cellio | Entries tagged with news

When the story of Toga, the stolen baby penguin, first surfaced several days ago, speculation was that the thief was looking for a chic Christmas present. But in the ensuing days it would have been nearly impossible for the thief to not know that the penguin would only accept food from its parents and that it was slowly starving to death. The zookeepers and police made it easy; return Toga and no questions will be asked. If this theft was the act of someone with more ambition than brains, but not someone fundamentally evil, that would have done the trick. He made a mistake; he could correct it.

However, Toga the penguin is probably dead now; the zoo received an anonymous phone call that his body had been dumped. The thief killed senselessly -- and informed negligence makes him just as guilty as direct killing in my mind. This might have started out as simple theft, but it became senseless vandalism (is there any other kind?). I think this guy, people who neglect their kids' health, and people who drink heavily knowing that they will then drive all deserve the same punishment -- but since Toga is "only" an animal, even if they caught the guy he'd probably get off with a misdemeanor conviction. That's just wrong.

And I feel the same way about all the abusers whose acts don't make the news, too. If someone willfully killed one of my cats I would be just as infuriated as if he had killed a blood relative.

First the serious one (from

unspace): a conscious woman on life support, who happened to be poor and non-white, was removed from a respirator against her will, which is legal in Texas due to a law that Bush signed. Where were the outraged statements from the White House and Congress this time?

Also from unspace: JMS is compiling books of his B5 scripts for sale. It appears that they'll have extra commentary and stuff. I didn't explore far enough to find prices, but I assume they're up there.

And now some lighter stuff:

Compiled religious wisdom from aliza250 (short) should appeal to the geeks reading this.

grouchyoldcoot's struggle with a Christmas tree made me laugh out loud for several minutes.

And you think *I* am distractable: short, funny! (Link from

dmnsqrl.)

In response to the Supreme Court's ruling on eminent domain, some people want to use eminent domain to build a hotel on Justice Souter's home. I love it! The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Cafe" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. [...] Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular piece of land because it is a unique site being the home of someone largely responsible for destroying property rights for all Americans. (Thanks to jeannegrrl.)

Dani is off to Origins. This means the chance to cook the food that I like and he doesn't. Tonight was curried lentils with vegetables. The African peanut stew is simmering now (I know it reheats well); this will be enough for a few meals. Yummy!

I had a guest for dinner tonight. Unfortunately I came home to a power outage. Fortunately the stove is gas, not electric. And also fortunately, the power came back on about 15 minutes before she arrived, so I could at least begin to apply the window AC to the climate problem.

County property taxes are currently the subject of a fracas. The county executive wants to cap increases in assessments at 4%, because school districts aren't allowed to gain more than 5% a year and if they do, they have to lower the tax rate to compensate. This cap sounds like a win for the taxpayer at first glance, but actually, what it means is that under-assessed properties will remain under-assessed while everyone else picks up the difference. Accurate assessments and the resulting changes in millage rates are more fair, and the current scheme might violate the state constitution. (Fairer still, of course, is to not tax property, or savings. If you have to tax something, taxing consumption (sales tax) seems fairer, with exemptions for food, heat, etc. But don't penalize people for trying to save for the retirement no one else will provide.) But the part I like is that when approving this plan, the council mandated that tax bills would show whether you gained or lost from this scheme. So at least they have to tell us. :-) (Well, that said, how many homeowners see their tax bills? They go to the mortgage company.)

According to CNN, a CA prosecutor and judge conspired to keep Jews off capital juries because "no Jew would vote to send a defendant to the gas chamber". I find this curious. Yes, I know a lot of liberal Jews who are anti-capital-punishment, but that's because they're liberal, not because they get it from their religion. Lots of non-Jews are anti-capital-punishment, too. I actually wonder what the proportions supporting capital punishment are in the four groups represented by these two divisions: Jews and Christians, and religious versus non-religious. (Non-religious, in this case, means identifying with the religion but not doing much of anything about it, like the bagels-and-lox Jews and Christmas-and-Easter Christians.) I suspect that religious Jews are the most likely to suppor the death penalty.

Finally, Terry Schiavo. The situation is tragic, but I don't see how it's any business of the federal government to intervene in a specific case. If you have an issue with the way the state courts are structured, address that (if you can, constitutionally -- which I doubt). But you don't get to pick and choose interventions like that. So purely on legal-purity grounds, I hope this current effort fails. On non-legal-purity grounds, I feel awful for everyone involved but it's a sucky way to live and if she did express an opinion on that, her family needs to honor it. And this should serve as a wake-up call for everyone to put these things in writing; she was only 26 when she was struck down. I had a living will by then; do you now?

What's wrong with this statement? "The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts." (story)

A story about reports of missing Americans in south-east Asia offers this gem: "Some callers were unclear on geography as well, reporting missing Americans in China, South Africa and even Vermont." Vermont?! From people who haven't noticed that New Hampshire is still there?

Some parents in Orange County are upset because a Catholic school allowed children of a gay couple to enroll. They are arguing that this violates church teachings. The school has so far refused to budge. It seems to me that, quite apart from any issues of gay rights or open-mindedness, the parents have it all wrong; educating those kids is precisely within church teachings. Shouldn't they be welcoming the opportunity to teach those kids their doctrine, rather than letting them go off to the Godless public schools? I thought a key component of Christianity was ministering to people who haven't yet accepted their message; here they have people they consider sinners delivering their kids up for education in the church, and they're turning down the opportunity. Sounds like a missed opportunity to me. (I am not endorsing this, merely observing.)

