Adultery In the Bible

In Deuteronomy chapter 22 the Bible spells out very clear punishments for adulterers.

There is a problem with that.

Deuteronomy 17:6

You need at least two direct eye witnesses to an event before you can put someone to death.

Typically this means the couple who committed adultery had to do it in front of witnesses before they can be stoned to death.

Some argue that people can confess or witness their own crimes.

This is actually arguable in the Hebrew. Essentially the language states that the witness and the accused are different individuals.

So, unless you and someone else actually catch two people committing adultery and you are both willing to testify against them in front of the congregation there can be no Godly punishment.

There is no other punishment for "perceived" adultery. I have not found a passage that allows punishment of a woman for having a child out of wed lock. The child cannot enter into the Temple in Jerusalem, but, I can't find any other punishment.

There are a lot of "suggestive" ideas in the Bible and a lot of commands.

The most important commands in my opinion are:

You are forgiven as you forgive.

So if you don't forgive people, if you demand they be punished for what you believe they have done wrong then you must be punished for what others believe you have done wrong even if you do not believe you have done anything wrong.

Love others as you love yourself.

Not better than yourself. Not worse than yourself. Treat others the way you treat yourself. Feed them as you feed yourself. Clothe them as you clothe yourself. Love them as you love yourself.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart

Don't add your own ideas to the Lord God's commands because when you do your prove that you love yourself more than God.

Health Care, Unemployment, Welfare and Importing Resources

People are an economic resource.

If you do not take care of and use your economic resources your economy cannot expand. Period.

The argument about health care is a lot like the argument about oil drilling in Alaska or other locations.

You either take care of and use your economic resources or you don't.

People, land, oil or money in the bank. These things are only useful if you use them.

If you don't spend any money the money is as useless as if you don't own it. If you invest money, buy a company for example or some stock, you are using the money effectively. If you put money in the bank you give permission for the bank to lend it out to others. The money in the bank is useful because you are using it.

If you bury your money in the ground or shove it in your mattress it becomes useless.

Oil is the same way. In the ground it is useless.

People too, people who are not producing are useless. Worse, people who are not producing are a drain on the system.

We all know there are times when we are busy and times when we are not. Typically we do not manage our resources well during the times we are not busy.

Suppose you had a car that you drove every day for several years. One day you stop driving it and you put in in the garage. If you maintain that car while it is in the garage, charge the battery, etc, the car will work when you need it. If you don't maintain it the car will not work when you need it and you will have to get a new car and incur the costs associated with storing or recycling the old car.

People are the same way. We either maintain them, keep them sheltered, fed, clothed and healthy OR we live them to rot until we need them and when we need them they are not ready to be used so we have to import workers from other nations.

Then those workers get to a point where they are not useful right now so we repeat the cycle.

Essentially management blames the workers for not working when management (government) can't provide anything for them to do.

By importing long term labor to manage short term labor needs we are creating a long term burden on our society.

President Bush tried to address this very issue with a temporary worker visa. The problem is that once people are in the US they will typically stay. The temporary worker visa is a poor attempt at the solution because it ignores the resources currently available.

We need to give people the opportunity to work. The United States is a free nation. You are free to succeed, you should be free to starve. You should also be able to work at community service centers where you are put to work and if you need specific services you can get them, money, food, health care, etc.

The problem then becomes people treating each other like crap, the haves and have nots. If you are working at a community service center you are a have not and some of the bureaucrats will treat you like crap just because they can. It is this kind of "I can treat you like crap" that resulted in laws for civil rights and people still ignore those laws and treat each other like crap.

We have to retrain people to accept that everyone is just as important as everyone else. There are no people who are better than other people.

Today we just leave people to rot in poverty because we can't train people to treat each other decently and we don't want to make community service a condition of receiving social services.

Law Abiding Citizen: The Movie

I'm an engineer. A manufacturing engineer. Not a mechanical engineer or an electrical engineer.

I went to see Law Abiding Citizen tonight. The movie was great right up until the end.

Any moron can run out to K-Mart and pick up a car alarm that will go off when you try and move the car. If you bump it even.

The premise of the movie is that a super genius that designed fool proof killing systems for the CIA has his family murdered in a home invasion by a psycho.

The District Attorney makes a deal with the real killer so the accomplice will get the death penalty.

This pisses off the super genius so much that he spends ten years planning his revenge against the system.

