Decades from now, when only old men and women can dimly recall when somebody told a friend of mine about a dancing human spaceman that can read my mind when we got the radio on, there may be 9-year-olds that sing together “Joel, the Lump of Coal.”

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His Majesty was thinking about the little people this morning.

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You never know what will get His Majesty monologuing over breakfast.

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Our Cub Scouts went caroling to an old folks home. The elderly people there were moved. It is remarkable, the power we have to affect each other. (more…)

Nine years ago, Edmonton writer Colby Cosh was considering in the National Post the potential H5N1 flu epidemic: “One daily warned us on Wednesday that a flu pandemic could ‘thrust the planet into unprecedented social and economic chaos.’ But what, I ask you, was the Spanish flu if not a precedent?” He continued with the lessons he had acquired from an acquaintance with microfilm rolls of early 20th Century Canadian prairie newspapers he had poured through for other research. (link)

This week in Maclean’s, Cosh turns similar attention to recent bouts of freelance terrorism: “It has become a pastime of mine to pick major royal or ministerial figures from 19th-century continental Europe and look up the little-known assassination attempts against them.” (link)

Meg Stout gives a plausible explanation of when dissent warrants expulsion from the Church, and when it doesn’t. It’s true that the women’s organization “Give Us The Priesthood Or We’re Telling The NY Times” (that was the name, right?) was “tone-deaf when it comes to Mormon culture but in tune with world media.” They certainly seemed to come from a much more alien value system than some of the subtler snakes in the grass, who dress and talk like Mormons, so much that they seem almost like the real thing. But I think it’s even simpler than even that. (more…)

It’s been said that the difference between a dialogue and a monologue is that a dialogue is something two intelligent people have in order to seek common ground, while a monologue is something one mentally ill person does on a street corner where he’s sleeping on the ground.

That isn’t quite true. I’ve found that His Majesty is actually quite fond of monologues at breakfast, at least so long as he’s the one delivering.

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You have a new boss (not the one portrayed above). Against all precedent, he doesn’t change all the old boss’s policies. He keeeps all the ones that working. You’re pretty impressed with your new boss. He is one of a kind. (more…)

I’ve been writing a lot about the nameless virtue, which is the virtue of unironically recognizing and praising standards that you yourself fall short of. The nameless virtue is easy to recognize when we’re talking about conventional sins and shortcomings. The inmate telling kids to stay away from the gangster life, the alcoholic who wishes he’d never taken that first drink, those are all standard fare. Along the same lines, what first brought the nameless virtue to my attention were Mormons who missed out on the basic steps of Mormon life extolling those steps. Those kinds of exceptions that prove the rule make the nameless virtue pretty apparent. (more…)

Those words would be as good an answer as I could give to the question originally addressed to Conan the Barbarian: “What is best in life?”

But they’re actually taken from this passage: (more…)

From Harpo Marx’s autobiography, regarding his New York City pals:

They had changed along with the times. Seven or eight years ago we would have wound up an all-night party in Aleck’s apartment arguing about croquet or the stock market, or making up wild puns and nasty menus. Now we wound up talking (they did, I mean—I still listened) about the NRA, the CCC, FDR’s last Fireside Chat, and Fiorello La Guardia, the new mayor of New York. Sooner or later Adolf Hitler entered every conversation, which killed it, and everybody went home wrapped up in his own depressing thoughts.

The Washington Post brings to our attention David T. Fagan, father of eight and author of Guerrilla Parenting. (link) There are people you disagree with, but respect or like. There are others who share many opinions with you, yet still irritate you. I see value in how Fagan describes the rearing of his children: instilling self-reliance and industry, willingness to chart an independent path, not idolizing formal education, but he annoys me, and the most compact explanation why is that he is a salesman.

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“God the Father and the Holy Ghost are not to be portrayed in meetings, dramas, or musicals.

“If the Savior is portrayed, it must be done with the utmost reverence and dignity. Only brethren of wholesome personal character should be considered for the part. The person who portrays the Savior should not sing or dance. When speaking, he should use only direct quotations of scriptures spoken by the Savior.”

Dance?

Am I the only one morbidly curious about what sort of Mormon Roadshow From Hell precipitated that rule?

The other day I cleaned a large surface with denatured alcohol and wore a blue nitrile glove on the hand holding the soaked rag. The next day I had a small spot to clean and didn’t bother with a glove since small amounts of skin contact with alcohol are not harmful; we often use isopropyl alcohol to clean skin. This led to musing on the concept of denatured alcohol. Denatured alcohol is 90% ethanol, an alcohol so mild to the body that people drink it. Drinking ethanol, while not acutely toxic, is still a problematic thing, so its distribution is controlled by law and heavily taxed. Ethanol is so useful for other things though, like fueling cars or cleaning, that it is worthwhile to have a way to distribute it in a form unsuitable for beverage consumption. So it is “denatured,” rendered unfit for drinking by mixing into it poisonous substances, traditionally methanol. Because ethanol is harmful to individuals and society, we make it safe to use freely by rendering it too toxic to ingest.

So, the LDS Church has released a four minute video explaining, and displaying, the garments and robes of the holy priesthood used by those endowed in LDS temples. (link) This probably reminded many of the publication in 1912 of James Talmage’s book The House of the Lord. David Rolph Seely explains:

On 16 September 1911, the Salt Lake Tribune published an account of certain individuals who had secretly taken pictures of the interior of the Salt Lake Temple and who had attempted to sell them to the church. The headlines read: “Photographs secretly taken of Mormon Temple’s interior; sent for sale to Church chief. President replies: Church will not negotiate with thieves and blackmailers.'” (more…)