parsha bit: T'tzaveh

This week's parsha continues the instructions for building the mishkan, including the ner tamid, the eternal light. The rabbis understand the ner tamid as a symbol to remind the Jew of the mitzvot, as it is written "the mitzvah is a lamp, and the torah is light" (Proverbs 6:23). Every mitzvah we observe brightens the world with God's light. (Genesis Rabbah 36:3)

random bits

New vocabulary seen today: "clienticide". Thanks, steven. :-)

My virus scanner spontaneously turned itself off today. I wonder what that means. (I turned it back on and ran a scan, which was clean.)

I give Erik his canned food on a certain counter that Baldur is too heavy to jump onto. Since his surgery Erik has been reluctant to make the jump himself (I usually pick him up when I feed him); I assume that will get better. A few days ago I saw him attempting to do feline chin-ups; he had his front paws on the (horizontal) handle for the cabinet and his back feet were not in contact with the floor. Alas, cats don't have sufficient arm strength to do that, but it was a valiant effort.

The last season of Blake's 7 is coming out on DVD soon, so I went to Amazon (UK) to order it. They offered a pre-order price of L34.99, which is a little steep but I decided to order. When they processed the order, it was L29.99, and that's what the confirmation email said. Weird! I think something like this happened with a past order from them too; I don't know what it means but so long as the change goes in the right direction, I'm not complaining.

"The Defendant's motion is accordingly denied for being incomprehensible". Check out the footnote. (Thanks to osewalrus and rjmccall.)