Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 1121

“The Harvard chemistry professor who was also a murderer”

    It reads like a detective story from the television screen.   The very human side of one once-prominent scientist:   http://mentalfloss.com/article/65139/...    

Fox News, mass murder, lying memes, hyperpartisanship, the Internet, and (of course) me

    Yesterday, a prominent South Carolina legislator by the name of J. Todd Rutherford — a Democrat – insinuated a causal link between Fox News and the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/e...   His description of Fox News is wildly inaccurate and slanderous.  I doubt that he’s ever actually watched the channel. [Read More...]

“Post-Christianity and the Culture of Death”

    Are you okay with this?   Can you see the handwriting on the wall?   http://www.theamericanconservative.co...   Do you see the “personal autonomy” connection that I do between this and current cases of “self-identification” with regard to race and gender?   Did you know, incidentally, that I self-identify as a seven-foot-tall immigrant from [Read More...]

Two miracle stories

    I.   I just came across this account, describing what some (include Elder Dallin H. Oaks, of the Council of the Twelve) regard as the miraculous preservation of the Manilla Philippines Temple back in December of 1989:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/86...   I hadn’t heard the story before.   II.   Last night, Monday night, my wife [Read More...]

A call to omit Shakespeare altogether from the English literature curriculum

    At least, to eliminate him completely from the English literature curriculum for inner city youth and/or people of non-European ethnicity:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/a...   Mark you that the call isn’t merely to cast the net widely, to read Shakespeare along with works from different periods and different backgrounds.   No, it’s to jettison Shakespeare [Read More...]

John Taylor, on the word “can’t”

    “We found many difficulties to combat, for it is not an easy thing to go into France and learn to talk French well; but at the same time, if a man sets to work in good earnest, he can do it. I have scratched the word ‘can’t’ out of my vocabulary long since, [Read More...]

“Al-Qaeda second-in-command killed by U.S. drone strike”

    This is a pretty big hit:   http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/06/...   AQAP seems to be the most dangerous and most ambitious al-Qa‘ida franchise.    

Responding to a series of attacks on the Book of Mormon

    My inimitable friend and former Maxwell Institute colleague Bill Hamblin has begun a series of responses to a series of attacks on the Book of Mormon launched out of the blue by Philip Jenkins, a reputable non-LDS historian — not a specialist on either Mormonism, Mesoamerica, or the ancient world – whose work both [Read More...]

Martin Harris’s sacrifice

    I think, given the many years and the considerable inflation intervening since the late 1820s, that we modern Latter-day Saints typically fail to grasp the magnitude of the sacrifice made by Martin Harris in order to publish the Book of Mormon.   E. B. Grandin’s price was $3000 to produce 5000 high quality [Read More...]

New Testament 173

    Matthew 18:23-35   It’s really easy to deride the folly and blatant hypocrisy of this unmerciful servant.   But how many of us, if we examined ourselves honestly and accurately, could escape pleading guilty to the charge of having a double standard, judging others while hoping to escape judgment ourselves, or, at least, to be treated [Read More...]