Come this fall, if you want to watch a Mountain West Conference sporting event on TV you better get digital cable. That’s right, no more ESPN, ESPN2, or ESPN-plus games. For all y’all in Utah there will be no more games on local TV either. 100% of in-conference games will either be on newly launching CSTV or its specialty MWC-only offshoot “The mtn.” As Scott D. Pierce of the Deseret Morning News said today:

Assuming you have access to CSTV and The mtn., this could be the greatest thing that’s happened to you if you’re a Cougar or Ute fan. Virtually all of your team’s football and basketball games will be available on television. (more…)

The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting that two rare copies of the Book of Mormon stolen from the institute at the University of Utah last fall have been recovered.

SWAT teams from Murray and Midvale, conducting a routine drug raid, searched a home in the 400 East block of Larchwood Drive (6770 South) in Midvale about 9:30 p.m., according to a Midvale police press release.

In addition to finding methamphetamine, officers located an 1840 Nauvoo edition of the Book of Mormon and an 1841 Liverpool edition, valued at $35,000 and $25,000, respectively.

Church history crime doesn’t pay.

Police apparently also found a large stamp collection and sheets of old Salt Lake Herald newspapers dated from the mid to late 1800s, but they are still looking for the original owners.

USU’s Mountain West Center for Regional Studies, which describes itself as “a humanities outreach center in the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences,” has just announced the 2005 winners of its Evans Biography Award and Handcart Award.

The Evans Biography Award, established in 1983, “recognizes outstanding research and writing of a biography of a person who lived in or had significant influence on the Mormon West or who was part of Mormonism’s pre-Utah history.”  It carries a $10,000 prize.  The Handcart Award, established in 1996 and carrying a $1000 prize, “is given each year to a biography of merit, often by an author who is not an academic historian, who contributes to an understanding of the Mormon-settled West.”

And the Evans Award goes (went) to…. (more…)

Answer: When you steal it.  A big heist went down recently in Salt Lake City (Rare LDS Texts Stolen) but a follow-up story posted today reports that most of the items were recovered and the few remaining items will likely be recovered as well.  I really hate to see this kind of story given front-page coverage — I don’t want the petty thieves of Utah to get the idea that this is a new market they should move into.  Time for museums and collectors to invest in a little more security.

Wow. Mike Parker pointed this one out and I just had to share. This is an actual article in the Jerusalem Post. It contains such wild statements as these:

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According to the just-released 2006 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches we are the second fastest growing church at 1.74% versus 1.81% for Assemblies of God. Of course that is from official records and neglects those who leave the faith. Assemblies of God does far, far better at retention than we do.