Monica

Those of you who enjoy the religion-related posts here might be interested in this new blog (see intro post) for questions and answers about the bible, particularly the Hebrew bible (Tanakh). There's a link there for question submissions, and there are a bunch of posts there so you can get a sense of what to expect.

And while I'm plugging sites, I'd be remiss in not mentioning Mi Yodeya for all your Jewish Q&A needs. And I'd say that even if I weren't a moderator there; I'm a moderator there in part because it was already an excellent site when I found it, so I stuck around and tried to help.

In the last two weeks we lost both merle_ and pedropadrao. I will miss them both. :-(

And there's no good transition from that to, well, miscellany, so this paragraph will have to serve.

I suppose, technically, if you're not sure if a TV show has jumped the shark, then it hasn't. But, that said, I doubt I'll be back for the next season of "Once Upon a Time", a show that got off to a good start in season one, carried it through part of season two, and then started going farther and farther afield of its original context. In addition to links to "the enchanted forest", the land of fairy tales, they mixed in an Arthurian knight (short-lived), Captain Hook, I think a couple other odd ones, and now, in the season finale, it's clear that Never-Never Land is going to be a major factor. If they were doing the work to tell a Gaiman-style story about all these realms being intertwined or some such I'd be on board for that, but it sure feels like they're just making things up as they go along now. Oh well.

Links:

Full moon silhouettes, a really gorgeous video of the full moon rising over the Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, NZ. (Link from Dani.)

Best court sanctions... ever! from osewalrus. As Ose says, best use of the term "Red Shirt" in a legal decision. And you thought court decisions had to be dull...

This is great (given that such idiots exist, which is not great). Bill Walsh was riding his bike and happened to be running a helmet-cam when a cab made an illegal U-turn across the bike lane, after being warned that it was illegal, and promptly got pulled over by an oncoming police officer. The video is short and cuts out before we get to see the expression on the cabbie's face, alas.

Feast of the ravens, a photo with an interesting story behind it. What do you expect to find when a large group of ravens congregates? Not this. From shewhomust.

siderea posted an excerpt from (and link to) an essay about libraries, mandatory internet use, and the very poor that is well worth a read. As more and more stuff moves to "online only", whom are we leaving out in the cold? The ones who can least cope, it seems.

I hadn't realized that 3D printing was advanced enough to make medical implants... a year and a half ago. Ok, this was an airpipe splint, but are plastic organs in our future?

Sad cat diary, a video in the general style of Henri (but not just one cat), from Talvin over at DW.

The talmud tells us that even if the eighth day after birth is Shabbat, we perform circumcision rather than waiting a day. There is then a discussion of implementation details (e.g. you still have to prepare certain things before Shabbat to limit the violations). On today's daf Abaye repeats several things about infants that he learned from his mother (who is credited but not named), including: If an infant cannot suck this is because his lips are cold, and the remedy is to hold a vessel of burning coals near his nostrils to heat him up. If an infant does not breathe he should be fanned with a fan and he will start. If an infant is too red, it means his blood isn't absorbed in him and it is not safe to perform the circumcision; if he is green then he is deficient in blood and we wait until he is not. (134a)

Apropos of nothing: have you ever wondered what Judaism has to say about surviving the zombie apocalypse? In other words, the season of Purim Torah is upon us at Mi Yodeya; take a look. (For more in this vein, click on the purim-torah tag at the bottom of the question.)

We did Thanksgiving dinner with my parents, sister, and niece, as usual. (My nephew is currently away at law school.) Someday my parents will decide that this is too much fuss and that's what they have children for, but apparently not yet. My niece brought her boyfriend, who I enjoyed talking with. I overheard my mother say to my father "that's the most I've heard Monica talk in ages" and, well, it's because there was more to talk about. Old family tropes only get you so far, and my mother and sister, at least, share basically no interests with me and Dani.

I've decided that Felix and Oscar aren't the right names for the cats; the initial behaviors that prompted them haven't continued. I'm currently leaning toward Orlando and Giovanni, which pass the random-friends-and-relatives test and the neighborhood test (would I be embarrassed calling an escapee?). A pair of perfectly-nice Italian names will suit, and if you happen to know that I'm a fan of Renaissance music, you might correctly detect a further inspiration for those names in particular. :-) (Orlando is the brown one, who's also the lovey guy who sleeps in my lap purring loudly.)

