angel one

moving

I'm finally getting around to switching web hosting providers. My current host has been great, but the truth is I simply don't need all the features I once did, and I do need some new features I didn't need when I signed up, and I can get what I need cheaper elsewhere, so it's time to move on. Since all my domain are actually managed as one (one of the problems I intend to fix), you may find this site inaccessible in the near future (I'll try to avoid it, but it might not be helped). Email to me may also bounce. If that happens, wait 12 hours and try again.

WFB would have been proud

The most appropriate postmortem I have ever seen (from the NY Times of all places):

Mr. Buckley marshaled polysyllabic exuberance and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse.

A run of Jewish posts

A riddle commonly asked of young (Jewish) children is to identify a shabbat on which 3 are removed from the ark. (Simchat torah doesn't count). The common answer is when rosh chodesh chanukkah falls on shabbat. In a few weeks we'll have another one - March 8 will be rosh chodesh parshat shekalim. In the same vein it occurs to me that when rosh chodesh nissan (my birthday) falls on shabbat, it would be parshat hachodesh, and again 3 torahs would be taken out. (Although for some reason, these later two are never provided as an answer to the riddle). I wonder if there are any more times I've missed.

the blind leading the blind

This event happened to me about a year ago, but I forgot to blog it at the time.

There is a blind man named Eliezer who comes to this area for shabbat periodically. He usually gets a ride home from paratransit, but on this particular weekend, the paratransit van had a breakdown across town, and wouldn't be available for several hours. I offered to give Eliezer a ride home, and it was then that I learned what should perhaps be a new rule for life: "never get directions from a blind man."

I hadn't heard of the street on which Eliezer lived (it was one of the many small streets that exist for only a few blocks in West Philadelphia, and although he had a rough idea of where it was, he could not give exact directions. The first attempt was doomed to failure as while we were going south on one of the numbered streets he didn't recognize the names of any of the named streets we crossed (none were his street, as we were hoping), and we ended up too far south, and had to get on I-76 and loop around. The second time I decided to take Baltimore ave west until we hit one of the numbered streets that he lived between and then take that until we found his street. He kept saying that from Baltimore I had to "turn left and then left again". I inquired if I had to turn immediately onto some other street, but he said no, I simply had to turn onto 58th and then turn left again. This made little sense to me and Eliezer could provide little explanation as to what he meant. When I finally got to 58th I made my left, and while about halfway through the turn Eliezer said "good, now keep turning". To me this comment didn't make a lot of sense as had I stopped turning I would have driven through the front of a Chinese restaurant, but then I realized that 58th and Baltimore don't intersect at right angles. The turn I was making was significantly more than 90*. While to me this was barely of note, to Eliezer this was a significantly different turn from most turns, and that is why he felt as if we were turning twice.

headline of the moment

From the NHL: Can you spell MVP without Malkin?.

Yes actually, you can. I realize the author is simply trying to praise Malkin, but the headline writer should really consider something that makes a little bit of sense.

signs point to "duh"

It's snowing, icing, and sleeting today. The kind of day that makes my usually 1 hour commute take 1.5 hours. The kind of day that makes me have a backup plan for if Philadelphia still hasn't plowed tonight and I can't make it home. (Drive to the Merion train station, park on a residential street nearby, and take the train to 30th street). The kind of day that makes half my coworkers call in sick. The kind of day that makes the sign "Caution: bridge may be icy" seem about as useful as useful as the proverbial glow in the dark sunglasses. Everything is icy! How about a sign that says "guess what: bridge may NOT be icy" - that would be something worth telling us.

In other news, when my cars skids, it apparently goes to the right 6 times out of 7, and to the left the one other time. I should probably get the tires looked at.

cute and cuttlefish

The NY Times (to which I am addicted) has an article on the cuttlefish. This sparked my interest mainly because when the Radzyner Rebbe first went looking for the identity of the chilazon in the late nineteenth century, he ultimately concluded that the cuttlefish was the chilazon. To this day in fact, the radzyner chasidim wear tekhelet made out of the ink of the cuttlefish. The Gemarah in menachot relates that the chilazon's body is "like the sea". As the NY Times article relates, the cuttlefish has the ability to camouflage itself in impressive fashion. I'm sure this fact contributed greatly to the Radzyner rebbe's identification.

Brooklyn: don't believe the hype

I've been shopping online for a camcorder. (Something I think every new parent does). I hit upon the model I want, and while I wait for Sony to release it (they appear to have moved up the release date for their new line to the end of Feb), I decided to do some price comparisons. (I reasoned that it's close enough to the release date that everyone should have it listed so I can preorder it). Somewhat unsurprisingly, I found several places that have the camcorder I want for well below retail price. All of them:

Close early on Friday

Are closed on Saturday

Are located in Brooklyn

Seriously - do non-Jews even go into the electronics retail business anymore?

Now of course comes the real question: Do I really even want to order from these guys? I hate to say it, but all of the stores have the same feel, and they all feel sketchy. I've been to these types of stores before, I've had them bait and switch me, and I've had them try to sell me inferior or "international" merchandise. The price is right though, do I risk it? Regardless of my personal stake, do I want to support those whom I know to employ such sketchy tactics?

free science

I read a while ago on fatwallet about a deal that could get free magazine subscriptions for watching ads. The only magazine of note was popular science, but I figured that if I just used my fake spam catcher email account and a fake name I didn't have much to lose if I let the ads run in the background while I worked. When I got enough credits to get my "free" subscription I gave them my address and assumed I would get nothing from it. To my amazement, I got my first issue of popular science a few weeks ago, and my second issue this past week.

