יחד כלם קדשה לך ישלשו

(Warning - nerdy post to follow)

Settlers of Catan - what a great game. It's absolutely perfect for shabbos afternoons. You can finish a game in less than an hour, it involves up to 4 people (more if you play in teams, which is just as fun), and has just the right combination of luck and skill to allow both inexperienced and experienced folks to enjoy themselves.

Another nice thing about Settlers is that it is entirely constructive - while there is competition, obviously, the way you win the game is by literally constructing cities, roads, settlements, and sometimes armies and "wonders" (somewhat like civilization.) There is quite a bit of luck, but is entirely possible for an experienced player to steamroll 3 other beginners, dominating for the entire game.

Some thoughts on Settlers:

1) The two main strategies, i.e. the wood/clay and the wheat/ore strategy, work surprisingly well against uncoordinated opponents. If there is a guarenteed way to pull this off in the pre-game set-up (usually only the case if you are 4th to go), you have a very strong game ahead of you, especially if you manage to monopolize one of these 4 resources.

2) Monopolizing any one resource, even sheep, is powerful but is more likely to slow down the game than give you an extreme advantage. Usually such a monopoly requires taking bad numbers or being left with only 2 resources at the begining of them game; this usually only works if you have a port. If you own the port of that resource, you will likely win the game.

3) The wheat/ore strategy needs another settlement very, very, quickly, depending on how likely you are to be boxed in. It is usually worth trading 4-1 twice in order to get the clay you need for another settlement.

4) "Mixed" strategies, i.e. merely maximizing your resource probabilities at the beginning of the game without a clear plan, are a great way to come in 2nd place. I usually play to come in either first or last, so strategies which win early or not at all are most appropriate. Diversification is less valuable than it seems, because the first 15-30 dice rolls matter more than all of the rest.

5) By the same token, ganging up on the leader at the end is not always in your best interest. For instance, if you have 7 points, someone has 9, and wants to buy a dev card, it may be worth it to trade him that dev card for 2 clay so that you can take longest road, and still have an iota of chance of winning. If he draws a point, fine, he wins, but if not, you get 9 points and a chance to win yourself.

6) The NTR game is completely different, and requires a much more mathemtical strategy. Point 4 no longer applies, and clay/wood strategy seems to do better.

In closing, I have some wood for your sheep. That is all, good night.

Goodbye Pope John Paul II

IV. CONFESSION OF SINS AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL

Let us pray that, in recalling the sufferings
endured by the people of Israel throughout history,
Christians will acknowledge the sins
committed by not a few of their number
against the people of the Covenant and the blessings,
and in this way will purify their hearts.

God of our fathers,
you chose Abraham and his descendants
to bring your Name to the Nations:
we are deeply saddened by the behavior of those
who in the course of history
have caused these children of yours to suffer,
and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves
to genuine brotherhood
with the people of the Covenant.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
(UNIVERSAL PRAYER CONFESSION OF SINS AND ASKING FOR FORGIVENESS "DAY OF PARDON" PRESENTATION; Vatican Basilica, 12 March 2000)

Astounding. No Jew could have fathomed such remarks even 50 years ago. He was certainly a remarkable man in many respects... I am sure Jose will have more to say soon.

Rachel v. The Lorax: Round 1

Fight!
This story greatly amuses me because both my parents are, in the words of some, "Commie-pinko-leftist-Tree Huggers". That's right, and they are proud of it. My Mom works for the county trying to rid the world of SUVs and my Dad prosecuted Love Canal and most recently he made sure that tax payer dollars were wasted in order that some old rocks be saved from demolition. I have always read the Lorax with much fondness in light of my not-so-crazy tree hugging parents.
I then find the anti-Zev's parents (embodied by Rachel) most amusing. It is almost satirical, lecturing one's child about how deforestation is a good thing. My, the strange people UofC collects.

Humor and Faerie

Some other business to attend to first. Alan sent me this link and it made my otherwise miserable (no food at Bartlett, no deposit envelopes at the ATM, debit card bounced to buy text books, missed bus, got sopping wet, paid too much for dinner- $1.50 for two nature valley peanut butter granola bars and a cup of tap water) day much better. Classic Israeli screwball comedy.

