August 28

 Nothing much planned for today. Perhaps water the gardens a bit. And if it stays dry, restructuring a couple of areas that I have already cleared of spent plants. We are still expecting the delivery of a package and we want to be here to bring it in.

I found this Salon article posted on MSN that is an interesting critique of Pence and his lovely story about his conversion to a rigid anti-abortion position. A long time ago I shed the notions that the Bible was as authoritative as Christians claim. I doubt Mike Pence knows  Latin, Ancient Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic--the languages the books of the Bible were written in or translated into (before English). He might surprise me. I also doubt he has any real command of the history of the cultures in which those languages developed. Again he might surprise me. His use of a mash-up of quotations from very different books of the Bible indicate he is using The Book as a weapon in his political argument. It is an example of another logical fallacy: appeal to authority. It doesn't persuade those who reject that authority.

You might think from the comments I made above that I don't follow much of religious developments. But that isn't quite true. This article on Patheos is interesting. I noticed several points. First, religious higher educational institutions are suffering from the same problems their secular counterparts are suffering: over expansion, unsustainable institutional debt, a bloated administrative structure, and ballooning costs which leaves graduates with debts they can't pay. Second, the social/political fragmentation of our population makes it very difficult for any educational institutions (religious or secular) to find a large enough market to survive.

Update: we are still waiting for the delivery but decided to do part of our shopping--the part that involved the supermarket closed by. But we noticed again that certain goods that we expected to see were not there. We were looking for chili beans and only found one brand and one size of that. That has been a frequent experience over the last few years--fewer choices and higher prices.

Several news commentators have asked recently why, given statistical data indicating a growing economy, ordinary people aren't feeling it. In fact, with the 2024 election campaigning season ramping up, voters are feeling positively sour on the economy no matter their politics. This article from Popular Information explains very clearly why people are grumpy.