Down, down, down.  From here.

Bonneville County is Idaho Falls.

Here is an interesting contrast.  I just picked whatever years came up first on a search.

1979 LDS Statistical Report

Members  4,439,000

Children of Record 107,000

24 children per 1,000

(Children of record is the number of babies blessed, which means its the birthrate among people who still have some connection to the Church.)

1986 LDS Statistical Report

Members  6,170,000

Children of Record 93,000

15 children per 1,000

2019 LDS Statistical Report

Members  16,565,000

Children of Record 94,000

6 children per 1,000

2020 LDS Statistical Report

Members 16,660,000

Children of Record 65,540

3 children per 1,000

What strikes me is that we have fewer children now than we did in the late 70s with a quarter of the Saints.

Sometimes when the kids are all piled in one place I feel like a dragon over his hoard.

-thus EDJCB.

Disobedience always is dangerous, but the most dangerous type is when you think you are being more virtuous than the apostles.  This ends in you being more Christian than Jesus.

Not to the same degree but there are also dangers in being more virtuous then the mass of the Saints.  One way to get around those dangers is to laugh at yourself when you are being sanctimoniously extra righteous.  Be extra righteous, but also laugh at yourself.

Not my own insight, but someone said that hookup culture is clearly a forerunner to ‘you will own nothing and you will be (un)happy’

And porn and easy divorce culture and  . . .

Men will be punished for their sins.

-thus the second article of faith.

What happens if you read a couple of pages of D&C 132 back to back with Elder Christofferson from May Conference being wryly funny about why we don’t baptize rolls of microfilm?

You see an image in your mind.  This is the image you see.

There is a man standing but leaning forward.  He is wearing a suit and looks suspiciously like President Nelson.  A brilliant light is beaming straight down onto his head, his neck, and his upper back.

His arms are straight out to each side.  Each one is resting on the upper back of another man in a suit who is also hunched over a bit, just like the first man, to receive the weight.  The light appears to run through the first man’s arms to those two men.

Each of those two men have their arms straight out to the side.  Each of them touching the backs of two more men in suits.  The light flows through their arms too.

(more…)

The reason why swearing in this way is bad is because it is a lie.

Strong recommend.

Summary: swearing is usually a very emotionally loaded form of lieing.

Whereas cursing someone is angry and aggressive.

Me: Swearing can be done to comic effect.  That isn’t a lie.  But it does degrade the linguistic commons.  It takes the power from the swearing.  Ironically, it is people like us who conspicuously avoid those words who give them their remaining power.

People are saying that the freedom of information act  request for Pfizer has turned up a comparatively large number of adverse reactions during the trials.

No link, because I don’t have a source that I completely rely on and haven’t looked at the documents myself.

But if this matters to you, for example because you are thinking of taking another booster or something, you may want to look into it further.

Sometimes when you are on the shore watching the waves roll in

Or on the Alpine granite feeling the wind of the world blow

An elvish mood comes over you

(more…)

It’s that time of year again.  Our Christmas page is up.  Check the banner above.

Everything is going to be all right.

The young priest asked God to blave the bread.

He had to do the prayer over.

I was grateful, it gave me a chance to pay attention to the words.

There was a writer from a professional background who went to bull fights and professional wrestling in evening wear.  He clapped politely from time to time.  When the most deeply pleased, an occasional slight expression would fleet across his face.  The regular attendees came to love having him there as kind of a mascot or as a touch of class and took him in.  One day one asked him why he just didn’t show up to hoot and holler like everybody else. (more…)

God is not in a rush.

I dreamed I was watching a Dark Lord–you know, the big bad villain, the leader of all the spooks and goblins and things that go bump in the dark, bent on conquering all of Fantasyland and putting it under his iron heel. It was apparently–you know how you just know things in dreams–one of those Fantasylands where a new Dark Lord arises every few hundred years once the old one has become only a hazy memory.

He was talking to someone. Maybe a subordinate, or maybe he was monologuing to the plucky farm boy hero.

Being the Dark Lord is harder then you think. You have to make the nicest of judgments all the time or you fail.  If you draw off too many forces to deal with the plucky hero and his ragtag band then your main assaults against the kingdoms of men will fall.  But if you do not draw off enough forces just when you’ve crushed the last Kingdom of men and are planning on ruling unchecked and supreme, the plucky hero shows up in your throne room to kill you.

If you give your subordinates too little independence and power then the plucky hero is able to run rings around them.  But if you give them too much, they turn on each other and even on you.

I remember thinking this made sense and even thought to myself that the dark lord had to be pretty terrifying to cow his enemies and keep his own hordes in check, but also could not be too evil or he would fritter away resources in just doing nasty stuff and would actually inspire more opposition that way.

The next part of the dream was an infodump.

I was given to understand that the dark Lords monologue was correct. In fact a dark lord had to basically do everything right or else the plucky hero and his ragtag band would figure out a way to defeat him.

That was because the purpose of Fantasyland was not generating heroes.  The purpose of Fantasyland was to create the perfect dark lord.  The plucky farm boy heroes and swords of prophecy and the alliances of light and all of that were just  for testing the dark lords and terminating failed dark lord trials. They were a mechanism for creating the perfect dark lord.

When I woke up I thought that such a dark lord might turn out to be not so dark after all.

Oh I say, what! The brainy coves at Lawrence Livermore let on they’ve reached energy positive nuclear fusion.

Put it to me straight, chaps. Does anyone know the stock ticker for Lawrence Livermore? I have a good mind to have a flutter.