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About 10 minutes after my first positive pregnancy test, I was at the bookstore, perusing the shelves of parenting titles, a pastime I’ve continued with some regularity for nearly a decade now. One of my favorite of these books is called 10 Principles of Spiritual Parenting. Read More
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In one week, on November 19th, Times and Seasons will turn one year old. As part of our anniversary celebration…expect something big. Something huge! Something MASSIVE!! Well, big, anyway. Stay tuned. Read More
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I have to admit that I have a soft spot for what I think of as the virtues of commercialism. Read More
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There are a lot of interesting things I ought to take the time to blog about, but instead I’d just like to ask our BYU audience a quick question: what’s the story behind this? What kind of changes have there been in the International Cinema program? Read More
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This afternoon at lunch, my angelic three-year-old daughter said causally to her quesadilla, “I’m going to kill you by plunging my spoon into your heart.” Read More
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Because I’m hopelessly behind in everything I do, I hadn’t realized that I neglected to post a thank-you for our guest blogger Daniel Bartholomew. Yes, the Westchester invasion is officially over (whew!). But seriously, it was great having him on board for two weeks. Read More
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I can’t claim to have an explicit link to LDS life with this post, but I think it’s topical nonetheless. There have been several discussions on this site about education– the various pros and cons of homeschooling, pre-schooling, small private colleges, etc. So here’s my little contribution: Why does it matter? Read More
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A Deseret News article reports a recent devotional by Elder Oaks where he expresses concern over some recent social trends. Discuss. Read More
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I’ve been witness to many discussions, in and out of the bloggernacle, questioning the importance of some of the stories in the Book of Mormon. Read More
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Although he goes to nursery in the Wakefield Ward each Sunday, my son attends pre-school twice a week at the Braddock Baptist Church in Annandale, Virginia. Read More
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It was late spring in London, and just as the weather outside started warming up, things inside started heating up, too. Read More
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(Now updated!) We’re very happy to announce our newest guest blogger: Rosalynde Welch. Read More
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OK. I’m not sure if that title bears exactly directly on what this post is about, but as an R&B fan I had to use it before my time runs out. I’m a guest-blogger, which means I’m only supposed to get two weeks. I’m not sure if today is my last day or if I’ve managed to sneak past Cerberus at the gates. For about the past month I’ve been questioning an assumption that I had. My assumption has been that Mormons have a responsibility to base their personal opinions and positions on scripture — and not just on a… Read More
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We lawyers have several disadvantages in trying to live the gospel. For one, everyone seems to hate us. However, there is one perk that almost offsets all the drawbacks of being a lawyer/disciple. That is that we have greater access to legal metaphors for the atonement. Read More
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We LDS like to refer to ourselves as a peculiar people. Read More
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This map, from the New Historical Atlas of Religion in America, shows the largest religious denomination in each US county. This does not mean that the majority of the county belongs to the denomination, only that no other denomination is larger. My guess is that Hancock County, Illinois (Nauvoo) will be the first purple county east of the Rockies. Maybe it already is (I don’t know the age of this map). What are the other contenders out east? Which will be the first purple county in California? . Read More
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Paul Morphy was a New Orleans born chess genius who wowed the world (or at least that small and geeky portion of it that cares about chess) with his aggressive and imaginative play in the decade before the Civil War. Read More
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If you’ve spent five minutes in the bloggernacle, you’ve heard a liberal-leaning Latter-day Saint bemoan the constant conservative harping among members of the church. Read More
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I was feeling a little jealous of all of these Bloggernacle get-togethers, so I flew to Washington D.C. to meet Matt, Nate, and Kaimi. Read More
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I’m not a big fan of much of David Brooks’s writings, as he is often too Manichean to be useful (here’s a good parody). But in the opening pages of Bobos in Paradise, Brooks does a nice job of describing the shift in American culture from a class structure based on lineage or money to one based on education and achievement. Read More
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Times and Seasons is my main way of wasting time these days, but I do have other vices, one of them being chess. Read More
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Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. (Psalms 122:6) News reports are rampant with rumors that Yasir Arafat is either dead, in a coma or on life support. What seems certain is that Arafat’s end is nigh. Read More
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This is off-topic, but I thought I’d put in a word for the 9/11 Commission Report. Read More
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George W. Bush, in my mind, is very much like Bill Clinton. Both men seem to have the ability to make otherwise sane people on the other side of the political fence become nutcases. Read More
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Well, we have ourselves a new president. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. A week or two ago, Brandy Siegfried mentioned Ron Suskind’s article “Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency.” I didn’t read the article, but I heard Suskind talk about it on NPR, and found it very interesting. Read More
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I have generally avoided posting on same-sex marriage, and I am not attempting to initiate another debate on the merits. But I believe that one of the huge stories of the presidential election will be the importance of this issue. While most people I know thought this election would be a referendum on the war in Iraq, it now appears that the tipping issue may have been same-sex marriage. More on my other blog. Read More
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One of the so-far-untold stories of the election is that Mormon Senator Harry Reid will almost certainly assume leadership of the Democratic Party in the United States Senate. Senator Tom Daschle appears to be going down in South Dakota, thus providing an opening for Reid. Of course, the Democrats are a minority in the Senate, but they are far from irrelevant. I assume this makes Reid the most powerful Mormon politician in the United States. (Will he be the most powerful Mormon politician ever?) Ironic, in light of the recent dominance of the Republican Party among Mormons, that our most… Read More
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Not that anyone needs any more suspense tonight, but I’ll be keeping a curious eye on Utah’s election results. Read More
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Our internet host is having some problems keeping up with traffic on this incredibly busy day. The problem is exacerbated since they’re also hosting some official election supervisor sites in Florida. We’ve had one hiccough so far today — about an hour and a half of down time — and we may see more. Just an FYI. Read More
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Nate’s post on the Sabbath returns me to some thoughts on the Sabbath I’ve been kicking around for a while. Earlier this fall, as I was looking for music for my ward choir to do, I considered Healey Willan’s setting of “O Quanta Qualia.” The text is as follows: Oh, what their joys and their glories must be, Those endless sabbaths the blessed ones see, Crown for the valiant, to weary ones rest, God shall be all and in all ever blest. Read More