Your Questions About Gardening

A question to Christians about the Creation story?

So God made man, animals, trees, etc. and put them all in the Garden of Eden and the only rule for humans was that they couldn’t eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Now, God is supposed to be omniscient so he knew that they would indeed eat from the Tree of Knowledge. So then why would he punish them for eating from it? He created them with the ability to disobey him, he put them in a situation with easy access to the Tree of knowledge, and he had foreknowledge that they would disobey his rules. And yet he did nothing to stop them, he didn’t put up any warnings or obstructions between Adam and Eve and the Tree, he didn’t tell them that an evil snake would try and tempt them, he just sat back knowing that they would sin and prepared to punish them for it even though he could have easily stopped it. How is this fair? An analogy for this is if I gave a kid a a delicious piece of cake and told him not to eat it even though I knew my diabolical cousin would come in as soon as I left the room and convince the kid that eating it was the right thing to do. And then I sit back and wait for him to eat the cake and when he does I beat him and throw him out of my house, even though I easily could have stopped it from happening at any point or at least warned them. So why would he do this? And is it fair?

The black atheist has spoken.

Myklia’s Diary (newly wed) Long But Funny?

Dear Diary,

Monday: Now home from honeymoon and settled in our new home, it’s fun to cook for Bob. Today I made an angel food cake and the recipe said, “Beat 12 eggs separately.” Well, I didn’t have enough bowls to do that, so I had to borrow enough bowls to beat the eggs in. The cake turned out fine.

Tuesday: We wanted a fruit salad for supper. The recipe said, serve without dressing.” So I didn’t dress. But, Bob happened to bring a friend home for supper that night. Did they ever look startled when I served the salad.

Wednesday: I decided to serve rice and found a recipe which said, “Wash thoroughly before steaming the rice.” So I heated some water and took a bath before steaming the rice. Sounded kinda silly in the middle of the week. I can’t say it improved the rice any.

Thursday: Today Bob asked for salad again. I tried a new recipe. It said, “Prepare ingredients, then toss on a bed of lettuce one hour before serving.” I hunted all over the garden by my mom’s. So I tossed my salad into the bed of lettuce and stood over there one hour so the dog would not take it. Bob came over and asked if I felt all right. I wonder why?

Friday: Today I found an easy recipe for cookies. It said, “Put all ingredients in a bowl and beat it.” Beat it I did, right over to my mom’s house. There must have been something wrong with the recipe, because when I came back home again it looked the same as when I left it.

Saturday: Bob went shopping today and brought home a chicken. He asked me to dress it for Sunday. I’m sure I don’t know how hens dress for Sunday. I never noticed back on the farm, but I found a doll dress and some little shoes. I thought the hen looked real cute. When Bob saw it, I wondered why he counted to 10.

Sunday: Today Bob’s folks came to dinner. I wanted to serve roast, but all we had in the icebox, was hamburger. So I put it in the oven and set the controls for roast. Must be the oven, because it still came out hamburger.

Good night, Dear Diary. This has been an exciting week. I am eager for tomorrow to come, so I can try a new recipe on Bob.

Some questions on the this article about Benjamin Franklin…?

From Time Magazine:

” The Spies Around Franklin

The system was remarkably simple. Every Tuesday evening, detailed reports of what had transpired in Ben Franklin’s French household made their way, in invisible ink, to the southern perimeter of the Tuileries Gardens. There the missives were stuffed into a bottle and lowered by string into a deep hollow at the foot of a tree. After dark the British ambassador’s secretary fished them out to be dispatched to London and deposited his side of the correspondence under a neighboring boxwood.

Franklin was encircled by spies from the minute he set foot in Paris to solicit support for the Revolutionary War. On all minds the burning question was whether France intended to assist the rebel colonies, and if so, when and how it would do so. The French monarchy had its own efficient news service in thousands of paid informants who reported from their favorite cafés, their mistresses’ boudoirs, their medical rounds, their hotel desks, to police chief Jean-Charles Lenoir. Among Lenoir’s roundups was a weekly catalog of the city’s sexual escapades. This was a city of which it was said that when two Parisians talked, a third inevitably listened. Lenoir was among the first to trail the celebrated American on his arrival, sounding a note of uneasiness about his potent celebrity. The chief had serious competition: Lord Stormont, the British ambassador in Paris, pledged to observe the “veteran of mischief” as closely and as inconspicuously as he could. As that was not easy for an accredited ambassador, British intelligence stepped in.

The British agents reported to an immensely gifted master spy who spoke better French than most Parisians and whom even Lenoir’s men found difficult to shadow. America might claim some credit for Paul Wentworth’s spectacular performance: he was a New Hampshire native. His agents were a varied but inventive bunch, filching diaries and diving into closets. They proved recklessly unable to resist Paris’ charms. One agent, as fond of back stairways as of disreputable addresses, never left Paris without attending a drunken orgy. In the course of one such evening, he entrusted his confidential documents to a more sober reveler, who saw that they made their way to Versailles.

Franklin knew himself to be the object of what he aptly termed “violent curiosities” but at home insisted that he had no intention of speaking other than the truth or of implementing any particular security precautions — or even of dismissing his valet if he were “a spy, as probably he is.” Against all counsel, he stayed his course; he reasoned in part that the quantity of information in itself provided a kind of smoke screen. His apathy about security came at a price. Armed with detailed inventories of French munitions bound for America, the British were repeatedly able to confront the French with evidence of this collusion.

Meanwhile, the weekly white-ink dispatches arrived like clockwork in London, where, moistened with a chemical solution, their hidden messages appeared in red. And the source? Decades after his death, he was revealed to have been a perfectly loyal servant — of both sides. The consummate double agent was the brilliant Edward Bancroft, Franklin’s secretary and one man who had had his confidence all along.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2012113_2012104_2012012,00.html ”

1. About the second paragraph: Did the French spied on Franklin too? If they did, What were the French looking from Franklin?

2. About the third paragraph: Who is the gifted master spy mentioned in the first line? ” Paul Wentworth ” ? Why should the Americans claim credit for his skill? And the reveler mentioned in the last sentence who ” who saw that they made their way to Versailles. ” — what’s his role in this subject?

3. From the fourth paragraph : What does the last sentence mean?