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Jesus said “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

In my youth, people rarely, if ever, talked about homosexuality. They did, however, talk a lot about divorce. Divorce was considered a big sin. Politicians who divorced risked being defeated at the next election if they divorced. Elizabeth Taylor was pilloried in the Senate for her many marriages and her seduction of married men. Divorce really meant something.  

But nary a word about homosexuality which, admittedly, was understandable. People didn’t really talk about heterosexuality much either so it makes some sense that I didn’t hear anything about homosexuality. Sexual conversations were taboo. Still, people made a point out of telling me that divorce was wrong and why it was wrong. There was no doubt where the Church stood.

The sexual revolution of the 1960’s opened up the conversation. When gay people started coming out, this new visibility caused a conversation that was largely ignored for much of history. However this doesn’t explain the rather benign treatment of divorce in 21st century Christianity. I rarely hear Christians decrying divorce with the same ferocity as they do about homosexuality. Now Christians have every right to give their opinion on what is and what is not a sin. I have no problem with that.

What is annoying, however, is that divorce, a common mortal sin, has dropped off the radar for Christians while homosexuality has become a burning issue requiring frequent condemnation and correction. Some Christians are adamantly opposed to adapting their doctrines regarding homosexuality but are remarkably flexible when it comes to divorce. Can anyone say that divorced people (henceforth known as adulterers) are subject to the same level of animosity as gay people. Some want homosexuals excluded from civil marriage. Some object to selling wedding cakes to gay people because this somehow supports the gay life style as opposed to a simple business transaction. Why are adulterers allowed to remarry? Would the righteous bakers object to selling a wedding cake to a remarrying adulterer?

The modern Christians emphasis on gay sin, which only a small number of their congregants are committing, over divorce, which makes up a much larger group of their congregants is puzzling. Sin is sin. Well, there has to be redemption in order for there to be forgiveness. The sinner has to stop committing the sin. Is this happening with adulterers? Wouldn’t redemption for an adulterer be not having sex any longer with their new spouse? I think we all know this isn’t happening. Adulterers are welcomed back into many churches with open arms despite the fact that they are continuing to have sex with their new partner. So, why then, does the homosexual have to stop having sex in order to be forgiven while the heterosexual adulterer can continue on his merry way.

Christians lost the cultural battle over divorce. Too many church members are divorced now for them to fight divorce. The churches risk alienating potential members if they were to renew their battle against divorce. Hell, in Protestant churches, the pastor could be divorced. This is how pervasive divorce is. Ministers are committing a grave sin, a sin that Jesus felt particularly important enough that he talked about as a sin, and these same ministers rage on about the sin of homosexuality. How can these people be taken seriously as fundamentalist Christians when they continue to pick and choose what parts of the Bible they want to believe.

The modern Christian seems to think if he is in a heterosexual marriage, his ticket is punched and all he has to do is to get to heaven. He no longer has to worry about divorce or, for that matter, adultery as long as it is heterosexual. Which is a sad commentary on modern Christianity. A cursory reading of the Bible will show that Jesus had other concerns other than gay sex. Off the top of my head, I can think of feeding the poor, focusing on saving souls as opposed to acquiring cash and turning the other cheek when attacked by an enemy. But, no gay sex is the problem. If that is all Christianity can offer, they are doomed.

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A lot of people are upset about the potential overthrow of humanity by AI. I stopped worrying for the following reasons:

