Monica

I bought a new calendar today and, to my surprise, among the candle-lighting times on each page it lists Pittsburgh. (Usually we don't make the cut.) While looking at this I noticed that sunset in September is moving by about 12 minutes per week, but that in March it only moves by about 8 minutes a week. Shouldn't it be symmetrical? (The delta for sunrise and sunset changes over the course of the year, with the widest swings being at equnoxes and the smallest ones at solstices. I grok that; I don't grok that they don't match.)

Friday night I saw something unusual at services: a man lit candles and a woman made kiddush and there was no special occasion dictating that. For all that egalitarianism is a core principle in my movement, I don't think I have ever seen a woman make kiddush in our sanctuary before, unless there were special circumstances (sisterhood service, a bat mitzvah, etc). Gee, maybe there's hope that someday I will be offered that honor after all. (There's still another barrier: there is a strong meme of giving that pair of honors to a couple. This was violated this week, too.)

Yesterday morning after services our newest rabbi (hmm, I need a shorthand notation for him -- the others are "senior rabbi" and "associate rabbi") talked with the group about adult education. He wanted to know what we want to learn, when we want to learn it, and how we want to learn it. It was a good discussion; I wish im luck in distilling down feedback that, in aggregate, meant "all of it". :-) He seemed a little surprised by the idea that, actually, we'd love to learn on Shabbat -- ideally right after services, but late afternoon leading into havdalah would be acceptable to some. I hope that idea bears fruit. (Of course, he was asking the group of people who self-selected to stay around after services for the discussion... but every option doesn't need to appeal to every congregant, only to a critical mass. And we also discussed the idea of giving the same class multiple times, in different kinds of timeslots -- a teacher's dream, but for some reason we don't tend to do it.)

At the end of the discussion he said something interesting, so after it broke up I asked him "did you just imply that you're available for individual study?" and he said yes. Heh. I'll be in touch.

Short takes:

I assume that everyone has by now seen Jon Stewart on election hypocrisy. You might not have seen Language Log's discourse analysis on Karl Rove.

(I have not posted about the election; it's not because I don't care, but because there's so much as to overwhelm and lots of other people are already posting good, thoughtful pieces.)

I recently found myself in a discussion about internet discussions and used the phrase on the internet nobody knows you're a dog. I later went looking for the cartoon; it shouldn't surprise me that it has a Wikipedia entry, but it did surprise me a little that Google suggested the phrase after I'd typed only "on the internet". That real-time search-guessing thing is good sometimes. (I also went looking for a recipe for a dish I ate last night at Ali Baba's, and when I'd typed only "mujdara" it offered two completions, "recipe" and "calories".)

Speaking (sort of) of internet discoveries, this article from Real Live Preacher taught me about the Caganer, a figure we don't often see in nativity scenes these days but apparently quite normal in times past.

This article on using the internet for identity theft (link from Raven) didn't have anything new for me, but it's a good summary to give to people just getting started. It did remind me how annoying I find the canned security questions used by most banks -- things like "mother's maiden name" and "city of your birth" were way too easy to crack even before the net was ubiquitious. (And the ones that aren't tend to be non-deterministic, like "favorite color".) Fortunately, in most cases your bank doesn't really care about the answer; it's just a password. So lying adds security at little cost, assuming you can remember the lie. (What do you mean my first pet wasn't named "as375m~@z"? :-) )

I'll be leading services tomorrow night (and Saturday morning) at my synagogue, including reading torah. (Both the rabbis are away.) I'm looking forward to it. One small monkey wrench was thrown at me -- last week we switched to a new siddur for Friday nights, an interim prayerbook based on the forthcoming Mishkan T'filah. (MT is out, but our copies are still "forthcoming".) So all the familiar page numbers are wrong, some of the songs are in different places, some of the English is a little different, etc. I borrowed a copy and applied stickie notes for a few page cues; it should be fine. (If you're local and want to come, that's 7:00 tomorrow night.)