I went in to speak to a certain Israeli professor yesterday about taking his class. "Too many people, I just can't do it." he insisted "I have eleven students, and I am leaving early, how can I give attention to all of them?" Despite impossible odds, there was still hope "Ok, I'll tell you what, I will stay after class with you lehashlim what you missed." (as I can't make the first part of class because of PE)
Rule #1 about old people: They want you to know how much work they put in. They are not faulting you, they love you, but they want you to know that they have to work. I always misunderstood my aunts lists of preparations as a guilt trip until I realized that she just wants me to know that she really cares. It explains so much. P.S. He sends DaSh to Tiki.

As a graduating senior it is my right to take a cool class. Luckily Prof. Fulton and Pick are teaching the Medieval Myth of Tolkein. I have been struggling to understand why it is that I don't like Tolkein that much. He is good, but not an author I rave about. I finally stumbled on the reason, he is not funny. Well there are funny parts (few though) but he essentially sees his writing of Faerie stories (enchanted myth type things) as necessarily serious, because he reasons that if they are made light of than it is impossible to really accept the secondary reality (he writes as much in the Tolkein Reader "On Faerie Stories"). Where as The Princess Bride, a work I will rant about at length, it essentially a satire, which is so moving that it also works as myth/enchantment story (not Faerie per se).
I am really looking forward to this class (at the moment) because I think it will help me ponder my two favorite questions right now: Stories and Humor. I think both are really important, but I don't know why yet. I have more to say on the matter, but I adjourn here for now.

With all due credit to will baude

mr youse needn't be so spry
concernin questions arty

each has his tastes but as for i
i likes a certain party

gimme the he-man's solid bliss
for youse ideas i'll match youse

a pretty girl who naked is
is worth a million statues
-- e e cummings

Million Hour Movie

'Croesus asked who [Solon] thought was [the second happiest person], fully expecting to win second prize. Solon answered, “Cleobis and Biton. They were of Argive stock, had enough to live on, and on top of this had great bodily strength. Both had won prizes in the athletic contests, and this story is told about them: there was a festival of Hera in Argos, and their mother absolutely had to be conveyed to the temple by a team of oxen. But their oxen had not come back from the fields in time, so the youths took the yoke upon their own shoulders under constraint of time. They drew the wagon, with their mother riding atop it, traveling five miles until they arrived at the temple. When they had done this and had been seen by the entire gathering, their lives came to an excellent end, and in their case the god made clear that for human beings it is a better thing to die than to live. The Argive men stood around the youths and congratulated them on their strength; the Argive women congratulated their mother for having borne such children. She was overjoyed at the feat and at the praise, so she stood before the image and prayed that the goddess might grant the best thing for man to her children Cleobis and Biton, who had given great honor to the goddess. After this prayer they sacrificed and feasted. The youths then lay down in the temple and went to sleep and never rose again; death held them there. The Argives made and dedicated at Delphi statues of them as being the best of men.”'
-- Herodotus, Histories

AHHHHH

Last quarter. I am so not ready for this...

חג שמח

Happy Purim Everybody.

I'm writing after a spirited megillah reading in Jerusalem. Although the mention of Haman's name was boo-ed quite often, the most spirited boo-ing came after the following verse:
וישם המלך אחשורש מס על-הארץ ואיי הים

Also heard an interesting bit of Purim Torah. As I'm sure y'all all know, the Torah was written originally without sentence stops and without breaks between the words (much like the ancient Greek and Phoenician forms of writing). Thus the Beginning could be read as follows:
בראשית ברא אל הים את השמים ואת הארץ. . . . ורוח אל הים מרחפת על פני המים

(This reading explains the singular verb.)

Regards to everyone and a Happy Purim to all.

N V T S: NUTS

I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine who lives in the not-so-safe part of Yehuda/West Bank. If he is right about the violence that will ensue following disengagement, I will need severe therapy. How can I be affiliated with the dati-leumi (National Religious) movement after a (potential) stunt like this? They think they are on some mission of Biblical importance. Are they nuts?!!! This rhetoric is insane but these people don't seem to understand that this is considered psychotic in other parts of the world. Like Jose's story of Mitnachlim who shoot arabs and then go to frum-lesbian weddings. WTF?! How do these people get social issues so well, and completely lose political ones???

