The next morning I called up Joe and Sam to ask them if they wanted to go to the mall. Mostly I wanted to get myself a Cat Stevens album after the movie I’d watched with Andrea the night before. It turned out that Sam didn’t have to go to…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Back in Business Edition!
So, instead of cleaning my apartment yesterday as planned, I spent the morning going through the Outer Blogness list, updating and correcting it. There are still a few bugs to work out (explained here), but now the blogroll here and the Outer Blogness list have been synchronized, and they contain…
What was the straw that broke your belief’s back?
I’ve been reading an article at Mormon Matters about More Open Mormon History, and it seems to me there is a fundamental idea at play here: if you hear about “true Mormon history,” you’ll lose all hope and faith and then apostasize. OMG! The author, Mormon Heretic, tries to deflect…
two intriguing news stories on the homosexuality front
I caught this article about an email campaign that allegedly has the support of the LDS leadership to contact state representatives in Illinois on civil union legislation. I have to admit, it seems fishy to me. I don’t think the LDS leadership would sponsor an email quite like that. Does…
Orem’s not so bad when you give it a chance. (OH continues…)
“Your family moved here so that you would date Mormon boys?” “Essentially. When I told my parents I didn’t believe in God and didn’t want to go to church anymore, Dad completely flipped out. He blamed it on the kids at school being a bad influence on me. But apparently…
A reminder to be positive and upbeat, especially with members
When I left the church, I found that more things made sense to me. I didn’t have to start rationalizing things to make it fit in with doctrine, and I could just believe in the world based on how I saw and experienced it. So, I’d definitely say that when…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Miracles and Tragicles Edition!
Pixelfish reports a tragicle: the death of Paul Harvey. She and her readers reminisce about listening to “The Rest of the Story” — I know that for me it brings back plenty of memories of the long drive to seminary, at 5 a.m., in the still-freezing car when the weather…
Walk With Hellmut
Some of you might enjoy a virtual tour of the city of Saarbrücken, my last home before I came to the United States: Max Ophuels Preis_Trailer_2009 from LICHTFAKTOR on Vimeo. Located at the French border, my father’s house was literally five minutes walking distance, and the high and low German…
Turns Out that Utahns Aren’t Just Googling Porn
DAMU members have long been suspecting that residents in the state of Utah were among the top consumers of pornography. There remained considerable uncertainty, however, because the only available data were Google trends. Now, Benjamin Edelman from Harvard University has confirmed conjecture with credit card data of pornography consumers. After…
may not matter, but you can try
I wasn’t aware of this until I received an email from my ultra-conservative Mormon uncle encouraging me to vote against it, but Hawaii’s state legislature is currently in the process of approving civil unions. However, the measure deadlocked in committee in the senate. The senate majority leader (Democrat) says they…