What happens when you give up diet sodas?

For me nothing.  Don't like them.  But many are addicted to them.  Here's what happens when you give them up--reduces migraines, other things taste better, the scales will respond, and reduces diabetes risk, among other benefits.  Effects of diet soda.

What's a baker, florist, candlestick maker to do?

 Recently, "the state" squeezed every penny, including donations, from a Christian couple and destroyed their livelihood because they wouldn't bake a cake for a lesbian couple's wedding.  They would serve them as customers every other way, just not that. Story.

They were ordered to “cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published, circulated, issued or displayed, any communication, notice, advertisement or sign of any kind to the effect that any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, services or privileges of a place of public accommodation will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination will be made against, any person on account of sexual orientation.”
“Within Oregon’s public accommodations law is the basic principle of human decency that every person, regardless of their sexual orientation, has the freedom to fully participate in society,” the ruling states. “The ability to enter public places, to shop and dine, to move about unfettered by bigotry.”

Divorce cakes are quite popular. Just google images. Many Christians do not believe divorce is God's will. Gay couples get divorces.  Can a baker be required to bake one for Harry and George if he would not do it for Mary and George?




Can a Quaker pacifist bakery owner refuse to decorate a cake with guns by turning down a big job for the NRA? The military?
 

  
What about a West Virginia Democrat's celebration in memory of an Exalted Cyclops of the KKK who represented him in Congress? Is that OK to turn down? (There was such a story posted on the Internet which apparently was a hoax).
 
Does a female baker have to create pornographic images on cupcakes for male clients? Or yoga positions for the exercise club? Many of those pink breast cancer images were just porn, in my opinion.


These are all activities by Americans expressing their free speech; what about the religious and speech and assembly rights of the baker?

Media tries to instruct Christians in how to behave

So many of current cultural values pushed by the media and government are not found in the Bible: tolerance, diversity, ecumenism, political correctness, body confusion, sexual immorality. Instead, Biblical values are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, mercy, justice, good works, fear of God, sincerity, truthfulness, respect, honoring elders, generosity, charity, being chosen people, compassion, humility (the queen of virtues), gentleness, thankfulness, gratitude, hard work, sharing in Christ's suffering, self-control, restoring the sinner, and so forth as found in the Gospels and Epistles.

Dear media; stop trying to teach Christians theology

My cat is deaf, so what does that make me?

 
I've tried sign language, but you know how cats are.  They do what they want and then take a nap.

The pay gap. Does it really exist?

          
When my Grandmother Mary wanted to be a school teacher in the late 1800s she was turned down by the Ashton school board because she lived at home with her father (her mother had died in 1896), and the thinking in those days was if a man could support her she shouldn't be taking a job from a man who might be supporting a family. I even encountered this in the 1960s when applying for a graduate assistantship--I was married, my competition was not.  Sort of like we feel today about immigrants getting the jobs we think citizens should have.  

Today we have laws and guarantees for equal pay like Iceland and have had for decades. If Iceland has high gender equality, they are probably doing the same jobs. We don't have laws (yet) demanding equal results for a B.A. in Social Studies and a PhD in Computer Science or for a woman who doesn't drop out for 10 years and one who did (as I did). For almost 40 years, women have outnumbered men in enrollment in college, but they are still not selecting the difficult and well paid degree programs. Also, highly educated women tend to marry men of the same calibre, and thus don't always enter the work force at the same rate as less wealthy women and stay home to raise their children who then do the same. For each group of college grads marry college grads, or doctors marrying doctors, or lawyers marrying lawyers, the gap widens between their families and those women who didn't go to college, or didn't marry at all before having children.

When everything is taken into consideration, like willingness to move, or to take unpleasant assignments (like travel) to get ahead, or to negotiate salary, there's almost no difference (in same job with same requirements in education). Think about it; if employers could get women to work for less for the same job, why would they hire men?  When I asked my boss why a male librarian colleague with the same work experience and education made more than I did, he told me, "Because he asked for more."