We had a couple of people over for board-gaming this weekend. History of the World plays differently with four players than with six. We also played San Juan (a "light" version of Puerto Rico), Automobile (only our second time playing), and Pandemic. I suspect we haven't really "gotten" Automobile yet; our scores were pretty close and nobody did anything really unusual. (Well, only one player took out loans, but other than that we seemed to be playing similar strategies.)

Some links:

HTTP Status Cats: the HTTP return codes illustrated. I've seen 408 (timed out) around, but many of these were new to me. Also, I didn't know about some of those status codes (402 I'm looking at you).

Are Twinkies really immortal? Snopes weighs in.

This recipe for schadenfreude pie looks delightfully yummy. Alas, I saw it the day after the annual baronial pie competition. Maybe next year... Hat-tip to siderea.

Remember Henri, the angst-filled French cat? He's back.



(Previous videos here and here.)

Some professions require a certain amount of ongoing education every year, usually in the form of several-hour seminars. At least for the legal field, it seems like the subjects do not have to be all that closely related to American law. I routinely see advertisements for these in the Jewish press covering topics in halacha or Jewish ethics. But even so, I was surprised to see that Law and the Multiverse was offering one on superheroes, comic books, and constitutional law. If I were a lawyer I would totally go to things like that. :-) (The blog is fun too.)

Language Log recently wrote about an unusual keep-off-the-grass sign: tiny grass is dreaming. That's a neat image.

shewhomust recently posted a picture of a neat woodland "sculpture".

Everybody's probably seen is Facebook making us lonely? from the Atlantic, but I wanted to stash a link somewhere anyway so I may as well share.

And finally, Mi Yodeya (formerly known as Jewish Life and Learning) recently launched as a full-blown Stack Exchange site after a year in beta. I've enjoyed participating there -- lots of good questions and answers and discussion, but in a useful format that isn't "just another forum where you have to wade through the junk to get to the good stuff". There's going to be an online launch party on Sunday. More info:

Thanksgiving food: it's not too late! Thanks to shalmestere for pointing out this Thanksgiving dinner flowchart.

A great rant on web-service protocols (that is, SOAP versus REST) from a former coworker: the S stands for simple.

Law and the Multiverse on Once Upon a Time: is Rumpelstiltskin's contract valid?

Our torah-study group has been talking about the akeidah (binding of Yitzchak) for a few months (just finished). One opinion that some people expressed is that, in addition to the individual and family tragedy that would result if Avraham had not been stopped, this was a national threat: if Yitzchak died then that would end the whole Jewish enterprise. So (the reasoning goes) Avraham would be killing his own legacy and the Jewish people along with Yitzchak.

I find this position problematic because, really, is anything too great for God? Not only could Avraham have more sons (the promise to Avraham didn't mention Sarah), but after Sarah died he did. If Yitzchak had died, that would not automatically mean the end of the Jewish proposition as spelled out in God's promises to Avraham. It would, of course, have been a terrible thing for the people involved, but we're talking about a proto-national issue here, not a personal one.

After the study I remembered another case where this kind of reasoning comes up, and this time it's embedded in our liturgy. I've always been a little bothered by the part of the Pesach seder that says that if God hadn't taken us out of Egypt we would still be slaves there today. Really? God couldn't have decided that the next generation was worthy if the time wasn't yet right? Doesn't this claim show something of a lack of faith?

I decided to ask this seder question on Judaism.StackExchange to see what the folks there have to say. There are some interesting answers so far. Take a look if this interests you.

Disclosure and plug: the site is currently trying to increase traffic and is running a contest with a nominal prize (small gift certificate to a Jewish bookstore). If you click on that link you'll help me a little. That's not why I posted this entry (it started out as just the akeidah and morphed), but as long as I was talking about it anyway...

And on the subject of this contest, here is an interesting question about the use of e-readers that is somewhat related to a question about the use of a Kindle on Shabbat. There's good discussion here about the nature of e-ink and writing and kindling light. I'd like to see answers to all the questions I've linked here; maybe you can help. (Contest page with links to all entries is here.)

