Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 1236

“Life beyond Earth”

    I’ve just read a lavishly illustrated and very interesting article in the July 2014 issue of National Geographic:   http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ast...   The search for extraterrestrial life is now focused less on signals from ET than on exobiology, places where relatively primitive extremophiles might have eked out a survival niche.   And there’s talk [Read More...]

Keeping Portland weird

    Those who’re committed to the cause of keeping Portland weird need have no real anxiety on that score:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnVjk...   Thanks to Carol Rawson for bringing this to my attention.    

C. S. Lewis on life’s obstacles, setbacks, and difficulties

    “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life.  The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life — the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real [Read More...]

Against shameful, ignorant anti-Islamic propaganda

    This morning, a friend passed on to me an extremely virulent anti-Islamic email that’s apparently circulating widely.   It’s not the first such thing I’ve received, and, unfortunately, it won’t be the last.   The email, a wildly distorted and grossly misleading presentation of “Islam in a nutshell,” aims to paint all American Muslims [Read More...]

True conversion to the Lord

    My wife and I have just returned from attending a multi-stake conference where we heard from, among others, Elder Whitney Clayton of the Seventy and Elders Richard Scott and Russell Nelson of the Twelve.   There were many important messages conveyed by the conference speakers.  Many of them challenged me to do better. [Read More...]

“Thou hast done wonderful things”

    In The Interpreter Foundation’s eighty-seventh (87th) scripture roundtable, Bruce Webster, Daniel Peterson, Mike Parker, and Ben McGuire discuss Isaiah 22, 24-26, and 28-30 in connection with the 37th lesson in the 2014 Gospel Doctrine manual:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/scri...    

“She Loves Me”

    Marrying a theater major was one of my brighter moves; we see a fair number of live plays and operas each year, and I enjoy it thoroughly.   Tonight, with a friend, we attended a very good performance of the musical She Loves Me at the Hale Centre Theatre in West Valley City.   [Read More...]

A lecture that I delivered at the University of Queensland in 2006

    I addressed the topic of translating Islamic texts into English.  I conceived and founded a project to do this, and I was deeply involved with it until a couple of years ago.   The lecture was recorded in two parts:   http://omc.uq.edu.au/audio/news/peter...   http://omc.uq.edu.au/audio/news/peter...   If I knew that this lecture was available [Read More...]

The Golan Heights and the Syrian civil war

    I’ve never actually been to Quneitra, but I’ve seen it and the adjacent United Nations camp and checkpoint many times from above, on Israeli-held Mount Bentel.     This is the same area in which is set the marvelous film The Syrian Bride — which I heartily recommend to anybody as a really [Read More...]

1 Nephi 12

    Today’s Book of Mormon reading –today’s reading for me, anyway; it’s difficult to tell whether anybody’s reading along, and readership and comments for these entries seem to have dropped off quite a bit — is 1 Nephi 12.   Out of all that that chapter covers, I want to say something today about “the [Read More...]