Are they serious?

Hope for dieters!

According to Dan Lewis at Now I Know,

We think of the earth's gravitational field as uniform, pulling us downward equally whether we’re in New York or New Zealand. That’s not quite right, though. As Indiana Public Media’s “A Moment of Science” notes, “when gravity is measured, we find it changes from place to place. That is because the density and thickness of Earth’s rock layers is not the same everywhere. Certain parts of the earth are denser than others, causing the gravitational pull to be slightly greater in those places.”

Perhaps this will give the weight-loss challenged a scientific excuse: "My problem is that my scales are located over an area with dense, thick rock layers, which makes my weight heavier in that spot."

Or it could explain why you weigh five to ten pounds less on your bathroom scales than you do later in the day on the scales at the doctor's office. Nothing is wrong with your scales, in this case. It is the doctor's office that is geologically misaligned.

From The New Yorker September 13, 2015

Kim Davis Needs to Read the Bible Again

By Gregg Easterbrook

 

Kim Davis and her supporters lash out against homosexuality by calling on ancient divine pronouncements of anger, rather than upon the serene divinity who, in the New Testament, offered unconditional forgiveness.  

Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY TIMOTHY D. EASLEY / AP

Kim Davis, the clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, returns to her post soon, after spending five nights in jail and then a few more days recovering at home. A Pentecostal Christian, Davis says “God’s authority” instructs her not to issue licenses for gay marriage, even though the law compels her to. Presidential contenders, including Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, both fundamentalists, have praised her stance.

It’s undeniable that the earliest scripture books, the ones Christians call the Pentateuch and Jews call the Torah, don’t like same-sex relations. At the Garden of Eden, God decrees that a man will be the husband and a woman the wife. (See the second and third chapters of Genesis, ideally a scholarly translation such as the New Revised Standard; this article cites the N.R.S.V.) In Leviticus 18:22, the text states, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” In 20:13, Leviticus specifies that both parties in male-male sex shall “be put to death.”

That seems open-and-shut, though one might wonder why Davis, Cruz, Huckabee and the like seek only to deny gays marriage, rather than execute them as God decreed.

But here’s the thing. Christian theology says the New Testament amends the Old: what happened in the days of the apostles amends what came long before. Acts 13:39: “By this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.” (Acts is the founding text of Pentecostalism.) Jesus overturned existing law about sin, the Sabbath, the afterlife and many other matters. His ministry proclaimed “a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” (II Corinthians 3:6.) “Letter” in this context means archaic law—that is, the law Davis, Cruz, and Huckabee want applied today.

When conservative Christians justify opposition to gay relations by citing ancient scripture, by the most amazing coincidence they don’t mention the other stuff there. The ancient passages that denounce same-sex relations also denounce eating shellfish and trimming one’s beard. The Christian who says God forbids homosexuality – then shaves before going out for dinner at Red Lobster – is speaking from both sides of his mouth.

In Leviticus, the Old Testament book that calls homosexuality an abomination, God not only sanctions but encourages slavery. Leviticus 25:44–46 , spells out rules for seizing, holding, and selling slaves. And there’s no estate tax: slaves may be kept “as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property.” In Deuteronomy 21:18–21, near the passages on the abomination of same-sex relations, ancient scripture directs that a disobedient child be taken by his parents to the city gate and stoned to death.

If banning homosexuality is “God’s authority” to a modern Christian, ritual murder of children ought to be as well. So why don’t today’s Judeo-Christians believe in slavery and filicide? For mainstream Jews, some ancient doctrine has been reinterpreted by rabbinical commentary or civil law; for Christians, premises of ancient scripture have been amended. This happened first via the middle prophets Isaiah and Hosea, who came centuries after ancient scripture—biblical tip: the key that unlocks the beauty of Abrahamic faith is the seldom read Book of Hosea—and then through the ministry of the Redeemer.

What does the New Testament say about homosexuality and gay marriage? Silence on the latter; on the former, there’s one reference. In his Letter to the Romans, verses 1:26-27, Paul observes of idol worshippers, “Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”

Conservatives prefer translations, such as the God’s Word Bible, that substitute “perversion” for “error.” Yet many church-married, monogamous, man-woman, devout Christian couples engage in acts once thought perversion. Beyond this, Paul frowned on all sexual interaction, including by men and women married to each other. (I Corinthians 7:29.) The apostles evinced no interest in any form of carnality. Jesus never wed, and if he experienced erotic longing, the specifics are lost to history. 

The Old Testament is chock-full with lust and rape: by the New Testament, it’s as if sex has gone out of style. Those who beheld Jesus bathed in the glory of the resurrection believed the long-dreamt golden age about to arrive. Sex just didn’t seem terribly important compared to that.

