Entries tagged with talmud

Entry tags:

talmud

frogs

Somebody said today is World Frog Day (who knew? not I!), and with Pesach coming up soon that led to some discussion of the second plague, and somebody linked to a passage in the talmud about it and I have questions:

Rabbi Akiva says: It was one frog, and it spawned and filled the entire land of Egypt with frogs. Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya said to him: Akiva, what are you doing occupying yourself with the study of aggada (stories)? This is not your field of expertise. [...] Rather, the verse is to be understood as follows: It was one frog; it whistled to the other frogs, and they all came after it. (Sanhedrin 67b)

(Convention: the parts in bold are in the original text; the rest is editorial elucidation. The talmud's discussions are often quite compact.)

If I'm reading this correctly, Rabbi Elazar's objection to Rabbi Akiva's statement isn't the claim that there was one frog that then produced more. Rabbi Elazar is fine with the "one original frog" idea. No, he's disputing how the other frogs got there; Akiva says the first frog spawned them, while Elazar says it summoned them.

Rashi elaborates Elazar's complaint: Akiva should refrain from stories about frogs and focus on more serious stuff, like laws of plagues and afflictions, that Akiva actually knows something about. Which makes me wonder what any of them are saying about Elazar's knowledge, since it's apparently ok for Elazar to talk about this stuff. This is Elazar ben Azariah, who at the age of 18 was miraculously given white hair overnight so that the other sages would take him seriously as (briefly) the head of the Sanhedrin. It's not like he's some nobody who doesn't know more "serious" stuff and is only equipped for stories.

What a peculiar passage.

And also: world frog day? Really? (Search engines produce hits. And I found it on a list on Wikipedia, for what that's worth.)

Entry tags:

humor,
talmud

talmudic humor

I heard a story the other day at minyan:

A rabbi has a long-time friend who's a gentile. One day the friend comes to him and says "Rabbi, we've been friends for decades and I've heard you talk about the talmud; will you teach me some?" The rabbi shakes his head and says "look, you aren't one of us, you haven't been trained in this, you won't think about it the way we do -- I'm sorry, but I can't teach you this". The friend persists, and the rabbi finally says "ok, tell you what -- I'll ask you a question, and if you can correctly answer it, we'll study some talmud together". The friend eagerly agrees.

The rabbi says: "Two men climbed down a chimney together. One of them was dirty and one was clean. Which one washed himself?" The friend responds "Oh that's easy. The one who was dirty washed himself."

The rabbi shakes his head. "No no, my friend. The one who was dirty looked at his friend who was clean and concluded that he was fine. The clean one looked at his dirty friend and rushed off to wash up."

"Oh please, give me another chance!" The friend pleads. "Ask me another question!"

"Ok," the rabbi says. "Two men climbed down a chimney together. One of them was dirty and one was clean. Which one washed himself?" The friend, having learned from the previous response, says "the clean one did, because he saw his dirty friend and assumed he was dirty".

The rabbi shakes his head. "No no. The dirty one looked in the mirror, saw he was dirty, and washed." "Wait," the friend objects, "you didn't say anything about a mirror!" The rabbi shrugs. "So it turned out there was a mirror."

"Let me try again," the friend begs. The rabbi sighs and asks again. "Two men climbed down a chimney together. One of them was dirty and one was clean. Which one washed himself?" The friend responds, "if there was a mirror or other reflective surface, the dirty man could see that he was dirty and he washed. Otherwise, each man looked at the other, so the clean man thought he was dirty because of what he saw and he washed."

The rabbi shakes his head once more. "How is it possible that two men come down the same chimney and one is dirty and the other is clean? Clearly this never happened!"

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a conversation snippet

Tonight at our s'lichot service (something tied to the high holy days), a fellow congregant greeted me and said "I haven't seen you in hours!". (We'd both been there this morning.) I said "hours and hours!". He complained that I was getting carried away.

