random bits

A month or two ago I saw a commercial for a new TV show called The Book of Daniel. It looked interesting, but it was a while ago and I had completely forgotten about it -- until some bible-belt protesters managed to get some southern stations to not show tonight's premier, thus making the news and reminding me to set the VCR. (I only saw the one commercial, but it struck me as "respectful but off-beat", like the movie Oh God!, and not the blasphemy the protesters allege.) I suspect we're dealing with either stupid protesters or a smart, manipulative network. I mean, isn't the news the best advertising money can buy?

Erik still needs to gain weight, so he'd been eating mostly canned food. A friend suggested (and the vet concurred) that feeding him baby food might help (more protein), so I bought a few jars of that to try out the idea. He loves that! (Or, to be more precise, so far he loves chicken puree.) Because baby food is intended for people, it has nutrition information -- which tells me that a small jar is 70 calories and 6g of protein. (A baby's RDA of protein seems to be 14-15g.) This makes me wonder what ordinary feline nutrition needs are. Cat food, not being intended for humans, doesn't come with the FDA-required data dump.

I've been listening to a CD by Neshama Carlebach that I picked up recently ("Journey", IIRC). I was surprised to notice that she uses the Sephardi pronunciation of Hebrew -- surprised because her father, who was also a famous singer and songwriter (in addition to being a rabbi) used the Ashkenazi pronunciation. I guess I just assumed she'd follow her father in this, though I'm glad she didn't 'cause Sephardi is what I'm used to and it makes it easier for me to understand what I'm listening to.

I never thought it would be so much hassle to evict a mailing list. I'm currently hosting a list at my shell provider. There is a Yahoo mirror of the list, but for historic reasons that's not the "main" list. Well, I want to stop hosting it, so that's going to change now. This should be a simple matter of moving subscribers, flipping a switch at Yahoo (so direct posting is allowed), and shutting down the current (non-Yahoo) list. In practice, though, moving subscriptions requires the subscribers' active participation (which isn't happening), and only the owner of the Yahoo list can flip that switch (I'm a moderator; the owner is bouncing email), and I'm starting to wonder if moving the list requires sacrificing a goat under a full moon at midnight or some such. (Which would be a problem, as that's pretty likely to be avodah zarah, or alien worship. And squicky. :-) )