Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts

Monday, June 04, 2012

3541 Challenge

Monday, June 4, 2012

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.
-- George Bernard Shaw --

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June!  Agh!  Already?

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The GPS says my city house is 29 feet above sea level.  Not enough, I think.  Next time I go to the country house, I'll have to check there.

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I went to a small hafla last Friday evening.  Some kids were selling raffle tickets at 20 cents each for some charity.  I bought five.  I won.  First time I've ever won a raffle.  Each of the vendors there had contributed something to the raffle, so I won a shopping bag containing a tiny glazed mirror exactly the right size for the sink in the half bath, a CD from the group who performed the music, a nice jingle hip scarf, a plush camel, two long sexy yarn hair doflinkies, an anklet, and a couple other things I can't remember now.  After I got home I found a card entitling me to a hula hoop - which annoyed me because I'd actually considered buying one from the vendor.  (After reflection, it has occurred to me that said vendor, knowing there was a coupon in the bag since the hoop wouldn't have fit, should have searched out the raffle winner.  Hey, there weren't that many people there.)

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Sumthin' else I don't understand:  Howcum if God tells you to do X, like join the priesthood, marry a particular person, or run for national office, then you can publicly claim God speaks to you and many people will believe you and consider you favored by God.

But if God tells you to do Y, like kill a particular person, set fire to yourself, or bomb a building for political reasons, then the courts and public opinion consider you insane if you claim God told you to do it.

Who are we to decide what God will or will not tell a person to do?  To whom He will or will not speak?  Who are we to ascribe motives to God?  If Man did not create God, then how can Man define God?   We can read God's mind?  We know what He's likely to say, and to whom He's likely to speak, and what His ulterior motive is for what He says to them?  If He says only things we want Him to say, then we have created God in our own image.

Read the Bible.  That God ain't necessarily nice, doesn't always play fair.

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I've been playing "Every Word" on the Kindle.  I'm not good at it, but I figure it's good for me.  They give you a bunch of letters, and you have to find all the words that can be created from those letters to rack up points, and at least one word that uses all the letters to proceed to the next level.

Yesterday I was given W S T O G H R  on level six (of ten).  I had to find 34 words of 4 letters or more, including one using all seven letters.  (The program, by the way, doesn't accept proper nouns or abbreviations (a lie!  It accepts things like "prof" and "ref") or a a lot of other perfectly good words.  There's this "list".  So if you find more than 34 total, some of them weren't on the "accepted" list.)

Anyway, try it.  

I worked at it forever, handed it to Daughter, and she got the seven-letter word almost instantly.

Um, no, I don't remember what it was.  Sorry.  Take a whack at it in the comments.  (I'll bet Becs gets it first.)
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Thursday, October 18, 2007

1513 Ashes to Ashes

Wednesday, October 18, 2007

I don't trust animal crematoriums at all, even the regulated and inspected ones. You send a 90 lb. dog, and you get back a cup of ashes. You send a 30 lb. dog, and you get back a cup of ashes. You send a 10 lb. cat, and you get back a half a cup of ashes. You send a 30 lb. big-boned Maine Coon cat, and you get back a half a cup of ashes.

Seems like there's a formula: dog = 1 cup, cat = 1/2 cup. I half suspect they cremate several animals at once, and then just apportion out the mixed ashes.

Not that it really matters that much. When you disperse the ashes in a loved place, it's really the idea that counts.

Speaking of cremation, there's something that has been bothering me for years. Humans don't burn down to powder. No matter what the temperature or time, there will be very brittle pieces of bone that kind of hold together and continue to look like bone. So the crematorium crushes the remains before they return them. When I scattered Jay's ashes on my mountain, there were many hard bits of obvious bone, the size of the pink part of my pinky fingernail.

Now here's what bothers me: there were no bits of metal. The man was full of metal. He had a Greenfield filter, and lots of clips and plates holding his skull together, and some other stuff. I expected to see melted pellets of metal. I didn't. Why not?

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Joke I heard recently:

A scientist goes to God, and says, "Lord, we don't need you anymore. Scientific advances have allowed us to now make the shape of a man from dirt, treat the dirt, and breathe life into the form. Now that we can do everything you can do, you can retire."

God answers, "You can create life? Show me."

So the scientist kneels down and starts scraping dirt into a pile.

God stops him, wagging His finger. "Uh uh. Use your own dirt."
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