BYU cooked the Oregon Ducks in the Las Vegas Bowl tonight and served them up on a lovely Christmas platter. In other words the Cougs crushed the Ducks. BYU rolled over the perennial Pac10 contenders as if the Ducks were a JV team. 38-8? Wow!
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This MSNBC article quotes a study that claims more than 9 out of 10 people have had pre-marital sex, even those born as long ago as the 1940′s (contrary to popular opinion that back then everyone was chaste). In other words, pretty much everyone is having sex before they get married. (more…)

The last thing I expected to read this morning at the gym in SELF Magazine was the tired old adage that Utah women are more depressed than the “average” U.S. woman. (or that Utah women reported 54% more rapes?!)   But here you have it:

Where are the healthiest (and unhealthiest!) places for women to live? SELF ranked 100 of the largest U.S. metro areas to find out. We analyzed roughly 6,000 bits of data in nearly 40 categories, including death and disease rates, environmental indicators, community resources and lifestyle habits. Sperling’s Best Places in Portland, Oregon, helped us gather the data and crunch the numbers, and an expert panel decided how much weight to give each criterion. Where applicable, all data is women specific and weighted for age and population size; averages are for the 100 cities on SELF’s list. How did your hometown do? 

The answer? (more…)

Brigham Young University’s College of Fine Arts and Communications is making available three free moving image and music videos online from its 2006 Christmas greeting card. (more…)

Interesting article about how bloggers in Iran are evading detection by the Ministry of Information and laws restricting freedom of expression: 

Some journalists say the Internet has become even more vital in Iran as the government has suppressed other, more easily controllable forms of expression. Several opposition newspapers have been shut down since September, including the prominent paper Shargh.  The editor, Mohamed Atrianfar, said in an interview that the closure of Shargh and other publications and renewed pressure on critical websites reflects the government’s concern that “the more challenges we have, the more agile and fresh the society becomes.”

Could thousands of subversive bloggers bring down a repressive government?  Stay tuned.

First off, I don’t want to pretend that this post has any real direct link to identifiable “Mormon” issues. But the issue of Iraq looms large in the minds of much of our readership and its problems have been debated on the bloggernacle so heatedly and so often that the issue has started to occupy a status all its own within our small community. I felt this topic needed some air-time and apologize in advance if it doesn’t quite fit the expectations of our readership. (more…)