A life in words

  • My Blog Be Back

    Once upon a time, a web hosting provider utterly lost the entire site of one of its customers, without any backup. Surprisingly enough, the user in this Brothers Grimm-like cautionary tale was yours truly! Now, after months of neglect, I’m finally getting joshhansen.net back up on its virtual feet. Sorry about the downtime. Unfortunately this…

  • “Broken Spears” and the Book of Mormon

    One of the most interesting books I’ve ever read is “The Broken Spears”—a collection of indigenous and Spanish records documenting the conquest of Mexico shortly after the fact. While reading I unexpectedly noticed parallels with the Book of Mormon record. In fact, I found so many that I began to keep track of them. Some…

  • A Goal Gastronomical

    Having just eaten lunch at Kneaders I was struck with a really cool idea: I’m going to make my own Kneaders-like meal, doing as much from scratch as is reasonable. This would include the following: The Sandwich Vegetables: grow the lettuce, tomatoes, herbs, onions, sprouts, etc. Bread: not milling my own wheat or anything, but…

The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves… to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection [and] opens the door to foreign influence and corruption….George Washington, Farewell Address