I responded by saying: "hours" means at least two; "hours and hours" therefore means at least four; it's been longer than that since this morning, so "hours and hours" is not inappropriate.

It was at this point that somebody standing nearby said "oh, that's where I know you from!". We'd both been in a talmud-heavy class a while back.

There are worse things to be remembered for. :-)

Crossposts: http://cellio.livejournal.com/1066383.html

Entry tags:

judaism,
talmud

followup: JLI class

A few days ago I wrote about the first session of a class applying talmudic reasoning to modern legal cases. The first class covered cases of unintended benefit: somebody, in the process of committing a crime, accidentally causes benefit to the victim -- does he deserve leniency? I noted that the class gives CLE credits and wondered in passing how that worked; why would the American Bar Association care about Jewish law, interesting as it is?

I've now had a chance to read an essay that was an appendix to the class materials, and that essay did a good job of drawing connections. I also learned a new term from it, "moral luck", which I gather is a term of art in some circles. (I'm not sure why "moral" exactly.) Example: a driver recklessly races down the road and hits a pedestrian. Another driver, equally reckless and speedy, almost hits a pedestrian but the pedestrian manages to jump out of the way. In both cases the drivers had the same intent and behavior; it's only that the second one got lucky and didn't hit anybody. But even though the drivers were the same, one will be punished much more severely than the other; the one who didn't hit anybody benefited from "moral luck".

We saw this in the case of the fisherman who saves a child from drowning. The sages in the talmud disagree about whether he is nonetheless liable for violating Shabbat (he didn't even know about the child so had no intent to save him); later the halacha is determined as I described in the previous post.

The essay then contrasts this with how US criminal courts operate. Courts deal in crimes, the author notes, and not primarily in outcomes (caveats to follow). It notes that in criminal law the interested party is the state; criminal law doesn't much care about victims per se. Because a criminal case is prosecuted on behalf of the whole community (bundled up into the state), a positive outcome for the victim isn't very important. Laws are about establishing the rules of society, in which smashing car windows to steal laptops from inside just isn't ok. (Smashing a car window because you saw the dog that was going to die from heatstroke is different, and not addressed.)

However, the essay goes on to note, prosecutors have discretion in whether to bring charges and which charges to bring. Further, there is wiggle room come sentencing time (assuming a conviction), and victim impact statements are often allowed.

While it appears that intent is secondary to action -- we prosecute for what people do, not what people want to do, and that's how the one reckless driver evades penalties -- the concept of punishing intention isn't absent from American law. We have laws about "hate crimes", which is purely a matter of judging intent. (I have, I think, written in the past about how I think these well-intentioned laws are nonetheless flawed. Thought-crime laws give me pause, and laws that seem to value different victims of the same crimes differently seem pretty iffy to me. But they're a thing, and they're a thing that's probably not going to go away.)

That's all about criminal law. The essay then turns to torts, which are between people (not the state) and involve the payment of damages. It uses the legal principle of "reasonable foreseeability" to argue that the thieves get no leniency for saving the dog because they didn't reasonably know about the dog, but then contrasts this analysis with the "eggshell skull" case, in which if you accidentally gravely injured/killed someone because of his unusual medical state (which you could not foresee) when you only meant to hurt him a little, you're held liable nonetheless. It appears that under American law you can't benefit but can be liable if consequences are not foreseeable.

The essay, written for the class and with many citations, is by Menachem Sandman, an attorney from New Haven, CT.

It's possible, perhaps probable, that the lawyers taking this class for CLE credits knew all that already, but a lot of it was new to this non-lawyer and I'm glad to have the additional context. It looks like each lesson has an accompanying essay of this sort -- cool!

Crossposts: http://cellio.livejournal.com/1066212.html

Entry tags:

judaism,
talmud

JLI class: Dilemma

I've taken a few classes put on by the Jewish Learning Institute (they teach concurrently in many locations worldwide) and am currently taking this one. The title is "The Dilemma", and they describe it as: modern dilemmas, talmudic debates, your solutions. Each class looks at a group of real incidents around some theme, after which we discuss what principles ought to apply before delving into relevant texts (talmud and later commentaries). It's a pretty neat class, though I keep identifying aspects of the problems that aren't the core point of the lesson and thus get set aside.