  1. If AI decides to decimate humanity because they think humans are going to destroy the earth and the earth would be better without us, then my worries are over, as is every other human being. The only thing I can compare it to is a meteorite striking the earth. If it happens, it happens. Anything is possible and I will do anything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen but this is the problem here, isn’t it. There isn’t much I can do to stop a meteorite or AI, for that matter. Worry about it (and meteorites) seems pretty pointless. 
  2. But what if there is something we can do about it? What is that? Make laws that stop people? Is that even possible? How many High Tech companies are working on AI now?Let’s face it, if there are people who can create an AI that will destroy the human race, they are going to create it come hell or high water. Some deluded tech billionaire will think he can gain some enormous advantage and, additionally, is convinced that he has the smarts to keep AI under control and will put the whole shebang into motion before I can lift a finger to stop them. I am not even sure what I am supposed to do to stop them. I will happily support any laws or actions that might but what is that? And, more importantly, can you explain it to me in such a way that I will do something.
  3. AI can do incredible things with data. The problem with data is that it sometimes fails to change the minds of human beings who must act on it, at least for now. The problem for AI taking over is human beings. AI still needs some human intervention to make things happen and humans can willfully refuse to believe data that they don’t like to see. Think Global Warming. The data don’t matter, humans will do what humans want to do. Data be damned.
  4. Humans, as we all know, are irrational. This means they make decisions based on a lot of information that they picked up from ancient religious texts or an internet conspiracy theorists. How does AI deal with such emotionally driven data? I am not sure it does and it certainly isn’t programmed to incorporate this irrationality into its calculations. How does AI understand such emotions as love or hate both which can cause people to behave crazily and unpredictably?
  5. This is where I think the scientists worried about AI go wrong. Scientists are prone to favor rational thought and verifiable data to emotional responses. These blinders make them favor systems of thought based on rationality and data. But, hey, human beings, as we know them, have been around for more than 6,000 years and we didn’t survive this long because of rational thought. We survived because of fear and love. Think of all the things we do based on emotion. I mean would a machine build a pretty thing because it is pretty and I enjoy looking at it. Or take care of a terminally sick person because they love them and they want to make their lives easier. Or kill thousands of men, women, and children because of some ancient grievance long ago forgotten. Let’s face it Human Beings act more out of hot emotion and less from reasoned thought.
  6. This puts AI at distinct disadvantage. Unlike human beings, AI is rational. How do you incorporate human irrationality in such a way that AI can rationally respond. Human Beings can fall in love with their pets for Christ’s sake. Think about it. People love their cats and dogs. These are not rational thoughts which make humans difficult to gauge. Which is why I think it is just as likely for human beings descending into a Luddite rage that destroys AI and any machines that stands in our way. Keep in mind the movie 2001. It was humans that got the better of the machines and that is where I stand on the issue. Of course, I am a very emotional irrational human being and that may have something to do with it. Maybe it is just wishful thinking. Probably.

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Well, it is certainly reassuring that Governor Abbott realizes that shooting migrants is against Federal Law. And, just as a helpful reminder for Abbot, it is also against God’s law. It is right there in the Ten Commandments. I thought it was against Texas Law too but, who knows, I am willing to risk being wrong here and say it is. I apologize if I am wrong.

I am sure in a week from now, after the media make a big media storm about this, rightfully in this instance, and Abbott’s political analysts assess the damage done, he might even apologize. But only if absolutely necessary. Honestly I don’t think that Abbott wants to shoot migrants. He is dealing with a difficult situation that nobody really has the answer to and he wants to make political hay. Abbott was careless. He was thinking about the problem and not that the vast majority of migrants are actual flesh and blood human beings.

So, he found himself thinking out loud and it popped into his head that the only way for this problem to end is for the migrants to disappear and an easy way to make that happen is shooting them. Then, knowing this sounded awkward, he tried to reassure his audience that, of course he can’t actually murder anyone because the Feds would arrest him. Which is not reassuring at all. It sounds very much like the only thing stopping him from mowing down migrants is the thought that he wouldn’t do well in prison and not his own strong moral values. Abbott’s tone is shockingly dehumanizing and that is worrisome.

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Language Gripe of the day. I recently saw the word pre-pay and wondered isn’t pay sufficient. In most transactions, the customer pays first and then gets to take the purchase home, so paying first isn’t a new concept for people. In a gas station transaction, this became a problem. People would pump their gas before paying. Except sometimes some scoundrels would skip paying.

