Winterling

Fantasy books aimed at pre-teen children can be a bit formulaic. Usually a child, just before puberty, when they are feeling like they should be capable but feel powerless, is sent into a magical realm where they expect to be powerless but end up saving the world. Sarah Prineas Winterling (2012) is such a work. What was interesting to me about it was the way that the basic situation was that of the Hittite king Ammunas. The story takes this basic situation and tries to work out a solution. I doubt that Prineas has ever heard of Ammunas, but it was interesting anyway.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From this talk:

When people proceed “without principle,” erelong they will be “without civilization,” “without mercy,” and “past feeling” (see Moro. 9:11–20). Such individuals do not experience real joy, such as being quietly and deeply grateful to a generous God, or of helping to restore those who “droop in sin” (2 Ne. 4:28), or of gladly forgoing praise and recognition so that it might flow, instead, to parched souls.

We're 75th

This is old news by now, but Forbes places BYU at 75th in its national rankings.

On a completely irrelevant note, you can take Egyptian classes at the 4th, 8th, 11th, 12th, 14th, 22nd, 30th, 34th, 46th, 56th, 75th, and one unranked school. Which should go to show that general rankings are an exercise in pride and may or may not tell you what you want to know about a school.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From We Will Prove Them Herewith (1982), 92:

Of course, a loving God, deeply committed to free agency, has left mankind free to reject and to violate His commandments. But there are no secular substitutes! The seventh commandment does not read, for instance, "Thou shalt not commit adultery except between consenting adults." Nor does it read "Thou shalt not commit adultery unless it is in a 'meaningful relationship.'"

Still a Good Policy

Victor Davis Hanson has some interesting commentary about how we have become a nation of liars (with numerous examples). He ends giving some reasons not to lie:

The majority has to tell the truth — to the IRS, to the police, to the DA, to the census — if a consensual society is to work. You readers tell the truth so that the society can survive an [insert name of liar here] or [insert a different liar's name here]. Average people must speak honestly or our elites’ lies will overwhelm, even destroy us.

If you have been in a place where certain people could not be trusted to tell the truth, then you know that little if anything can get done.

Two, this often sordid, sometimes beautiful world is not the end. There is transcendence. Lies damage our soul. Selling out in the here and now has consequences later on. If you are religious, your immortal soul is lost. If you are not, at least consider that your legacy, heritage, and remembrance are forever ruined. Ask the ghost of Stephen Ambrose. What good was all that money, all those interviews if based on a lie? All the insight and delight that he brought millions of readers was tarnished. And for what, exactly?

 Do you really want to leave a legacy of lying?

We must try to tell the truth, not to doctor films, edit tapes, erase talking points, or lie before Congress, fabricate heroic war records, or invent false sources. Again, why? Because we seek to do the right thing with the full resignation that in the here and now we will often still lose and will lose often and gladly telling the truth.

And we must do so when all about us are shredding and forging documents and lying to us and about us. To do otherwise is to forfeit the respect of others and ourselves.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From We Will Prove Them Herewith (1982), 92:

And how much collegiality and neighborliness will there be unless we keep the ninth commandment by refusing to bear false witness and by insisting on fair play one with another? Such empathy and concern as are needed to cope with human interdependence do not arise out of mere biological brotherhood.

From the Reader's Mailbag

I received a question from a reader asking if "the rest of the Lord" in Hebrews 4 is the same as the Sabbath rest (presumably in Genesis 2:1-3).

The short answer is the same word is used in Greek in both cases, though Genesis uses the verb form and Hebrews uses the noun.

There is a long answer that is more involved and complicated, uses Hebrew and comes to the opposite conclusion, but given that today is a day of rest I will not go into it.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience (1980), 3-4:

To those who mean well but thoughtlessly speak of "building a better relationship" with God (which sounds like a transaction between mortals desiring reciprocity), it needs to be said that our relationship with God is already established, in a genealogical sense. Perhaps what such individuals intend to say is that we must draw closer to God. But we are to worship, to adore, and to obey God, not build a better relationship with Him!

The Reverse Mussolini Fallacy

I ran across a new fallacy, the Reverse Mussolini Fallacy:

The Mussolini Fallacy is believing that, because Mussolini made the trains run on time (if he did), that excuses his other acts. The Reverse Mussolini Fallacy is believing that, because Mussolini made the trains run on time, making the trains run on time is bad.