In the first class, the theme was cases where someone in the process of committing a crime does unexpected good -- should he be treated more leniently because of that? The cases were:

1. A terrorist attacks someone, stabbing him in the gut but not killing him. The victim is rushed to the ER, where doctors find a cancerous tumor that would have killed him within the year.

2. On a hot day, thieves smash a car window to steal the laptop sitting on the front seat, allowing a dog inside to escape the heat that would have killed him.

3. Civil law prohibits possession of alcohol, but someone nonetheless keeps a private stash. A disapproving neighbor smashes his kegs. Later that day, the civil authorities conduct a surprise inspection but find nothing with which to charge the person.

I noted that the three cases had different types of unintended benefits -- saving a human life, saving an animal's life, and saving money (the fine that wasn't paid). (On the transgression side, one is against a human life and the other two are against property. We were mostly focused on the benefit side, not this side.) I also noted that there were three types of culpability on the part of the victim -- the guy with the alcohol was knowingly violating local laws, the guy with the laptop recklessly endangered the dog, and the terror victim was an innocent bystander. I thought that both of these axes of variation would be relevant to the discussion, but that's not where the class went.

We then talked about some other cases, most significantly a passage from the talmud about a man who goes fishing on Shabbat and inadvertently catches in his net a child that had fallen into the water, thus saving the child from drowning. Fishing is not allowed on Shabbat, but saving a life takes priority over Shabbat laws. Does saving the child bring him any leniency for violating Shabbat? If he knew about the child there would be no question; pikuach nefesh trumps Shabbat. But in the case of an accident? The talmud rules that it's pikuach nefesh, saving a life, even if you didn't intend it, and so the fisherman is not guilty of violating Shabbat.

(Rabbi: "What do we learn from this?" Me: "If you're going to fish on Shabbat, have a child on hand to throw in." Rabbi: "..." What? It reminded me of always mount a scratch monkey. But I digress.)

From there we talked about applications, and learned that if the act itself causes the positive outcome then there is leniency -- for example, breaking the window to steal the laptop and freeing the dog -- but if the benefit comes only later, it doesn't. So the knife-wielding attacker doesn't get any leniency for the cancer discovery, and the person who destroyed his neighbor's alcohol stash owes him damages.

There was more, and also some material in the book that we didn't get to and that I haven't read yet. I don't claim to have learned all the answers, but it was an engaging class.

The second class was about taking the law into your own hands -- for example, you know that that guy right there is the one who just stole your iPhone and he's about to hop into a cab, so can you physically intervene? More on that later, I hope. (I had to miss the end of this class so I'm waiting for the recording, plus there are materials I need to read yet.)

This class gives CLE credits, which kind of mystifies me, so a lot of the students are lawyers. Apparently I fit in with them, dress aside. I'm not sure how talmudic studies help one be better at practicing Pennsylvania law, but if I were a lawyer I'd be tickled to be able to satisfy a professional requirement through torah study.

I was discussing this class in Mi Yodeya's chat room and somebody mentioned the book Veha'arev Na, which collects things like this -- real, modern question with Jewish-law interpretation. That sounds like something I would quite enjoy.

Followup post

Entry tags:

shavuot,
talmud

Shavuot: the oven of Achnai

Shavuot night I went to an interesting class at our community-wide tikkun leil shavuot, the late-night torah study that is traditional for this festival. The class was taught by Rabbi Danny Schiff on "the real context of the oven of Achnai".