When he puts his plan into action he first murders the people who killed his wife and child. Then he goes after all of the lawyers and judges involved.

The guy does all kinds of super genius stuff during the movie.

At the end the DA moves a bomb from city hall to the geniuses lair and the genius blows himself up.

Because he wasn't smart enough to put a simple car alarm system from K-Mart into his bomb.

I could design a box that would set off a siren if you drilled a hole into it, if you made it cold, if you made it hot, if you moved it, if you even came close to it. I can do all this with off the shelf stuff that I can buy at K-Mart. Thermostats. Tire pressure sensors. Car Alarms. All really simple stuff.

I liked this movie right up until the super genius CIA engineer was dumber than the guy who installs car alarms at Best Buy. Then it was super lame.

I give Law Abiding Citizen 5 farts for being disgustingly stupid.

$119.00 for a wine glass

I like wine. I am no connoisseur. I just enjoy a glass of red wine in the evening after dinner.

I have a couple of decanters I purchased at the Dollar plus store, a fancy corkscrew gadget I purchased at Costco for $10 bucks (they raised the price to $20 last time I saw it), some wine glass I bought at Ikea, this vacuum pump thing with rubber stoppers that really does help keep a bottle of wine for a few days and this gadget called an aerator that really rocks.

All in all I spent less than $100 dollars on my wine gadgetry. My wife figures I over spent, but, she enjoys the taste of wine after I run it through the aerator so she does not mind.

Tonight I went looking at wine glasses. I just wanted to figure out why there are so many different kinds of glasses and how they might make the wine taste differently.

Essentially I think glasses are a bunch of horse crap. Buy a set of wine glasses and enjoy them, but, it is always worth reading.

Reading.

I ain't spending $119.00 on a single wine glass.

I bought a set of 4 Waterford crystal wine glasses for a friend for Christmas. I don't mind spending money on stuff for people.

I just ain't spending $119.00 bucks on wine glasses. I will take a drive to Ikea and buy some different wine glasses and test them out. I have a couple of different style and I will test those.

There is this really kewl thing you can buy at the University of California Davis bookstore called the aroma wheel that I think rocks. It helps you train yourself to identify different flavors in the wine.

There are also some pretty expensive kits of stuff to do the same thing.

I like wine. I don't mind spending $20, maybe even the occasional $30 on a bottle of wine.

$119.00 on a glass. Not this high school drop out. I guess I am just too stupid to spend that much money on something I can buy for a buck or two.

Persistence

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ?Press On? has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
- Calvin Coolidge

The question is always who will be more persistent. Those who persist will succeed.

Is that true?

Essentially yes. The problem occurs when there is a disagreement about the feasibility of the process.

For example, Thomas Edison persisted in his work to find an economical light bulb that would last long enough to be of value and be strong enough to withstand shipment after testing.

Many scientists knew that passing electricity through a material would cause the material to glow.

Finding an economical material that would withstand shipping from the factory to the point of use and would last long enough to be of perceived value to the consumer was the problem.

Thomas Edison did not phrase it exactly like that though. :-)

In the end, it is always obvious that the solution existed.

Along the way you can bet that people argued about IF a material existed that would be both robust enough to ship, give enough light and be inexpensive enough that the consumer would find value in the purchase.

Thomas Edison believed the material existed.

Many other, very intelligent, very educated scientists abandoned the search because they had decided the material did not exist OR because investors decided that finding the material was so expensive that the return on investment would be minimal.

Thomas Edison was right. Thomas Edison's investors were right. The people who argued against "staying the course", persisting, were wrong.

Those who failed to persist lost money. Those who were persisting, BUT, did not discover the "best" material before Thomas Edison did are forgotten.

What if the job really is impossible?

President Bush was a big believer in persistence. The average person does not persist, which is why so few people achieve difficult projects. The average person will quit after trying so much.

Exactly how much is dependent on the person. Some people will try a "lot", some a "little", some will perceive one person's "lot" as a "little" and others perceive the "little" as a "lot".

Getting people to agree on what is possible is difficult. Getting people to agree on what is impossible is much easier.

Bad leaders will always default to impossibilities because so many people believe in the impossible.

Great leaders will tackle impossibilities and make them possible.

It is easier to say "Flying is impossible" than it is to build the first airplane.

I would rather persist in the face of failure than quit and believe in impossibility.

Obama is a quitter who believes in impossibility and he has built his possibilities on deriding those who persist and whom the quitting majority laugh at.