My mother Gudrun Bachmann was born on June 9, 1939. When World War II begun with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, she was less than three months old. When Germany surrendered on May 9, 1945, she was one month shy of her sixth birthday. Besides a treasure…
Author: Hellmut
Oldies but Goodies: Testimony of a Dissident
A while back another blogger asked me to submit an essay about my Mormon experience. Probably, for good reasons he changed his mind and never published it. Since it is already written and might shed some light on my argument at Times and Seasons, I might as well publish it…
Investigator’s Lament
I am not your trophy, Do not display me, Do not report about me, Be my friend. When you reduce me To a number, I am less than human, And so are you.
Helping a Boy Recover from His Burn Wounds
Some of you might have noticed on Facebook that Jana Bouck Remy from Pilgrim Steps has raised money for HandReach, which is an excellent charity that helps Chinese children to recover from burn injuries. Jana and her friends raised enough money to pay for a girl’s prosthetic. The Main Street…
Nature’s Values
Our revulsion at the cruelty of the Supreme Leaders henchmen is a powerful refutation of the postmodernist credo that anything goes. After the enlightenment discredited the authority of tradition and religion, the notion that reason or civilization could provide an ersatz God has also collapsed. The efforts of analytical philosophy…
Spain Investigates Jay Bybee for Torture
According to Harper’s, Spanish authorities are investigating Bush administration officials for torture. That includes the former BYU law professor Jay Bybee who signed off on John Yoo’s infamous torture memos. The premier Spanish newspaper El PaÃs reports that judge Baltasar Garzón is involved in the investigation. Garzon is famous for…
The Nature of Sexuality
Todd just found a youtube video of the documentary Legacies about the treatment of Mormon gays by their church: Spencer Kimball’s attitudes about sexuality, unfortunately, can only be characterized as superstition. In the Mormon case, superstition is intertwined with claims to personal revelation. The latter is defined such that the…
Walk With Hellmut
Some of you might enjoy a virtual tour of the city of Saarbrücken, my last home before I came to the United States: Max Ophuels Preis_Trailer_2009 from LICHTFAKTOR on Vimeo. Located at the French border, my father’s house was literally five minutes walking distance, and the high and low German…
Turns Out that Utahns Aren’t Just Googling Porn
DAMU members have long been suspecting that residents in the state of Utah were among the top consumers of pornography. There remained considerable uncertainty, however, because the only available data were Google trends. Now, Benjamin Edelman from Harvard University has confirmed conjecture with credit card data of pornography consumers. After…
Rebranding the Church
Gabriel Rossi is a marketing specialist who exercises in branding. I have not read much of his work but his emphasis appears to be that you first have to develop relationships with your staff and team members before you can successfully project a brand to your clients and customers. With…