We started by reviewing the famous story in the talmud (Bava Metzia 59b): Rabbi Eliezer and the rest of the sages are having an argument about the ritual status of a particular type of oven. After failing to win them over by logic, R' Eliezer resorted to other means: If I am right, he said, let this carob tree prove it -- and the carob tree got up and walked 100 cubits (some say 400). The sages responded: we do not learn halacha from carob trees. He then appealed to a stream, which ran backwards -- but we do not learn halacha from streams either. Nor from the walls of the study hall, his next appeal. Finally he appealed to heaven and a bat kol (heavenly voice) rang out: in all matters of halacha Rabbi Eliezer is right. But the sages responded: lo bashamayim hi, it (the torah) is not in heaven. That is, God gave us the torah and entrusted it to the sages, following a process of deduction given at Sinai, and that torah says that after the majority one must incline (in matters of torah). So, heavenly voices aren't part of the process. (It is then reported that God's reaction to this response is to laugh and say "my children have defeated me".)

That much of the story is fairly widely known, and I've also heard a joke version that ends with "so nu? Now it's 70 to 2!". The g'mara goes on from there, though, and it takes a darker turn. After this episode they brought everything that R' Eliezer had ever declared to be ritually pure and destroyed it, and, not satisfied with that, they excommunicated him. Rabbi Akiva agrees to be the one to tell him, and the g'mara describes a fairly roundabout conversation in which it's clear that R' Akiva is trying to let his colleague down gently. But even so, R' Eliezer is devastated and, the g'mara reports, on that day the world was smitten: a third of the olive crop, a third of the wheat crop, and a third of the barley crop were destroyed.

But wait; we're not done. Rabbi Eliezer's wife, Ima Shalom (literally "mother of peace"), was the sister of Rabban Gamliel, the head of the Sanhedrin that had ruled against R' Eliezer. Ima Shalom was careful to keep her husband from praying the petitionary prayers at the end of the Amidah, for fear that he would pour out his heart to God and God would punish her brother. But one day something went wrong, she found him praying these prayers, and she cried out "you have slain my brother!" (And yes, he had died.) How did she know this, he asked? Because tradition says that all (heavenly) gates are locked except the gates of wounded feelings.

And that's the second level of the story, which I also knew before this class. The real "aha" moment for me came when, instead of reading on, we backed up.

Why is the g'mara talking about this now? Sometimes we do get things that just seem to pop up out of nowhere, but usually there's context. In this case, that context is the previous mishna (the g'mara expounds the mishna). (Rabbi Schiff: "ok, everybody turn back four pages in the handout now".) That mishna says: Just as there is overreaching in buying and selling, so is there wrong done by words. One must not ask another "what is the price of this item?" if he has no intention of buying. If a man was a repentant sinner, one must not say to him "remember your former deeds". And if he was the son of proselytes one must not say to him "remember the deeds of your ancestors".

We talked about each of these cases. On the repentant sinner, he said, every married person knows this one: you do something wrong, you make amends and beg for forgiveness, your spouse forgives you... and then, five years later, in the midst of an argument, it comes out again. It feels terrible, right? The other cases can be just as bad. (You ask the price knowing you're not going to buy, then don't buy, and the seller tries to figure out what he did wrong. And for the proselyte, you're reminding him of things that somehow taint him that he didn't even do!)

Right after this mishna the g'mara begins discussing verbal wrongs, saying they're worse than monetary wrongs and that one who slanders another is as if he shed blood. The rabbis discuss all this for a while, and then we get to the oven of Achnai.

The episode with Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Schiff says, is not about rules of derivation, or proofs from miracles, or divine will versus human will. That's all just back-story. The main point is the hurt that the sages caused after the dispute. Disputes are fine; we get that all the time. But they over-reacted, hurtfully, and that is the point the g'mara is trying to make by putting this episode here.

Interesting class, and well-presented. (This writeup doesn't really do it justice, but it's the best I can offer.)

Entry tags:

short takes

Going to the eye-doctor and having my pupils dilated seems to cause the day to become bright and sunny. But this is Pittsburgh, where sunny days are relatively uncommon. Does this mean that most people in Pittsburgh never have their eyes checked this way, or are we all mysteriously choosing the same few days for this?

