Summary page 11 of 36

Warning: This has been migrated from an earlier blog server. Links, images, and styles from postings before 2018 may be funky.

27 Apr 2009 — Beyond recycling

One of my pet peeves is hair-shirt environmentalism.

23 Apr 2009 — Prithee heed this public service announcement

O ye celebrants of Talk Like Shakespeare Day, commit not murder most foul against the Queen’s English, and remember the following oft-neglected points:

22 Apr 2009 — Can you serve humanity on your kosher china?

Every once in a while, I am in a conversation where an obscure issue of kashrut comes up. I refer to the delicacy that our earliest rabbis refer to (when they must) as basar me-holchei shtayim, “biped meat”. At first glance, this seems like a simple question to answer, because as we read last Shabbat:

21 Apr 2009 — 马 word!

This NYT article was, alas, written as a human-interest story, rather than as a geek-interest story. The author explains that the new identity cards issued by China’s Public Security Bureau are rejecting many citizens’ names because of their “obscure” characters because “[t]he bureau’s computers… are programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters”.

14 Apr 2009 — Don’t let the sun come up on me

A classic paranormal romance ends with the following dialogue:

13 Apr 2009 — Middle matzah mystery

It’s a good sign when your son asks you a question at the Seder that you need to go all the way to the Mishnah Berurah to answer.

12 Apr 2009 — Facebook needs better tech writers

03 Apr 2009 — Mazel tov!

As a resident of Massachusetts, I am proud to welcome the state of Iowa into the Equal Protection Under The Law Club. This is a rather exclusive club right now, but I have every reason to expect that over the next decade, it will become less so. Furthermore, since Iowa, unlike California, has a sober and deliberative process for amending its state constitution, I have every reason to expect that the backlash against its supreme court’s decision can be restrained before the voters do something that their descendants will be ashamed of.

02 Apr 2009 — Now we see the violence inherent in the system

Anatole France was famous for remarking that “the law in its infinite majesty forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread”. Twenty-first-century capitalism does M. France one better: we break up the homeless encampments with truncheon-wielding police while letting the rich host overnight parties under the adjacent bridge.

31 Mar 2009 — If there were a Temple of Geekdom...

…surely this cuneiform tablet inscribed with an approximation of √2, computed geometrically, a tablet that was fired a thousand years before Pythagoras was even born—surely this tablet would belong in the Holy of Holies.

26 Mar 2009 — Blaming the victim (bonus capitalism edition)

Bruce C. Greenwald of Columbia University explains why the rest of us can feel morally superior to those who were wiped out by Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme:

25 Mar 2009 — A big squishy center

According to the latest news from Israel, the Labor Party has decided to join Likud in a coalition government. “680 of Labor Party central committee members voted in favor of joining the coalition, while 570 voted against. The voter turnout stood at 78 percent of the committee members.”

19 Mar 2009 — Rambam, repentance, and racism

As you may have heard, there’s a massive…words fail me…going over the fannish segments of the Internet, particularly LiveJournal, that some have dubbed “RaceFail ’09”. (See here for a chronological and comprehensive list of links. Note that despite the “Fail” in the topic as a whole, the content is a mix of the thought-provoking and the cringe-inducing.) I have been reading a lot of the stuff posted under this heading, commenting a little, reading a lot, commenting a little, reading a lot, thinking a lot… I think I’m ready to post a little now.

13 Mar 2009 — The pot, the kettle, and the civil rights commission

This past Shabbat, as I was bundling children up to leave our synagogue, I overheard some other members grumbling about a mosque that was being established in the Boston area—I forget where. To be precise, they were grumbling that some other folks were concerned about a Mormon center being established in the area, whereas we all should be concerned about the mosque; we should hope that the Mormons go and proseletyze the Muslims.

06 Mar 2009 — Self-determination, where “self” means “other”

I have read Rashid Khalidi’s book The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, and I can thank John McCain for bringing his work to my attention.

Later posts / Earlier posts