this is a message i wrote for a mailing list i belong to affiliated with the association for mormon letters. i’m writing to a thinking mormon audience, which should include at least a few of you. those of you who are not mormon may find it interesting. or maybe you’ll find it hard to relate [...]

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i know i should be modest, but i took the graduate record exam yesterday and scored (out of 800 possible points in each section) 700 on the verbal section, 780 in the quantitative, and 790 on the analytical. this should put me in the mid to upper nineties as far as percentiles are concerned–woohoo! i [...]

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the death toll in the palestinian uprising as of today: 1849 palestinians 612 israelis   51 foreigners2512 total from the news that i typcially read, one would think that israel is littered with the bodies of innocent israeli civilians mixed with bits of few palestinian suicide bombers. i think that most of us can conjure up a distinct, [...]

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once again, an early morning bout with caffeine-induced insomnia (a couple of cokes after a week or two without caffeine) brings you another mind on fire post. may present to you: (drum-roll, please) embarrassing moments, part one: a few months ago, i used to walk two to three miles in the morning to catch my [...]

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last night pbs aired a documentary called faith and doubt at ground zero. it is a candid and human look into how the massive destruction of human life in the world trade center affected belief in god. a number of people are interviewed, including survivors, family members who lost loved ones in the attacks, and [...]

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i feel the need to write something special for today. it is, after all, september 11th. in fact, i went to bed a little after midnight, but felt the need to write and got back up again. i’ve thought a lot about the significance of 9-11. i’ve wondered how the attacks on the twin towers [...]

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i usually cast a green party protest vote every election year, but i may vote democrat this year: – democrats have a razor-thin margin of one over the republicans in the senate.- republicans have a mere 11 seat majority (out of 435) in the house. with a president and most of his hawkish advisors wanting [...]

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last week in church, i made public my unbelief. the first sunday of each month in most mormon churches is essentially open-mike sunday. anyone can go up to the pulpit and bear their personal witness of christ and of the teachings of the church. i stood in front of this same congregation many times before, [...]

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last weekend, jana and i celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. on saturday night we picked up dinner at “the stand” in laguna beach. the stand is a little vegan restaurant with only one table in front, with a decent-sized tree growing through a hole in the middle of the table. there is one window for [...]

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i wrote this post a couple of days ago, but a university-wide power outage this labor day weekend has made it very difficult for me to get online to post this. i had to go in this weekend to power down our servers before the scheduled shut-off, and once again after the power came back [...]

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