Orson Scott Card has a new book called Empire out. It’s apparently a mix between Tom Clancy and a cautionary tale about how our political differences are getting a tad out of hand. We’ll see if this is one of the all too often of late mediocre Card books or one of his fantastic ones. For those interested Instapundit has a post and podcast interview with Card about the book. Since you can’t comment there, feel free to comment here.

Hopefully the last note on the whole 9/11 - Steve Jones sage. According to published reports Steve Jones’ book on the 9/11 Conspiracy is not going to be published. [Edit: Correction - see below]

“The conspiracy theory is spurious and based on questionable research,” Kenneth Godshall, chairman of the board, said Nov. 8. “This particular volume is not up to WJK editorial standards and not representative of the PPC publishing program.”

Note that Jones was not the one writing the above book. My apologies for the confusion. I should have read more closely at what was sent me. The book is this one by David Ray Griffin. Steve Jones has written praising the book but wasn’t involved in the book itself so far as I know. My apologies for passing along bad information.

I should note Griffin was the leader of the of the 9/11 conspiracy group, to which Steven Jones of BYU belonged.

(Update 12:34 p.m. 11/27/06) as Danithew notes # 67 in the comments below, The Moderate Voice has removed the offending photos. In my email to Joe Gandleman who runs the site, I noted:

Joe,

I don’t know whether you are responsible for the eventual removal of those photos. If so, my most gracious thank you. I will also publicly post this on the blog. If you were not responsible–then a thank you to whomever was responsible.

It may not seem like much to you . . . but it was a step–and a good one in the right direction. Again, thank you.

Regards,
Guy Murray

(Update 11/27/06 2:54 p.m.) Joe Gandelman the owner, if you will, of the Moderate Voice exchanged some emails with me this afternoon. He has allowed me to publish this portion, which I am happy to do:

YES you can post what you want on the site. I saw her email and sent it to Shaun and said this explains it simply, eloquently and we should consider removing it. Since he wrote the post and put the photo up — a photo he got from google images and one that is on the internet — I told him that if he felt as I did we really should take it down. He quickly emailed me that he had read the email and removed the photo.

As, I told Joe in my response to his email–he did a good thing here. It is the rare individual who will admit to a mistake, and even rarer one who will do something about it. While I was critical of the Moderate Voice originally, I am equally happy to say I appreciate and respect even more now the fact they took the action they did.

Will this one small act stop religious bigotry? Perhaps not. But, it was the right thing to do, and an example to other sites and individuals out there. I commend and thank The Moderate Voice for its actions.

(Update 11/26/06 7:05 p.m.) There are two more posts over at the Moderate Voice here and here directly related to the fallout of the original post to which I linked. I posted about Andrew Sullivan’s Anti-Mormon Bigotry over at The Messenger and Advocate. Well, it’s now spreading to some pretty surprising mainstream blogs. It has hit Instapundit, Ann Althouse as well as the Moderate Voice. I’m quite surprised at the Moderate Voice’s post. While I don’t necessarily believe all these folks are anti-Mormon bigots–I am troubled and disappointed by their linking and/or posting what are clearly anti-Mormon and religiously bigoted posts, such as posting photos of the Temple Garment. Just how a temple garment photograph is relevant to Mitt Romney’s political candidacy somehow escapes me.

(more…)

Deseret News posted a short piece on a new book, The Mormon Way of Doing Business.  It looks at eight LDS CEOs and how they do business.  No doubt you could guess two or three of the eight.  Those profiled in the book include David Neelman (CEO of Jet Blue); Dave Checketts (formerly CEO of Madison Square Garden); Kim Clark (former Dean of the Harvard Business School); and Kevin Rollins (CEO of Dell Computer).  Amazon lists the publication date as January 3, 2007, so it’s not clear whether you can get your hands on a copy in time to put under the Christmas tree of the aspiring Mormon business tycoon in your family.

BYU 33 Utah 31

The winning touchdown pass came on the last play of the game with 0:00 on the clock. Never again will they be able to say John Beck cannot win a close game.

Awwwww Yeeeeeeah

Well done Cougs.