I used to think that freedom should be afforded to all who were willing to afford it to us, i.e., pretty much everybody except for literal Communists and the like.

I still think the same thing, except now I worry that its actually boatloads of people whose sights are on us.

I saw a motorcycle followed by a tiny truck followed by an old van going down my street.  Close enough it was almost a procession.

It caught my eye.

But the real unusual thing is the people, no matter what car they drive.

Each one a little world, an unfinished symphony, an avatar of themselves.

Every passerby is a parade.

October 14, 1066.  Nearly 1000 years of the Norman Yoke.

Signs of old age:

People tell you a movie is bad, and then you don’t go watch it.

People tell you a restaurant is bad and then you don’t go and try it out yourself.

Elder Bednar brought up a teaching Elder Holland gave a decade or so ago.  He said we are on a river that is flowing stronger and stronger towards disaster and we have a choice about which direction we are going to paddle.

Elder Oaks said something similar a few years back if I recall.

You can choose to drift with the current. You can choose to paddle against it.  What you cannot choose is to paddle across dry land.

The trend of your society is what it is. The constraints on your actions are what they are.

Marriage is but the beginning bud of family life; parenthood is its flower. And that bouquet becomes even more beautiful when graced with grandchildren. Families may become as eternal as the kingdom of God itself.

-thus President Nelson

I ordered a large expensive rechargeable battery last week.  It cost several hundred dollars.  Monday it came, I found it left outside on our door step.  The box was a little crumpled, was an unusual size, and had a sticker on the side proclaiming that it was a battery.  I remember looking at the sticker and thinking, huh, I didn’t think they let you ship batteries through the mail, I thought the sellers would have claimed it as ‘parts’ or something.

I came inside and put the box down on a side table without opening it.  I didn’t need it right away.  Then it slipped my mind.

Yesterday morning I did need it.  But it was not on the side table.

We convened as a family, prayed, and then looked everywhere.  I even went outside to the garbage bin in case it had been thrown away by one of the kids during their clean-ups.  After all, the box was a bit crumpled, though the battery had enough heft that I didn’t think any one could carelessly think the box was empty.

No luck.

We prayed again, and looked again.

No luck.  I left to work.

When I came home the battery was sitting on my desk charging.

You found it, I said.  The wife and kids were sitting nearby.

Instant chorus in reply–No, no, no, it was delivered.

An hour or two before I came home the doorbell rang.  My wife opened it to find a delivery man out there with a box.  He said it was a battery and she needed to sign for it since it was an expensive, fragile part; they had to be extra particular.  He advised her to handle with care.

She opened it and put it on to charge.

I went and looked at the box.  It was the exact same box I saw on Monday, complete with the slight crumpling and the battery sticker on the outside.  I hefted the battery.  It was the same heft as I recalled.

The abstract quoted below estimates the child car seat benefit to cost ratio at 57 to 8,000. Does this count as two posts in a row here connecting with La Llorona?

“Since 1977, U.S. states have passed laws steadily raising the age for which a child must ride in a car safety seat. These laws significantly raise the cost of having a third child, as many regular-sized cars cannot fit three child seats in the back. Using census data and state-year variation in laws, we estimate that when women have two children of ages requiring mandated car seats, they have a lower annual probability of giving birth by 0.73 percentage points. Consistent with a causal channel, this effect is limited to third child births, is concentrated in households with access to a car, and is larger when a male is present (when both front seats are likely to be occupied). We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.”

I am so flattered, I’m crying for joy.

I would like to thank all the little people who made this possible.

The unedifying spectacle of both parties seamlessly switching their position on Supreme Court nominations during elections.

Democrats threatening packing the Court, packing the Senate with DC and Puerto Rico statehood, and ending the filibuster.

Republicans threatening to skip the customary hearing.

We are not assigning blame. We are not even lamenting the individual norm; not all norms are good.

We are recognizing that norms are toppling.

I remember being 4 years old and watching my father split wood in the fall. (more…)

Storm between the Stars, by Karl Gallagher. One of the better SF books I’ve read in a while. Good plot, an interesting physical setting, and actually different cultures that do different things.

I am continuing to read Saving Faith on the research behind why youth leave their church. Mostly its behavior and personal issues, not doctrine, though that can happen.

Interesting ones so far:

Delayed age of marriage.
Pornography (he argues this is a big one).
“Diversity”
“Tolerance”

The last one comes complete with this quotation from Elder Maxwell.

Irreligion as the state religion would be the worst of all possible combinations.

BYU is a mess, too many of our people are enthusiastically chanting “four legs good, two legs better,” but I continue to think that far and away our biggest problem is that no one is getting married and no one is having kids.

The problems with our marriage markets are over-determined, but among them are that increasingly no one shows up to buy until 10 minutes before closing.

What our society calls early marriage isn’t.  But not putting off marriage is great.

This is how Hell Works–you cling to your sins so tightly that you think of them as part of yourself and you make enemies of the people who want to free you.

-thus J. Bennett