When I registered for the NHC summer institute (the learning program I'm going to after Pennsic), I checked off the "willing to read torah" box. I had looked at the portion; there is one very long aliya (two columns!) and the rest are managable, but there was no place to indicate "but please not levi". Fortunately, they don't just send out assignments; yesterday I got mail asking what I'm interested in. (There are several options, not just Shabbat morning.) There were a bunch of people on the To: line of that message, including some with "rab" in their user names. I hope I won't be outclassed. I don't think so.

Links:

The Art of Conversation is a new blog that promises to cover some of the issues, philosophical and practical, of online conversations. Good stuff from jducoeur and others; I suspect it will appeal to many of my readers.

Running for office the XKCD way (link from a locked post). I loved the first campaign attempt (the petition drive), though I agree it was ill-advised.

Misspelled signs are common, but this collection of signs with the same error made me laugh.

Speaking of misspellings, this thread in magid's journal is fun. Doesn't everyone know about the fourteenth-century Sephardim/Ashkenazim diphthong wars?

Duck Darwin awards (source forgotten), or "what happens when a duck builds a nest on a high-rise?".

Vegan zombie t-shirt (from kmelion). It looks like the shirt doesn't actually exist and it's just a design. Pity.

Overheard from a Diablo game: "...as long as you resurrect faster than they heal..." Um, yeah. :-)

I didn't know about the Netflix prize until siderea posted about it. Nifty! Improve their predictions by 10%; win a million bucks. It'll be interesting if the psychologist ends up beating the mathematicians.

I recently attended a religious service that had a lot of poetry in it. Or, at least, I assume it was poetry, but it made me wonder: surely modern (meterless, structureless) poetry is more than just doing things with white space, right? I mean, I understand a sonnet or a sestina at some level; I see the challenges that faced the author and can appreciate the artistry worked within those constraints. I have, thus far, been unable to develop such an appreciation for the choice of where to put a line break, except in the small subset of cases where that creates a change in meaning or creates an accrostic or some such. It feels, to me, sort of like composing music without concerning oneself with key, mode, or time signature. Obviously I'm missing something.

I was asked a few days ago to read a short torah portion this Shabbat. I wondered how long it would take me to learn (it's about 12 lines in the scroll). Answer, for first-order learning: 35 minutes. That was surprising. Of course, it will require daily reinforcement to keep it, but that's fine.

Note to self: I was talking with someone recently about what I look for in candiates for the laurel (the SCA's highest award for arts and sciences), and remembered that I had written about this a while back. Yup, still believe all that, almost six years later.

Why, oh why, is tulip season so short? It feels like they just showed up not long ago, and now they're fading. Oh well... on to something else, I guess! (I think the lilac bush is next to bloom, but I'm not sure.)

This weekend Dani and I joined some friends for a last-minute gaming get-together. We played La Cita (my third time, I think), which split interestingly: the winner had 35 points (would have been 40 if he hadn't starved his people in the last round), another player and I had 32 and 33, and the other two were in the high teens. It didn't look like that in play. (I thought I was doing worse and those last two better.) Then we played Rum and Pirates and all clumped within a few points of each other (something like 62-70). I like both of these games and will happily play more.

A few weeks ago I ordered a used DVD set via Amazon Marketplace. (I decided to see what all the Heroes fuss is about.) I chose a seller who had only a handful of ratings, all positive, figuring that someone like that is motivated to give good service. (Also, I noticed that the DVD would ship from PA.) A few weeks passed with no DVDs, so I sent email a couple days ago. This morning the seller wrote back with profuse apologies; he (she?) had accidentally sent my order to someone else who'd ordered on the same day, but now had the set back in hand -- "so I'll drive it over this afternoon". It turns out the seller is in the greater-Pittsburgh area. As promised, the DVDs were waiting for me when I got home from work, so everything worked out just fine. (I never order anything from third-party sellers that I actually need in a hurry.)

Speaking of TV, the BBC might bring back Blake's 7 (link from caryabend). Woo hoo! I trust that this will eventually find its way to DVD and, thence, my TV. Since it's been more than a quarter-century, I do wonder what they'll do for casting. Of course, they could well do a "25 years later..." story, even though the final season left things on a cliffhanger.