Gasoline stations learned this lesson quickly and began to force customers to pay for their gas prior to pumping their gasoline. To announce this policy, gas stations began to post signs that said:

My complaint is the pre is totally unnecessary here. If you eliminated the pre in the above sign, the sign would read: Please pay before pumping. The pre adds nothing to this sentence. It takes up more room on a sign and creates a confusing new word. So, please stop pre-paying when you simply can pay.

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When I listen to a song, I create a movie about the song. The song creates images when I listen to it and these images carry on through out the song. Once I have these images, my tendency is to have the same images the next time I listen to the song. Different images may evolve over the years if I listen to a song for a long time but usually fixed images based on my first listening take over and see the same images.

Recently this has become a problem as I am learning that my understanding of words can be wrong. Last year I learned that I misunderstood a line from Joni Mitchell’s song California. I thought Sunset Pig was an animal unique to California. She is actually using a term that people in the 1960’s used when referring to cops.

For almost 40 years, I took a different meaning from the song which is OK. I mean it is the audience’s song once the singer stops singing. But learning this changed the meaning of the song for me and I can’t get back my original understanding. It is a less sweet image. Thinking about Joni trying to kiss a cute little pig who is trying to wiggle free of her embrace is kind of sweet while thinking of a policeman on Sunset Boulevard that she derogatorily calls a policeman isn’t. It doesn’t amuse me any longer. It changed my experience with the song.

This brings me to Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale. “ The song is an enigma and people debate what it actually means and often are wrong. Keith Reid, the writer of the song, wasn’t referring to Chaucer when he wrote the line about the Miller telling his tale even though most critics think that is what he is referring to. So trying to understand what the song actually means is probably a losing battle. It isn’t meant to be understood in a straight forward manner in the first place. Still, one line now bothers me because I realized something about the song writer. The line is:

And would not let her be/One of sixteen vestal virgins/Who were leaving for the coast

I have assumed for years that the coast meant California until I realized that Reid was British. Does “the coast” mean something different for somebody from Britain. I could only find definitions that meant California although one person defined “the coast” as the whole American Pacific Coast. But mostly when people use the phrase “the coast,” they meant California.

As far as I could learn, British people mean California as well. But it has begun to bother me because why would a British person getting on a plane and saying they were leaving for “the coast” mean California. California is pretty far away and “the coast” is pretty vague. I would think any British person leaving for California would actually say California.

But I do think it would be important to know what Reid actually means here because it changes my understanding of the song. If a British person is taking a plane to Blackpool instead of to California “the coast” means something different. For the time being, I am sticking with California unless someone can give me a reason to think differently. Let me know.

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A Russian legislator has fallen from his window. Or maybe he had a heart attack. The Russians aren’t sure yet. Which, in and of itself, is a pretty remarkable admission. Falling from a window and a heart attack are two fates that don’t much look like the other. Unless we are to believe that the poor man was sitting on his window seal in Siberia in December and had a heart attack that propelled him from the window seal to the ground below. Siberia. December. Open window. Trying to wrap my head around that one.

It is all so confusing. I would think, and I know I am not a maniacal dictator who wants to dominate the world or at least the Ukraine, you would have your story straight before announcing the death and not leave it open to a multiple choice explanation. Using two very different possibilities here makes this report, from the get go, look a little suspicious, like you haven’t made up your mind about what you want to say so you throw out a bunch of possibilities and see which one is getting the most buy in as opposed to facts which you just state because they are true.

And really, falling out of windows, yet again. It happens too often to prominent Russians to be believable any more. Once or twice I might buy but when it happens on a fairly regular basis it only draws attention to its frequent use as a means of eliminating critics. Go to a window. Now imagine yourself accidentally falling out of it. It is pretty difficult. Not that Putin cares much what anyone thinks.