There is nothing good here

I saw this graphic in this past Sunday's wall street journal. I don't know which of the numbers they present shocks me more. What year was this survey done in anyway? I am very bothered that in 2008, nearly one in five Americans would have some reservations about voting for someone simply because of the color of their skin or their sex, and I still don't know why so many Christians are wary of Mormons. (And even more bothered when I remember that these are the people who were willing to admit it!)

sigh

It's times like I'm forced to remember the one cardinal rule of surveying Americans - 7% of us still think elvis is alive.

scary thought of the day

With all this talk of a stimulus package, I've been thinking about the national debt. (Yeah, I'm really a wet blanket aren't I?) The national debt is currently 9.245 trillion dollars. More accuracy is not possible, because it will have grown before I can finish typing this post. To put this in perspective, the national debt is 6 and a half times larger that the total amount of money in circulation!¹ If congress sucked the money from every wallet, bank vault, and checking account in the country, that would still not pay for even a sixth of the national debt.

Divided up by person, every American is about $30,000 in the hole due to the national debt. (Before you total up how much your household owes, remember that this includes children and people who don't earn any income).

The debt is 2 and a half times larger than the combined market capitalization of the 20 largest US companies.²

footnote 1: when defining "all money in circulation", I'm using the M1 definition, which includes all cash (bills or coins), plus transactional bank accounts (such as checking accounts).

footnote 2: I'm defining company size by market cap.

snow in Israel

My sister (who is a lot funnier than I am), writes about her experience in a snow "storm" that hit Jerusalem last week. (By "storm" I of course mean 4 cm of snow). She works in a bookstore which sells English books.

I sat in the store for about 2 hours until I realized that the only people on the street were Russians, who are not exactly huge consumers of English books during snow-storms

(Russians: Do you have any books in Russian?

me: no

Russians: Tell me, why are all the stores closed? Is it a national holiday?

me: no, it's just that it's 200,000 degrees below comfortable

Russians: exactly! It's thast good weather which caused us to make aliyah

me: (thinking they are kidding) ha ha

Russians: (puzzled) what's so funny?

me: uh...nothing. Nothing at all.

Russians: We would also like to celebrate this glorious national holiday. Can you tell us where we might buy vodka?

Other than that only one lady came in to my store: She is the neighbor from upstairs and she was clearly surprised that a store would be open today. She tried to understand what my rationale for opening the store on such a day could have been. "Do you have somewhere to live?" she asked. When I said that I did she seemed puzzled and then asked if my husband beat me, if the place had a roof, and if I remembered how to get there from here. When I denied and confirmed things in the correct order she seemed even more confused, so I explained that I was Russian. This seemed a logical explanation for her and she subsequently brought me down a glass of tea with vodka in it and then retreated back into her apartment. That's when I decided it was time to go home.

Obama to advertise in superbowl

As was pointed out to me before, Fox will not be taking any political ads for the super bowl, but some local affiliates still can. Obama is running this ad on several local stations. I have to say it's not bad. He keeps a very positive vibe, and the upbeat music will help keep it from negatively standing out from the multitude of funny ads that surround it. It is curious though that he is clearly trying to evoke a very 1960s-esque mood (large rallies, music, change, headbands). A few of the shots in the middle show Obama from the back which I think is a big mistake given that a super bowl ad is a chance to reach out to largely uninvolved voters without whom face time (or at least face recognition) may be huge. However, as I stated below, I think that just the buzz the ad creates will be worth far more than the ad itself.

parenting from the male perspective

Now this is my kind of magazine.

Boot Camp For New Dads conducts research on men�s interactions with babies. We know that infants are able to focus better on contrasting colors and are attracted to movement. Anecdotal evidence indicates that babies like football on TV (i.e., contrasting colors and movement), so we asked Boot Camp veterans to watch a football game with their babies. An astounding 98% reported that doing so provided their baby important life lessons on commitment, passion, and the West Coast offense, as well as an essential bonding opportunity for dad. Due to an infant�s poor vision in the critical first weeks, a big screen TV is considered essential to a baby�s optimum development.

Caution : New moms tend to be skeptical about this important research!

They don't let me in politics anymore

In a few weeks (Feb 5), we're going to have the closest thing this country has ever had to a national primary. Dubed "super duper Tuesday", nearly half of the delegates to the two conventions will be selected. Within the few weeks after that, several more states will vote, and by the end of February, it is likely the races will be all but decided. Two days before "super duper Tuesday" is the super bowl, an event whose advertisements are watched more closely than the game itself. I am surprised that I haven't heard about a political campaign using the super bowl for advertising. The buzz alone would probably be worth the 2 million. I realize that to pull this off the commercial would have to be different - a run of the mill attack ad wouldn't go over well with super bowl audiences. But can you imagine the buzz it would create if, say, Mike Huckabee ran a funny ad (perhaps even with him delivering the punch line) in a super bowl ad? Everyone would be talking about him! It probably isn't worth it for the front runners, so McCain and Clinton (who is still the front runner despite winning fewer delegates than Obama) won't do it, but for everyone else - especially on the Republican side where everyone is trying to differentiate themselves from the large pack, this could be something that would put a candidate's name in everyone's mouth.

Note to campaign advisors: please send me the check via certified mail, thanks.