children in adults' bodies

I run a moderated "mirror" of an unmoderated mailing list. In other words, I edit a filtered feed, cutting out the spam, off-topic posts, gratuitous HTML, duplicate postings, and misdirected personal replies.

Recently (sometime during Shabbat) someone posted a long, off-topic message on a controversial subject. This was unwise. Someone else then posted a reply saying, effectively, "keep your off-topic drivel off this list", which was unwise, misdirected, and somewhat childish. Someone else posted twice, saying (and fully quoting the messages both times) "yay" and "pbbbttttt" to these messages, which was unwise, misdirected, and definitely infantile. Other people have responded to all of that. And then, the AOL/raspberry guy posted something saying we shouldn't be continuing this discussion, to which he'd already contributed noise.

All in under 24 hours.

Children, children, children... can't live with 'em; can't shoot 'em. But y'know, every time something like this happens I pick up another subscriber or two for the moderated list. :-)

trope geekery

I'm chanting Torah for a women's service next month. Short chunk; 8 verses of parsha Emor. And I'm trying to learn the trope (cantillation melody) the right way, from the notation, rather than just parroting a tape recording. (I have a tape, in case this approach fails.)

The big difference between reading trope notation and reading regular music notation is that trope symbols are much more context-senstive. It's more like learning to pronounce an irregular language than like learning to read music.

( geekery behind the cut, because you have other friends )

I didn't have the translation handy when I was doing this, but it seems I don't need it for broad strokes. I know enough words that, at least for this passage, I know what it's talking about without consulting a translation.

Book, passage, and tape are definitely going with me to Toronto for Pesach. Multi-day visits with relatives involve a lot of boring "between time", which I find kind of frustrating. Yes, I always take reading material, but that gets old. But this is something I need to work on and can do on my own, so it's perfect. I hope to be well into practicing from the real text (which doesn't have vowels or trope marks) by the end of Pesach.

And besides, that way if they don't let us back into the country or something because we visited SARS-land, at least I'm not completely hosed on this. :-)