This seems like it deserves much more attention:

– the total fertility rate in the US has declined from 2.12 in 2007 to 1.64 in 2020

– half the world’s population lives in countries with below-replacement-level fertility

– China now has a fertility rate even lower than Japan’s pic.twitter.com/CIbazSKue4

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) January 4, 2022

Would one could say, ‘an enemy hath done this’

A rabbit was hopping along when an angel appeared.

“Rabbit,” said the angel, ” all Atlantis will be buried under the waves of the ocean in three days.  Prepare!”

“What is Atlantis?  What are waves?  What is the ocean?”

The angel grimaced.  “Listen, Rabbit, everything, everything, is going to be covered in water in three days.  Like a flood that covers even the tallest trees, and also the water will be too nasty to drink.

The angel disappeared.

The rabbit wondered just what the heck he was supposed to do about it.

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I dreamed that here we all were, our rickety selves (but somehow we were also metal machines).  If we worked ourselves hard enough our parts would snap and our builder would then weld it back on, but sometimes in a more structurally sound place.  Over time, the best of us were a mass of big welds and repurposed parts.

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Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate ‘relationship’ involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, then, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the ‘married’ couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other.

-thus Wendell Berry

Happy Last Day of Christmas to everyone, great or small.

Odd thing.  This is been one of the happiest Christmases I can remember.  But also one where I am having less melancholy that is is ending than is usual.

Professor Hugh Nibley once noted that the kingdom of God cannot endure if it indulges even the smallest sin: “The slightest taint of corruption means that the other world would be neither incorruptible nor eternal. The tiniest flaw in a building, institution, code, or character will inevitably prove fatal in the long run of eternity.”

(from Elder Christofferson)

It follows, conversely, if an incident does not prove fatal in the long run of eternity, it was not a sin.

Some wonder why God would punish people.  The answer is that it’s a kind of celestial engineering.  Sin making you unfit for eternity isn’t a consequence.  Its the definition of sin.  That’s what it is.  If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be sin.

I want to be careful because I am going to say something a tiny bit shocking.  It is true but not in every sense.  It is that sins you repent of are not even sins at all, anymore, because once you repent of them they won’t stop you from pursuing your course.

It’s as if doing something wicked in mortality isn’t yet sin.  It’s Schrodinger’s sin.  Whether it was sin or not remains to be determined by whether you repent of it later.

Like most Christmases, this Christmas we made an experimental ice cream.  Eggnog ice cream.   It was such a hit that we made some more batches for relatives.  I am now dreaming of a yellowish Christmas.

We made up the recipe ourselves.  Here it is.

This recipe is meant for a standard 6 quart ice cream freezer.

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