President Bush is making a visit tomorrow to Salt Lake City to deliver a speech to the convention of the American Legion. Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson has promised an anti-Bush demonstration, calling “for an even larger protest than the rally he pushed last year for another Bush appearance” in Utah. Commentators on the local NPR affiliate, KUER, speculated this morning (8/29) that President Bush might have chosen to speak in Salt Lake City because polls have shown that support for him is higher in Utah than in other states. If this is true, then President Bush has made the classic mistake of assuming that Salt Lake City itself is representative of Utah; in fact, he and/or his staff might have even made the mistake of assuming that Salt Lake City was predominantly LDS, and that, based on the further mistaken assumption that all LDS would automatically be supportive of Bush, Salt Lake City would be a “safe” place for him to speak. (more…)

OK, most school starts next week so I think the (relative) summer hiatus of BT is over. As the science contributer I ought mention the biggest news of the week. No, not that Pluto was demoted from planet to dwarf planet. Not even that the Poincare Conjecture proof was confirmed. No, the big news by my book was the result that dark matter exists.

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Looks like there will be some visitors in Utah Sep 20-22 and I would like to invite anyone who cares to meet to a bloggersnacker at my place in Orem on the 21st. Kids are invited. I am proposing a pot-luck (in good Utah County tradition), so there is that, too. Weather permitting, yard sports may be involved.

Please email me for contact info (hpsoandsos at gmail dot com).

Nine months ago, I spotlighted a disturbing London Times article on this blog about botched abortion procedures in the United Kingdom. The Times story was about the approx. fifty babies who survive abortion procedures every year. We must realize, I suppose, that it is possible that more than this survive but are then killed as unwanted anyway. (more…)

Are you ready for some football… predicting? Well alrightee then. The 2006 BYU football season starts in less than two weeks and here is your chance to publicly predict how the Cougs will do this year. I’ll be there in the flesh as they open the season down in Tucson so I’ll report back on how they look in person then; but in the meantime let’s do some guessing! (more…)

LDS General Conference Scriptural Index, a useful website that links from scriptures to the general conference talks (1942-present) that cite those scriptures, is adding some new features. One can see the beta site here.

Among the changes:

• The addition of the Journal of Discourses to the scriptural index
• A more efficient interface
• A full-text index of General Conference talks and the publication of Ensign talks on the web site

The site is looking for volunteers for proofreading and editing web pages. Information is located here.