A New Yorker profile of Mitt Romney addresses the question of how well his management style translates in the political arena. Its thesis is that Romney’s approach to politics and governance originates from the institutional nature of Mormonism as well as from his experience in management consulting and corporate turnarounds. The treatment is less sympathetic than most Mormons would hope—probably a foreordained conclusion, given that authoritarian religion and big business would not be expected to be among the Favorite Things of a readership with literary pretensions. Still, the brief take on Mormonism as an institution is interesting. linux modbus software Adobe Acrobat 6 professional
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(3 votes, average: 1.33 out of 5)

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Joseph Smith often exhibited an admirable willingness to salvage rather than savage people and ideas. In a similarly liberal spirit Mike W.’s comment on yesterday’s post shows a desire to find a way to appreciate Spinoza’s thought in light of Mormonism despite Spinoza’s antagonism towards religious authority and other mainstream religious concepts. Indeed, I think there are a number of significant ways in which Mormonism is informed by (or, if you prefer, is compatible with) certain Enlightenment sensibilities that can be traced to Spinoza. (more)

(3 votes, average: 2.33 out of 5)

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For a few General Conferences in a row I posted summaries of each individual session, but this time I have not. Instead, I decided yesterday to channel the devout Mormon’s sense of entitlement to skimp on Saturday chores and binge on the prophetic word into something I pretty much never do. I read an entire book in a single day—in this case, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity by Rebecca Goldstein. (more)

(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

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Sisters, it’s that time of year again… Time to start thinking about finding that special piece of swimwear that will both accentuate your most positive features and allow you to uphold the modesty that becomes daughters of God. (more)

(10 votes, average: 3.8 out of 5)

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Here are brief first impressions of talks from the second day of General Conference, to be updated throughout the day. (more)

(7 votes, average: 4.14 out of 5)

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Here are brief first impressions of talks from the first day of General Conference, to be updated throughout the day. (more)

(4 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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Former Massachusetts governor (and not-former Mormon) Mitt Romney has a decent shot at the Republican presidential nomination.

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(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)

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An interesting article in the Washington Post this morning about the resurgent practice of mutaa in Iraq. A traditional Shiite practice apparently banned under Saddam, a mutaa is a ‘marriage’ with a sunset provision, in which the parties agree in advance that the man’s financial support and the woman’s companionship will continue for only a pre-specified period of time that could range anywhere from a day to weeks or months—or, I suppose, even years. A man’s having a permanent wife or wives is, as you might imagine, no obstacle to his entering into a mutaa. (more)

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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In one of his responses to my previous post, Jared* is probably not alone in thinking that Elder Bruce R. McConkie’s final conference address and his discussion of seeing God in the last two chapters of his book The Promised Messiah suggest that he himself had been visited in person by the resurrected Jesus Christ. Elder McConkie clearly believed in the potential reality of that blessing, and the importance of seeking after it with all one’s heart; but he makes his case based on scriptures and teachings of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, and does not recount any such experiences of his own or anyone else of our generation. In fact, a careful reading of these sources may suggest that while he lived hoping to receive this blessing in mortality, he died without having attained it. (more)

(9 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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As a matter of ontological outlook, atheism seems to have been foreign to ancient cultures and mindsets preceding and surrounding the Greeks of a few hundred years B.C.; but skepticism with regard to individual claims of prophetic power and authority seems to be a more ancient, deeply rooted, widespread, and respectable tradition. In fact, while he would probably not go all the way with the Rolling Stones in having Sympathy for the Devil, the witness of the Old Testament seems to be that on at least one pivotal occasion Jehovah himself had sympathy for the skeptic—at least, the skeptic of individual claims. (more)

(3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)

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I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t read beyond this headline in The Washington Post: “Study Claims Iraq’s ‘Excess’ Death Toll Has Reached 655,000.” I wouldn’t expect pre-med students to become skilled at Fermi problems, and indeed I wouldn’t expect your typical practicing M.D. to remember much at all from required physics classes I’m sure they’d prefer to forget. But even if they are M.D.s, those who author, referee, and edit papers presenting quantitative results in (allegedly) respectable academic journals have no excuse for forgetting the related but lesser basic quantitative skill of ‘ballparking,’ typically taught sometime around—oh I don’t know—maybe the first problem one ever approaches in freshman physics? (more)

(4 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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The last edition of The Weakest Links, available on the sidebar under the heading “Temporalia (Week of 2 October),” started off with three links and no further links were added. This post provides a place to sound off on this week’s links. (more)

(2 votes, average: 2.5 out of 5)

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The last edition of The Weakest Links, available on the sidebar under the heading “Temporalia (Week of 28 August),” started off with three links and ended with four. This post provides a place to sound off on this week’s links. (more)

(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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It was announced today that George F. Smoot—for whom I worked one summer as an undergraduate at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory—has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, together with John C. Mather, “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.”

The award honors the scientific harvest of two of the three instruments aboard the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), which provided key observational evidence that our universe began in a hot and dense nearly-uniform state (the ‘Big Bang‘) and evolved the presently observed large-scale structure of walls, voids, filaments, and clusters of galaxies from the gravitational growth of tiny random density fluctuations (about 1 part in 100,000) in this primordial soup. (more)

(5 votes, average: 4.4 out of 5)

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Here are brief first impressions of talks from the second day of General Conference, to be updated throughout the day. (more)

(4 votes, average: 3.25 out of 5)

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Here are brief first impressions of talks from the first day of General Conference, to be updated throughout the day. (more)

(5 votes, average: 3.6 out of 5)

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[Originally posted 2 October 2005. Please go to the original to remind yourself what transpired the second day of Conference a year ago.]

Below are one- or two-sentence first impressions of talks from the second day of General Conference, to be which were updated after each session. (more)

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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[Originally posted 1 October 2005. Please go to the original to remind yourself what transpired the first day of Conference a year ago.]

Below are one- or two-sentence first impressions of talks from the first day of General Conference. (more)

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The statement in The Family: A Proclamation to the World that fathers are to “preside” over their families has led to considerable consternation over just what ‘presiding’ means in a marriage of “equal partners”; but thanks to the presence of female office-holders in the Church, it would seem that confusion over the meaning of this term extends into the ecclesiastical sphere as well. Only a Church so heavily rooted in (and therefore so touchy about) top-down prophetic priesthood authority could spawn discussions as to whether Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary presidencies actually preside. This is just one example of the Orwellian contortions that tincture Church discourse and practice from time to time; and while it may be tempting to lament, mock, revile, or resist these as merely serving the interests of the Ministry of Truth, perhaps they should be regarded instead as an acceptable price to pay to retain the unity, stability, security, and historical continuity that only a top-down community can provide in a changing world that demands change. The existence of some path to change can be the silver lining, even if at first glance some things seem to get worse—as some may consider to be the case with the evolving relationships between the female-led auxiliaries and the priesthood hierarchy—before they get better. (more)

(3 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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A recent post, born of yet another discussion of women and the priesthood, articulates well a distinction between power and authority. For instance, I for one am not inclined to argue against the proposition that “smokin’ hot sex appeal=power.” However, the I think the following claim requires further examination:

The patriarchalists and the feminists are working for precisely the same goal: both want men to invest more in their children. This, in fact, must be one of the foremost objectives of any society that aims to reproduce itself: men do not instinctively invest very much in their offspring, and somehow they must be persuaded or forced to do so because women are, by and large, unable to provision themselves and their children alone. Patriarchalists propose to do this by giving men more authority; feminists propose to do this by giving women more power. (more)

(7 votes, average: 4.71 out of 5)

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