I am also torn as I realize that reports like this in Arutz Sheva are completely accurate, Israeli police hate Arabs and Settlers-- this is known-- and on the one hand violent police officers is not ok, on the other, neither is planning violent counter insurgence to government operations. It's the B rate ideologues that scare me.

Oh, and apparently my friend is teaching a noncredited course at Bar-Ilan in political philosophy to MA students. Avenu shebashamaim...

Why the Hell not?

Reading Jpost's article on orthodox-frum-women-(albino-eskimo-midget)-rabbis (ok the middle stuff came from a weird song I happened to shuffle past last night) I think to myself, why the Hell not? I understand not inventing legal categories that have never existed before, like letting women count in a minyan, which is even a shaky idea when it is considered in the mishna (and they were pretty liberal back then- hell, they even wanted women to learn torah [Sotah 20.]). Everyone concedes, however, that smicha died a very long time ago (except for maybe the GRA) so that our modern rabbinate is just a synthetic artifice, the same way the DMV is (i.e. it exists for our convenience). That being said, I do not see why women should not be afforded the same opportunities as men*.

I think we can then map this debate on the Andrew Sullivan/Michael Warner homosexual marriage debate. Sullivan would say that we (women) want the same rights and opportunities as plain folk, while Warner would argue that we should not be trying to bolster the current power hierarchy. Oh, and Jerry Falwell would say that they are all damned to hell anyhow, so why should we care**.

Oh, and go check out Volokh.

* I do think that feminism in orthodox is an uber-boring topic of conversation, however, that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be blogged about on (very) rare occasions.
** He would probably give the "women should serve their husbands in the home" line from Ephisians 5:22, but I wanted to continue with the Hell theme of the post.

Congrats

The West Coast is a good place for Abe.

Darth RAL

[As I have the utmost respect for HaRav Lichtenstein, I would never offer any words that might belittle or insult him]

R. Aaron sent the Gush alumni an email *inviting* us to the annual Gush dinner where this year, R. Amital will be honored. Unfortunately R. Aaron's prose comes accross as a tad combersome and at one point I could not help imagining the lines coming out of R. Aaron with a Darth Vader mask*.

I trust you will avail yourself of this opportunity by joining the Har Etzion community at the dinner

Admiral Piet.

* As R. Aaron is a large man with huge hands, thus it is not a difficult picture to construe.

The Onion: Every Time Area Man Drops By, Friend Is Watching The Big Lebowski

(what about my taste in poetry?)

The Unwearable Brightness of Seeing

I finished "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" last night, between 11:59 and 12:00.

Good book.

Happy Pi Day!

Gasp!

Could Bush actually have done something (or possibly many things) right?! (and more importantly, could the NYT be recognizing it!?)

At the very least, Mr. Bush is feeling the glow of the recent flurry of impulses toward democracy in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where events have put him on a bit of a roll and some of his sharpest critics on the defensive. It now seems just possible that Mr. Bush and aides like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz were not wrong to argue that the "status quo of despotism cannot be ignored or appeased, kept in a box or cut off," as the president put it in a speech at the National Defense University here.

"For Bush, a Taste of Vindication in Mideast", By TODD S. PURDUM, NYT, 3/9/05

Images

a map of Mexico city, two hundred years ago
how holy the correlation
pensive pynchon
penny pinching pensions
chinese chicken, alabaster sauce
the cost of daily exercise and
long, sweet beautiful

ANTH 21690

"Patriarchy as Anthropology in the Urban Sphere"
taught by Willowby Dabdul III
visiting professor from Kyle U.
Spring Quarter 2005

textbooks: "The Art of Mackin'" by Tariq "K-Flex" Najif
selections: Chpt. 4, The Cultural Anthropology of a Chickenhead: a Critical Schematic

Pooh on Politics

Oh Bother.

How Many U of C Students...

does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. Shhh! We're trying to study!

Last night at 10:36 the lights in the Reg went off for a good ten minutes and no one budged. Everyone insisted on working by the light of their laptops and that was that. A true UofC moment.

Another good story: My prospie this week told me that his dad was being mugged during exam week in Hyde Park. He informed the mugger, "I don't have time for this!" and went on his way.

