This plaque is at the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France. It may be difficult to read, but it is titled, “Appearances of the Risen Christ.” It describes a series of five memorials to the stories in the Bible describing the resurrected Savior. We Mormons know there were at least a few more, and probably many given that Christ had many sheep around the world during the Atonement. My thought upon seeing this was: “if only the world knew about the others appearances.”
According to this story, there are two earthquakes that may have taken place at about the time of the Savior’s death.
It is always interesting to follow such scientific efforts to see how the evidences from the physical world match with the scriptures. Faith should not be based on such scientific efforts, however, but should be based on the spiritual witness through the Holy Ghost.
Still, there is some evidence of earthquakes. Cool!
As most readers know, the United States was the first — and still the only — country to use atomic weapons against another country.
Now I am very unhappy to report that the United States is the first country to engage is cyber warfare against another country.
For several years we have been the first country to engage in drone warfare in other nations’ sovereign territory. Now, the Obama administration is proudly leaking the fact that the president sits down on a weekly basis to decide who will be assassinated by the drones. As the Nation magazine points out, President Obama has now become the assassin-in-chief.
Who cares, you say. After all, the president is mostly targeting bad guys. Do you care that drones are now being used to spy on you in the United States? Meanwhile, the NSA is building a massive domestic spying center in Utah. One of the clear purposes of the center is to spy on your e-mail and blog posts (ahem!) and phone calls.
This is clearly a brave new world, a world where the United States engages in all kinds of firsts. The country with the first Constitution intended to protect individual liberty has now become first in warfare and first in developing the 21st century technological apparatus to destroy liberty.
This study makes the claim that so-called “benevolent sexists” (BS) are happier.
What this means is that what we Mormons would see as “traditional family roles,” ie men work and are responsible for making money, women take care of the kids and home, actually makes people happier.
To quote from the description of the study:
For men, BS was directly associated with life satisfaction. For women, the palliative effect of BS was indirect and occurred because BS-ideology positioning women as deserving of men’s adoration and protection was linked to general perceptions of gender relations as fair and equitable, which in turn predicted greater levels of life satisfaction.
To translate this: men like traditional family roles, and so do women. Women acknowledge that traditional family roles often put them in a seemingly inferior position but in exchange they get more attention and protection from the man, and they like that.
Discuss.
A Washington Post writer visits the exotic land of Arkansas (I can just hear the editor making hick jokes) and reports that there are a lot of evangelicals there and some of them really hate Mormons. It is in Arkansas, you see, where the descendents of many of the families killed in the Mountain Meadows Massacre live today.
There aren’t many places in America more likely to be suspicious of Mormonism — and potentially more problematic for Mitt Romney, who is seeking to become the country’s first Mormon president. Not only do many here retain a personal antipathy toward the religion and its followers, but they also tend to be Christian evangelicals, many of whom view Mormonism as a cult.
And yet, there is scant evidence that Romney’s religion is making much difference in how voters here are thinking about the presidential election and whether they are willing to back the former Massachusetts governor.
So, to be clear: There is “scant evidence” of any reason to tie this story to Mitt Romney, yet the Washington Post still finds a way to do it. And the Church and Romney have both apologized profusely about this 150-year-old story, but it is still important enough to merit a lengthy story in the Washington Post.
And just in case there is any doubt, the Post reporter ends his story by reaffirming there is really no story here at all: “None of that history, though, including the massacre, may make much of a difference at the polls,” the reporter writes.
You got that? There is absolutely no story here. It has no effect on the campaign in any way or on the Church or on Mitt Romney. But we must write a story anyway. Doesn’t the Post have better things to do? Well, given its plummeting circulation, apparently not.