parsha bit: Nitzavim-Vayeilech

Our parsha tells us "this mitzvah is not far away from you [...] it is very close to you, in your mouths and hearts to fulfill". To what mitzvah does the passage refer? Rashi says it refers to torah study. A lazy person, he says, claims that the torah is far away, beyond reach, and thus does not try to study. However, Rashi says, it is close by and thus easily available.

(I don't know where this comes from, but there is a tradition that says that an angel teaches the child in the womb all of torah, but it is forgotten at birth until later re-learned.)

serves him right

This morning I was on a standard local street, one lane in each direction, at a red light. There was one car in front of me. The guy behind me, apparently impatient as he sped toward me, pulled up beside me (straddling the yellow line) and then proceeded to pull up next to the car in front of me, at which point I noticed he was signalling a left turn. Note: there is no turn lane and this light has no advanced green. I guess he couldn't wait the anticipated five seconds to get to the intersection once the light changed.

As he pulled up next to the car in front of me I heard a crunch: he had locked side mirrors and kept going. (He had to back up to disentangle the cars.) When the light changed they both went through the intersection and pulled over, and I pulled over behind them. As I walked up I saw the guy playing with her too-flexible mirror and saying "really, it's no big deal to fix this". This might or might be true, but given his behavior, I took a small amount of pleasure in handing her a card with my phone number and saying "just in case you need this, I was behind you and saw the whole thing". (I figure this is below insurance thresholds, but IMO he should cover her repair costs. Maybe knowing that she could bring a witness would help to motivate him to do so.)

I'll bet this cost him way more time than waiting his turn would have. Maybe this isn't a fitting thought for the month of Elul, but: serves him right.

link roundup

Here are assorted things I've been meaning to share (and want to close the browser tabs for; whatever did we do before tabs and session-saving?).

A meta-comment (attribution lost; sorry): does this happen to you too?

God and the suburbanites, most recently transmitted by dglenn.

Jumbo Settlers of Catan at Burning Man, forwarded by patrissimo.

Death responds to incentives?, also from Patri. My bet's on "reporting", not "reality", of course.

If you have ever attended college in the USA, please consider helping siderea with this poll about grading. I'm curious about what she'll find if she gets a large-enough sample set.