Roper v. Simmons

Thank God the court finally struck this down (although 5-4 is far closer than I would have liked). I don't see how this was not obvious, esp. in light of Daryl Renard Atkins v. Virginia. I want to read the decision and post more later.

A little while later:
Intuitively Justice Kennedy's argument just makes sense to me.

The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood. It is, we conclude, the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest. (p. 20)

And really all of (b)(2) on p. 1-2 of the synopsis.
I realize that while I feel very passionately about the matter, I am not a jurist and trained mainly in philosophy, theology and ethics. Thus most of the arguments that I can bring are not from the realm of the legal (re: relevant) but the philosophical/political. Oh well. For now best-of clips:

It has been noted that “adolescents are overrepresented statistically in virtually every category of reckless behavior.” Arnett, Reckless Behavior in Adolescence: A Developmental Perspective, 12 Developmental Review 339 (1992). In recognition of the comparative immaturity and irresponsibility of juveniles, almost every State prohibits those under 18 years of age from voting, serving on juries, or marrying without parental consent. (p. 15)

As for retribution, we remarked in Atkins that “[i]f the culpability of the average murderer is insufficient to justify the most extreme sanction available to the State, the lesser culpability of the mentally retarded offender surely does not merit that form of retribution.” 536 U. S., at 319. The same conclusions follow from the lesser culpability of the juvenile offender. (p.17)

Respondent and his amici have submitted, and petitioner does not contest, that only seven countries other than the United States have executed juvenile offenders since 1990: Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria,the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China. Since then each of these countries has either abolished capital punishment for juveniles or made public disavowal of the practice. (p.23)

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, dissenting: The Court’s decision today establishes a categorical rule forbidding the execution of any offender for any crime committed before his 18th birthday, no matter how deliberate, wanton, or cruel the offense. (p.1)

Indeed, the age-based line drawn by the Court is indefensibly arbitrary—it quite likely will protect a number of offenders who are mature enough to deserve the death penalty and may well leave vulnerable many who are not. (p.16)

Accordingly, for purposes of our decision in Atkins, the mentally retarded are not merely less blameworthy for their misconduct or less likely to be deterred by the death penalty than others. Rather, a mentally retarded offender is one whose demonstrated impairments make it so highly unlikely that he is culpable enough to deserve the death penalty or that he could have been deterred by the threat of death, that execution is not a defensible punishment. There is no such inherent or accurate fit between an offender’s chronological age and the personal limitations which the Court believes make capital punishment excessive for 17-year-old murderers. (p.16)

Justice Scalia dissenting: What a mockery today’s opinion makes of Hamilton’s expectation, announcing the Court’s conclusion that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years—not, mind you, that this Court’s decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed. The Court reaches this implausible result by purporting to advert, not to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, but to “the evolving standards of decency,” ante, at 6 (internal quotation marks omitted), of our national society. (p.1)

Even laterer:

1. Upon rethinking I realize that Atkins is not a fortiori to Roper, but yes, I am against the death penalty. Hobbes defines cruelty in De Cive as that which looks back and not forward. It seems to me that the death penalty punishes the criminal based on the heinousness of their action and not to protect society from that person, or allow the criminal to reform. That being said, my opinion is irrelevant because our Supreme Court does not believe the death penalty to be either cruel or unusual.

2. Listening to Jacob's good advice I read Scalia's dissent of Atkins v. Virginia. Scalia, per usual, shows why he is brilliant and explains that and "evolving standard of decency" is not the best of arguments to make. He then examines the objective evidence for the evolving standards, which are tenuous. To that end I agree with Mr. Thunder that looking for national consensus is not the best idea. That is to say looking at the various states of the Union and how they legislate does not strike me as the best way of determining standards, the purpose of having states rights is not to enforce uniformity. Just because 26 states do not have the death penalty does not mean that we ought to coerce the remaining 24. To that end I am more comfortable with looking at the rest of the world for these standards of decency. As a matter of policy I do not think it wise to attempt to achieve moral parity with the EU, but the fact that the only countries to have executed minors since 1990 were Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria,the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China does make it seem a little laughable that we would attempt to do so.

