Japanese Senior Dolls

Japan has one of the highest abortion rates in the world.

As a result, they have a rapidly greying population.

As a result, the wave of Japanese seniors frequently has no children to take care of them, or at least no children in their homes.

As a result, Japanese toy companies like Bandai have turned from making toys for tots to making toys for seniors, specifically: child-like dolls that seniors can interact with.

Excerpts:

Talking toys have become such a hit that some elderly people have embraced them as substitutes for the children who have grown old and deserted entire neighborhoods in the rapidly greying country.

The Yumel doll, which looks like a baby boy and has a vocabulary of 1,200 phrases, is billed as a "healing partner" for the elderly and goes on the market Thursday at a price of 8,500 yen (80 dollars).

Another toymaker, Bandai, in November 1999 launched the Primopuel doll which is meant to resemble a five-year-old boy who needs the same sort of attention, asking to be hugged and entertained.

GET THE (TRAGIC) STORY.

(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent it!)

Good Annunciation Friday?

A reader writes:

A question — what’s being done about the Feast of the Annunciation this year?  The usual date is March 25, but this year Good Friday falls on that date.

Believe it or not, the Annunciation is being transferred to April 4th this year, more than a week after its usual date of March 25 (nine months before Christmas).

PROOF. (WARNING: Evil file format [.pdf]!)

The reason has to do with which days take priority over which other days in the calendar. There are elaborate rules for this. Basically, you check the Table of Liturgical Days from the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, you’ll see that the Annunciation, as a feast daysolemnity, is a rank #53 day, which thus takes a back seat to days of rank #1-#42.

Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday are rank #1 days, so you can’t celebrate the Annunciation then.

Holy Thursday (like the other weekdays of Holy Week) are rank #2, so you can’t celebrate it then.

Days within the Octave of Easter are also rank #2, so same thing.

The Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday) is also rank #2.

So long story short: It gets bumped to April 4th, because that’s the first opening where another day wouldn’t take precedence over it.

2050: 9,000,000,000

The U.N. Population Division now estimates that there will be 9 billion people alive in 2050.

That’s about 40% more than are alive now, and a number that the Earth can easily support if nations do not put economic barriers in the way of the free flow of resources (food, etc.).

In my view, the number is likely to cap out at 9 billion or a little higher, as the trend is already slowing worldwide. After it caps out, it’s like to start declining.

That’s not to say the future will be rosy in mid-century. Most of the growth will occur in developing nations whose leaders may not let them develop enough to handle their growing populations.

They may, for example, try protectionistic economic policies that spark trade wars and make it harder for their citizens to make money and buy what they need from elsewhere, leading to economic stagnation, recession, depression, and attempts by governments to start wars to get new resources (the real reason–coupled with national pride–that most wars are fought), to force abortion and other anti-child policies on their populations, or both.

Still, we’re not looking at a Malthusian crisis.

Of course, the 9 billion figure is predicated on the predictions of a department of the horribly corrupt and incompetent United Nations. It’s not an unreasonable figure, though, so

GET THE STORY. (Cowboy hat tip to the reader who e-mailed it!)

Excerpt:

“Future population growth is highly dependent on the path that future fertility takes,” the report said.

No! Really?

I Feel All Googley (Part II)

Okay, this is cool.

Y’know how bloggers will sometimes put updates welcoming visitors from other blogs who have linked them?

Well, my post on Sharona leaving Monk has been getting a ton of hits from Google. In fact, it’s the top page Google gives you if you type in "sharona leaves monk." Only problem was, it was written before we knew the on-screen explanation for why Sharona left.

So I just updated it with this:

UPDATE: Welcome Google visitors! More information has been revealed about the Sharona situation since the time this post was written. Basically, Sharona and her son, Benjy, moved back to the East Coast to reunite with her former husband. (This was not shown on screen but was talked about.) Subsequently, Monk hired a new assistant, a former bartender named Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard), who has a daughter. Thus far, Natalie seems to be doing as good a job at standing up to Monk as Sharona did, but we’ll always have a special place in our hearts for Sharona. Hopefully she’ll guest star in the future.

121

. . . that’s the number of e-mails in my gmail inbox at the moment.

It’s significant because I’m using my gmail inbox as my staging area for e-mails I want to take action on (either blogging, sending a private reply, etc.).

Making the switch to gmail has made it much easier for me to keep track of the e-mails I need to take action on, with the result that I’ve been responding to readers more on the blog (and off) than previously.

Nevertheless, 121 is a pretty daunting number, so I just wanted to say to folks who’ve e-mailed me that I hope they’ll be patient. Gmail is making it easier for me to respond to folks, and I want to respond to as many as I can.

Muchas gracias, and God bless!

Book (Etc.) Recommends

A piece back a reader wrote to suggest that I do a permapost on book recommendations drawing together the various recommends I’ve made from time to time (a la what I do with Lent questions in Annual Lent Fight). I’ve decided to do so, so here goes.