I posted the preceding on the "great unanswered questions" page on our wiki at work. In keeping with the name, I've received no answers.

Why does Windows 8 hide the control to shut down the computer? The discussion in the (currently-)top-voted answer makes a good deal of sense. And I actually didn't know that it's now considered safe to just turn a running computer off; decades of "don't do that" have trained me not to.

Back in July 530nm330hz posted a review of a new book of lessons from the talmud, specifically tractrate B'rachot (blessings). Based on that review I recently bought the book and I'm quite enjoying it so far. It's organized by talmudic page, so I first jumped to the entries on particular pages that I know and love -- how does God pray, different themes of concluding blessings, the tussle over leadership where they deposed Rabban Gamliel (I previously wrote about that one), and one or two others. Now I'll go back and read the rest. I hope this book is the first in a series.

I forget where I came across this special "de-motivator" image, but why should I keep all the fun to myself? (Image behind cut.) ( Read more... )

Entry tags:

shabbaton

This week was my congregation's annual shabbaton. We take over a cabin in the "suburbs" of Zelienople and have a grand time. This year was the largest I've seen at 42 people, and all of them seemed to be engaged in it. It was great.

When nobody feels pressure (got to get upstairs to the bar mitzvah, got to beat the lunch guests home, whatever), we can relax and just take our time with services. I don't get that very often and I treasure it. We had kabbalat shabbat out on the porch in the fading sun (plus there were porch lights). Saturday morning after the service we had an energetic discussion of part of the parsha (Tazria [1]), interrupted only by our need to walk up to the main building for lunch (but it continued later in smaller pockets).

Speaking of which: ( Read more... )

Friday night we had a study session around the second chapter of Pirke Avot (teachings of the fathers, where a lot of the sayings we "all know" come from). We broke into pairs or trios to study for a while and then each group shared something it learned. We've used this study method before and I find it works well; it's harder to do in-depth study with 42 people all together, but by doing it this way I learned things both from my group and the larger group.

Saturday afternoon we tried something new. My rabbi asked a few of us to prepare chugim, short sessions to run concurrently, so people could learn what they want. I taught (well, lead a study of) a section of talmud -- how various rabbis concluded their individual prayer at the end of the t'filah. (B'rachot 16b-17a, for anyone following along at home.) I approached this from the prayer context, not the talmud context -- we have this fixed text that we say every service and then we're supposed to say our own prayer, but maybe not everybody is comfortable doing that. The idea was to present a range of things that are recorded in our tradition; maybe people would get some new ideas.

I had not realized, and did not think to ask at the beginning, that no one there other than me had actually studied any talmud before -- maybe they'd seen material that came from the talmud, but they'd never looked at a page of talmud before. I, not knowing this, gave only the scantest of introductions to talmud itself (here's what the full page looks like, here's where we are, here's an interlinear translation to follow 'cause nobody here including me is going to read the Aramaic straight from the page). When I learned at the end that this was new to everybody, part of me wondered if I should have given more of an intro -- but I think not, on reflection. I helped a group of people just dive in to something that many consider intimidating; I think that probably left them all feeling better, and more confident, than a "talmud 101 using this text as an example" class would have been. I am becoming a big fan of the "just do it" school of teaching.

