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…

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations…. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form….John Stuart Mill, On LIberty