Phase III: The Disappearing Teivah

I received an email with this excellent piece from R' Yaakov Horowitz. Read the whole thing - it's truly a top-notch essay. Excerpts:

At one point in the session, Rabbi Orlewik and I were sharing the podium while responding to a series of hard-hitting questions. Then, someone got up and asked us to share our thoughts regarding the subject of the Internet (to-ban-or-not-to-ban?).

At that time, there was a great deal of discussion in the broader Orthodox community about how to respond to the challenge of the Internet, and an immediate hush passed through the audience. You could have heard a pin drop in the room as three hundred sets of eyes focused on Rabbi Orlewik and myself. Well, my mother didn’t raise a fool, so I boldly stepped forward, firmly grabbed the microphone ……… and passed it to Rabbi Orlewik.

And:

With the advent of technology, I propose there simply is no teivah anymore. I think that we are deluding ourselves if we think that our children are protected by the fact that we screen what comes into our homes (as we most certainly ought to) and enroll our children in fine yeshivos.

There's plenty more. Read the whole thing.

Baruch Dayan HaEmet

A woman in our firm passed away today from brain cancer. The head HR person was walking around a couple of hours ago, obviously extremely shocked and saddened by the turn of events, clearly distraught by what had happened. When he said the name, it rang a bell, but it didn't click right away until Serach sent me a text message and I read this post from Eema2Four:

I received a phone call that just a short while ago Leah bat Isabelle was nifteret.
The levaya will be held on Friday, BE"H.

Not only was Leah an old friend of Serach's family from Monsey, she had a small impact on my life as well. When I first tried getting a job here, she was one of the people who put my resume in to the Human Resources department, which helped keep my name fresh in their eyes and eventually led to my getting the job here.

:( Baruch Dayan Emet. May her memory be a blessing...

Jewish Economics & Religious Partners

I would like to get back to the Jewish Economics series I started a few weeks ago; this being the end of the month, and our finally having kept track of just about everything we spent money on, I should have an idea of how this month went and have at least one month's worth of data. It is absolutely mind-boggling how it adds up so quickly, even when I think we do a good job of projecting our expenses.

Meanwhile, I wanted to make one quick note about work. I don't blog about my company, and am not doing so here, really - I just found recent events interesting. Our company's primary managing partner, who is Jewish but not religious, announced his retirement recently. The person he is nominating, and the Executive Board seems to be unanimously in favor of to replace him is a religious Jew. This means that a religious Jew will be the top man in what is one of the, if not the, largest branch of one of the largest accounting firms in this country... and nobody blinked an eye. And while our company has quite its fair share of Jews and religious Jews which may make it less of a surprise, I think the reaction would have been much the same no matter what race or religion the new managing partner would have been. I think that's a great positive of this firm. It truly seems to be all about performance (and obviously, attitude), and doesn't seem to have some of the back-stabbing and games you hear about from some other places and in other professions.

I often hear people complain about their work environment, and perhaps if you ask me in the middle of March, I'll complain as well. But so far, so good.

Big News for Downloaders

This will make things very interesting: (via Judith)

Bittorrent is going legit, with deals inked with several major production companies for pay for downloads.

And here's a model of how bittorrent works if you've never been sure how to visualize the process.

This could have quite an impact on a number of industries.

If Only He Were Alive Today...

100 SerAndEz points to whoever can tell me who said this:

"After 2000 years of exile, the Jewish People has emerged traumatized. The source of that trauma has been the constant insecurity and fear that characterized most of the Diaspora, in most parts of the world. It is a product of landlessness, massacres, periodic expulsion and flight, persecution by tyrants and abuse by the Church and Mosque who encouraged antisemitism to satisfy their own insecurities and political desires. …Physical security for the Jews has traditionally been improved in a number of ways: usefulness, mobility, bribery and assimilation. Psychological responses to this insecurity and trauma are well known: self-hatred and blame, identification with and appeasement of abusers, obsessive fantasy of a future paradise on earth. These solutions and responses are so integrated into the Jewish psyche that they have been passed down from generation to generation, displaying themselves even in relatively free societies, even in America and the recently liberated homeland, Israel….Despite its significance to the Jewish Nation, the State of Israel has failed to alleviate most of this trauma, and has not reduced the levels of antisemitism - it has simply allowed antisemites to masquerade themselves under the new banner of "anti-Zionism". We cannot expect antisemitism to disappear - Jewish existence and Jewish philosophy will always be threatening to its children: Christianity, and Islam... The trauma and insecurity, on the other hand, is within our power to diminish - should we decide to do so…And what is anti-Zionist? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the Globe. It is discrimination against Jews, my friend, because they are Jews. In short, it is antisemitism….The antisemite rejoices at any opportunity to vent his malice. The times have made it unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being the case, the antisemite must constantly seek new forms and forums for his poison. How he must revel in the new masquerade! He does not hate the Jews, he is just 'anti-Zionist'!..."