At any rate, the key word in Romans is not “perversion;” rather, “natural.” The science of the question of what a person’s natural sexual preferences are is unsettled, but tends toward the idea that people are born that way. If we are born with our sexuality, either it is a gift from God or evolved naturally. And if same-sex attraction is natural, then it is in concord with the New Testament.

Of course, believers of all stripes pick and choose. Liberal Christians avert their eyes from Christ’s near-absolute ban on divorce, in Matthew 5:32. Wealthy Christians ignore their Redeemer’s warning that the rich are barred from heaven, in Matthew 19:24. Most Christians would rather not know that Jesus said to give to panhandlers, in Luke 6:30. Right now, the mainly Christian leaders of the European Union don’t seem concerned that Jesus said that only helping the destitute counts in the eyes of God. (Christ says, in Luke 6:33, “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.”) Republican candidates thumping their chests about how admirably Christian they are skip the fact that Christ banned exactly such puffery. (Matthew 6:1 reads, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”) The Israeli right pounds the table about ancient scripture, but skips Exodus 22:21: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”

In the eight hundred thousand words of the Bible, one can find a verse to support just about anything. Even so, it’s disturbing that contemporary Christian conservatives lash out against homosexuality by calling on ancient divine pronouncements of anger, rather than upon the serene divinity who offered the world unconditional forgiveness.

Voicing the thoughts of the serene God in John 15:12, Jesus summed up Christian theology in one sentence: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Once, God was full of anger; ultimately, the Maker cared solely about love. Why don’t today’s Christian conservatives understand that the second part amends the first part?

Come again?

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogo, as every school child knows, is a Welsh village with the longest name in Britain. 

Fun fact: The name was used in the 1960's cult film Barbarella (Jane Fonda) as the password for Dildano's headquarters:

Dildano: [radioing instructions to the rebel army] And our password will be... Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
Barbarella: You mean the secret password is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?
Dildano: Exactly.

More fun in Kentucky

Michael May, 44, was arrested in Lincoln County, Kentucky, in August after the Pilot Baptist Cemetery near Stanford, Kentucky, reported that he had tried to dig up the grave of his dead father “in order to argue with him,” according to Lexington’s WLEX-TV. May told officers his dad had died about 30 years ago. 

It is not clear whether he was even digging up the right grave.

(Alcohol was involved in the decision to dig. And Mr. May, the living one, was also charged with possession of marijuana.) 

Source: WAVE-TV, 8-18-2015

Damien's note: As for the involvement of alcohol, one can only say, "Well, der!" And perhaps he was just carrying bluegrass in honor of the state's nickname.

Isn't a rest home for cats a reduncancy?

In 1999, a Lincolnshire, England woman named Jain Hills founded something called the Lincolnshire Trust for Cats. The original goal of the Trust was to find new homes for displaced cats of all ages, and that's a function the organization still serves today. But they've expanded to address a more narrow need. Their website explains the problem: 

We are often asked to take in cats where the owner has died or gone into residential care. Frequently, no one in the immediate family will take them in and often there is the urgent necessity to remove them from a now empty property. Unfortunately, charities cannot always solve the situation. Quite often, when an elderly person dies, the animals that are left behind are elderly themselves. Would you want your lifelong friend to be put in a pen for the rest of its life, with no hope of a home because of its age?

Their solution: a retirement home for cats. 
 

 

(Images via Laughing Squid) 

For a one-time fee of £850 (about $1,300), the Trust -- a non-profit -- will accept your former pet into its confines and care for it from there on after. (You don't need to die first, either; if you have to give up your pet for any reason, the Trust will accept him or her.) Any expenses incurred on the cat's behalf in excess of that £850 fee is taken care of by the Trust. And, because of generous donors, the Trust doesn't need to pinch pennies (although it could use more donors, if you're interested). According to Mashable, the retirement community "features three central south-facing rooms where cats can sunbathe all day, and also has private rooms for less social cats, enclosed outdoor cat runs and round-the-clock care from a live-in caretaker." Not bad for an old cat.

The Trust is, as of about a year ago, home to roughly 80 cats, according to the BBC -- also provides temporary sheltering for about 300 or so younger cats who will ultimately be placed it new homes. But don't think Ms. Hills is a crazy cat lady -- hardly. She told the BBC that she prefers dogs (she owns five of them), which is why she's able to run such a unique charity:  "I couldn't run a dog charity but I can run a cat charity because I can stand back from it. I don't get emotionally involved." Besides, she continued, one can have too much cat-time for one's sanity: "when you work with 400 cats all day you need to go home to a dog."

Source: Now I Know