It's summer. High heat and humidity are normal for summer. I get that. But I still hold that, for Pittsburgh, temperatures in the 90s and heat indices in the 100s until 10PM and by 10AM are abnormal. Just sayin'. I sure hope I can catch a ride to Shabbat services tonight; there's nothing to do about the walk home, but it'd be nice to not arrive soaked in sweat. Especially since I'm leading.

Buying subcutaneous fluids from the vet is expensive, except that they had a price-match policy so it wasn't. But they restricted that policy, so I asked for a prescription. I was going to fill it online but it'd be easier not to, so today I talked with someone at CVS who determined that yes in fact they could order these (by the case -- which is fine). So today I dropped off the prescription and met the full force of the paperwork engine. After supplying the cat's birth date, drug allergies, insurance information, primary care physician, and a few other things, we were ready to go. I wonder if Giant Eagle, where I had the Prednizone filled (but they don't do fluids), just punted on this info, filled in N/A, or what.

I got a postcard notice of a class-action suit this week. They know their typical audience: "how much can I get?" and "how do I get my money?" were in bold; "what is the suit about?" took rather more digging. I've gotten money from a few class-action suits over the years (and I'll send this one in too), but I always do so with some degree of ambivalence, not knowing which ones are real (and people should be compensated) and which are "it's easier to settle than prove plaintiffs are on crack" -- and in the latter case, how I feel about benefiting from ill-gotten gains given that the defendants are going to pay the money out anyway. But I also admit that thus far I haven't been motivated enough to actually research any of these cases... the moral high ground is way over there, not here where I'm standing, it would appear.

Links:

The comic on this Language Log post made me laugh. Three negatives in six words indeed!

In the spirit of the song, kinda: Weird Al, Stop forwarding that crap to me (video).

Google+ circles you can use. Social networking: new media, same old problems.

I was surprised and a little weirded out, the other night, when I typed "parme" into Google and it offered to auto-complete to "parmesan crusted tilapia recipe". That was in fact what I was searching for, though I was going to just say "fish", but I hadn't realized Google's mind-reading was that good. :-) I didn't remember to follow up at first opportunity from a different IP address, though, so I don't know if profiling was involved.

(My question, still not satisfyingly answered as this recipe didn't do it so well, was: how do you get the cheese to stay on the fish? I was speculating about egg, as you often do for breading, but this recipe called for olive oil. I ended up with fish and cheese in proximity to each other, which was tasty but not what I was going for.)

Larry Osterman passed along this video showing upgrades from Windows 1.0 through to Windows 7 with all intermediate steps (except Windows ME, which doesn't play the upgrade game well, it appears). It was amusing to see what did and didn't survive upgrade (Doom almost hit 100%!), and amazing that it actually worked.

Bohemian Rhapsody on ukelele (video), from siderea. I didn't think I could imagine it, and I was right. Nifty!

Cool bedroom, and not just for kids! Link from talvinamarich.

The internet is for cats. Cats in sinks. Be careful; this is like TV Tropes on four legs. Don't say I didn't warn you.

And finishing up with another one from siderea: this funny ad for milk (involves cats).

Today's entry at Astronomy Picture of the Day introduced me to the Galaxy Garden, a detailed representation of our galaxy in foliage form (1 foot = 1000 light years). Nifty! It has some very nice touches, like the gravity well at the center. If I should ever find myself in Koma I want to go take a closer look.

Neat visualization #1: the scale of the universe, showing how big (and small) things are. Link from filkerdave.

Ooh, pretty: when Planet Earth looks like art. Link from browngirl.

Overheard at work: "Every time a developer cries, a tester gets his horns".

Neat visualization #2, from a coworker: 200 counteries, 200 years, 4 minutes.

I had sometimes wondered what the point of bots was -- what does somebody get out of creating bogus LJ accounts just to add and remove friends? (At least when they post nonsense comments they might be testing security for when the spam comes later.) Bots on Livejournal explored helps answer that question. Link from alienor.

Graph paper on demand (other types too). Thanks, loosecanon; I can never find the right size graph paper lying around when I need it.

A handy tool: bandwidth meter, because the router reports theoretical, not actual, connection speed.

And a request for links (or other input): does anybody have midrash or torah commentary on the light of creation (meaning the light of that first day)? I have the couple passasges from B'reishit Rabbah quoted in Sefer Ha-Aggadah and I have the Rashi; any other biggies? I was asked to teach a segment of a class in a few days.