(Anonymous) quote of the day, after interviewing a job candidate: "He has a lot of learning to do, and I don't want to pay the tuition".

This sign in a shop made me laugh.

Reusable printer paper looks like an interesting idea; I wonder if it can be developed economically. I'm surprised by the claims about what it costs to (1) manufacture and (2) recycle a piece of paper.

Quote of the day #2 brings some much-needed context to the flap over Obama's ex-minister. Excerpt (compiled by dglenn): "No one likes to hear someone, especially a preacher, criticize our good country. But Donna Potis [...] and so many others who decry presidential candidate Barack Obama for having attended the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church while he preached prophetically have very selective memories." The whole thing is worth a read; it's not long.

Somewhat relatedly, osewalrus pointed me to this post pointing out that all the candidates and the voters have a bigger religious-leader problem than this. Excerpt: "[I]f I wake up and find that I'm in an America where certain pastors and certain churches are openly denounced from the White House's presidential podium, I will suddenly get even more nervous about freedom of religion in America than I already am." Yes.

I found this speculative, alternate timeline of the last ten years by rjlippincott interesting.

Question for my Jewish (and Jewish-aware) readers: Thursday is Yom HaShoah (Holocaust rememberance day), so instead of my usual "daf bit" in the morning service, I'd like to do something on-theme. It has to be a teaching, something that would qualify as torah study, which rules out most of the readings that tend to show up in special services for the day. Any suggestions? I could probably find something in Lamentations, if that's not cliche, but I'm not really sure. And naturally, I do not wish to offend with a bad choice people who are old enough to remember.

Recently (to investigate something), I added a third-party tracker to some of my posts in order to see where the hits are coming from. This was meant to be temporary, but I've found it interesting to see just how big the internet community is, so I've continued to use it at times. So, I don't know who any of y'all are (and publishing on the internet means I might never know, and that's cool), but I'd like to say hello to my regular readers in Italy, Moldova, Switzerland, and Cambodia (!).

We are having weird modem luck. I thought all DSL modems were basically the same, but apparently not. Our old (bought in 1999) modem has started dropping signal -- it's eratic, but when it happens it lasts for a few hours. My DSL provider mailed me a new one (a level of service I did not expect) and it's reliable but universally slow. So our current mode of operation is to use the old one until it drops and then switch to the new one for a few hours. Weird. So I think we need to buy a new modem that is both reliable and fast, but since I thought they were all the same I now don't know what to look for. (We have basic DSL. Someday I hope they well run FIOS to our neighborhood and we'll switch.)

Recent conversation:
Dani: We're out of (book)shelf space in the library again.
Me: Maybe we should assemble that last bookcase we bought.
Dani: We're out of shelf space in the library again.
Me: You built it and filled it already? So we need to buy more?
Dani: We're out of wall space to put bookcases...

(I assert that he is incorrect on that last point, but it hinges on a dispute between practicality and purity. Or something like that.)

We bought some CFLs (in two different color-tones) to try again, and installed some in the ceiling fixture in the living room (the packaging contained no dire warnings about that, unlike the last one). Freaky white and bright, so some tuning is called for, but there might be a bigger problem: flicker. The switch is a dimmer, but we know CFLs don't dim so the switch is at max. (Truth to tell, we don't dim regular bulbs in that fixture, either.) Does the mere presence of a dimmer switch doom CFLs? That would be annoying.

A couple links:

A few nights ago I made these lamb chops, which I've made before and which are amazingly good.

The ten plagues, done in peeps (from someone on my subscription list, but I've lost track of who). Twisted! Funny!

Who thought it would be a good idea to put strobe lights on school buses? Fortunately we're past the time (until next fall) when I ever see them before dawn, but they're still annoying. Clue delivery: drivers are safest when our eyes are on the road, not when we're distracted by something wacky in the peripheral vision! And you're a bus, for crying out loud; you're way more visible than the cyclists.

Harvesting a few browser tabs...

