I followed Adam’s link in the sidebar to an article in Meridian Magazine, by their film critic Kieth no I did not spell that wrong Merrill. Read More

Jason Knapp over at Let Your Mind Alone is looking into the possibility of establishing a student-edited journal of Mormon studies, possibly in conjunction with BYU Studies (he mentions informal discussions with Jack Welch). It all sounds very tentative and gestational at the moment, but it sounds like a potentially interesting development. Students (or others, for that matter) who are interested in Mormon studies may want to check out Jason’s post, where he also gives contact information. Read More

Sometime T & S and BCC commenter Jim Lucas points out this interesting story. Daniel Arkell, an LDS student at Washburn University Law School in Kansas, joined the Christian Legal Society. When the group decided to start a Bible study program, he was one of the volunteers to lead the study. However, the group then decided that he could not lead the Bible study, or become an officer of the group. Arkell filed a discrimination complaint with the university, which then revoked the CLS’s charter. The CLS is now suing the university in federal court. Read More

Just how PoMo is the celibate one? Here’s a sample from her post on the topic: Because of my internet blogging activities I ‘meet’ other people online. We have no real life interaction, just email and blogging comments. Then, one reader of my blog-about-dates invites me on a real date with one of his real friends. So I go out and meet in real life this stranger that I first met in cyberspace. (My simulacra world has now spilled into my real world). We have a real nice time. Then I go home to blog about the date, so I… Read More

I am not a connoisseur of music, I am an omnivore, and I think I recall Nietzsche pointing out that a person who will eat anything is a person who has no taste. That’s me. There are few kinds of music that I don’t enjoy. Read More

Here is a very simple question on which I have no priors: is there a difference between withdrawing from the Spirit and having the Spirit withdrawn? On the former, see Mosiah 2:36. On the latter, see Helaman 13:8. I can visualize us withdrawing from God, but I have a harder time visualizing the circumstances under which God withdraws from us. Read More

We’re going to the Temple tomorrow, three hours away, and I was sitting here pondering where we might eat lunch (I’m extremely pregnant and pretty much living from one feeding to the next.) in a city I don’t know that well. So, I went to Yahoo! maps, typed in the address of the Temple, clicked on ‘show restaurants’ and ‘all cuisines’ and there you have it. Every restaurant in a five mile radius, location shown on map, and no panicked u-turns because you passed a place that looked good or settling for fast food because you don’t know if there… Read More

Over the next little while, I’m going to be trying to implement the new blogroll feature from WordPress. There will be a bit of lag time as we get our blogroll moved over. During this lag, the new blogroll will only be partially complete. However, it should load a lot faster as it’s not getting data from two other websites. Read More

Apologies to all who have tried to comment this morning. Kaimi was messing with comment moderation settings (where we can put “questionable” comments into a queue for individual approval) and accidentally added an extra blank line to the list of questionable comment flags. The software apparently interpreted this as a blank space, so any comment with a space in it was marked questionable. This has been fixed, and everyone’s “questionable” comments have been released from comment jail. (I hear they’re considering a class action lawsuit, alleging unconstitutional conditions). Read More

Over at my own blog, I’ve posted some (as is my wont, lengthy) reflections on the importance of celebrating holidays, even those that aren’t, strictly speaking, one’s own. The occasion, of course, is that today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. (Actually it began last night at sundown, but the formal holiday is today.) As I’ve mentioned a few times before here at Times and Seasons, I’m a fan of holidays–I think their religious, historical, communal and moral importance to one’s personal and family life can only with difficulty be overstated. And that goes especially for religious holidays (despite… Read More

I don’t know how I missed this, but apparently during halftime of last week’s Stanford-BYU game, the legenday Stanford Band’s halftime act included five dancers wearing wedding veils — a not-so-subtle dig at the opposing school’s founder. Not to worry, though, the Stanford athletic director issued an apology Monday. Read More

Some of my co-bloggers are big fans of the slippery slope. I’m a skeptic. I’m not suggesting that it is not possible to, in a descriptive way, construct some sort of progression between events that makes some sense. (I have separate doubts about descriptive use of slippery-slope arguments, particularly with the problem of cherry-picking). But my biggest concern with slippery slope arguments are when they are employed normatively: “We shouldn’t do X, because that might lead to Y, and then Z.” Or the ever-popular framing: “Wow, so-and-so suggests we do X. What’s next, Y?” And thus are proponents of some… Read More

This evening I was having dinner with a well-known professor of sociology from Stanford. Near the end of the dinner, he was discussing genetic research in Utah. He said the only problem is that the research is entirely focused on the men because the Mormons don’t care enough about women to keep their genealogy. Read More

I was running late for a meeting today when I encountered a staff member at the law school. When I explained quickly that I was 10 minutes late, she commented, “No problem. Jewish Standard Time.” Well, I thought it was a strange comment to make to me, a conspicuous Mormon, but I was also intrigued by the comparison to the expression, Mormon Standard Time. Do all religions have an expression like this? I have never heard of Catholic Standard Time or Muslim Standard Time. Read More

President Hinckley writes this month’s First Presidency Message, In Opposition to Evil. After lamenting society’s “inordinate emphasis on sex and violence,” he writes: The whole dismal picture indicates a weakening rot seeping into the very fiber of society. Legal restraints against deviant moral behavior are eroding under legislative enactments and court opinions. This is done in the name of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of choice in so-called personal matters. But the bitter fruit of these so-called freedoms has been enslavement to debauching habits and behavior that leads only to destruction. A prophet, speaking long ago, aptly… Read More

Examining one subset of the question “Who would Jesus vote for?”, Josiah at Christus Victor notes: Alan Keyes says Jesus wouldn’t vote for Barack Obama. Well of course he wouldn’t. Jesus isn’t even a citizen of Illinois. Read More

A follow-up question occurred to be as I was looking over D & C 89:17 for my last post. A phrase jumped out at me, and I think it’s deserving of its own discussion. D & C 89:17 reads: 17 Nevertheless, wheat for man, and corn for the ox, and oats for the horse, and rye for the fowls and for swine, and for all beasts of the field, and barley for all useful animals, and for mild drinks, as also other grain. (emphasis added) Can someone please tell me what these “mild drinks” made from barley are, that we… Read More

Just a few months ago, defenders of traditional marriage predicted that should government recognize gay marriages, public schools would soon give equal treatment to homosexuality in sex education classes. We were right quicker than I expected. In Massachusetts, a committee is already preparing a ‘gay-friendly’ curriculum for kindergartners and up, a school district is helping elementary teachers overcome their reluctance to use particular words in the classroom, and an 8th grade sex education teacher shows her students how to have gay and lesbian sex by drawing pictures of various sex positions, then asking the class questions such as “Can a… Read More

It seems to me that there are academic issues that saints sometimes have difficulties with and that they might be helped if they had “answers� to those questions from LDS academics who have thought about the problems. I can imagine a student in university who hears about a particular hot topic in the academy and doesn’t yet have tools for thinking about it from an LDS perspective. Read More