The Washington, D.C. Chapter of the BYU Management Society (BYUMS-DC) announced today that it would honor best-selling author and columnist Orson Scott Card at its annual Gala Dinner on April 24, 2010. Card will receive the chapter’s Distinguished Public Service Award and will deliver keynote remarks about his views on ethical leadership today and his experiences as a prominent member of the literary and academic communities.
“We are proud to be honoring Orson Scott Card during this year’s Gala Dinner,” said Sen. Gordon Smith, Chairman of the Advisory Board. “His words and his example have reached millions of people, and his spirit of mentorship and service have much to offer our community.”
I have often heard the criticism that Latter-day Saints classify everyone who disagrees with our beliefs as “anti-Mormon.” Of course, the people who say this are usually anti-Mormons. Am I proving their point? I don’t think so.
Mitt Romney is kicking off his 19-state book tour this week with appearances on Letterman’s “Late Show,” NBC’s “Today Show,” ABC’s “The View,” Fox’s “Sean Hannity Show” and a speech at the National Press Club in D.C. All apologies, but as speeches go, I tend to find Mitt’s to be as somniferous as an LDS General Conference sermon. Even the subject of his candidacy itself is usually a surefire soporific, but this is apparently gonna be the biggest week for Mitt since he got that Cosmo Brown elected senator. And since he so far refuses to take the best political advice on offer (getting himself baptized a Southern Baptist), I suppose that means Mitt’s still a Mormon, in which case the Mormon cognoscenti here at MSP probably ought to serve up a cogent insight or two about Brother Romney before too long. Until then, Pete Rizzo of The Daily Collegian has graciously agreed to republishing his column here, recapping his impressions of the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Read the rest of this entry »
It looks like a large segment of the American public thinks that a couple of out-of-context quotes from some leaked emails constitute knock-out-punch evidence that global warming is a lie. How can there be so much debate over things as cut-and-dried as facts and reality??? Fortunately Outer Blogness has risen to the task of exploring why!
The best short post I’ve seen on how to rationally analyze evidence (outside your area of specialization) comes from NeuroLogica (hat tip Kuri). I’d quote just one part, but it’s not long, and the whole thing is quite informative (regardless of your ideology). NeuroLogica discusses some of the ways bias affects critical thinking, and Aerin sent me an interesting NPR segment explaining some scientific studies illustrating this sort of bias in action. Sadly, some out groups are biased against their own. Read the rest of this entry »
Quick summary of what Oaks said: People in the US, generally, are ignorant about religion. He says that’s bad. Oaks then blames higher education for this, claiming that higher education has lost its focus now that it actually spends its time teaching students things like science, medicine, and engineering instead of theology. (Makes me think of Mencken on theology, “Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.” H L Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, “Sententiæ: Arcana Coelestia” (1949).) I’m sure we’d have the technology we have today if all we did in college is just talk about the unknowable. Yep, this is genius. What a great idea, former law professor Oaks! (I wonder if he followed his own advice when he was a law professor; talk about worthless law school classes.)
Not having made a big enough fool out of himself, Oaks tries harder by claiming he knows ‘The Truth’ and is going to tell the students ‘The Truth.’ Though, apparently, ‘The Truth’ is really 3 ‘The Truths’:
The nature of God, including the role of the three members of the Godhead, and the corollary truth that there are moral absolutes.
The purpose of life.
The three-fold sources of truth about man and the universe: science, the scriptures and continuing revelation, and how we can know them.
Maybe I’m just a jaded secularist, but it sure seems like: #1 is heavily debated and certainly not knowable; #2 has as many “truths” as there are people on the planet; and #3 is an oxymoron.
So, what have we gained from this? Oaks thinks all universities should teach just Mormon theology. I bet we could learn more if I simply put my 9 month old son in front of everyone and we all watched him for an hour; at the very least he’d be more entertaining.
A while back, there was a husband-wife couple of speakers who came to one of my classes to talk about their mission to Papua New Guinea for several years. I wrote about that on my blog a while back, highlighting one of the things they said about their children that particularly struck me.
These children grow up to be Third Culture Kids, and there is a phenomenon of these Third Culture Kids from a variety of upbringings. What these Third Culture Kids must realize is that they do not belong. And they never will. They must learn to accept that they can’t be American, but they can’t be Gapapaiwa. They have to be something in the middle. Many Third Culture Kids, in fact, end up marrying others, because even if the particulars of their situations vary, they understand the phenomenon and each other
This is a kinda loose paraphrase, but I’m pretty sure the mother said the exact words, “they do not belong. And they never will.” That struck me. I checked out the wikipedia page on Third Culture Kids here, and although I fit one of the traditional categories (army brat), what I felt was that as an ex-Mormon, I feel this way too. Read the rest of this entry »
Best Discussion Forum goes to Further Light And Knowledge. (And BTW, a big thanks to all the folks from all of the different discussion forums who participated in these awards! It was a pretty close race between FLAK and Mormon Discussions!)
“Nothing About Us Without Us” — what a great insight, brought to us this past week by the feminist Mormon housewives. Reese Dixon wrote the post comparing the situation of disabled people with the situation of women in the LDS church: in both cases policy decisions are made for them, by others. It also seems to fit some of the other discussions I saw around blogspace this week, talking about other groups when you could be talking with them. For example, check out this BCC article (containing lots of speculation about former Mormons, including that gem that former “Mormons become shell-shocked and bitter, and go into therapy to become professional ex-Mormons”). Scott B. might have considered watching In the Shadow of the Temple (reviewed here by the Swearing Elders). Meanwhile Andrew is reduced to posting his responses elsewhere since he’s not welcome on BCC.
By contrast, Tim advises Evangelicalsnot to just talk to other Evangelicals if they want to know what Mormons believe and are like. And Ms. Jack is going the extra mile by actually having the LDS Missionaries over for dinner. And MoHoHawaii presents a great insight about advice, namely who it’s really for/about.
Sadly, we still have reportsfromall over of straight people making shockingly ignorant assumptions about gay people.
On a completely different note, both Todd and Runtu have posted interesting points about post-modernism. And speaking of debating the existence of objective reality, Jon discusses global warming “skeptics” — as Phil notes, you can’t resolve away climate change.
And let’s close with a couple of announcements: Madame Curie is starting a feminist cyber book club. And don’t forget that you’ve only got another day or so to vote for the Brodies (if you haven’t already) or encourage your last few friends to vote for you!
Did anyone else catch this gem from the Utah State Legislature: Utah Delivers Vote of No Confidence to ‘Climate Alarmists’. Basically the Utah State Legislature passed a bill saying that global warming was a conspiracy and demanded that the Environmental Protection Agency stop regulating greenhouse gases.
Sadly, I can’t say this is all that surprising considering who the state representatives are (um, Chris Buttars, need I say more?!?). Not to be outdone by loony Chris Buttars, uber-loony Mike Noel, claimed that “environmentalists were part of a vast conspiracy to destroy the American way of life and control world population through forced sterilisation and abortion.” The article ends with a “great” (i.e., disturbing) quote by Noel, “Sometimes … we need to have the courage to do nothing.” Who elects these people?
March 8th, 2010 by Chino Blanco 
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