Posted by Lynnette
Today marks ZD’s third anniversary. Our third year has been perhaps a bit slower than the previous two in terms of regular posting, but we’re happy that we’ve managed to stay alive (albeit with occasional long pauses between posts). Our approach to blogging, as you’ve doubtless observed, is random and haphazard. No one on ZD really presides (whether as a full-fledged presider or a chicken patriarch)–depending on your point of view, this is evidence of why presiding is unnecessary, or why loosely organized anarchy is a mistake. Read more…
Posted by Kiskilili
We’re fond of the terms “conservative” and “liberal” to describe a spectrum of approaches to Church teachings, from unwavering compliance on the one extreme to thumbing one’s nose on the other. However, while certainly useful in a limited way, these terms fail to take account of the network of possible methods whereby members can interpret various Church teachings in light of their own behaviors. Read more…
Posted by Lynnette
I’m pretty gloomy when it comes to questions of human nature. I very much believe in original sin. I don’t buy the optimistic notion that humans aren’t really all that bad, and just need a bit of education to be persuaded to do the right thing. No, I resonate much more with Alma on this one: we’re carnal, sensual, and devilish. It’s not just that without grace, we can’t quite make it to the finish line on our own; we’re wandering off in the wrong direction altogether. It’s why I like Augustine, who would have no patience with the positive self-talk of 20th and 21st century pop psychology. We’re pretty messed up, we human beings. We hurt each other, both inadvertently and intentionally. We hurt ourselves. We set out to do good, but our motives are mixed, and our efforts prone to self-sabotage. We plan to repent–but not yet. Read more…
Posted by ZD
In this ZD feature–Titles in Search of a Post–we provide catchy titles and you, our scintillating and creative readers, have the opportunity of offering suggestions in the comments section as to what such a post should be about, ranging from half-baked free associations to polished paragraphs, and (this should go without saying on our blog) from the sublime to the ridiculous. Enjoy!
(And if you aren’t familiar with the Keystone Cops, click here.)
- 30 December 2008
- Filed under: Titles
Posted by Lynnette
From a feminist perspective, Genesis 3:16 is one of the more difficult passages in scripture. The last phrase, “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee,” sets up a hierarchical model of marriage in which men lead and women follow. Though the terms have shifted (rule/preside for the men; obey/hearken for the women) over the years, the general model remains in LDS teachings and liturgy–providing a topic of endless discussion for Bloggernacle feminists. In grappling with the contemporary arrangement, in which women covenant to hearken to their husbands, I have encountered a number of arguments which attempt to deal with the apparent sexism. The most commonly cited, at least in my experience, are: Read more…
Posted by Kiskilili
The secrecy surrounding the temple can be viewed from several different angles, but in this post I’m interested in exploring how it functions with respect to time.
Because investigating details of the ceremony is forbidden to the uninitiated and people are required to receive their own endowments before being allowed to do vicarious work, time–to contemplate the significance of the particulars of what one is covenanting under sacred oath–is denied the new initiate. The Church’s preparation for the would-be temple-goer is vague and enigmatic. As a result, worthy individuals who have refrained from finding out about the ceremony in advance are given approximately a second and a half, as the moment descends upon them with its plodding air of inviolable inexorability, to decide whether to make those covenants or not. Which isn’t, realistically, enough time to decide “not.” Add to this the legions of smiling family members and friends probably shepherding the clueless novitiate through the ceremony, as well as the possibility that said novitiate’s departure on a mission or wedding may loom in the immediate future, and the prospect of deciding “not” in that split second, with all the pressures of the situation bearing down, diminishes to the microscopic level. Read more…
Posted by Kiskilili
Not infrequently statements from Church leaders contain instances of full-fledged Chicken Patriarchy in all its muddled, labyrinthine, self-contradictory splendor. But in other cases, both patriarchy and equality are being taught separately as appropriate ideals. Read more…
Posted by Ziff
As a kid, I was at least somewhat aware that we Mormons believed differently than other Christians about some crucial doctrines. For example, I knew that our belief in God having a physical body wasn’t widely shared. I also knew that, unlike the sadly misled apostates, we believed that the Wise Men weren’t present at the birth of Jesus.