The Mob Mentality in Blogging

In the post below, I stated

[Shouting people down] is essentially a low-grade form of speech terrorism - designed to disrupt and disturb the lives of anyone around it, hurting the victim of their tirades more than anyone else. It keeps the victims from spreading their ideas, and keeps anyone who wants to hear them from hearing their ideas. It restricts all dialogue. It is, quite simply, wrong.

To some extent, blogging is the complete reverse of a mob squad. Online, all voices can be heard. There is no true "shouting down" of another, which is (usually) a very positive effect. Unfortunately, though, there are some people who do practice a form of shouting down others, even on blogs. This can be done in any number of ways, all of them simply contemptful to different degrees. Some accomplish this by degrading others while in dialogue; some call people names; a few make false claims as to the opinion of another, then proceed to mock it; others simply misrepresent what the person was saying or trying to say, or spin the focus of the person's point to something else entirely. Sometimes, this is done innocently - the blogger simply misunderstood what the person was saying, and they proceeded to attack that misunderstood point - but all too often, this is done specifically to mock or degrade the other person and his/her ideas.

But thankfully, the blogosphere is quite large, and while there are those who do practice such mean-spirited stupidity, it is quite easy to avoid them. I've always liked Miriam & PsychoToddler's answers as to why they love the J-blogosphere:

It's like a place you drop in on and numerous interesting conversations are going on. You know most of the people there -- or even if you don't know them, you are welcome to join in the discussions. You can go to one table and talk about politics; another one and have an earnest discussion about religion. ...

A while back I described blogging as "targeted socializing." I can have conversations with people anywhere about topics that are actually of interest to both of us. I'm not confined to the nonsensical small talk of people I happen to come in contact with in the real world. And when the conversation becomes boring, I leave. In the real world, I'm often stuck staring at someone who really doesn't interest me.

In the blogosphere, you can always walk away whenever you want... and your voice can still be heard. Perhaps it won't ever be heard on that blog again, but that's fine - it doesn't need to be. People tend not to respect blogs which mock and show disdain for others. Those who do respect such blogs are likely not the people whose respect you'd want to look for, anyway.

I think that one of blogging's biggest strengths is its ability to let any voice be heard. Yes, there are those blogs and bloggers who have been shut down by other people knocking down their sites, by people threatening them in "real life", by dictators and governments, etc. - but even these are rare, and what cannot shut a blogger down is the mob mentality. A blogger cannot be shouted down by a group of immature morons, whether they are college students or grown-ups sitting at their desks. Blogs are a place where one can say their piece and state their opinion - clearly, calmly, confidently.

Krum (as a Bagel) wrote an interesting post on a similar subject a few weeks ago. Check it out.

Hypocrisy on Campus: Mob Rule

[From the SFGate, via Instapundit]

[Ez: excerpts] America's college campuses, once thought to be bastions of free speech, have become increasingly intolerant toward the practice. ...

While academia has its own crimes to atone for, it's the students who have become the bullies as of late. A disturbing number seem to feel that theirs is an inviolate world to which no one of differing opinion need apply. As a result, everything from pie throwing to disrupting speeches to attacks on speakers has become commonplace. ...

The fact that the rioting students could be heard yelling, "He has no right to speak!" was telling. Apparently, in their minds, neither Gilchrist nor anyone else with whom they disagree has a right to express their viewpoints. In any other setting this would be called exactly what it is -- totalitarianism. But in the untouchable Ivy League world of Columbia, it was chalked up to student activism gone awry. While condemning the incident, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger has yet to apologize to Gilchrist or to conclude the supposed investigation into the affair. In other words, mob rule won the day.

