1. Why isn't there a "Great Mormon novel"? And here.
2. A modest proposal for economizing the time of sociologists, and much more.
3. Hossein Mousavi is an artist and so is his wife.
4. Honeybees can recognize different human faces and discriminate between them.
5. 98 percent of current flu is novel H1N1.
There may not be a great mormon novel (yet), but there is a great heterodox mormon tv series. Big Love is one of the best shows on TV today, and one of the best TV series ever. Ironically, it’s not written by people with the background that Stegner identifies for the novel (born in the church, left then partway back) but by a gay male couple. Yet the polygamist sub-culture (which is outside mainline LDS) is given such a sympathetic and compassionate portrayal. I strongly encourage you to watch it.
#5 is neat. Makes me wonder if we are building immunity to the nastier version predicted for this fall. Another interesting tidbit– people over the age of 70 don’t seem to catch ugly versions of h1n1, the explanation being that they were alive when this flu must have gone around before hence their immunity.
We’ve much to learn from bees and other insects about pattern recognition and adaptive terrain mapping. Evolutionary processes seem to have finely selected for this prowess subject to a burdensome resource constraint.
Re: “from the Appalachian Trail” – were you hanging out with Mark Sanford?
SC lawmakers won’t be able to find their panties without Governor Sanford.
Hopefully he won’t get into a car wreck not wearing a seatbelt speeding to his “I found Mark Sanford” press conference.
Re: #4 and related comments on honeybees:
Never forget that
brain cell : brain :: bee : bee colony
More generally,
cell : organism :: eusocial species organism : eusocial species colony
More laymanlike,
Human cells are altruistic versions of ants.
Orson Scott Card has written some interesting Mormon-influenced science fiction. He has also written some really sick, paranoid right-wing “action-adventure” stuff. Totally black helicopter, tin-foil-hat, Turner Diary stuff, almost.
If by “some”, you mean “one”…the only action-adventure/political thriller he’s written is Empire. Since the hero characters are at best center-right, and the book contains villains on both sides (while the main hero/villain is a centrist who works for a caretaker Republican administration using left-wingers as agents provacteurs), it’s hard to categorize it as paranoid right-wing. Paranoid, maybe, but not very right-wing. It’s more Clancy with outlandish technology and better characterization than anything–and remember that it was written intentionally with a mind towards a video game based on it.
Hope you have not been crying while on the Appalachian Trail…
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