I has a sweet potato made me laugh so hard I couldn't see. Really. Several times. (Link from hobbitblue.)

In the interest of species equality, cat laws.

Too many books for the available shelf space? Not a problem!. (Source forgotten.)

Time breakdown of modern web design in this entry is spot-on.

I've mentioned before that my synagogue maintains a freezer of donated, cooked food to have on hand for houses of mourning, families where someone's sick, and similar acute cases of need. I think this is a great idea; if you're cooking anyway you can cook a little more to donate and help someone out. Yesterday I got email from the person who monitors this saying they're low on meat and pareve dishes, so tonight I'm roasting an oven-full of chicken to take over (less one meal's worth for ourselves this week), and tomorrow night I will make some vegetarian soup. I love being able to help in this way.

Speaking of soups, recently Dani and I were at a restaurant where I had a really fabulous butternut-squash soup. This one was dairy (I detected cream), and I couldn't identify all the spices. Web-surfing has led me to some promising recipes; I'm open to specific suggestions. I have now procured one butternut squash with which to experiment.

I'm about 40% of the way through the second book of His Dark Materials. I am pretty sure I know what the deal was with Grummon (the explorer Asriel went off in search of). So either I'm right or the author is being clever and has something up his sleeve. It feels pretty darn obvious, so I'm not ruling out the latter. (No, please don't tell me; I'll know on my own soon.)

The local SCA choir is singing at an event this weekend. I think we sounded really good at Monday's practice; I'm looking forward to the performance. We'll also be doing one piece jointly with our instrumental group, which is nifty. We haven't done that in years.

Jericho returns for a short second season (half-season?) next week. I really liked this show, so I'm glad to see it unharmed by the writers' strike. Whether it is harmed by its network is yet to be seen. (They cancelled it and then responded to a fan campaign.)

Assorted links (most sources lost, sorry):

Baby dos and don'ts. That the site is not in English really doesn't matter.

Surfing cat. It's not entirely clear to me that this is the cat's idea.

Joel on Software recommends Tripit for keeping track of the assorted confirmation numbers involved in travelling. Sounds useful especially for us infrequent travellers who don't have the routine down already.

Bruce Schneier on security versus privacy. Too many people think it's a zero-sum game; it's not.

Bookmarking (haven't finished reading yet): Rands in Repose on preparing presentations. It's odd: in most contexts public speaking is, ahem, not my strong suit. Really not my strong suit, even in fields I know very well. I get nervous and fumbly-mouthed. The exception? While I'm not as skilled at the mechanics yet as I'd like to be, giving sermons or divrei torah does not make me nervous.

I pass this on too late for voters in half the primaries in the country, but even so, there's a general election coming, so: jducoeur nails what's really important in choosing a candidate. (PA doesn't vote until late April. It's possible we won't actually be irrelevant this time, but we'll see how today turns out.)

George Bush v Mohammed ibn Tugluq by David Director Friedman, on whom the law binds.

Dani and I saw a performance by Second City last night. It was a mixed bag -- some very funny bits, some that fell flat for me, and more scripted than improv (which surprised me). I hadn't realized that Second City is sort of a franchise; there are several troupes out there using the name. I assume they share base material. (This show was, in part, customized for Pittsburgh, some in ways that could be easily reused and some not.) The Second City we saw in Toronto years ago was doing something akin to modern commedia dell'arte; the local show was (mostly) more-conventional comedy sketches. Still fun, as I said -- just different. (I think my favorite was the sketch where the teenager's mom starts answering the instant messages on his computer. Serves the kid right for not using a password, I say. :-) )

Someone local took a few thousand dollars and ran in the NH presidential primary, and he actually came in ahead of some of the "real" candidates. The local newspaper reports his reaction to receiving this news thus: "Son of a (gun), no (kidding)? That's (really) amazing." Or something like that, anyway. :-)

Commenting on the FBI getting its wiretaps shut off for non-payment of bills, xiphias posted this story that made me laugh. I'm not saying I believe it -- just that it made me laugh.

