Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 29

An inexplicable inconsistency remains unexplained

  Vital Signs 43/4 (2024), the current issue of the newsletter of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), includes the text of a letter (dated 30 October 2024) that was sent by Dr. Janice Miner Holden, who currently serves as the president of IANDS, to the actor Al Pacino. Mr. Pacino recently experienced an […]

A year-end report

  Between sixteen and thirty-five percent of all annual charitable gifts in the United States are given in December.  Nearly 30% of annual online donations occur in December, with spikes on Giving Tuesday and the last days of the month.  Ten percent of all giving occurs on 29-31 December, as donors make final contributions before […]

Muslim prayer in a Latter-day Saint meetinghouse?

  I don’t know the source of the photograph above, so I can neither give credit to the photographer nor ask his or her permission to share it.  I apologize for that.  But the photograph has apparently generated considerable conversation, not to say controversy, and I feel that I ought to say something about it. […]

Thoughts on Syria (and on a Slander)

  Some notes about the astonishing turn of events in Syria: Russia is a big loser in this story.  Vladimir Putin invested a great deal in supporting Bashar al-Assad’s regime.  For one thing, he was interested (as Soviet leaders and czars have been since Peter the Great) in acquiring a warm-water naval port.  Latakia, on […]

Christmas and Human Deification

The news out of Syria is stunning.  The fall of Damascus and the collapse of the Baathist government there came swiftly, and what it will all mean very much remains to be seen.  I will certainly shed no tears over the departure of the Assad regime, and what I’ve heard from the head of the […]

Heaven Could Not Hold Him

  The Christmas season is busy one.  Especially, perhaps, in the United States, where commercialism drives both it and us, and where it falls during a frenetic period known as “the holidays,” preceded by Halloween and Thanksgiving and succeeded by New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day (to mention only a few of the festivities). […]

Still! Still! Still!

  Two new articles went up today (Friday) on the website of the Interpreter Foundation.  The first of them represents the 646th consecutive Friday on which a new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “What Can Artificial Intelligence Tell Us About the Literary Skills Needed to Dictate a […]

Light the World!

  In my opinion, Giving Machines definitely represent one of the most brilliant ideas that I’ve ever encountered with regard to Christmas.  They are a fun way to focus on giving during this season, rather than only on eating, drinking, and getting.  They are convenient, and fun for children.  They offer small and reasonable but […]

We press on

  My wife and I took our core film production and film distribution and film bookkeeping group out to dinner last night, both for Christmas and to celebrate the near-conclusion of the dramatic-film portion of our overall Six Days in August project.  (One more contract is awaiting completion.  The others have been signed.  And then […]

Numbers are pesky things

  Unfortunately, today’s blog entry needs to be largely devoted to the proverbial notion that a lie can travel half-way around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.  (Appropriately enough, the saying is commonly but, it seems, falsely attributed to Mark Twain.). My boots are now laced up, so it’s time […]