3. Trying minors as adults has always baffled me. How can you call an apple a pear, when it is in fact a pear? Assuming that minors are held to a lighter standard of the law, the harshest punishments should be reserved for only those who possess full status under the law. Echoing Justice Kennedy, minors do not have the right (re: competence) to sign contracts or vote. This is a categorical (arbitrary) rule whereby one who is born one day earlier may vote, while another, born later, may not. Once we hold that minors lack this competence, they should lack it in all domains of the law.

It fundamentally bothers me that some reason that if a child commits a calculated crime, it must mean that he has a calculating sense of moral reasoning. Computers can calculate, but they cannot be tried for murder. Children can be very smart, but not wise; wisdom can only come with age. It is the wisdom that allows us to understand the consequences of our actions. While 18 does seem arbitrary, we assign arbitrary standards all the time to proclaim when and where responsibilities fall. It is impossible to believe that kids (yes 17 years olds are still kids- have you seen the prospies?) can understand the full moral implication of their actions. Like the story of Cain and Abel, Cain understood what killing was, but he did not yet understand murder.

I apologize to all the legal feet I have just trampled on.

A Good Story

After a truly craptastic day, I could not do anything except retreat to 3W and watch the PB. One of two movies that can rectify most any mood that I am in. As I was watching the movie feature after the movie, I think that all the people associated with the movie kinda got it wrong, except Mandy Patankin. He said that when he read the line "You killed my father, prepare to die" he could not help but think of his father who had died of cancer a decade earlier. Through this myth, he was coming to terms with his own life. Good fairy tales allow us to reflect on things and mythologize them, as we cannot do ourselves, because we can never be at the center of our own myth. Stories are not just for kids.
Ben, Rebecca and I were talking about the celebrity myth making culture (after I exclaimed that I liked watching the Oscars- a festive evening I abstained from to watch PB, fittingly). The only intelligent thing I had to say was that celebrity myth making is important because there need to be mythical characters in our world. Every child is in awe of their parent. "Wow, my Dad is a doctor." you think to yourself. Problem is when you actually become that doctor (lo alaynu), it ceases to be so magical. You can never be at the center of your own myth.
Movies do it though. More than theater, more than music. When movies are shot, they do not resemble the final product. When you see the movie, in its finished form, the acotrs are no longer at the center of the myth. I think that is part of the appeal of movies, no one, not even the actors that shoot the movies, are the ultimate keepers of the stories and myths they create. I wonder how this fits into my larger ideas of Hobbes' story of the Common-Wealth, and the Jewish notion of Yetziat Mitzraim and Maamad Har Sinai?

Side Note: I am really happy about the Oscar results. This is the first year in a while hat I can remember being happy with Oscar outcomes (or not being sad). MDB won for best picture, director, best use of Morgan Freeman and actress. Sideways (which I have not seen) won for best adapted screenplay and Eternal Sunshine won for best original screenplay. As screenplay is often given to the movie which, if the Oscar were more avant garde, would have been nominated for best picture- I am always happy when cool movies win, e.g. Eternal Sunshine.
To disagree with Caryn James of NYT I think that MDB won all those awards because Hollywood likes ol' timey movies. The kind that we like so much that we can imagine watching them with our grandparents and grandchildren. LotR is not one of those movies. Neither of my two grandparents would (have) understand WTH was going on and would have been quite bored. LotR is a lot of smoke and very little movie. While Hollywood likes larger-than-life, I think it likes ol'-timey better, which is why they gave such resounding approval to MDB (I stole much of this last rant from Jr. Ginsbu).

Only Connect

So, lately I've been checking israel news daily. This is fairly unusual for me, but for a while there, it looked liked big things were about to happen. Shame about the terrorism. Today, I read this on haaretz:

The cabinet on Sunday approved Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposal to increase by 40 percent stipends allotted by the government to yeshiva students aged 23 and up. The move will not affect the state budget, as at the same time, the government will decrease stipends allotted to yeshiva students under the age of 23.

(Sigh.)

In other news, I went to a hooka bar last night, and smoked some tabacco. That's about as exciting as it sounds. I also finally saw "Sideways", which was quite good, but not astoundingly amazing (Giamatti is better in American Splendor, which you might want to see if you like that sort of thing.) Had a pretty dreadful shabbos (nothing dramatic, just nothing went well) after a pretty dreadfull erev shabbos (work stuff, ask me if you care.)