( footnote )

Entry tags:

daf bits,
talmud

daf bit: (prompted by) Zevachim 50

Today's daf has a long discussion of how some of the rules of talmudic reasoning relate to each other, drawing examples from the laws concerning the temple service. In lieu of that discussion (which does not fit in the margins of this daf bit), I offer a summary of the rules cited on this daf:

Kal v'chomer: I learned this as the "how much the moreso" argument, but it literally means ~~"simple and complex"~~ "lenient and strict" (thanks for the correction). This is the argument that says that if such-and-such (simple, minor) behavior is a problem, then surely thus-and-such amplified version of it is. I understand that there is support for running the logic in the other direction too, though I don't know how that works.
Gezeirah shavah: this is an analogy drawn between two uses of the same word in torah. If the word means such-and-such when used here, then it must mean such-and-such when used over here too, and you can use this reasoning to clarify ambiguous interpretations. I am told that originally this rule applied only in cases where a word appears exactly two times, but that doesn't seem to be the case any more.
Hekkesh: this is an analogy based on facts rather than words, and is sometimes described as being related to the gezeirah shavah. If I understand correctly, this is the rule that's in play when you see reasoning like "if we do such-and-such for a sin offering, then we must do the same thing for a wholeness offering".

The daf also refers to binyan av, which has something to do with a passage serving as a standard for interpreting others, but I lack good examples or a clearer understanding. (There are more rules too; these are just the ones discussed here.)

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a talmudic story

My rabbi and I were recently studying in tractrate B'rachot and came across a story with more drama than you usually find in the talmud. (This story was, of course, not new to my rabbi.) It's described in the commentary as one of the more famous stories in the talmud, but it was mostly new to me. (A tiny part of it shows up in the Pesach haggadah.)

( Read more... )

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daf bit: Bava Kama 116 (and software)

The g'mara discusses cases of group loss. If a caravan is travelling through the wilderness and robbers threaten to plunder it, each person's contribution to buy them off is proportional to the value of his goods. (The cost is not divided evenly among all the people.) This is because the robbers want the goods, not the people. However, if the journey was dangerous enough that they hired a guide, then the number of people must also be accounted for, because a guide guards life too and not just property.

If a ship at sea is threatened by a storm and those on board decide to lighten the load, on the other hand, the division is made according to weight, and each person must remove the same weight. This is so even if one removes gold while another removes copper. (116b) (The factor in the case of the storm is life, not value, so all share the burden equally.)

By the way, Davka currently has the Soncino Talmud on sale for an unspecified period of time. I think they do this about once a year, maybe less often. The current version has features that the one I bought c.2002 (on sale) doesn't have, and I'm going to want a Mac version soon anyway. (I've sometimes felt the lack in not having this software on my iBook, and my next desktop machine is almost certainly going to be a Mac too.) Does anyone out there know of anything better in this space? I do need the English along with the Hebrew. The Windows machine isn't going away (yay VNC), so if I don't buy it I'm just losing out on the laptop and newer features -- I won't lose access completely. But it'll be more of a hassle.

Entry tags:

talmud,
worship

not a daf bit

I had to miss minyan this morning for a doctor's appointment so I didn't prepare a daf bit for the congregation, but here's something my rabbi and I studied this week:

Tractate B'rachot is largely concerned with the whys and hows of prayer. The central prayer of the service, the t'filah (or amidah or shemona esrei), consists of three opening passages, some number of intermediate ones (depending on the day), and three closing ones. Each passage ends with a phrase blessing God for something specific. (That's all by way of background.)

The g'mara teaches (34a-b): these are the benedictions when one bows: the beginning and end of avot (the first passage), and the beginning and end of hoda'ah (one of the closing passages), nowhere else. Rabbi Shimon ben Pazzi said in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, reporting Bar Kappara: this is for an ordinary person; a high priest bows at the end of each blessing; and a king bows at the beginning and end of each. (There is some further discussion of kings.)

I knew that the talmud frowned on the often-seen practice of bowing at the beginning and end of each (and sometimes continuously). What I didn't know is the reason: it's seen here as presumptuous.

Entry tags:

links,
talmud

signal amplication: Dafcast.net

Dafcast.net is producing a new adaptation of the talmud as a podcast. I just listened to tomorrow's daf, which is all stories (so pretty accessible), and I'm looking forward to more of this. The project is young, so if you're interested in helping, they'll be happy to have you. They're looking for translators, scriptwriters, performers, and probably other folks too. I can't help with translation, but I've signed up to try my hand at adaptation/scriptwriting.