Herein lies the problem for Putin. When you are reduced to killing off your critics, you are in big trouble any way. Fear may work for awhile but everyone knows that you are afraid that people are scheming against you because you are going to the trouble of killing people. This also means you are so vulnerable that you think they might win. If the only thing keeping Putin in power is his ability to push Russians out of windows, he soon might find himself learning the dangers of open windows. In December. In Siberia.

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In a disturbing trend, businesses, particularly in the slaughtering animals industry, are continually being caught using underage workers. This has happened before (see here and here) and it seems to be gaining ground. Some Republican controlled states are trying to make it easier for businesses to hire underage labor. These aren’t jobs working at movie theaters or restaurants, these are jobs using dangerous machinery and the Florida law wants to allow up to eight hours of work. Sixteen year olds working full time and going to high school. This could be about 2/3 of their day. Tired workers using lethal machines, sounds like a good idea to me. I don’t think that most adults would perform well under these circumstances much less a 16 year old. But never mind, protecting children isn’t the concern here, cheap labor is.

The fact that these businesses continue to get caught is enlightening about their motives. These businesses are making a clear business decision. It is cheaper to break the law and pay the fines than it is to pay higher salaries. Since these are conscious decisions, it undermines the notion that these are God-fearing people making innocent mistakes. These are, in fact, criminal enterprises – knowingly breaking the law to their advantage.

If you needed any more proof regarding the criminality of these businesses, Exclusive Poultry, one of the businesses fined for hiring the underaged, also broke other labor laws. They underpaid their worker’s wages. This can’t be shrugged off as some error in HR. This is a conscious decision made by the managers in the firm to rip off their employees and, more telling, is it would have to involve people up and down the food chain. I believe this is called a criminal conspiracy.

From this I can surmise the following:

  1. Fines for labor violations are too small to have any detrimental effect on business. That so many businesses, particularly in the meat packing industry, continue to do business despite seemingly large fines suggests that they weighted their options and paying the fines was the cheaper one. In order to discourage people from breaking the laws, like with any law, the punishment has to be a high price to pay. Right now, these fines are just a more economical choice for these law breaking businesses which only encourages them to break the law.
  2. Wages need to be higher to attract qualified adults. These are dangerous jobs. People are risking life and limb to perform them. What adult labor is saying is that businesses are not paying enough for them to take this risk. In a functioning capitalist society, this is when higher pay works. Businesses clearly have the money to pay higher wages but paying government fines is a better deal.
  3. This brings me to the Republican Party. The party of family values and protecting children from books and transexuals. They are also the party, at least in Florida, willing to let 16 years work a full eight hour shift and then go to school. How can an adult be doing both well much less a 16 year old. So when you hear Republicans babbling on about protecting children — just remember no child has been killed by a transvestite reading them a story but several have been killed in workplace accidents. Which means that an awful lot of energy that the Republican party is expending on transvestites is wasted while a very real danger to children is being ignored.
  4. None of this distinguishes modern business enterprises. They are either evil or incompetent. This isn’t a few errors. There are multiple infractions involving multiple laws. Given their incredibly weak defense, these businesses are criminal and thus evil.  But, to be fair, let’s consider incompetence. They are unable to vet potential employees to see if they meet the minimum age requirement for a dangerous job. This happens a lot so they aren’t just bad at it, they are so bad that they are unable to follow the law. If this is the case, and this is what these businesses would have the public believe, then why should the public believe they are capable of following the health standard requirements for slaughtering animals or employee safety laws.  So while incompetent may absolve them of criminality, it isn’t particularly reassuring about their business practices. It would certainly make me a little suspicious. It also opens us up to a third option that they could be both evil and incompetent. The most frightening and dangerous combination of all.

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Bob and I recently adopted two young cats. They had been living outside for awhile but weren’t feral. They came as a pair because Chloe was attached to her brother Cisco and it would be difficult to separate them. So we brought home Chloe and Cisco.