I haven't posted poetry in a while, so here's Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." This poem is way, way, way too much.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Have a good week everybody.

Greatest Movie Review Ever

"No, "Constantine" is not part of a trilogy including "Troy" and "Alexander." It's not about the emperor at all, but about a man who can see the world behind the world, and is waging war against the scavengers of the damned. There was a nice documentary about emperor penguins, however, at Sundance this year. The males sit on the eggs all winter long in like 60 degrees below zero." (From Roger Ebert's Review of "Constantine")
It took me a minute to get the connection. And then I cried.

As If

I got to talk with two of my Rebeim last night. Twas awesome. First R. (Y) Blau came to speak from Hamivtar on halachik decisions concerning non-halachik matters (a crazy Gush concept). It was interesting, if a bit rushed. Bkitzur, he is very cool.
Then I went over to Jim Blocks and we talked for three hours!(!!). People wonder why I don't go over there more often. The first reason is that he is so frigin busy, but on top of that, how often can I spend three hours doing anything? Twas very sha've. What follows is a rant that I constructed:

When Hobbes sets out on the project of creating the modern nation state (common wealth) he does so by embarking on a completely artificial project. Hobbes himself says in the authors preface to the Leviathan that he is creating this state, because no such artifice exists without the invention of man. The model of "as if" (think ke'ilu) is employed in the beginning of pt. II chpt 18 (elsewhere as well) when Hobbes says that a commonwealth consists of a group of people coming together in agreement, and covenanting to assign a man or body as their ruler. This founding action (myth) of liberalism never actually happened (Locke deals with this [I hope] in the 2nd Treatise section 101), but it is a really good story, so we all accept it. Hobbes even leaves open the possibility that we won't accept the myth, at which point he says "fine, rise up, see what I care?" but if you loose, treason is punishable by torture. If you feel like you have enough numbers, sure go ahead, worse comes to worse and you just go back to the state of war.
It is the "As If" model that I really like. Shani and I were talking this summer and I was saying that there are two ways of looking at history. The first is as a point on a space time map (not a spacetime map). Lat. 42 long. 42 12:00:00a 2/22/05 exists on this plot, I can go there (theoretically) and poke about. The second conception of history is the sequential (diachronic*) view where I know something happened, because historically, it occurred at a specific place and has had implications on my life and the world around me. This would also imply that even if something happened in the first model, it might not necessarily have ant corollary in the second model. How? Well if Joe Chumus lived and died in 322 BCE in the middle of nowhere Arabia, he was not a part of my history, cause frankly, he did not matter. I think the "coke cans" model** of Maamad Har Sinai is a very similar idea. That is we construct the model of history "keilu hu yatza". We create an "as if" model, where we retroject a historical event (which may very well have happened even in the boring first model of history) that has a profound impact on our lives.
This keilu has always bothered me. What does it mean that we imagine ourselves "as if" we left Egypt. We didn't leave Egypt, and even if we ourselves did, we are certainly not doing a very good job of reenacting it. The Muslims go on the Haj, that is a good reenactment. Why don't we go down to Egypt, flee to the Red Sea, and then take hovercrafts to saftey on the Sinai peninsula? That would be a much better "as if". Our "as if" is one of nation building. It is one where we retroject a model as if we were freed from Egypt. Just as in the current model of the liberal as if, it does not matter if and group of people ever created a commonwealth. Our Seder is one where we consider the formative implications of the Yetziah.
Jim said that the secret of all these stories is that they created their nation ex nihilo. Hobbes creates citizens from rational animals in the SON (SOW), Moshe creates Jews from Egyptians (see all the myriad of midrashim about how Jews were on the 49th level of tumah, 4/5 of the Jews dies in makat hoshech, and others which talk about the Jewish depravity in Egypt)and Jesus was a Jew. These are all the dirty secrets we "as if" away, but they are really cool parts of our retrojected history.

*I have never used this word before, but I looked it up, and I think it fits here. It seems to be "one of those words" that academic people-types use.
**Brought to my attention by Miriam G. (because I am just not that smart) via Tamar Ross. The line goes something like: Even if I saw the coke cans from Maamad Har Sinai, it would not affect my emunah.

