Do you know the Brief Insights series of books? It’s similar to the Very Short Introductions series, in which a broad topic is covered in one concise, well-written volume. The many titles are as far-ranging as Kafka, Music, Existentialism, Literary Theory, Relativity, Statistics, and Modern China. Recently I read the volume Postmodernism, by Christopher Butler, an Oxford University English professor. In this book, Butler explains postmodernism’s roots in the works of Derrida, Foucault, and Barthes, as well as its rise in the context of the avant-garde. Butler explores postmodern expressions in politics, visual arts, literature, architecture, and music, showing how postmodernism has broadened our cultural tolerance and opened doors of pluralistic expression. But he also discusses postmodernism’s failure as a tool for democratic negotiation, as well as its opposition toward humanistic concepts of individual agency and responsibility. More...

There are only two possibilities if you see this post. The first is that it is within 24 hours of 9:00pm, December 30th, 2010 (MST) and the DNS change hasn't kicked in yet. If this is the case, no worries, it should kick in sometime soon.

The second possibility is that you are subscribed to and/or monitoring the old blog URL and should update your settings. The official address for this blog is http://blog.mormonletters.org. If you are subscribed to the AML feed and seeing this message, then you need to update your feed URL to the official feed address. We're sorry for any inconvenience caused by this update, but hope you'll enjoy the new blog features!

AML blog will be getting a new look and feel, thanks to efforts by Jacob Proffitt and Johnna Cornett -- including a switch to Wordpress as our new platform. It's our hope that this will make the blog function more smoothly than it has in the past.

The changeover will take place Thursday evening, Dec. 30. Aside from the blog being down for a few hours, you shouldn't notice any ongoing problems. The URL address for the blog will remain the same.

Thanks in advance for your patience as we work out the (inevitable) bugs. And thanks to Jacob and Johnna for researching and implementing the changeover!

A personal vignette.

In August of 2001, the company I worked for was caught in the collapse of the technology sector, the so-called “dot-bomb” where heavily overvalued tech stocks took a beating in a massive market correction. The effect was that a lot of technology companies simply shut down, and the survivors chose to shed a lot of employees through the middle of that year. I was one of them.

I got a good severance package and had small lump of cash I got from cashing in stock options (required as a condition of the separation package), so I felt no special panic. Sure, there were a lot of tech people looking for jobs, but I could afford to wait out the first rush and pick up a decent job after the initial panic passed and the industry inevitably recovered. In the mean time I had freelance work and was starting a small business. More...

Last month I had the chance to speak to an English 195 class at BYU, which is a class made up of mostly freshman. I took that class before most of those students were even born, in a building that's no longer used for Humanities, and I spoke in a building that didn't exist then (talk about a time warp).

My job was to show how, as a former BYU English major (who graduated cum laude *cough, cough*) had gone on to use her major. It was a great experience being able to encourage the students, especially since I knew full well that they'd been the butt of the same jokes I have been ("What are you going to do with your major when you graduate? Ask, "Do you want fries with that?" Hahahaha!!!!) More...

On fast Sunday, my business plan was preached over the pulpit.

OK, it wasn't technically preached. More just shared. And it's not so much a business plan as a running joke. But it was still a surprise to hear the second counselor in the bishopric tell the ward about how I dream of opening a gas station in Las Vegas where, after inserting a credit card and pumping your gas, you pull a giant lever on the side which makes the numbers spin and spin, so that you never know in advance whether you'll get gas free, at a discount, a bit higher than usual, or at double the ordinary rate.

What was more surprising was that the counselor was making an important spiritual point. More...

Our webmaster, Jacob Proffitt, has set up a link to an email subscription to the AML blog (so that people can receive emails whenever there is a new AML blog post).

On the AML blog pages, on the right side, there is a list of recent comments and a list of recent posts.

At the bottom of the list of recent comments is a link for those who want an RSS feed whenever someone posts a new comment on the AML blog.

And, at the bottom of the list of recent posts, is a link that says "Subscribe to Dawning of a Brighter Day by Email"

This "subscribe" link is the one you use to get emails whenever there is a new post on the AML blog.

We hope that this will make it easier to know what is going on at the AML blog, and perhaps bring people around for more discussions.

Do you love AML and what it stands for? Would you like to help keep it alive? We’re looking for someone willing to do some of the very unglamorous work necessary to stay afloat. Currently, we are in desperate need for a Treasurer. Honestly, we’re not even sure what is involved in this position other than keeping track of financial matters and possibly helping with registration at the AML annual meeting.

We already have someone to pick up the mail, make all the deposits, write the checks, handle the membership database, and send out ordered copies of Irreantum. What we need a Treasurer to do is anything related to the accounting. Sorry—we hardly even know what that entails. We’ll figure it out together. Any takers? E-mail Darlene at youngbookshelf at gmail dot com.

This is my favorite Christmas poem. What's yours?  More...

Let's face it: the internet has us all freaked out.  It's 1439 all over again--maybe more like 1450--and this Gutenberg dude has just revolutionized the way information is disseminated and all we know for sure is that those monks who make a living doing awesome illustrated manuscripts are probably all going to be out of jobs. More...