(I’m not sure if I’ve got all the recommends, so if anybody finds ones that I’ve missed in the archives, e-mail me. Thanks!)

This list will become more organized over time.

Fatima Books Recommendations

A reader writes:

Can you recommend a good book on Fatima? I am looking for something with a little meat on it, less inclusive than a 10,000-page multi-volume set (if such a thing exists), but not too short or simplistic.

There are three works that I’d recommend:

  1. Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words
  2. Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, vol. 2
  3. Calls from the Message of Fatima
  4. Encountering Mary by Sandra Zimdars-Swartz

The first three are all written by Sr. Lucia herself. The first two consist of her memoirs of the incident (there are several different memoirs, which overlap to a considerable degree). The third is the volume she wrote and released after the publication of the Third Secret.

The fourth book is a critical but balanced look at recent apparitions, including Fatima. It is a semi-scholarly work that tries to take an objective look at them, presenting both the evidence for and against them without drawing definite conclusions one way or the other.

For the Vatican’s take on Fatima (including basic information on what happened), read

THE MESSAGE OF FATIMA.

Due to the poor quality of many books on Fatima (many of which contain copious amounts of material now known to be false) and other apparitions, I ask commenters to refrain from recommending additional works in the comments box.

PRIEST: Contraception Can Be OK

A reader writes:

A while ago, my wife stopped taking the pill. I am ashamed to admit this, but we did not realize that the Church taught that contraception was intrinsically evil. We knew they did not "approve" of it, but we did not think it was a grave sin. We also did not know that the pill could sometimes function as an abortafacient. Anyway, when we found out, we immediately got off the pill.

Even though we had made the decision to get off the pill and to stop contracepting, I still wanted to meet with my pastor to discuss the issue of contraception in general, since I really did not understand what was "intrinsically evil" about it.

Anyway, my pastor had some interesting things to say. He pulled out a piece of paper with a [PHONY-SOUNDING TOOL FOR EVALUATING YOUR CONSCIENCE] on it. He told me that my wife and I should use this [TOOL] to make a "mature decision" whether contraception was right for us.

He stated that the most important axiom governing [THE TOOL] was this: Morality is based on reality. He said that the Church’s moral teachings were a "best case scenario" or simply IDEALS to be reached for, and that pastoral practice may not measure up to the optimum.

He basically told me that we needed to do what was right for us, in our situation.

Needless to say, I was very shocked at what the priest said. So I just came right out and asked him: "Father, are you saying that if my wife and I, after reflection, make a mature decision to continue to contracept, that it would be an acceptable decision"? He replied, "Yes."

So, can a decision by a husband and wife to contracept ever be licit?

Here is the teaching of the Church:

Every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible [Humanae Vitae 14].

Thus it is never licit to use the Pill or anything else in order to achieve a contraceptive effect.

It is extremely tempting to simply state that your priest lied to you, but I have to hold open the possibility that he is just grossly misinformed about the nature of the Church’s teachings. In any event, he grossly misrepresented them to you.

It is also difficult to resist the conclusion that he is likely to be morally culpable for this gross misrepresentation as well, since a few years ago the Pope issued an encyclical (Veritatis Splendor), one of whose key and widely-reported points was the repudiation of exactly the kind of moral theology your priest pushed on you (i.e., that the Church proposes only goals to strive and that nothing is intrinsically evil so that particular circumstances can allow one to morally do things that the Church proposes as intrinsically evil).

Whether he is culpable for his action or not, I could not recommend that you seek this man’s counsel on any matter of Catholic moral theology. He is at a minimum grossly ignorant of its basic principles and (with a significant degree of probability) knowingly subversive of it.

Christian Convert Killed In Iraq

Zakho (AsiaNews/MEC) – A Christian convert from Islam was killed for his faith. Ziwar Muhammad Isma’il, who worked as a taxi driver in Zakho in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, was shot dead by Abd al-Karim Abd al-Salam at a taxi station early on the morning of February 17.

Abd al-Salam approached Ziwar and told him to return to Islam. When Ziwar refused he opened fire with an automatic rifle.

Abd al-Salam fled but was chased by other taxi drivers who, after apprehending him, turned him over to the police.

Abd al-Salam claims that the prophet Muhammad appeared to him in a dream and told him to kill the Christian.

Ziwar, who converted to Christianity seven years ago, leaves a widow and five children. He had been quite open about his faith even though he had been threatened by his relatives and other Muslims. He had been arrested twice but never charged.

In countries like Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, where the Shariah (Islamic law) is the state law, Muslim men who convert from Islam can be put to death, their marriages annulled, and their property taken away.

Even under more moderate Muslim authorities, such as those in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, converts may still face widespread hostility and aggression from their own families and communities.