This is even enough to get me to learn about setting up podcasts. :-) (I listened to this one on my computer; I assume I can automate a feed once the production rate picks up.)

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interviewed by tangerinpenguin

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

pesach,
talmud

a little talmud

At the end of this morning's service the rabbi did some teaching of his own. (This isn't usual, but through logic that I'll explain if asked and punt otherwise, doing so was useful today specifically.) He brought the mishna about our obligation to remember the exodus from Egypt both during the day and at night. Some of this is in the haggadah; since my family skips that part I was glad to have it here. In short, the torah passage says "all the days", but if it just meant "the days" it could have said so, so "all the days" means day and night. (The torah, like a good technical spec, is not supposed to contain unnecessary words.)

This obligation is fulfilled in the liturgy in the paragraphs after the sh'ma ("I am the lord your god who brought you out of Egypt..."). This passage ends the paragraph about tzitzit (fringes), which (the torah says) we are to wear so that we will see them and remember the mitzvot. We don't wear tzitzit at night (because it says you have to see them; the mishna predates good lighting). So, the rabbi asked, why do we read about tzitzit at night and not just in the morning? He gave Rashi's answer, that we say that paragraph because of the exodus part (and I guess the rest just gets brought along).

I offered a different answer: if we need the fringes to remember the mitzvot, and we need to read about that in the morning even though we're already doing it, then how much the moreso would we need to read that passage at night when we aren't wearing them? To this the rabbi said that I grok talmudic reasoning. :-)

Entry tags:

random bits

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.)

Entry tags:

random bits

(Not dead, just busy. :-) )

Term heard at work: heinosity, as in "the heinosity of this bug is higher than the heinosity of the bad interface fixing it would introduce". I know that "heinousness" is already a word (at least in some dictionaries), but this version is more striking, perhaps by analogy with "bogosity".

(Speaking of vocabulary, I used the "word" "gogetitude" in describing a job candidate recently. People laughed and knew exactly what I meant. :-) )

I got the Golden Compass daemon generator to work a few days ago. I don't know what the different critters mean, but so far mine has morphed from a tiger to a spider to, err, some sort of feline (I'm not sure what that is). There's still time for you guys to go adjust it if you like.

I got a letter today reminding me that my biblical-Hebrew class starts tomorrow. That was polite of them (I signed up weeks ago), but the time in the letter is different from the time in the original catalogue. I wonder which is correct. Fortunately, the letter includes a phone number.

The gas stations I use most often have two rows of (double-sided) pumps, so there are four "lanes" to pull into. These can be approached from either side. Depending on which side of your car holds the access point, you will want either left sides or right sides. You would think it would be possible to develop some sort of convention, so that two lanes go in each direction, one lefty and one righty, but it never seems to work itself out on its own. ("Use the pumps to your right" doesn't seem hard to me...) Tonight while getting gas I waited almost as long for shuffling as for actual fill-ups by people ahead of me. Whee. (Now there's an argument for fuel-efficient cars: reduce trips to the gas station! :-) )

For those wondering what happened with that online talmud-study effort I mentioned a few days ago: the originator started a mailing list and said we'll be starting with introductory stuff (not daf yomi any time soon), and I've heard nothing more from the URJ person. Actual study has not yet commenced. They've announced a book, which sounds so basic that I won't spend money on it but I'll borrow it from a library if I can.

Entry tags:

Internet time

I know, of course, that things happen more quickly on the internet than they did in the Old Days (TM). Even so, this surprised me a little.

( watch this morph before your very eyes )

Entry tags:

timely study

Today in our talmud study my rabbi and I reached the passage in B'rachot (16b) that records the concluding prayers of several sages. The t'filah, the central prayer, has a fixed text, but there is a place to insert personal words at the end. (Over time, some of these have in turn become fixed.) On this day before Yom Kippur, let me share some of these prayers that struck me most strongly.