Below is a list of some of the funniest comments I read in the Bloggernacle in 2010. Note that in most cases, I’ve taken excerpts from longer comments. Each commenter’s name is a link to the original comment (except for comments at Mormon Matters, which are no longer displayed at the site).
Showing all posts by Ziff
Warning: Reading this post may make you dumber
Reading this post may make you dumber. Not (only) because of bad arguments I might make, but because you’re reading it on a computer.
How to Name Your Devil [updated]
What name do Mormons most often use to refer to Satan? A few months ago, Julie M. Smith suggested in a post at T&S that we might be cutting back on naming him specifically as being responsible for evils in favor of blaming “the world.”
Hymn Humor
Not very good humor, mind you. Remember that I have a talent for dumbness. Consider yourself warned.
Does the design of our scriptures make them more difficult to read?
LDS scriptures can be difficult to read. One reason is that their language is unfamiliar. The argument has often been made that we should quit using the KJV Bible, or at least supplement it with a more recent translation (for example, here’s Steve Evans, here’s Julie M. Smith, here’s DKL, and here’s Grant Hardy on the topic). But I’m thinking of a different reason our scriptures can be hard to read: their design.
No Comment
I recently bought some eyeglasses online. When I was selecting frames, the site I was buying from allowed me to filter the list by whether I wanted by rim style (full rim, half rim, rimless), by shape, by size, and by frame color. It occurred to me that none of these were all that useful to me because what I found most important was that my glasses not make a statement of any kind. Needless to say, this is a difficult enough criterion to define that the site did not allow me to filter frames in this way.
I eventually found some frames I was happy with. But thinking about the issue of wanting my glasses to not make a statement also got me to wondering about whether such a goal is easier for men to achieve than it is for women.
A One-Hour Block for the Holidays
What meetings does your ward or branch typically hold when Christmas in on a Sunday? Do you have all three hours of meetings, or just sacrament meeting? Or is there some other arrangement? Read More
Things to Like in the CHI
A few years ago, I wrote a post asking why the Church Handbook of Instructions (CHI) wasn’t available to rank-and-file members. And now, bowing to the strength of my arguments ;), the Church has gone ahead and published the newest revision of the CHI (well, Handbook 2, at least) on its new website.
I’m thankful for Feminist Mormon Housewives
This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for the blog Feminist Mormon Housewives. Read More
Most Quoted Parts of the Proclamation on the Family
A recent discussion at fMh turned, as so many do, to a discussion of whether Church teachings about marriage emphasize more that the husband should preside or that the husband and wife should be equal partners. Given this question, I thought it might be interesting to look at whether the “presiding” part or the “equal partners” part of the Proclamation on the Family had been quoted more.
“Gotcha” questions for GAs
A recent guest poster at fMh asked for suggestions about what question she might pose to a visiting Seventy who had agreed to a Q&A session with members as part of stake conference. In a post at Nine Moons, Rusty pointed out that many of the questions seemed to be “gotcha questions,” intended to make a point rather than to genuinely seek information. (Several commenters on the fMh thread made a similar point.) I agree with Rusty. Many of the questions did appear not to be serious attempts to get information, but more attempts to show the Seventy up. That being said, I really liked a lot of the “gotcha questions.” I began to wonder why so many people thought of asking them.
A Moving Wall at LDS.org?
You’ve probably already seen that the new Church website is out of beta. Check it out at new.lds.org. I haven’t looked at it extensively, but from what I have seen, a couple of nice features stand out. First, you can now upload your own picture to be available to fellow ward members who can’t remember your name, bypassing your ward website person who never got around to it. I hope everyone in my ward does this, because I’d love to be able to learn people’s names faster and pictures would really help. Second, Church magazine articles now have more intuitive URLs. For example, if you want to link to President Uchtdorf’s wonderful talk “You Are My Hands” from this last April General Conference, at LDS.org, you have to use the following URL: Read More
Nacle Notebook 2009: Funny comments
Last year I compiled some of the funniest comments I had seen in my reading of the Bloggernacle in the previous year into a post. I got a lot of positive comments on the post, so I’ve decided to try it again. Here’s my list of some of the funniest comments I read in the Bloggernacle in 2009. Of course, I’m only one person and I can only read so much of the Bloggernacle, so I’m sure I missed a lot of good stuff. If you’re so inclined, please feel free to share other funny comments from 2009 in the comments.
A Post by Ziff, Even a Guy Who Likes Numbers
In Mark Brown’s post “Mormon Buzzwords” (“on words and phrases we don’t need”) at BCC last month, a number of people suggested that our frequent use of appositive phrases beginning with “even” used to describe Jesus or the prophet is particularly annoying. Here’s an example from President Uchtdorf’s otherwise excellent talk “We Are Doing a Great Work and Cannot Come Down,” given in April 2009 Conferece:
I have witnessed with my own eyes and joyfully testify that in our day, God speaks through His prophet, seer, and revelator, even Thomas S. Monson.
So who started this usage of “even”? And who’s perpetuating it among current General Authorities?
No Longer a Black and White Issue
In last month’s Conference issue of the Ensign, (PDF complete–note it’s 6 MB) for the first time I can remember, the pictures were all in color. Not just the pictures of the speakers, but the candid shots of people in and around the Conference Center and Temple Square, and watching Conference in other parts of the world. I’ve always really enjoyed these candid pictures, and I appreciate the work of the photographers who I assume must take hundreds or thousands of pictures each April and October to be able to pull out and publish such fun and interesting ones. I’m going to miss the black and white format of the pictures, though. I don’t know the first thing about photography, but it does appear to me that black and white photographs can emphasize interesting patterns of light and dark in ways that are overwhelmed by different colors in color photographs.
Footnote Fun(damentalism?)
A couple of years ago, a friend gave my family a copy of Bookcraft’s The Book of Mormon for Latter-day Saint Families. My wife and I have been reading it with our kids. It has a lot of useful features that make it more appealing for kids: it’s an oversized book with pictures, maps, subheadings within chapters, big print, and definitions of difficult words in the footnotes.
Mormon Fundamentalism and LDS Fundamentalism
In Steve Evans’s recent post “I Could Not Do It” at BCC, he mentioned the “serious aspect of fundamentalism at the heart of being a Mormon,” and then clarified,
I am using “fundamentalism” in a general sense, and not in reference to polygamist groups, although that is clearly an example of fundamentalism in action.
His comment got me to thinking that it’s too bad that, in the Mormon context, the word “fundamentalist” has come to be almost synonymous with “polygamous.” Read More
And his name shall be called…
In a recent post at T&S, Kaimi suggested
it seems to me that church members (and leaders) tend to de-emphasize the use of the single-name description Jesus. We regularly use the name Jesus when it is associated with the title Christ. However, when we use a single-word name, LDS speakers — unlike speakers I’ve heard from other denominations — tend to use the name Christ, not Jesus.
I think he’s probably right, but I thought it might be interesting to gather a little data to check. Read More
More Church President Probabilities
As a follow-up to my last post discussing who in the Quorum of the Fifteen would likely be Church President at some point, I made some figures that show Quorum members’ changing probabilities over time for the last 60 years. (A description of where these probabilities come from is in the previous post.)
Predicting Who Will Be Church President
Who among the current First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve is mostly likely to eventually become President of the Church?