Ezzie's Blog Roundup, 8/5

It's been a while, but there's too much good stuff out there to pass up today.

• Happy 6-month anniversary to Stam & M^2! It's amazing how much life can change in just one year...
  
• Baruch discusses an old favorite discussion of mine - understanding siyugim vs. halacha ('fences' vs. Jewish law), specifically in the area of tznius.
• ProfK on tests. Interesting.
• R' Gil posts about Buying Rubashkin, and notes that while as of now, nothing has been proven and therefore nothing should stop one from buying it, should the claims against Agriprocessors prove to be true, one should certainly refrain even if the food itself is kosher.
• Steg has a good post on psak (ruling), policy, and pain. I especially liked this line:

  If you hurt someone, you apologize. You don't need to apologize for the decision, if it was the correct one, the necessary answer for what was asked of you. But if it hurts someone, you do have to apologize for that.

• RaggedyMom discusses being a morning person vs. being a night owl, and how much more a person can get done being the former. (Feh.)
• Jameel discusses the latest episode of Srugim, which is about the young religious singles crowd in Israel. You know a show is good when the people who it relates to are finding it painful to watch thanks to all the parts that hit home.
• Finally, Erachet had a great post on her current job working at an old home:

  Maybe what I'm scared of is not these specific elderly people themselves. Maybe what I'm scared of is what happened to them - how life seems to have bailed on them and given them up. Maybe I'm scared of the idea that a person can have led such a rich life and then still end up like...well, like the old woman who sat in that chair today going on and on and on about her bank account. Or like the strange old man who sometimes staggers in and mutters a pathetic request for money. Insane. Disfigured. Completely dependent on people who patronize you. And there isn't any choice in the matter, either.
  
  Sometimes we live in a cruel world. People can be cruel. Life can be cruel. It's cruel for a person with so much history, experience, love, loss, and life-wisdom to their name to be reduced to the emptiness that some of these elderly people have become. It's cruel that the young patronize the old, when it is we who have so much still to learn. And it is cruel that the old, who have so much they could teach, can't teach because they've lost their minds.

Check them all out. 'Tis a good day to read...