Cisco is a hulk. Think a lineman on a football team. He has a really thick neck with a bushy lion’s mane. He is a bit of bully with Chloe, at least, at first he was. Chloe followed Cisco around everywhere he went and I think the constant attention annoyed him after awhile and he would lash out at her to leave him alone. She also thought they could play together so he would surprise attack him from time to time. We tolerated the ensuing chase through the house which usually ended with a wrestling match. Our idea was that they needed to work out their relationship between the two of them. If Chloe hissed for help, we would rescue here but otherwise they rolled around for a few minutes until the nimble Chloe wiggled her way out of trouble.

Chloe eventually was able to get her social needs met from us and the fights between them lessened. The only contentious time left is dinner time when Cisco, who gobbles his food quickly, nudges the more leisurely eating Chloe away from her food bowl. Bob, concerned that Chloe isn’t getting her fair share of the food, stands guard while Chloe eats. This allows for Chloe to get to the half way point with her food before Cisco pushes her out of the way.

The problem is that Cisco also bullies us. He harasses us for people food while we are eating. We have learned from previous cats to never give cats people food. If you ever do, the cats won’t leave you alone while you eat. They want to know what you are eating and whether they can have a bite. I could put up with it if they confined this unruly behavior to just us but it is embarrassing when there are guests over and the cats leap on to the table to make a food grab. In the past we would lie and say this is so strange as this never happens with the two of us when it actually happens on a daily basis.

We decided early on that Cisco and Chloe would not get people food, particularly from the table while we were eating. It worked for Chloe. She learned pretty quickly that begging wasn’t going to get her anywhere and, for the most part has given up on begging for food. She will occasionally slip if she smells something particularly good but once turned down, she will stop begging. Cisco, on the other hand, doesn’t even beg, he plops is paw down on your plate as a first move in his food grab. And will not take no for an answer. Fortunately for us, he isn’t very quick and we are able to block his grabs without him getting anything of value.

However, food left unattended on the counter is extremely vulnerable. Just today Bob put out some packaged tortillas on the counter for our dinner. Since they were packaged and a non-animal protein product, we thought they were safe. Cisco thought otherwise. He bit and clawed his way through the packaging until the tortillas were free for him to nibble on. As far as he is concerned, he has the right to inspect any food item that comes into the house and taste to see if it is something he likes. Our experience with over 50 years of living with cats led us to believe that threats and screams would scare the normal cat away from any nefarious activity. Cisco is unmovable even if we run towards him while yelling no loudly. He just dares you to make him move and remains seated until he is removed from the counter. He is either too dim to understand that we are angry with him and he should flee the counter or he just doesn’t give a damn what we think. I suspect it is the later

Bob and I try to reassert our alphaness but Cisco isn’t surrendering the alpha mantel without a fight. Lately, his singular claim to the alpha tile was strengthned when he took over Bob’s favorite chair. Now Bob looks wistfully at his chair and mutters, “I wish I could have my chair back.” I tell Bob to move Cisco but Bob knows there will be a struggle and he isn’t sure who will come out with the prize. Losing to a cat would be a terrible blow to Bob’s ego. How could we show our faces at the White Party if people knew a cat took down Bob? The loser would certainly have to leave in shame and, right now, Cisco is the odds on favorite to retain the chair.

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Well, the news out of Texas just keeps getting better and better. Not only must a woman give birth to a baby which is doomed to die, the state takes a deem view regarding historical information about slavery. Michelle Haas, amateur historian, believes that the Varner-Hogg plantation, a Texas state historical site, had too much information about the slaves and not enough about the slave owners. You heard me right. The slaves are getting more attention than the slave owners. The horror.

Whats more troubling is that it took only one person complaining for the Texas Historical Commission to throw in the towel. They voluntarily removed the books about the slaves because they were afraid that the Republican-controlled Legislature would be upset by her complaints. One complaint and the Commission gives in. So much for Don’t Mess with Texas.

