Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 47

“Elvis Has Left the Library”

  A new, 54-minute-long episode of the series A Marvelous Work — an episode that, shockingly, includes me — has been posted on the website of Scripture Central.  Watch it at your own risk:   “Who Actually Saw the Gold Plates? | A Marvelous Work Episode 5” The final gathering in the series of European […]

In Beowulf Territory

  Two new articles went up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “An Analysis of the Financial Incentives in Attacking the Restoration,” written by Ron C. Rhodes Abstract: With the popularity of social media growing exponentially, prominent critics of the Church are leveraging the platforms, particularly YouTube, as a key resource to produce […]

Music! Again!

  Last night, we attended a performance by a string quintet (occasionally joined by a French horn) at the Schloss Mirabell in Salzburg.  The palace, which stands with its gardens on the shore of the Salzach River north of the medieval city walls, was built about 1606 by Prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich Raitenau as a pleasure […]

A Global Effort on Behalf of Women and Children

  I lead off with something that, manifestly, comes directly from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™.  This is pretty big news.  Obviously, of course, there ought to be a law against such things — but alas, as long as theism and theist exist and are permitted free rein, these horrors will […]

Some art and music from Latter-day Saints beyond America

  I participated in a FAIR conference in Göteborg (Gothenburg), Sweden, several years ago, and we’ll be doing another conference there this coming Saturday.  The organizer for that previous event — which was extraordinarily well attended by members from Denmark, Norway, Finland, and even Germany, as well as from Sweden itself — was Louis Herrey, […]

“A fortuitous meeting of the chordal atoms”?

  My wife and I went out with Scott Gordon and his wife to the Salzburger Freilichtmuseum — the open-air museum — in Großgmain, not too far outside of Salzburg.  We walked around most of it, looking at the collection of traditional regional buildings (e.g., farmhouses, barns, a small chapel, and the like) that have […]

From the international Church

  We attended church today in the Salzburg Ward.  It was really fun for me to again sit in German-language sacrament and priesthood meetings, as I did so many times so many years ago during my mission in Switzerland.  I had the chance to speak in Arabic for a while, too; the missionaries had an […]

Two simple stories

  The in-person turnout for the FAIR conference in Rome a week ago was, frankly, disappointing — although, already about a day after it had concluded, I was told that its online viewership was in the range of roughly eight hundred.  Attendance in person at today’s conference in Salzburg — see the program here — […]

Christopher Hitchens and the Great Composers

  Two new items appeared today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: ““Armed with Righteousness and with the Power of God”: Allusions to Priestly Clothing, Priesthood, and Temple in 1 Nephi 14:14,” written by Matthew L. Bowen Abstract: Nephi saw in vision that in the latter-days “the saints of the church of the Lamb” […]

La Serenissima

  This morning, my wife and I walked over to the Doge’s Palace, the Palazzo Ducale, on the Piazza di San Marco, where she had booked a guided tour.  The Palazzo Ducale was the residence of the Doge or Duke of Venice from its construction in 1340 until the Napoleon-induced demise of the Republic of […]