Political debate often uses both the Mussolini Fallacy and the Reverse Mussolini Fallacy. Hugh Nibley discussed these issues in "The Unsolved Loyalty Problem." It is worth another look.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From We Will Prove Them Herewith (1982), 119:

Enduring the requirements of repentance involves so much more than just a weekend of sorrow; scarlet stain does not fade away quite so easily.

A.D. 410

This date is generally considered to mark the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. A.D. 410 was the year that Rome fell to the Visigoths.

Back in 382, the nominally Roman emperor Theodosius I (who actually ruled from Constantinople) signed a treaty with the Visigoths that made the Visigoths part of the Roman empire. While the Romans considered the Visigoths now part of the empire, the Visigoths thought differently. They despised Rome and thought of themselves as independent of it.

It was the general Flavius Stilicho's job to keep the Visigoths under Alaric I out of Italy. Alaric, however, persuaded Stilicho that if he would help Alaric, Alaric would help him capture Illyricum (basically Greece and Macedonia) for the Western empire. While they were preparing for the invasion, Alaric crossed the Rhine and invaded Gaul. So Stilicho called the invasion of Illyricum off and stuck Alaric with the bill. At that point, both Stilicho and Alaric thought that the other had double-crossed them.

In 408, Honorius, son of Theodosius I and the Western Roman Emperor, got into the act. Honorius and Stilicho had a fight about whether or not Stilicho would allow Honorius to go to Constantinople. Things escalated until Stilicho was deposed, took refuge in a church, but was hewn down anyway. The reprisals against Stilicho's followers and slaves who had been brought to Italy by him resulted in many of them fleeing to Alaric, swelling his army. By the end of 408 the Visigoths invaded Italy and besieged Rome.

The Senate tried to get Honorius to settle with Alaric, but Honorius kept reneging on his agreements and insulting Alaric.

Finally, on 24 August 210, the Roman slaves opened the gates to the Visigoths who plundered Rome for three days.

The Visigoths thus plundered the Roman empire from the inside. Rome probably could have been spared were it not for the treachery and double dealing of the ironically named Honorius.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From We Will Prove Them Herewith (1982), 117:

For Latter-day Saints, the double irony will be to suffer abuse from some who claim we are not Christians, and at the same time, from others precisely because we are! Such can do wonderful things to concentrate our commitments. Was Jesus not persecuted both for not being the political Savior some Jews expected, and, at the same time, for being a threat to the political order?

Something to Remember the Next Time You Gut a Fish

The book of Tobit is part of the real Apocrypha, that is books that are part of the Septuagint--the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible--but excluded from the Hebrew Bible.

When Tobit and the angel Raphael (disguised as a relative of Tobit) are journeying by the Tigris, they catch a fish.

And the angel said to him: Gut the fish and taking out the heart and the liver and the gall, set them carefully aside. (Tobit 6:5).

After eating the fish, Tobit asks:

Azaria, my brother, what is the liver and heart and gall of the fish? And he said to him: The heart and the liver, if someone is bothered by a demon or an evil spirit, he should smoke these before a man or woman and he will never be bothered again. (Tobit 6:7-9)

When they approach Ecbatana, Raphael tells Tobit of his intention to have Tobit marry Sarah, the woman whose previous seven husbands had been killed by demons. The marriage is agreed upon, the documents are drawn up and the wedding feast is made.

When the feasters were finished, they led Tobit to her. When he was going he remembered the words of Raphael and took the ashes of the incense-burner and placed upon them the heart of the fish and the liver and smoked them. When the demon smelled the smell, he fled to Upper Egypt. (Tobit 8:1-3)

Remember, the fish was caught in the Tigris which is about 350 miles away by today's roads. So the fish was probably at least a month old and had not been refrigerated. Of course the demon Asmodeus wanted to flee to Upper Egypt a thousand miles away. Sarah, Tobit's new bride, probably did as well after getting such a wedding present.

Nothing quite says "I love you" like smoked fish guts.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From We Will Prove Them Herewith (1982), 104:

Playing to the gallery in all its forms involves a wearying regimen. We cannot finally be concerned about pleasing Him if we are too concerned about pleasing them. Besides, playing to the roar of the crowd, be it a few peers or an imagined multitude, ends as an empty exercise. One realizes finally that he is in the wrong theater. We do well to let the bracing sea breeze of the scriptures clear our heads so far as the limitations and the risks of the praise of men are concerned.

How to Succeed as a College Student

A new study out of Georgia Tech reports that:

organized, motivated high school students who have demonstrated their ability to master advanced subjects are more likely to succeed as STEM majors than others who have not demonstrated that academic ability or who, though they may be talented and score well on aptitude tests, are disorganized or who do not think they would be happy remaining in science. Imagine that!

STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. I strongly suspect that this applies to other majors as well. How do we find such successful students?

"So if colleges want to know who will succeed in college STEM programs," she added, "they should be looking at the AP test scores, not just registration for an AP class."

Did colleges really not already know this?

In academia sometimes the best research is simply a penetrating glimpse into the obvious.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From If Thou Endure it Well, 28:

These really are our days, and we can prevail and overcome, even in the midst of trends that are very disturbing. If we are faithful the day will come when those deserving pioneers and ancestors, whom we rightly praise for having overcome the adversities in their wilderness trek, will praise today's faithful for having made their way successfully through a desert of despair and for having passed through a cultural wilderness, while still keeping the faith.

A Spectacular Misreading

I have long been used to individuals misreading me. It is an occupational hazard as well as a common fact of human life. As Peter Novick pointed out:

There is nothing more tedious than the spectacle of disgruntled authors complaining that they have been misrepresented or, even worse, whimpering that they have been “misunderstood.” Academic authors, above all others, should be immunized from such concerns, after years of seeing the versions of our lectures we get back in blue books at the end of the term. (Peter Novick, "My Correct Views on Everything," The American Historical Review 96/3 (1991): 699.)

Individuals are free to read what I have written on this blog or elsewhere any way they like and there is nothing I can do about it. I have been aware that some individuals consistently misread my blog. One individual, however, understood yesterday's Maxwell quote as an attack on BYU President Cecil Samuelson. Such was never intended; such a thought never crossed my mind, and I publicly repudiate such a reading. I said, "I guess some things have changed." What I understood to have changed is that Elder Maxwell said that at BYU:

Such individuals [those with inarguably good scholarship and also with testimonies born of the Spirit] need never look anxiously over either shoulder.

At the moment that seems to have changed, at least in some corners of BYU. I do not know who is responsible for the change in those particular corners. I do not know how pervasive that change may be. I do not know if the change is the work of a single or multiple individuals, if it is purposeful or accidental. I do know that it is not right, particularly at a Church sponsored university. Our jobs should not be jeopardized for defending the Church, the gospel, or the truth.

The Invisible Administration?

The economist Richard Vedder asks, what do 2,358 college administrators do? That magic number is the number of college administrators in the University of California's central office. It does not include the number of college administrators at various campuses in the UC system, which totaled 8,822 two years ago (more than the number of ladder-ranked faculty!). He points out that the UC system has 240,000 students and a budget of over 24 billion dollars a year, which That means that the UC system is spending over $100,000 a year for each student. Unfortunately, much of that $100,000 per student does not go to help the student, or even the faculty. It goes to the administration. Vedder wonders if half of the administrators were eliminated would the students even notice? It is a question worth asking. (See here for some commentary about how things are likely to go at UC in the future.)

Today's Maxwell Quote

From this talk:

Twenty years ago, when President Oaks presided, a group of deans, administrators, and their partners heard my expression of faith in the future of this special university. Similar and specific things were also said 13 years ago at the inaugural of President Holland, including how “The greatest gift a [university or college] president can give his students is the example of his life” (Elder Neal A. Maxwell quoting Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh [president of the University of Notre Dame], speaking at the 59th Annual Meeting of the American Council on Education, New Orleans, Louisiana, 7 October 1976, p. 15).

President Rex Lee is certainly giving that precious gift to BYU, and likewise so are many others here. This is as it should be, since producing student credit hours without giving the accompanying gift of faculty exemplification is not enough at BYU! To seek and to maintain a consecrated, bilingual faculty—who speak both the language of scholarship and also of faith—requires retaining and recruiting those with inarguably good scholarship and also with testimonies born of the Spirit. Such individuals need never look anxiously over either shoulder.

I guess some things have changed.

A Small Substitution

This is an interesting piece about Islam and economics brought to my attention by my friend and colleague, Dan Peterson. The author talks about how different people's attitude towards government is influenced by their position in government. I find the argument works on a smaller scale simply by substituting a smaller scale term for the author's use of "state":

It's simply an indisputable fact of human nature. The [administration] creates perverse incentives. It's not a conspiracy. It's not an agenda. It's just a fact. The [administration] cares not for reason and evidence. The [administration] cares about power. So, it will always prefer, publish and promote the scholar that legitimizes it's power. And the scholars who oppose [administration] power will always be ignored, obscure, and if necessary attacked. The [administration] will always chose Keynes over Hayek, and the seekers of Truth have an obligation to revisit their view of history, theology, politics, economics and every other soft science in light of that fact.