These are the days in which summer begins to give way to fall. The days grow shorter, the nights get longer, and there begins to be just a bit of a bite in the air. Though winters in Southern Ontario are long, I still look forward to their slow approach. But that is beside the point of the rest of this article. While I link to several good pieces of writing each day in my A La Carte column, I focus almost exclusively on Christian material. Sometimes, though, I read other material and feel like commenting on it. That’s exactly what you will find below—interesting articles from mainstream sources that are accompanied by some brief commentary. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a fascinating and deeply concerning article about South Korea, the country with the industrialized world’s lowest birth rate. “South Korea’s fertility rate—a snapshot of the average number of babies a woman would have over her lifetime—slumped to 0.78 last year, from 0.81 in 2021, according to new government data. And the slide has worsened in recent months, falling to 0.70 in the April-to-June quarter.” For a birthrate to replace and maintain the current population, especially in a country with no significant immigration, it must be no lower than 2.1. A number as low as .70 represents a looming disaster. The government has been heaping up subsidies, incentives, benefits, and even cash payments to those who have children, but they have been unable to stem the tide. What the article does not discuss is … Continue reading As Summer Turns to Fall