Okay, I know this isn’t a serious study, but I thought it was kind of funny. A student at Cal Tech decided to plot the ten most popular books at a given University (according to Facebook) on a graph with the University’s average SAT/ACT score. The study is here. (Hat…
FrogBlog!
Hello to the great wide world of the information superhighway. This DAMU interstate is a stretch of road I am well familiar with as I have been travelling on it for nearly a decade. In fact, I have purchased temporary ownership of this stretch of road and have been busily…
From baptism to resignation or excommunication
Now that I’ve gathered all of Outer Blogness (that I could find anyway), and updated the blogroll here accordingly, I’d like to suggest an assignment. This is inspired Wry Catcher’s hilarious post about her baptism and why she hasn’t resigned (she was baptized by two different religions and figures they…
What to do with Mormon missionaries?
So, here’s an intriguing quandary for you. I have a colleague, a full professor who has taught Psychology of Religion for about 30 years. He knows more about what makes religious people tick than just about anyone else in the world (he has, quite literally, written THE BOOK on it)….
Why “Reformed Egyptian”?
If you suppose the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction, it opens a different set of questions to explore than if you suppose that it is true. For example, why did the author choose to have his characters write in “Reformed Egyptian” instead of Hebrew or something else?…
Harold Bloom on Mitt’s speech
I was just going back over some articles I recently read in an issue of Sunstone and caught this quote from Harold Bloom’s take on modern-day Mormonism, “What he [Joseph Smith] most distinctly was not was another American Protestant revivalist. Mitt Romney would not like my saying this, but if…
Transforming Mormonism?
Noah Feldman has published a fascinating essay in the New York Times Magazine. Feldman focuses especially on Republican anti-Mormon bigotry and wonders how Mitt Romney’s bid for the presidency might change Mormonism. The rise of the religious right posed a tricky political quandary for the LDS church. On the one…
Romney and Religion
Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy has brought Mormonism—and the role of religion in politics—into the spotlight in some interesting ways. His candidacy is revealing of some of the fault lines both in Mormon culture and in the American political environment. The Mormon church has long had a confused approach to its…
even Republican op-ed writers are dissing Romney now
David Brooks, the token Republican at the NYTimes, tore Romney a new one this morning in an op-ed. I don’t know that his criticisms are all that new (e.g., Romney is a flip-flopper and best friend of the wealthy), but to hear it from a conservative is an intriguing change.