Yes, I thought that was a central doctrine. I also thought that Mormons uniquely took that position that the Wise Men arrived later. I’m not sure why I thought this was so important or unique. Maybe my parents mentioned it to me once or twice, or suggested I move the Wise Men away from the stable in the nativity scene. I don’t know. It makes me laugh to think back now that I thought it was such a central and important issue.
I’d love to hear of anyone else’s experiences of finding out that the Church-related ideas you thought were crucial as a kid turned out to be not so important.
[In case it's not clear, my title is a reference to the Far Side cartoon in which a bartender (I think) is dismissing the Wise Men with this line.]
Posted by Lynnette
6:30 am
My alarm goes off. I’m in a deep sleep, dreaming about my sister Melyngoch coming back from her mission and wanting to go on a crazy hike involving a lot of waterfall crossings. I get up, and pack my last few things. I have a large suitcase, a small one, a backpack and a small bag. Also, two other train necessities: a pillow and blanket. Since I’ll be flying later, I’ve been careful not to bring too much—one of the advantages of train travel is that the luggage limits are rather more generous (not to mention that they don’t come with extra fees), and it’s tempting to over-pack.
Read more…
Posted by Ziff
In a discussion about the hymnbook at FMH a few weeks ago, patti said that her husband thinks Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel is the Communist fight song. This reminded me that many years ago, when I was in a BYU ward and this hymn was announced, a friend wrote a note referring to it that said, “Working shoulders of the world, unite!” (Perhaps my friend is patti’s husband.) This comment inspired me to rewrite the hymn: Read more…
- 18 December 2008
- Filed under: Fun, Hymns
Posted by Seraphine
So a couple of years ago, I made a post at Times and Seasons about trusting God. In the meantime, things have changed, and the whole trusting God thing is a challenge for me at the moment. But let me back up a bit. Read more…
Posted by ZD
In this new ZD feature–Titles in Search of a Post–we’ll provide catchy titles and you, our scintillating and creative readers, will have the opportunity of offering suggestions in the comments section as to what such a post should be about, ranging from half-baked free associations to polished paragraphs, and (this should go without saying on our blog) from the sublime to the ridiculous. Enjoy!
- 16 December 2008
- Filed under: Titles
Posted by Kiskilili
Although I find the field interesting, I have some suspicions about evolutionary psychology, and Satoshi Kanazawa is doing little to allay those reservations with his recent post on what evolutionary theory tells us about happiness (hat tip to BCC’s side bar). The crux of his argument seems to be: do whatever you want, because that will make you happy. And since you, the lay reader, unschooled in the intricacies of baboon behavior and therefore not qualified to serve as an authority on your own desires, probably don’t know what you want, let me pronounce authoritatively on what will make you happy: you want status if you’re a man and children if you’re a woman. Read more…
Posted by Lynnette
Like many Mormons who live in California (as well as those outside the state who followed the Prop 8 campaign and the fallout from it), events of the past six months have raised a lot of difficult questions for me. I’ve had mixed feelings about the decision of the Church to actively involve itself in this particular political issue. I didn’t care for many of the actions taken during the campaign, and the idea of RS or priesthood meetings dedicated to the Prop 8 cause strikes me as more than a little distasteful. I find myself thinking that it would be nice to have church be a politically neutral zone, a refuge from the controversies raging outside, a place where one can focus on spiritual matters.
And at the same time, I suspect that there might be some basic flaw in that way of thinking. Read more…
Posted by Kiskilili
In the turbulent aftermath of proposition 8’s passage in California, the Church made some noise about being unfairly singled out by gay rights activitists. Whether or not the Church served as a lynchpin in the coalition that pushed the proposition through, its centralization alone makes it a logical target.
