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

24 Sep 2008 — Standing on principle

Even as Congress mulls over a titanic debt-fueled corporate bailout, it’s good to know that some legislators know where to draw the line and demand fidelity to old-fashioned principles of capitalism:

23 Sep 2008 — The secret history of the Betamax

Sony v. Universal, also known as the “Betamax case”, is a bit of legal history so beloved of geeks, passed on from grizzled hacker to Slashdot newbie, that it deserves the title of “myth”.

14 Sep 2008 — Being and nobodyness

The Talmud records the following deep philosophical debate:

14 Sep 2008 — A drash in honor of our 10th anniversary

כִּֽי־יִקַּ֥ח אִ֛ישׁ אִשָּׁ֖ה וּבְעָלָ֑הּ וְהָיָ֞ה אִם־לֹ֧א תִמְצָא־חֵ֣ן בְּעֵינָ֗יו כִּי־מָ֤צָא בָהּ֙ עֶרְוַ֣ת דָּבָ֔ר וְכָ֨תַב לָ֜הּ סֵ֤פֶר כְּרִיתֻת֙ וְנָתַ֣ן בְּיָדָ֔הּ וְשִׁלְּחָ֖הּ מִבֵּיתֹֽו׃ וְיָצְאָ֖ה מִבֵּיתֹ֑ו וְהָלְכָ֖ה וְהָיְתָ֥ה לְאִישׁ־אַחֵֽר׃ וּשְׂנֵאָהּ֮ הָאִ֣ישׁ הָאַחֲרֹון֒ וְכָ֨תַב לָ֜הּ סֵ֤פֶר כְּרִיתֻת֙ וְנָתַ֣ן בְּיָדָ֔הּ וְשִׁלְּחָ֖הּ מִבֵּיתֹ֑ו אֹ֣ו כִ֤י יָמוּת֙ הָאִ֣ישׁ הָאַחֲרֹ֔ון אֲשֶׁר־לְקָחָ֥הּ לֹ֖ו לְאִשָּֽׁה׃ לֹא־יוּכַ֣ל בַּעְלָ֣הּ הָרִאשֹׁ֣ון אֲשֶֽׁר־שִׁ֠לְּחָהּ לָשׁ֨וּב לְקַחְתָּ֜הּ לִהְיֹ֧ות לֹ֣ו לְאִשָּׁ֗ה אַחֲרֵי֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר הֻטַּמָּ֔אָה כִּֽי־תֹועֵבָ֥ה הִ֖וא לִפְנֵ֣י יְהוָ֑ה וְלֹ֤א תַחֲטִיא֙ אֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ נַחֲלָֽה׃

When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it turns out that she does not please him because he finds some indecent thing in her; and he writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her from his house; and she leaves his house, and marries another man; and the latter man hates her and writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her from his house, or if the latter man, who took her as a wife, dies; the first man who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been disqualified, for it is a disgusting thing before the Eternal, and you shall not pollute with sin the land that the Eternal your God gives you as an inheritance.

Deuteronomy 24:1–4

10 Sep 2008 — Is this a good sign or a bad sign?

I spent last night in my local hospital for a sleep study. The guy who called to pre-register me sounded like he had been up for 48 consecutive hours.

07 Sep 2008 — Not that I’m an expert in the genre, but...

So the Bursteins were kind enough to loan us the DVDs of the first Torchwood season, and we’re about halfway through them, and I have to ask:

05 Sep 2008 — The POW-In-Chief

I guess I have to say something about McCain’s speech now, too.

04 Sep 2008 — Disorganized thoughts on last night's speeches

There’s a long and linky post about Governor Palin that I’ve been wanting to compose, but last night, instead of writing that, I watched the Giuliani and Palin speeches. I know I’m not the intended audience for these things, but here are my reactions:

31 Aug 2008 — I am my blog's and my blog is mine

It’s Elul — a time to reflect on the past and prepare for the future, a time to concentrate (even more than usual) on turning away from sin, a time to renew and rebuild those things that have been neglected.

29 Feb 2008 — Moving, moving, moving

If you see this posting, it’s a sign that I have sucessfully migrated this blog from my old Fedora 4 virtual server at OpenHosting to my new Debian Etch virtual server at Linode. (The OpenHosting guys have given me great service, but I’m tired of learning how many Linux software packages that I need are unavailable as RPMs.)

11 Nov 2007 — Dept. of poorly named consumer goods

This country needs more children’s toys that help our young ones respect and empathize with people who have severe mobility impairments. I am disappointed to report that the Dora the Explorer Lil’ Quad is not such a toy.

29 Aug 2007 — Another way the Internet brings people together

There’s a song by the Bobs called Naming the Band, in which the narrator, an aspiring heavy-metal musician, laments that “names with meaning and attitude aren’t easy to find”. Well, now they are.

via Hacker News

28 Aug 2007 — Paranoia in full flour

The Boston Police Department, which took such heroic efforts to save our city from illuminated cartoon characters, has some competition:

20 Aug 2007 — Gender and shopping

The second part of the Boston Globe’s series on a Somerville doctor who got a male-to-female sex change begins thusly:

At age 52, Deborah Bershel made her first trip to the mall. It lasted nine hours. It was July 2006, and there was barely a rack of clothes in the Burlington Mall that she didn’t comb through. The next day she headed to the Natick Mall and logged another five hours shopping. She was making up for lost time. In each store, her approach was usually the same. She’d march up to a salesclerk and explain, “I’m a transsexual, so I’m new to this.” Then she’d ask her particular question, whether it be which cut of jeans would cover the top of her panties or which type of fabrics wouldn’t cling to her arms. “I have questions that no 50-year-old woman should have,” she said.

My wife inferred from this anecdote that Bershel had no female friends, because otherwise, she would be asking those friends for advice, not sales clerks. Women, she said, shop in groups as a social activity; men shop for the purpose of getting something. (The standard “all generalizations are false” disclaimer applies.)

I suggested that she put that observation in her LJ, but she asked me to put it here, since it connects with my previous comments regarding transwomen and platonic female friendship.

09 Aug 2007 — Bar sinister

Ha`aretz, covering the eviction of some Jewish families from an illegal settlement in Hebron, quoted Gershon Bar-Kochba, one of the residents who tried to resist eviction. The name also appeared in this New York Times article from 1989: “Gershon Bar Kochba, a seminary student from Hebron, was suspected of leading a group who opened fire on Palestinians in Hebron…” And this article on the Hebron Jewish community’s Web site laments that Gershon Bar-Kochba had to post a 25,000-shekel¹ bond in order to bail out a 14-year-old settler, while Arab suspects were routinely released on their own recognizance².

OK, this guy appears to be something of a macher in Hebron. What astounds me is that he carries the name of the leader of the last Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire. That revolt was thoroughly crushed by the Romans, after which all the remaining Jews were exiled from Judea, the province was renamed “Syria Palestina”, many Jewish practices (such as Torah study and Shabbat) were prohibited, and many rabbis were martyred. What kind of yeshiva bocher treats a guy like this as a role model? Does he learn from some Bizzarro-Talmud in which it says that God destroyed our Temple and exiled us from our homeland because we were insufficiently ruthless to our enemies?

via ongoing

¹ Approximately US$6,000.

² The article presented this as one example of how the Israeli government was treating Jewish settlers in Hebron more harshly than the Arabs. I mentioned this to my wife, and she said, “Well, they should. God Himself does.” After all, she went on, the Moslems only have the seven Noachide commandments to observe, while we have 613…of course, we can’t observe all of them today…and one of the reason we can’t observe all of them today is the misguided zealotry of Jews like the original Bar-Kochba.

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