An amazing documentary premiered on byu.tv today between sessions of conference.
Month: October 2006
The Place of Ranting in Mormon Thought: A (Longish) Response to Russell
I have been thinking all weekend about Russell’s post attacking the Mormon legislators who voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The post was a rant. Russell is disgusted and outraged, but there was more to the post than that. Russell didn’t simply think that the Mormon legislators were wrong. He thought that they had betrayed their Mormoness at some deep level. I’m trying to figure out whether or not there is any value in what Russell has done.
Some Thoughts on Embodiment
“[L]iterature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear, and, save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null, and negligible and non-existent. On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February� –-Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill
Ben Huff
My childhood was split between northern Virginia, outside of DC, and the international community in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I went to high school at The Cate School near Santa Barbara, CA. I met Kristine during a year at MIT, took a great class on scripture study from Jim at BYU, and just missed Melissa in the Japan Tokyo South Mission, finishing my service a little before she arrived. I met Adam at the University of Notre Dame and completed my PhD in Philosophy there in 2006. I specialized in ethics and wrote my dissertation on happiness and friendship in neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. I now live in a log cabin just outside of Ashland, VA, where I teach philosophy at Randolph-Macon College. I enjoy classic jazz, cooking, mountain biking, and playing ultimate frisbee. (Edit this post).
Sunday General Conference Open Thread
Continue discussions from yesterday, or start new ones. Share with us what you’ve gotten out of conference, or what you hope to get.