life

Human Bodies Emit Visible Light

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Very sensitive cameras capture light emitted from the body. Kyoto University, Tohoku Institute of Technology / Livescience.com

Very sensitive cameras capture light emitted from the body. Kyoto University, Tohoku Institute of Technology / Livescience.com

That’s right.  Our bodies actually emit a minuscule amount of real light.  This is not just radiation or infrared body heat, but actual photons are released from the surface of the skin:

Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals. ((“Humans Glow in Visible Light,” Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience. http://news.aol.com/article/humans-glow/584160))

New research indicates that the amount of light varies throughout the day:  [Read more…]

San Salvador El Salvador Temple Groundbreaking

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San Salvador El Salvador Temple. © 2008, Intellectual Reserve. All rights reserved. (click for larger view)

San Salvador El Salvador Temple. © 2008, Intellectual Reserve. All rights reserved. (click for larger view)

The announcement of the building of the San Salvador, El Salvador, temple was particularly moving for me since that is where I served my mission (’00-’02).  The closest temple for members in the country when I served there was the Guatemala City Guatemala Temple.  Making the trip to Guatemala typically took members years of saving, a week long trip in a bus, and usually only happened once in a lifetime.  This temple will be a great blessing for them.

LDSChurchTemples.com reports that the temple groundbreaking ceremony took place just a few days ago on September 20, 2008.  Elder Don R. Clarke from the Quorum of the Seventy, and president of the Central America area, presided at the meeting.  Photos of the ceremony can be seen here.  The temple will be dedicated in 2010 or 2011.

See the approximate location of this temple.  If you know more precisely where it will be going, please let me know.

The Grossest Form of Church Criticism

President Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994)

President Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994)

In recent weeks I have encountered what I consider to be one of the most damaging forms of criticism of the Church.  You might think that it is from all the anti-Mormon literature or propaganda.  Or perhaps it is those who are so vocal as to picket the curbs at our General Conferences with signs, profanity, and filth.  You might think it is those who have become disaffected, have left the Church, and are now eager to tear it down or “expose” it for what they see as serious problems.  You might think it is the work of scholars who have been excommunicated, and now find intellectual haven in promoting arguments against the learned.  You might even think that it is those tribulations that come from the adversary himself.  But this is not the case.

There is a much more gross and pernicious form of criticism of the restored gospel and of the Lord’s restored Church.  It is that criticism which comes from within the Church.

I know that this runs in the same current as several of my latest posts, but I strongly believe that “it becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor” (D&C 88:81).  And it also has a direct relationship to the covenants we make to God in the temple.  [Read more…]

The Joseph Smith Papers Volume 1 Available for Pre-Order!

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Book cover

“The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals, Vol. 1: 1832-1839” is available for pre-ordering at Deseret Book.  The description reads:

“The Joseph Smith Papers project is the single most significant historical project of our generation.”  —Elder Marlin K. Jensen, LDS Church Historian

Joseph Smith is known to history as the founder and first prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The publication of his papers, 200 years after his birth, will open a window on a life filled with what he called “marvelous experience.”

For one who had little schooling, Joseph Smith left an extensive legacy of letters and other written records. Now, the full collection of that documentary heritage is being made widely available.

The Joseph Smith Papers is not a “documentary history” project composed only of important documents relating to Joseph Smith. Instead, it is a comprehensive “papers” project that will publish, according to accepted scholarly and documentary editing standards, all documents created by Joseph Smith and by those whose work he directed.

The Joseph Smith Papers Project will eventually constitute approximately 30 volumes, organized into six series. This first volume is a part of the Journals Series.

Volume by volume, you can build and enhance your personal library with these crucial studies of the life, leadership, and legacy of Joseph Smith.

In the works for several decades, The Joseph Smith Papers will be the largest, most authoritative collection of original Smith documents in the world, replacing and transcending many earlier published works.

With access to texts not previously available, and certainly never in one collection, the Papers project provides new information and insights about Joseph Smith, early Mormonism, and nineteenth-century American religion.

Documents include correspondence, journal entries, revelations, translations, discourses, official histories, court cases, and business dealings—qualitatively researched and carefully annotated.

Although vast in scope, the aim of the Project is relatively simple: to make available to general readers and scholars the sources essential to the study of Joseph Smith—the religious leader, the city builder, the pioneer, the husband and father—a truly visionary man.

The ambitious Joseph Smith Papers is the inaugural publishing project of The Church Historian’s Press and sets new standards for the organization and editorial presentation of historical documents by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In recognition of the high scholarly standards being employed in all phases of this project, The Joseph Smith Papers Project has earned an endorsement by the National Archives’ National Historical Publication and Records Commission (NHPRC).

For more information on The Joseph Smith Papers Project, visit JosephSmithPapers.org.

Hugh Nibley: The Faith of an Observer

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Hugh Nibley in 2000.

Hugh Nibley in 2000.

If you have not been able to tell, one of my top role models and mentors is Dr. Hugh Winder Nibley, former BYU professor and highly esteemed LDS scholar.  He was and is still considered the foremost LDS scholar and apologist of this century, and perhaps of all time.  And he was a genius.  Once at a Biblical Society meeting the Jesuit scholar George MacRae, former dean of the Harvard Divinity School, heard Hugh expound lengthily on a Greek text without notes including sporadically quoting thirty lines of the original, for which MacRae covered his face and confessed – “It is obscene for a man to know that much” ((Truman Madsen in Hugh Nibley, On the Timely and the Timeless, x-xi.)).  Hugh Nibley passed away in 2005 at the age of 94.

A a couple decades ago a film documentary was produced about Hugh.  Son-in-law Boyd Petersen notes:

During the early stages of FARMS, Jack Welch began to consider producing a documentary about Hugh’s life and work.  Jack felt that a good production could be done for the modest sum of about five thousand dollars.  The idea took on a life of its own, led to hundreds of hours of personal interviews with Hugh, his family, friends, associates, and consumed a budget of a quarter-million dollars.  Welch approached Hugh’s son, Alex, who had studied at the American Conservatory Theater and was working at Sundance on what would later ecome the Sundance Film Institute.  Alex liked the idea and talked it over with his supervisor at Sundance, Sterling Van Wagenen.  Soon they added a cinematographer named Brian Capener to the team.  As they began to plan the film, Alex hoped it would show the more conversational side of his father.  “I wanted to show the public part of what I saw in private,” stated Alex.

Although Alex had informed Hugh about the project, Hugh didn’t fully appreciate that the project would actually become a reality until Paul Springer wrote him giving “broad hints and well-justified jibes.”  Needless to say, Hugh was furious: “What in hell is going on?  Charles (Alex) is being maddeningly uncommunicative.  Here I was, sinking into the grateful obscurity of a somewhat benign old age, and this thing breaks loose.  I must put a stop to whatever Charles is up to.  I did not settle in and for the suffocating obscurity of Provo to attract public notice.” ((Boyd Petersen, Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life, 374-375.))

But cooperate he did, and the documentary became a profound success.  I think far too many people inside the Church and out have ignored the weighty contributions of the scholarship and faithful example of Hugh Nibley.

You can watch the full documentary “Faith of an Observer” by clicking this link.

Also, Nibley’s newest book Eloquent Witness is said to have a transcript of this video.