One of the lines that always bothered me was, "Well, we have freedom of speech in this country, so I can say whatever the heck I want!" First of all, that's not true whatsoever. You can get jailed for yelling 'Fire' in a crowded area, saying 'Bomb' on a flight, or for certain hate statements. You can't say 'whatever you want'. Second, there's the issue of should you say whatever you want. Common sense and life experience should tell many people that the answer to this is an overwhelming NO. Third, a person has to think about whether it is fair for them to be speaking, knowing that their speaking affects the ability of everyone around them to do so - after all, while humans have progressed immensely, we still can only truly listen to one person at a time. That's where the idea of "taking turns speaking" came from.

Unfortunately, to many, this last point is completely ignored. Even if they acknowledge it to be true, they feel that because they are "right" and the other person "wrong" or "evil" or who knows what, they have 'more of a right' to say their piece as opposed to the person they are talking over. Before you shake your head and think 'Yeah, what a jerk!', realize that you've probably done the same thing at some point in your life: You were in an argument, the other person was saying their piece, and you raised your voice a drop higher and proceeded to drown them out with your point.

Of course, the difference is, you probably stopped doing this on a regular basis after high school. And on the occasion where you do it as an adult, you probably realize that it's wrong. These people have not. (And now you can shake your head in disgust.) Their hypocrisy is astounding: They often claim to be battling for the rights of one "opressed" group or another, yet practice opression to do so. It's mind-boggling. It is essentially a low-grade form of speech terrorism - designed to disrupt and disturb the lives of anyone around it, hurting the victim of their tirades more than anyone else. It keeps the victims from spreading their ideas, and keeps anyone who wants to hear them from hearing their ideas. It restricts all dialogue. It is, quite simply, wrong.

Ironically, the only way to stop 'people behaving badly' is to police their actions and take away them. I have said in the past that in the case of terrorists, they should - to some extent (much like other criminals) - lose certain rights accorded to the rest of us by virtue of their actions. We don't let criminals or terrorists walk the streets where they can commit the same crimes again. In the case of disruptive protesters, the only way to stop them may be to restrict them from coming to these events, by banning them from events, and by removing any and all violators. This now restricts their speech, and they will complain exactly that. And the answer should be simple: Learn how to act like a grown-up, and you can come back. Until you do, you can stay in time-out.

Opportunity Knocks

One of the interesting facets of blogging is the opportunities it opens up for a person. For me, at least, not only have I met countless other people, and through them, met others, but blogging seems to have given me a number of business opportunities that I otherwise may not have had. In the last 24 hours, 10 of which I was sleeping, I've been introduced to a few business opportunities and have been informed of a few events that I likely never would have had I not started blogging.

While those opportunities are great, and I hope to take advantage of some of them in the present and future, they're not as enjoyable as the first opportunity I mentioned: Meeting some incredible people. Yesterday, I had the chance to have lunch with the lovely and intelligent Chana, who is under the false impression that I know the world. (That would be Serach who does - really. A headhunter we once ate with wanted to hire Serach on the spot after they spent hours playing Jewish geography.) It was a great lunch, even if that nut Jameel called right as we were sitting down and disturbed us.

This motzei Shabbos, I'm not yet sure if I can attend the melave malka being thrown by BeyondBT. [We have the aufruf of FFD & FFW on Shabbos to attend!] I've met both David Linn & Mark Frenkel, will soon be repaying David the debt I owe him at Sushi Mitsuyan [again!] and attended the (excellent) Shabbaton a few months back which also had a small melave malka. If you're around Kew Gardens Hills, are in the Five Towns/Lawrence area, or even if you're as far away as Baltimore and drive really fast*, you can easily make this melave malka. The details are at BeyondBT. If we end up making it, I hope to see you there! :)

* I've done it in 3:00 without stopping. Normal people can do it in 3:15-3:30...

The Lost Art of Pager Texting

Picture it. Mid/late 90's, and teenagers have yet to enter the age of the cellphone. (gasp) So what did we have? How did we survive? Well, we had something called a "Pager." It was quite in interesting gadget for those of us that remembered it. A caller would call your pager number, and leave his number. Your pager would then go off with that person's number. Cool huh? Ya, it got cooler. You see, now-a-days, cellphones or even other electronical gizmos allow text messeging with no issue, for a small price ofcourse. Our pagers did not have a text option... or did it?