The median annual wage for high school teachers was $56,310 in May 2014., and for elementary $53,760, but based on hourly rate, they do much better than accountants and architects according the BLS. More men take the secondary position and are less common in elementary (although I remember 2 in the school my children attended in the 1970s).  Is that a pay gap or a choice?  Should people who teach compliant children the basics of their ABCs and math really make as much as people who teach "children" taller, smarter and with more discipline problems who are studying chemistry and physics?

The next time you go to the doctor even for a "wellness exam" like I did this week,  take a look at the women in the front office doing scheduling and billing, and compare them with who you see in the back doing x-ray or blood draw or stress test or bone density. There will be no men in the front, but about 1/3 to 1/2 of the tech staff will be male. What pays more? That which requires more education. How are these positions viewed in statistics? They are lumped into one category. There will even be a difference between the women in the front and those in the back--and it's very noticeable--particularly their weight and age.

HT Connie Dunn for the discussion that started on FB.
 

Make your New Year's Resolution about your finances

I know there are some who think Medicare is "free" healthcare, and believe all Americans should have it rather than the ragged, poorly thought out and sketchy Obamacare (these unnamed would be Democrats/Progressives) or private insurance. But it's not free. First, all my working years I paid into it (I'm not eligible for Social Security, although I did pay into it in a number of non-state jobs, so there's a special deduction for state employees). Second, I get a "Medicare reimbursement" with my monthly pension, which is then taxed. My "free" health insurance costs over 13% of a very small pension.  If I were single, or even if I hadn't invested 15% of my income in addition to my pension deduction every month I worked, I would be in desperate circumstances. Many women my age had a shorter work career, at a lower salary range due to career choices, and will be single longer than men. So make your New Year's resolution to put more into retirement. You'll need it for your health insurance, which by then will be single payer government owned, and horribly expensive.

According to the work of Harvard University's Malcolm Sparrow, fraud could account for as much as 20 percent of total federal health care spending, which would be considerably higher than what the government's figures indicate.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillmatthews/2012/05/31/medicare-and-medicaid-fraud-is-costing-taxpayers 

 

 http://www.cato.org/publications/congressional-testimony/waste-fraud-abuse-government-health-care

A message for the New Year from St. Augustine

Mrs. Miller's jams, jellies and noodles

No, not THAT Mrs. Miller, but the one in Fredericksburg, Ohio.

I can buy this product at Marc's, but it also is on-line and is often sold at Farmers' Markets and food fairs.  This morning I had a bowl of fat free yogurt topped with a few spoonfuls of Mrs. Miller's Apple Butter (which is about half the calories of jam).  There's a wide variety on line for purchase, including many sugarless.  Also noodles, peanut butter spreads, and drink mixes.

In Ohio, just about everyone claims to have Amish roots, but this one really does.

Esther Miller had 13 siblings and learned her techniques and recipes from her mother.  For years the business was in the Miller home, and as of 2013 has a new, modern facility.  Mr. and Mrs. Miller are still involved, but now their children run the business.  http://www.mrsmillersnoodles.com/history/

End of year contributions

Our tithe goes to our local congregation, Upper Arlington Lutheran Church, but there are other groups we like to support through the year and especially in December.  By December, they all come calling.  Increasingly, I get appeals by e-mail--in fact on Dec. 30-31, I must have received at least 10 last minute appeals.  We usually stay with organizations we know, although this year there were some new ones.

A presidential candidate (no comment)
National Parks
Coming Home Network
Lutheran Bible Translators
Black Swamp Bird Observatory
Pregnancy Decision Health Center
Lower Lights
St. Gabriel Radio, Columbus
Mercury One Nazarene Fund (for Syrian Christian refugees)
168 Film Project
Lakeside
COCINA (Haiti school)
EWTN
Pinecrest (in memory of my parents)