But here I’m interested in turning the question around: why have gays been singled out by the Church? Read more…
Posted by Vada
I’ve been wanting to write the last couple of days, but I’ve been kind of stuck with my current writing project. In my attempt to either work through this or avoid it (you pick), I’ve come up with some blog posts. They’ve all been fairly random, especially in regards to what we usually talk about around here, so most of them haven’t actually been posted (actually, most of them have only been written in my head at this point). But despite the fact that I don’t want to completely bury our blog in random and off the wall posts, I still do post some of them. Like my last post, which was even entitled Complete Randomness. Or the post about a fly in my bedroom.
I realized that to post such things I must feel pretty comfortable here. At home. And I do. It got me thinking about where I feel at home, and where I don’t, and ways that I can tell. Read more…
Posted by Vada
I haven’t blogged in a while, and I’m feeling a little guilty about it. (This is not to suggest that my fellow bloggers are in any way making me feel guilty. If you hadn’t figured it out, we’re kind of laid back about posting around here. No, the guilt is entirely self-induced.) The thing is, I really don’t have anything interesting to blog about. Not even anything uninteresting that I can make an entire post out of. Because, well, posts require thought (semi-coherent ones do, at least), and I’m currently incapable of thought. (This is a fairly common occurrence, what with 3 kids 3 and under.)
So, I’m now going to string together some completely random thoughts and call them a blog post.
Read more…
Posted by Ziff
A few months ago, The Baron argued in a post at Waters of Mormon that a weakness of the MPAA movie rating scheme is that it considers only the movie’s worst content category (of violence, profanity, and sex). For example, if a movie has enough profanity to get an R rating, the R says nothing about its levels of violence or sex. Such a movie could have any combination of levels of violence and sex, from none at all up to enough to warrant an R rating on their own even without the profanity.
The Baron pointed out that this practice of rating movies by only their worst type of content might set up an odd incentive:
this only encourages filmmakers to add more “R-rated” content to their movie, since obviously if they know they’re getting an R for violence already, why NOT add a lot of profanity and nudity as well? The rating is going to be the same, either way
This had never occurred to me, but I can see his argument that the rating system would create this incentive. His unstated assumption, though, is that movie makers want to put as much violence, sex, and profanity into their movies as they possibly can. I doubt that that’s actually the case. While I suspect they probably chafe at times at restrictions that trying to get a particular rating might place on them, I would be surprised if getting lots of offensive material in is often one of their major goals.
So which is true? Are movie makers anxious to put lots of offensive content into their movies, or not? What’s fun about this question is that there’s data I can use to try to answer it.
Read more…
Posted by Katya
Ziff, Ray, and Kent Larsen had it right — the Book of Mormon has the largest standard deviation in ratings of any book on the site. The stat is called “25 Books People Can’t Agree On” and you can see it at the bottom of this page.
The Book of Mormon may be at the top of the list, but it’s in good company, since books by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Isaac Newton are also on the list. (Of course, the urban vampire fantasy and regency romance do drag down the neighborhood a bit.)
It’s also the most widely-owned of any book on that list, by far. There are around 1,600 LibraryThing members who own a total of around 1,800 copies of the Book of Mormon. The next most widely held book is Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun, at around 400 copies. There have been some other popular books on the list, but they tend to drop off when they get very popular, because enough people give them an intermediate rating (2.5-3.5 stars) that it lowers the standard deviation of all the ratings. The Secret, a book made popular by Oprah Winfrey, used to be on the list, but now the standard deviation of the ratings is down to 1.34, well below the current top-25 cutoff of 1.42. Read more…
Posted by Katya
If you like books and statistics, you’ll love LibraryThing. They have 554,277 members who have cataloged 33,647,263 books of which 3,850,295 are unique works not shared by anyone else on the site.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s [Philosopher's] Stone is owned by more people than anyone else (37,254 copies, 3 of which are mine), although more people have posted reviews of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (704 reviews, with an average rating of 4.43 stars out of 5).
As you might expect, J.K. Rowling is the top author in terms of number of copies of her books owned, but Stephen King is second, even though his top individual book isn’t even in the top 200.
Oh, and one more thing (which is actually the whole point of this post): The Book of Mormon is at the top of a list based on another site-wide statistic. Care to guess what that statistic is?