Good morning! Good weekend! It’s officially cold here in Chicagoland.

What happens when we have a shortage of eggnog?

(NEXSTAR) – With Christmas just a few days away, many are stocking up on holiday favorites, including eggnog. Unfortunately for some, the ‘nog shelf may be empty.

A supply issue with butterfat, the fatty portion of milk and a key ingredient to eggnog, is keeping Organic Valley from putting its eggnog on store shelves this holiday season, a spokesperson told Nexstar.

The Wisconsin-based company works with 1,800 farmers to supply dairy products – like milk, cream and butter – nationwide. Usually they also produce eggnog seasonally – but not this year.

Organic Valley says it is making plans for the holiday drink to return in the future.

Eggnog is more than just a holiday delicacy and Cousin Eddie’s favorite drink. It’s been around for centuries, with most culinary historians agreeing the spiced egg yolk and milk mixture dates back to medieval Britain, according to Time Magazine.’

Are we all cyborgs now?

The ever quotable Elon Musk has suggested “we are all cyborgs now.” I think he’s right and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. We rely on digital media for almost everything – to check the weather, buy food, track fitness, find a partner, make money. Most of us even check our phones on the loo. We are not just human. We are cybernetically modified beings.

There are plus sides to being a cyborg – half man, half machine. We can work from home, crunch complex data, and automate otherwise mundane activities. We can talk with family overseas, design cities remotely, and create funny meme’s that go viral. But like all good things there are downsides to such an integrated existence. This was certainly true for Darth Vader. It is also true for us. The more we trade our humanity for a super-humanity mediated by the online world, the more something tends to give – and that something is the soul.

As helpful as the digital world can be, I’m not sure that being a cyborg is particularly good for deepening one’s relationship with Jesus. Sure, you can tick off a daily bible verse and use dopamine reinforcement in a positive way. But there are significant downsides to living like the Terminator when it comes to faith and Christ-like spiritual formation.

Digitally-mediated people, by design, find it harder to be human. They find it harder to be peaceful and still. Silence and solitude is a challenge. It is a struggle to practice the presence of God (since silence has a way of interrupting our notifications.) Cyborgs also struggle with other aspects of spiritual formation.

They find it harder to concentrate on scripture. They struggle to pay attention to the still-small voice. They lose their capacity to examine the inner life. Prayer is also a challenge for the cyborg because the results of prayer are rarely instantaneous. And this has implications. It’s almost as if the practices of Jesus require us to rethink our cybernetic tendencies and form an alternative liturgy – one that leads to a deeper faith, a rested soul, and a well-rounded humanity.

An active camel:

BONNER SPRINGS, Kan. -- Bonner Springs police officers responded to a very unusual assignment on Sunday afternoon.

Officers from the Bonner Springs Police Department and Animal Control tracked down a loose camel.

According to police, the camel had quite the journey in the city in southwestern Wyandotte County after it escaped a live nativity scene.

"This morning, officers took to the golf courses in pursuit of the camel (on golf carts no less)," police said in a Facebook post. "Later, it took a leisurely jaunt down K-7 Highway and into some neighborhoods."

The camel was apprehended by officers in the 600 block of North Nettleton Avenue.

It has since been reunited with its owners. As the police department put it, it "went back to doing camel things."

Photo by Alex Padurariu on Unsplash

Glad for this pooch and family:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A dog missing for two weeks in Colorado was rescued from a ledge about 50 yards (46 meters) above a creek and is now back home.

An animal control officer with the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region anchored herself to a wooden fence and rappelled down to the dog using a mountaineering harness and rope provided by a man living nearby during the Dec. 1 rescue, the humane society said Monday on Facebook.

The dog later identified through her microchip and tag as Jessie Lee immediately wagged her and crawled towards the officer but the ground started slipping out from underneath the dog, the humane society said.

The officer put a catchpole around the dog’s neck and shoulder to slowly pull Jessie Lee closer safely so she would not fall. Another officer then lowered a second rope which was tied into a makeshift harness for the dog and pulled them both up to safety, the humane society said.

Jessie Lee was reunited with her owners, who had been looking for daily since she went missing two weeks ago, the humane society said.

What happened to true conservatism?, he asks.

Wow:

(NEXSTAR) – A team of researchers at a Japanese university have created a mask using ostrich cells that glows when it detects traces of the coronavirus.

The scientists at Kyoto Prefectural University, led by the school’s president, Yasuhiro Tsukamoto, hope that the masks – which haven’t yet been approved for sale – will provide an efficient, cheap testing option, according to The Japan Times.

The team decided to coat a special filter in the mask with ostrich antibodies that target the novel coronavirus based on prior research showing the birds’ strong ability to neutralize the virus.