Our garage-door opener has been flaky for years and finally gave up the ghost this week. This morning I called Sears in search of a replacement. So I got out the phone book to look up their number.

They listed direct-dial numbers for a bazillion departments, none of which obviously said "garage-door openers go here" to me, and a general number. I called the latter. There was no "talk to a human" option, but there was an exciting automated system that was ready to serve me. Or something.

( Read more... )

Short takes:

Real Live Preacher recommended the "Velveteen Rabbi" weblog, so I took a look. I found this post about the liberal/conservative divide in Judaism to be interesting. The weblog is syndicated on LJ as velveteenrabbi.

While I'm not comfortable with Bush's nominee for attorney general, my opinion of the guy just went up a notch. Some folks are mad at him because he didn't elevate his own opinions over the law. Gonzale s said in a 2001 interview: "The question is, what is the law, what is the precedent, what is binding in rendering your decision. Sometimes, interpreting a statute, you may have to uphold a statute that you may find personally offensive. But as a judge, that's your job." Wow, someone in a position of authority who gets it! Now, if I could just be more confident that his ears hear what his mouth is saying...

Puppy shoots man who was trying to kill him. Good job, Fido! Talk about the underdog winning the day. (Pity he wasn't able to save three of his litter-mates.)

I found this pleasantly surprising: Orthodox Union writes in favor of embryotic stem-cell research (a while ago, but I didn't know before). With precautions, of course, but I find nothing to disagree with in their letter.

Note to anyone who thinks the previous two paragraphs indicate I undervalue human life: make sure you're ready to drink from the fire hose before pushing that button.

innerbitch_rss reports a rumored team-up between NetFlix and TiVo, so that you don't even have to get off the couch to go to the mailbox any more. That'd work. :-)

lefkowitzga gave me a copy a Craig Taubman CD with lots of new music for the (Friday-night) Shabbat service. I have now identified the "Hashkiveinu" that I first heard this summer at HUC and fell in love with. Boy is it an earworm, though! For a song that's supposed to be a bedtime prayer, it hangs on a little too firmly. :-) I recognized some of the other melodies too; I just had not heard attribution for them previously. It's a good collection. Thanks, Gail!

HUC now requires two years of college-level Hebrew (or reasonable facsimile) as a condition of admission (up from one a year ago). Really, I was just looking for the catalog of distance-learning courses (not found, by the way), and the section on the rabbinic program attacked me and made me look. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. (Just to be perfectly clear: Hebrew proficiency would be the least of my challenges...)

A couple days ago, Senator Orrin Hatch said that he favors developing software that would remotely destroy computers on which pirated music was downloaded. This attitude is frightening from any senator, but especially from the chair of the Judiciary Committee. I assume everyone knows that part by now.

I wonder if the senator would consider it appropriate to broaden this a bit to, say, destroy computers running unlicensed software. Like, say, his own web site.

There's not much water available in the Iraqi desert, of course, so most soldiers haven't bathed in a long time. According to this article, there's an army chaplain in Iraq who has a large pool of water for use by the soldiers, but there's a catch: they have to get baptised first.

Unless that chaplain personally collected the water without using any army resources (including protection), I hope they kick him out of there. Because in any other case, it's not his water; it's the army's water. And yes, my reaction would be exactly the same if it were a rabbi who required everyone to pray the daily service first, or a Republican who required you to change your voter registration to his party first, or anyone collecting a fee.

I'm all for having folks along with the army who aren't part of the effort but who do provide support services valued by some members of the unit. But when support staff become parasites, it's time for them to go.

Check out this list of top 100 April Fool's pranks (link courtesy of a coworker). I'm glad to see kremvax on the list; that was fun.

I saw a news item this afternoon that a plane is currently being quarantined in California because some passengers showed symptoms of SARS. If I were a healthy passenger on that plane, I'd be pretty irked at my heightened exposure. I hope they can separate the sick from the healthy quickly, before some idiot on the plane breaks out the duct tape.

Yesterday I got a phone call (on the answering machine) from someone saying "good job" on my letter in the paper. Not that I write letters to papers often, but that's still never happened to me before.

CompUSA called yesterday to say that the fan in my machine is dead and the motherboard probably is too, so they're going to replace both. ( Read more... )

I've been vaguely meaning to write about intermarriage for several weeks now, and independently the topic formed in the comments here. But I haven't had time to write my own thoughts on the subject yet.

A coworker and I had approximately the following exchange this afternoon:

Her: Is there a Jewish holiday that corresponds to Easter?

Me: Well, Easter sort of corresponds to Passover, kind of. According to tradition, the Christian last supper was a Passover seder.

Her: (blink)

Me: Is that what you wanted to know?

Her: I meant dates.

Me: Oh. Yes, most years they're within a few days of each other. Sometimes they're a month apart. (pause) This is more than you wanted to know, isn't it?

Monica

vandals

a few links

short takes

short comments on some current events

short takes from the news

garage-door opener (and some short takes)

short takes

sauce for the gander

whose water?

short takes (before going home to the flaky computer)

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