daf bit: Beitzah 4

We begin a new tractate, Beitzah, which means "egg". (I am curious about whether this whole tractate will revolve around eggs or if that's just how it starts.) The tractate begins by discussing the case of an egg that is laid on a festival day -- can you use it that day? There is a dispute. This leads to a discussion in the g'mara about the two days of a festival (in the diaspora); if we follow the opinion that you can't use the egg on the festival day on which it was laid, does this also apply to the second day of that festival? Rab said the egg is permitted on the second day while R. Assi said it is not. There is further discussion of R. Assi's position, which boils down to: he's not sure so he's stringent.

This leads to a discussion of why we keep a second festival day now when there is no longer any uncertainty about when a month begins. Abaye said: in early times they used to light bonfires to signal that the new moon had been sighted, but because of the mischief of the Samaritans (who sought to disrupt Jewish observance) the rabbis ordained that messengers should go forth, which takes time, so the extra day is insurance because the messenger might not have gotten to you yet. But, Abaye continued, if the mischief of the Samaritans were to cease and we went back to bonfires we would only keep one day. Further, even when the Samaritans were causing trouble, if the messenger arrived in time we kept only one day. So why do we observe two days now when we are well-acquainted with the calendar and don't need to wait for anybody? The answer: because they sent word from Palestine: give heed to the customs of your ancestors which have come down to you, for it might happen that the government will issue a decree and it will cause confusion in ritual. (4b)

So, we keep two days of festivals even though we don't need to on account of the calendar itself, because of tradition and because some successor to the Samaritans could mess with us again. I knew the "tradition" argument but not the other, and I didn't know this was explicitly addressed in talmud. I thought it was later rabbis who said that we have to keep doing it because we don't have a Sanhedrin that can override this law.

That the arrival of the messengers trumped the extra day (once the custom of the extra day was established) is something I did not know.

link roundup

Two items seen in rapid succession today:

• Here's why you're not hiring the best and brightest: (Jeff Atwood) talks about making telecommuting work so that you really can hire the best employees, as opposed to the best employees willing to live in a particular location. I once applied for a telecommuting position at a company that seems to get it as far as that's concerned, and a lot of the stuff they do is reflected in this article.
• What do programmers care about? (20-minute video): Joel Spolsky (Stack Exchange, Fog Creek) talks to recruiters about how to recruit programmers. If you've read Joel On Software you already know a lot of what he has to say here, but I still found it interesting to watch.

Can you help? Somebody asked a question recently on Writers about guidelines and heuristics for when to use screen shots in technical documentation. The question isn't looking for opinions or what you, personally, do but, rather, formal guidelines along the lines of what GNOME does for its documentation. So far it's only attracting opinion answers. I, too, have opinions and practices that I follow, but I can't source them either and I'd like to see the question get a good answer.

Speaking of Writers, I wrote a little something about writing good API reference documentation (like Javadoc), based on advice I've given informally over and over again -- finally wrote some of it down in a public place. Feedback welcome.

I recently saw an article with interesting-seeming observations and analysis of Modern Orthodox Judaism. I'm not all that tuned into the MO community and can't evaluate its credibility from inside, but I found it an interesting read. If any of y'all would care to tell me where on the spectrum from "yup" to "WTF?!" this is from your perspective, I'd be interested.

Finally, a little something for those who use the text editor vim (which I gather is related to vi?):

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