It was either some genius, or some really bored teen, developed a way for each number to be read as a letter. So instead of putting in your phone number when calling, you would quickly dial a series of numbers (and IIRC the # sign for spaces) into short sentences. Here is the conversion:

A=2
B=8
C=6
D=0
E=3
F=3
G=6
H=4
I=1
J=6
K=15
L=7
M=177
N=17
0=0
P=9
Q=2
R=12
S=5
T=7
U=11
V=11
W=111
X=?
Y=4
Z=2

Some of these might seem weird, but you need to remember, that digital numbers on the pager looked like a calculater, and the number 4, looked like an H missing the left leg. The A is 2 because a 2 looks like a Times New Roman lower case a. You will also notice that many of the numbers obviously repeat itself. Well, there was no real way to avoid this and the reader would have to try different ways of reading the messege till they got it. Eventually, you would get used to a certain number sequences, and have no problems reading it. Here is an example:

111133 is WIFE.

The reader would probably need a bit to see wheather thats a W, a U, V, I's or L's. Most of the time, it isn't a problem since you read the word in the context of a sentence, and you can pretty much figure it out. I remember, my wife, then my girlfriend, and I would page one another during the day with silly little messeges:

1 177155 11= I MISS U
434 611713 = HEY CUTIE
143= The Universal "I love you"
6211 1773 1114317 11 637 401773 = CALL ME WHEN YOU GET HOME

or sometimes, when we had a fight and I would not apologize, I would get a:

1 4273 11= I HATE U

Those were fun days. I miss paging my wife. There was something special getting a pager messege, much more then receiving a call today. I guess it has something to do with the person actually taking some time to figure out something cute, creative and short to say. Also, with the cellphones, you sometimes don't have the patience to talk to anyone. With the pager, that wasn't an issue. This system is also handy if you want to write something to someone without anyone reading it later. You can pretend to be some secret agent. I know Ezzie likes to pretend he's one.

So there you have it. Thats what we used to do back in my high school days. I'm really not sure how many people actually did this. I know my group of thugs did it, and they got it from somewhere else, but I also know there were quite alot of others that had no idea about it. Anyways, it was fun. And that's all that is important.

30 Bonus Ezzie points to whoever can decipher this:

41112124 119 2170 1190273 401112 8706 62177337

Video of the Day

It's just one minute, but it's awesome. Check it out at Shoshana's "other" blog.

The idea of how every little action we do affects what everyone else does is not only perfectly shown, it is so incredibly true. When people see the others around them acting a certain way, that will in turn cause them to act a certain way - for good or for bad. Harking back to the discussions here about New York, it isn't that New Yorkers are necessarily 'bad people' - it's that everything is so rushed here, people are forced to ignore what goes on around them much more, and those little things - the ones that make all the difference - simply don't happen. But that doesn't mean we should stop trying.

Interview With... Me!

Jewish Blogmeister has posted the interview he did of me. I thought he asked some good, interesting questions. If you have any you'd like to add or follow up on, feel free to put them in the comments [there or here] and I'll answer them. The same applies to any comments you'd like to make. Enjoy, and let us know what you think!

Ezzie's Blog Roundup, 11/28: Black Keyboards

It's amazing how much the details matter in life, and how people ascribe their own level of importance to details. Women across the world will get upset or insulted if a man doesn't understand the difference between their 18 pairs of black shoes... while men get frustrated that women think football is "just a bunch of men running into each other!" It's the details that matter in life.

I never thought that using a new keyboard would be such a great difficulty. The keys are actually great, the option and shortcut buttons as good as or better than what we had... but the keys and keyboard are all black. The old one? White. Now, this normally isn't a big deal, and it actually looks nicer on the desk in front of the monitor. But... it's hard to see at night! The living room isn't the brightest, and I don't always want to have a light on nearby... but I can't see the keys well. I don't often look at the keyboard, but every once in a while I glance down - but now, this doesn't help me and I'm making a lot more mistakes than normal. So often, the little details matter.

And now, on to the Top 10 [or not] from the J-blogosphere:

• 10) Robbie gets himself a flush, which may be worth more than money.
  
• 9) SoccerDad notes that some people are (as they often are) huffing against Israel.
  
• 8) BeyondBT is looking for some direction.
  
• 7) Elie has some fun word puzzles. (If you're into that.)
  
• 6) RenReb pops in with some nice shoes.
  

And now, rounding out the Top 5:

• 5) Sarah gets some interesting visitors to her blog.
  
• 4) Robert has a real-life script to write about after an interesting conversation in the Dan Panorama.
  