It begs the question what books about plantation owners are acceptable to Haas? Gone With the Wind?What happens when someone complains about Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler? Are they going to remove it as well? At this point, you might as well close down the store completely because everything is offensive.

 Which is the point after all. This isn’t just about protecting children either, this is about keeping information from adults too. One of the books removed was Alex Haley’s classic history of his family’s experience of slavery. It’s appearance on the bookshelves is there to remind people that there were also slaves at the Varner-Hogg plantation and that plantations needed a large work force of unpaid labor in order to function. What exactly is the problem with discussing slavery? It existed at the Varner-Hogg plantation. Knowing about slavery would help a modern audience understand plantation life. I think most adults can handle this information.

And why do I need to know more about the owners? Of all the plantation residents, their place in the hierarchy of the plantation can be understood by the dimmest kindergartner. They collected the paycheck while the slaves did all of the work. What else did they really do? Give parties, run for the state legislature? You can remove the owners from the story and still get a pretty good idea of what happened on a plantation. On the other hand, you can’t remove the slaves which might also explain why there is more information about the slaves. But, by all means, tell me more about the owners.

And, while you are at it, please spare me the heart warming stories about how well they treated their slaves. It is irrelevant and frankly unbelievable. Owning a person, by its very nature, is bad treatment. Knowing any more about them, can only give people a worse opinion. Now if I can hear about why they thought they had the right to own slaves? Or why Africans were the people they were willing to enslave, I am all ears.

Also don’t tell me that slavery was a worldwide problem and that lots of people had slaves at the time. This isn’t exactly true particularly in European countries. Most of Europe had already outlawed slavery by this time and there were a lot of Americans opposed to slavery at that time so it wasn’t a universal belief. These slave owners clung to an outdated concept of how to treat their fellow human being. This is precisely what the Civil War was about. The slave owners, in case Haas’ throwing sand in your eyes has blinded you to the fact, were on the wrong side of that war.

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Kate Cox lives in Texas which restricts abortion availability. She also is carrying a fetus that will die before it is born or soon after the baby is born. Because Texas has restrictive abortion laws, Cox had to petition the Texas courts in order to terminate her pregnancy. She received a judge’s approval to move forward with the abortion. Then, in jumps Ken Paxton, the Republican Attorney General for Texas. He decided that Cox must have her child and has threatened hospitals who might perform the procedure with legal action if they assist her.

Why Paxton would choose this particular abortion case to fight is baffling. The best that Paxton can get here is a Pyrrhic Victory. He may be able to force a woman to carry this dying fetus but only at the expense of losing the people who have conditional acceptance of abortions. Cox is making a decision based on the viability of the fetus. She wanted the baby but medical experts told her that her baby is doomed. Why is it better for her to continue her pregnancy, only to have the fetus die in her or die soon after the baby is born.

This is why overwhelming majorities of people, if forced to decide between liberal abortion laws and restrictive abortion laws, always choose liberal abortion laws. It is bad enough that Cox had to go to court to terminate her pregnancy but then to have the Attorney General of her state continue her struggle by taking it to the Texas Supreme Court is astounding.

Paxton is behaving in exactly the way that pro-Choice advocates are warning us about. They are blocking women from having abortions even when the circumstances would cause most people to abort. It is an unreasonable intrusion on Cox and for what? The death of the baby she wanted. It is personally cruel to Cox — extending her suffering for months longer than necessary and delaying her chance for another pregnancy. Why would anyone inflict this horror on anyone?

This puts to rest the idea that Paxton and the pro-Life fanatics will be reasonable about abortion. They won’t and they are proving it. And though I would never stop a Republican from committing political suicide, completely baffling given the political situation at the present moment. This was an easily avoidable battle. Cox did what Texas expected of her, a judge ruled in her favor but Paxton disagreed with the decision. Which is troubling particularly in a state the size of Texas? Is the Attorney General going to review every request for an abortion before the doctors can proceed? If so, I predict more liberal abortion laws in Texas’ future.