We are delighted to welcome guest blogger Chad Nielsen to Times and Seasons. Chad’s three great intellectual passions in life are science, history/religious studies, and music. He has pursued a career in biotechnology, but maintains an active interest in both…
Author: Frank McIntyre
That time President Nelson released me from the pulpit
One week before general conference I got up in High Priest Group and conducted the meeting for the first time. We’d moved into the ward six months ago and I’d just been called as the new group leader. Sunday the…
The Ever-So-Slightly Endangered BYU Man
A recent leak revealed what appears to be an old scale for evaluating potential BYU students. Basically, you take 10*GPA + ACT and then add points for stuff, like being from outside the West or taking AP classes. The most…
Clark Goble on deck.
We’re delighted to welcome Clark Goble back to T&S! Clark grew up in Canada in that part that appears like a strange looking foot extending south and east of Maine. There in the city of Halifax he watched the church…
Entitled
I very much enjoyed Elder Renlund’s comments on entitlement. First, because he made clear one of the reasons why we should be very conscientious about how we give help. It affects the receiver’s spiritual progression. Second, the King Benjamin-esque tie-in…
Recently uncovered texting conversation from 1600 BC
Shem: Oh great. Moses just posted a new policy. Mannassah: More animals we can’t eat? S: Nope, it says we wander in the desert until we are all dead.
Saul Callings
Saturday Morning conference referenced how Samuel was unsure that Saul was the right man to lead Israel. With the benefits of hindsight, one indeed wonders about the choice. Saul, in the end, had some serious problems as King. Does God call…
Small Group Dynamics
Far and away, when I am in a small group and decisions need to be made, most people would prefer that someone else make them. There are notable, and loud, exceptions. Four year olds, for example, very much want to…
Priors
In statistics, a popular approach is to think of the statistician as having a set of views (“priors” or “prior distributions”) that are based on past evidence and when new evidence comes in, one integrates that information in and forms a new…
Whining at Moses
Now that we’re up to Exodus in Sunday School, I am reminded once again of how much murmuring and whining the Children of Israel do. Clearly the major theme of Exodus is God’s power to save. But packed in there…
We’ve All Been Set Up
We’ve all been set up for failure. Consider the plan: go to Earth and obey the commandments. How likely is that to turn out well? Add in that part with Adam, Eve, and the fruit and I think it is pretty…
Dell, Obedience, and Parachute Mishaps
Last week, as the PC market faced DOOM!, Dell had a potential buyer, Blackstone, back out. While that was not particularly interesting to me, what happened next was. Another investor, Oakmark Funds, sold their 24.5 million Dell shares. To quote:…
I’m a Mormon Easy Chair and I believe that women
… should not get ordained to the priesthood. I know that reasonable chairs can disagree, but as Frank’s easy chair, I know what to expect once women are ordained. Frank is going to spend a lot more time sitting on…
Welcome Maren Mecham
We are delighted to welcome Maren Mecham as a guest for the next couple weeks. Maren Mecham is a native Northern Virginian, earned her BFA from BYU and was a photographer for the church before moving to Palo Alto, CA, where…
Charity Free Riding
As we all know, the gospel is overrun with economic doctrine. On that note, I noticed a quote about free riding from President Monson (which I just saw at Mormon Times): “I am confident it is the intention of each…
Midwest
Utah is not part of the Midwest. Idaho is also out. That is all.
“Fathers do not mother”
Kaimi put up a sidebar link to a NYT piece on parenting. It had an interesting quote: “Fathers tend to do things differently, Dr. Kyle Pruett said, but not in ways that are worse for the children. Fathers do not…
President Monson wins the prize
So Slate keeps track of who it considers the most powerful octogenarians and President Monson tops the list. If ever there was a list where Mormons could shine that did not have to do with singing and dancing I guess it…
Royal Skousen’s 12 questions — The Critical Text Version
Last month we posted Royal Skousen’s discussion of his work on recovering the earliest version of the Book of Mormon, along with some updates. Unfortunately, that post garnered some annoying formatting problems — mostly due to the new format T&S…
12 Questions and a Book by Royal Skousen
5 years ago we published one of my favorite “12 Questions” posts, in which Royal Skousen discussed in some depth what he has learned from his extensive work on the earliest editions of the Book of Mormon. His book, The…