If you've read a little talmud, or haven't but still laughed at the halacha of Xmas, you will probably enjoy Tractate Laundry, linked by velveteenrabbi.

Pleo, a robotic dinosaur reminiscent of Aibo, looks like it would be a fun geek-toy. I wonder what the cats would do. (No, I am not going to spend that kind of money to find out. :-) )

I realized tonight that we have more phones (plugged in, on the landline, I mean) than we get (legitimate) calls in a month. Um... I'm not sure what that says about us. (Why do we have a landline? Aside from the general-precautions factor, because there is one use case not covered well by cell phones: the caller just needs to reach, or leave a message for, the household, and not a specific member.)

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.

A few days ago I was petting Erik and suddenly noticed he was naked -- his collar was missing. In the 14+ years I've had him he's never before divested himself of his collar, so I'm mystified. A search of his usual hiding spots didn't turn it up, nor did a cursory look around Mary's house (where he spent last week). How weird! I bought a new collar at the grocery store (and even cut the obligatory bell off); since ordering a tag takes time I applied a Sharpie to the back of the newest rabies tag, there being enough room for a phone number. He's never gotten out, but of course it would be my luck that he would while sans tags, so better safe than sorry.

Speaking of cats, I found this story about Oscar the death-sensing cat interesting. I wonder what he's reacting to. (The article doesn't address the question of whether Oscar is the cause rather than the sensor.)

This story about a man whose house was condemned because of his books (link from caryabend) makes me scratch my head. 3000 books isn't that many. What's really going on? A little googling didn't turn up more details.

This photographic evidence of a packrat made me laugh out loud. Fortunately, they don't condemn cars. :-)

Aside: LJ has been really crawling for me for the last several days. Is this happening to other people too, or do I have a local problem? (LJ is blocked at work, so I can't collect that data point.)

I've got a lot of stuff accumulating in browser tabs on a wide variety of topics, so...

The (spam)bot wars heat up, by jducoeur.

I'm a little behind in my tech news. siderea posted a helpful summary of the news about cracking the DRM code on DVDs and the subsequent firestorm on Digg.

merle_ on the true reasons behind the bee population problem.

Why programmers should never become ministers, link from aliza250. Satan is a MIS director who takes credit for more powers than he actually possesses, so people who aren't programmers are scared of him. God thinks of him as irritating but irrelevant.

insomnia on the new military rules that significantly limit participation in blogs, mailing lists, and so on. I saw an article that quoted an anonymous military source saying "we didn't mean that; use common sense". I don't know enough yet to have a handle on what's really going on, but it bears watching.

South Park Mac vs. PC, link from bkdelong.

Unconventional greeting cards, like "your painful breakup has made me feel less alone" and "your cell phone ringtone is damaging your career". Link from thatcrazycajun.

In light of my recent post about kippot in synagogues and elsewhere, I found this post on hair-covering by katanah interesting.

Cached for later reading: Clay Shirky: A group is its own worst enemy. (He's talking about online fora.) Link from Geek Etiquette.

And, for those in the SCA, what looks like a thoughtful and fascinating conversation about staying in-period at events versus talking about your computer, and why people go to events anyway, and what changes we might want to make. This post by msmemory has an overview and links to several other posts I would have mentioned here but now don't have to.

There is a fountain in the courtyard outside my (work) building. Last year they turned it off in the winter, but it's currently on. The mix of flowing water, frozen water cascade, and ice in the basin is striking. Maybe I'll remember to take my camera with me tomorrow.

My cat Erik is fond of canned tuna. Actually, he is especially fond of the water. A few days ago he was ignoring the solids but lapping up the water, so I made more. I was able to leech out several rounds of tuna juice (I thought of almond milk while doing so) before the solids lost their ability to produce. Silly cat! (Yes, he's now eating solids, so whatever it was passed.)

Funny video #1, circulating on SCA mailing lists: toyota jousting.

Funny video #2, from brokengoose: cat washing machine.

Edited to add: Dani just showed me a candidate for most specialized blog on the net. The current entry doesn't make it real clear what's going on, but scroll down to some of the other pictures and you'll see. :-)