Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 1118

“Can Islam come back to the light of science?”

    This brief article summarizes the glorious past and current dysfunction of one of the world’s great civilizations, but nonetheless manages to express some very slight optimism:   http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/...    

“What ‘Mormon problem’? More would vote for a Mormon than an Evangelical Christian”

    A really interesting item from the Washington Post:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/t...   Latter-day Saints haven’t suddenly become popular.  Evangelical popularity is plummeting.   On one level, I think some Evangelicals have brought this on themselves through their aggressive triumphalism and, sometimes, through their air of sheer smug superiority.  (Evangelical anti-Mormonism affords an unappetizing illustration [Read More...]

“(One Reason Why) I Love Brigham Young”

    Noticing my recent posts in defense of Brigham Young, my friend, onetime FARMS Review colleague, and current Interpreter Foundation colleague Greg Smith called my attention to something that he’d recently posted on his own blog, but which I had missed while traveling overseas:   https://seesangelsinthearchitecture.w...   It’s a nice story, little known but [Read More...]

A constantly recurring invasion

    “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.” Thomas Sowell    

“Turn Around”

    I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform this Harry Belafonte/Alan Greene/Malvina Reynolds song on Father’s Day, and it’s put me into a (plainly lasting) nostalgic and wistful mood:   Where are you going, my little one, little one, Where are you going, my baby, my own? Turn around and you’re two, Turn around [Read More...]

“Far from the Madding Crowd”

    I could have been happy, I think, as an English major.  In any case, I’ve been drawn to Thomas Hardy since I was in high school.   So I enjoyed this new version of Far from the Madding Crowd — both for its own sake and for its reminding me of the novel.   [Read More...]

The continuing legacy of the Confederate past?

    A fascinating article from the Economist entitled “The Present Past” – which I hadn’t seen yet, but to which Doug Ealy kindly called my attention — shows what seems to be, if not lasting effects of the Confederacy, at least the ongoing implications of a distinctively “Southern” mindset and sensibility.   http://www.economist.com/news/united-...   And guess [Read More...]

That vile despot Brigham Young, again

    Almost immediately after I posted my previous item on “The vile despot Brigham Young,” I thought of another book that I should have included, one that would give a better idea of Brigham the (good) man:   http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Brigham...   And then a reader calling himself Bernardo Gui recommended it, saying of the letters [Read More...]

New Testament 181

      Luke 10:21-24 Compare Matthew 11:25-27; 13:16-17; John 3:35; 7:29; 10:14-15; 13:3; 17:2, 15   For some reason, the Lord doesn’t seem inclined to reveal himself principally to the faculty club at Harvard or through the New York Review of Books.  Instead, he calls people who are ignored or even disdained by the [Read More...]

“The Shakespeare Algorithm”

    You may have heard of “word prints” as a way of trying to deal with the issue of Book of Mormon authorship.   Here’s a really interesting “word-print” approach to answering the question whether a disputed centuries-old play entitled Double Falsehood should be considered a long-lost part of the Shakespearean canon:   http://www.newyorker.com/tech/element...   [Read More...]