• 3) Fudge has quite the grandmother. I think grandmothers are the best, like the one who came all the way across a wedding hall to tell me to put a sweater on Elianna.
  
• 2) Yitzchak notes a study that says women talk 3x as much as men. Only 3 times?! Yeah, right.
  
• 1) Hayom discusses the real issues. Amen.
  

Enjoy!

Snoopy & Math

(Hat tip: Mommy)

I want this.

This was not only the best toy I ever owned as a kid, it played an incredible role in making school a complete joke for me for about 15 years. (That's a good thing.) I learned more from this little toy than from some of my teachers... and my teachers weren't bad.

It is interesting how much of what we learn, skill-wise, is based on the little things we do in life - playing with a calculator toy, from sports, from dolls, whatever. Often, we don't realize it. On occasion, we think, "Where do I know that from?" and then laugh, realizing it's from something like a board game, an old joke, or some weird story. Learning in school is important. Learning from life is far more so.

Build-A-Bomb Workshop

(from James Taranto's Best of the Web)

Toys 'R' Us

Israeli paratroopers and intelligence agents raided an explosives lab in the West Bank city of Nablus, reports YnetNews.com. "In the lab, the forces found teddy bears with wires hanging from them, apparently slated to be used as explosive devices."

It's reminiscent of a tactic the Soviets used in Afghanistan, which Charles Bork and Gregory D'Elia described in a 1983 Yale Free Press article:

"Butterfly bombs" are a remarkable Soviet contribution to warfare. They consist of two plastic petals around an explosive charge, and are dropped from helicopters to a gentle landing on the ground. The seemingly intriguing toys spark a child's curiosity.

"Butterfly bombs" are representative of Soviet strategy: they do not admit to any difference between a civilian or military population, which is reasonable, since over 95% of the population opposes the Soviet regime. The Soviet response to guerrilla warfare is to terrorize the population, to attack the base of support for a resistance cause.

Always innovative, the Palestinians have brought us the Build-a-Bomb Workshop.

Sick, sick stuff. This is yet another reminder that those who carry out terrorist attacks are interested in killing, period. It has nothing to do with a "struggle" or trying to bring their plight to light, or any other garbage excuse the media gives them. They simply want to kill.

Cool Money-Saving TechMology

These are all good to know. (Hat tip: Cousin Noah)

We didn't have a keyboard yesterday, as our previous one got into a fight with a bottle of caffeine-free Coke, further proving my assertion that only regular Coke should exist. Blogging will resume shortly...

Interviewing... Me?

That's what Jewish Blogmeister is doing. Check out his interview with Life-of-Rubin, and if you have any questions, feel free to send them to JBM. (I've never been interviewed before - how cool! :) )

Islamic Extremist TV

Hey Ezzie

Anyways...

I could not even watch it all. Someone tell me what happens.

No Leftovers?!

Sorry, everybody. We have no more turkey, no more stuffing... I'm not even sure how many people we had, but it was somewhere over 25. The food was excellent, the company great, and everyone had a great time. A special thank you to Pobody and her non-commenting friend for coming early and helping out, then staying late and basically cleaning up while the rest of us were still shmoozing. I think I'd get killed if I posted any of the (very few) pictures I took, but we'll see. :)

Cooking Time...

The menu today is, in fact, the same as last year. Last year's returnees seem to be happy with that, so that's a good sign. So far, we have 20 "Yes" answers (including Serach, Elianna, and myself), a couple of "Probablys", a bunch of "Maybes", and a lot of "I may/probably will drop by after the one I'm going to". Basically, it's going to be packed. I should probably start cooking, no? :)

It should be a nice wide demographic again this year, too. We have a number of people from Monsey (woah), at least one each from Miami, Cleveland, Providence, Memphis, Phoenix, Montreal, Ottowa, Chicago, Los Angeles and Milwaukee, a number of people from around Kew Gardens Hills, a few from Brooklyn (nebach), and probably a bunch from other places I can't recall offhand. The menu:

Yellow split pea soup
Stuffing
Salad bar
Cranberry sauce
Sweet potato/regular potato concoction
Chocolate pecan pie
Apple Struzel
TURKEY

Today's NFL picks:

Miami (but Detroit to cover)
Dallas (but Tampa Bay to cover)
Kansas City (and cover)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Elianna at Play

Admit it. You just smiled. :)

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!