Deborah Makarios – Page 23 – Deborah Makarios

August 1, 2021August 1, 2021

The Tale of Jael

It always strikes me as strange when people interpret the Bible to say that women shouldn’t hold positions of authority (except possibly over children and other women). Have they not heard about Deborah?

Not me – the much much earlier Deborah. She lived in a very low-government era, when the people of Israel were governed by a) the Law of Moses (which was short and straightforward enough that ordinary people could actually know the whole thing) and b) a judge.

This simple system had the frequent addition of an oppressive foreign overlord who made the conquered people pay tribute and generally ground them beneath his heel. Because there’s nothing like getting ground under the heel of the oppressor to make you realize (and regret) you’ve been oppressing others yourself: failing to protect the rights of widows and orphans, taking advantage of the poor, or failing to give the land its statutory holidays. (Yes, the actual land.)

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July 27, 2021July 27, 2021

Making Up Mustard

Those of you who, like me, prefer your savouries without sugar in them know how hard it can be to find a good sugarless mustard. One of the simplest solutions to this problem is to buy dry mustard and then make it up yourself.

Or so one might think. Simply adding water to create the desired consistency results in something that should probably be banned under the Geneva Convention, and using vinegar instead – which is said to ameliorate the sharpness – is little better.

Naturally, in this brave new internetty world, the next thing one does is look up recipes online. These are mostly promulgated by people who are really passionate about food, and it shows. For one thing, many of the recipes need cooking, as though a person wanting a tablespoonful of mustard on their hotdog is going to have the time and inclination to cook a cupful or two of the stuff – not to mention eating hotdogs often enough to get through it all before it goes off.

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June 24, 2021June 24, 2021

Adventures with Avians

There are dinosaurs in our back yard. For a given value of dinosaur. “Feathered theropod dinosaurs” is what Wikipedia calls them (not to be confused with the celebrated therocephalian therapsid Purlovia Maxima). One is Troodon and one is Kryptops, and both are hens. Well, technically, only Kryptops is a hen. Troodon (pronounced Troo-don, not Tro-o-don like the original dinosaur) is a pullet.

And therein lies the problem. A pullet is a teenage hen, more or less, and Troodon turns out to be one of those rebellious teenagers who’s never seen a boundary she didn’t want to cross.

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