The Spectacles, the Stone, the Hat, and the Book: A Twenty-first Century Believer’s View of the Book of Mormon Translation | Interpreter

The Spectacles, the Stone, the Hat, and the Book: A Twenty-first Century Believer’s View of the Book of Mormon Translation | Interpreter: "“Joseph Smith reportedly said in 1826, while under examination in a court of law, that when he first obtained his personal seerstone he placed it in his hat, and discovered that time, place, and distance were annihilated; that all intervening obstacles were removed, and that he possessed one of the attributes of Deity, an All-Seeing Eye.”38"

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The Spectacles, the Stone, the Hat, and the Book: A Twenty-first Century Believer’s View of the Book of Mormon Translation | Interpreter

The Spectacles, the Stone, the Hat, and the Book: A Twenty-first Century Believer’s View of the Book of Mormon Translation | Interpreter: "Emma stated, “Now the first that my husband translated, was translated by use of the Urim, and Thummim, and that was the part that Martin Harris lost, after that he used a small stone, not exactly, black, but was rather a dark color.”34"

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‘Natural Republicans,’ Again | National Review Online

‘Natural Republicans,’ Again | National Review Online: "It has already been repeatedly pointed out that if Republicans want to get on the right side of Hispanic political values, they will have to junk their opposition to Obamacare (Hispanic support for Obamacare: 62 percent), big government (Hispanic support for big government: 75 percent), and racial preferences (the Latino Caucus in California is close to its longstanding goal of overturning Proposition 209’s ban on racial preferences in public higher education), as well as their positive view of capitalism (55 percent of Hispanics have a negative view of capitalism, the most of all groups surveyed by the Pew Research Center)."

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An Imagined Letter from President Obama to President Bush - ABC News

An Imagined Letter from President Obama to President Bush - ABC News: "I am sorry that, as a United States senator and presidential candidate, I was critical of you about so many things I now, myself, am doing.

I am sorry about saying Guantanamo would be closed immediately and it was a blight on America. It is still wide open for business.

I am sorry for criticizing you and your administration for intrusions on American's privacy and invasions into personal liberties. My NSA took what you did and put it on steroids.

I am sorry for criticizing the way you waged the war on terror. I have personally approved a number of drone strikes and actually have said it is OK to kill an American on foreign soil without due process. I know you are probably saying, "Aren't you the expert on the Constitution?" but, as you know, being president is hard work."

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President Obama’s Dragnet - NYTimes.com

President Obama’s Dragnet - NYTimes.com: "Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability."

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Ann Althouse is right: Were conservatives paranoid? Turns out they were not paranoid enough!

The Corner | National Review Online

The Corner | National Review Online: "Now, Politico’s Josh Gerstein has reported  on a draft Pentagon inspector general’s report that found that Panetta was indeed the source of classified information revealed that SEAL Team Six carried out the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound. Panetta’s camp has claimed that he thought all 1,300 people attending the speech in which he shared this information were “cleared.” If true, this particular revelation seems to suggest a lack of care rather than a specific plan to release the information. This, however, is no excuse."

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The Corner | National Review Online

The Corner | National Review Online: "With these few exceptions, what’s amusing is that it doesn’t seem to strike the authors that a celebrity could alienate conservative audiences with their liberal views; in an indirect way, they’re effectively saying conservatives are more tolerant of liberal celebrities than liberals are of conservatives ones."

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A Congressman's Racial Slur - Reason.com

A Congressman's Racial Slur - Reason.com: "But Rush wasn't content to stop there. Kirk's proposal, he declared, is "an upper-middle-class, elitist white boy solution to a problem he knows nothing about.""

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Why are liberals so rude to the right? | Leften Wright | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Why are liberals so rude to the right? | Leften Wright | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "Why is it that liberals feel no qualms about being rude? Far too many people who are perfectly polite and courteous, otherwise, think nothing of insulting you for not sharing their political opinions. They look at us with disdain, thinking we're unenlightened conservatives and never hesitating to say so.

As the lone conservative at the tennis courts, I cringe at the Sarah Palin jokes and the jabs at Mormons. When news came on 9/11 that planes had struck the World Trade Center, my partner commented that Bush would use it as an excuse to increase military spending. Bush, of course, is dumb – as are all Republicans, and we're epitomized by Dan Quayle, whose spelling of "potatoe" has entered historical canon."

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The Unbroken Window

The Unbroken Window: "Of course, there seems to be a limited amount of oil and other fossil fuels in the ground, though a researcher at Cornell believes there might be a geologic process that produces new hyrdrocarbons. But that is sort of irrelevant, especially if that “limited” amount is rather large, as more signs point to there being. For example, there are about 1.3 trillion barrels of known oil reserves in the ground. But that is at current prices and technologies. If we expand this to include expected amounts of oil including from unconventional sources, you get close to 10 trillion barrels of oil alone. If oil consumption stays around 30 billion barrels per year, and this is all recoverable, we’re talking over 300 years of just oil “left.” If we include coal that number grows … a lot."

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EA Sports Sucks

Maybe this will be a new feature on this blog--the "it sucks" feature. The blog version of Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage.

I have owned a copy of FIFA 13 for a while. I was happy with it until a few weeks ago when they changed the multiplayer functionality. Now, instead of the game automatically finding a match for me, I have to go online to EA Sports site, which routes me to Virgin's website, where I can finally select a forum room and find a game. Then I have to try and find a person to play against, by "challenging them." That's right, no automatic matching. Also, I can only challenge one person at a time. If the other person doesn't immediately respond, I sit wondering whether I should give up and look for another match-up, or give the other person more time.

Way to go EA Sports. You took a feature that worked perfectly fine and turned it a huge headache. And it happened to be the feature I used most. Thanks for ruining the game for me.