Kedoshim Tihyu.

Kedoshim Tihyu.

Kedoshim Tihyu.

Mishnayot

I put up the list for mishnayot lzecher my grandmother online here. If you want to take one just email me.
I also posted a new easter egg.
Here I go, slightly mad.

iTunes vs Napster

I love threads posted by irate computer geeks on slashdot. That being said, the Napster website provides a dearth of information on how their magical "all you can eat" service works.

Re:One small change would make all the difference. (Score:5, Insightful)
by splatterboy (815820) on Saturday February 12, @12:52PM (#11652591)

"As long as I could keep the songs after Ive cancelled my subscription, if I choose to do so in the future, I'd most likely subscribe to a service like this for a long time."

Is this a rhetorical staement or are you under the impression that this is what the Napster service is or what they are planning to do?

If so you're missing the point - YOU DO NOT GET TO KEEP THE SONGS. YOU DO NOT OWN THE SONGS. In a subscription service YOU WILL NEVER GET TO KEEP THE SONGS. That's the point of their buisiness model and their DRM.

This is getting to be like an apple thread where people would mention over and over that they are waiting for an X86 port of OSX or a cheaper, say, $500 Mac (oops, lost that excuse...)

If you think your model is such a great idea, why dont you start a company and give it a shot?

Because it hasn't worked and won't work. itune sells at $.99 per song and makes the tinyest profit after a couple of years... you think $14 per month for thousands of songs per subscription/month is even worth the time you took to post?

I cant wait for all the suckers to go out and sign up for Napster (sic) then start whinning about how f*scked up their files are either because of the M$ DRM or a hardware issue and now "their" music is "gone". Lets just hope said snivelling doesn't make it to /.

Pt 2. My New Shuffle
So after weeks of wait I finally got a Shuffle 1 gb. It is great save a few problems I have had. 1. When I pause it on occation it turns off. I have to turn it off and back on, which is mildly annoying. 2. The randomizer randomly chooses songs and then puts them back into the set. So after you have played the first half of your songs you have more than 50% chance of hearing a song you have already heard. This means it can take a while to hear every song on the little thing. 3. If you try to listen through, it is hard to figure out what you have already heard. e.g. you stop it and then restart it.
I like my new bubble of music, and don't intend to leave anytime soon.

ברוך דין אמת

Nonny
Ruth Berger Cohen (1913-2005)

אשת חיל מי ימצא, ורחוק מפנינים מכרה
בטח בה לב בעלה, ושלל לא יחסר
גמלתהו טוב ולא רע, כל ימי חייה
דרשה צמר ופשתים, ותעש בחפץ כפיה
היתה כאניות סוחר, ממרחק תביא לחמה
ותקם בעוד לילה, ותתן טרף לביתה, וחוק לנערותיה
זממה שדה ותקחהו, מפרי כפיה נטעה כרם
חגרה בעוז מתניה, ותאמץ זרועותיה
טעמה כי טוב סחרה, לא יכבה בלילה נרה
ידיה שלחה בכישור, וכפיה תמכה פלך
כפה פרשה לעני, וידיה שלחה לאביון
לא תירא לביתה משלג, כי כל ביתה לבוש שנים
מרבדים עשתה לה, שש וארגמן לבושה
נודע בשערים בעלה, בשבתו עם זקני ארץ
סדין עשתה ותמכור, וחגור נתנה לכנעני
עוז והדר לבושה, ותשחק ליום אחרון
פיה פתחה בחכמה, ותורת חסד על לשונה
צופיה הליכות ביתה, ולחם עצלות לא תאכל
קמו בניה ויאשרוה, בעלה ויהללה
רבות בנות עשו חיל, ואת עלית על כולנה
שקר החן והבל היופי, אשה יראת ה' היא תתהלל
תנו לה מפרי ידיה, ויהללוה בשערים מעשיה

Snow in Jerusalem: the view from our kitchen 

After The End

I had a wonderful time in Puerto Rico. Everyone should do it; twice. I would blog more about it, but I doubt it will ever happen.

The Buffalo has hit the fan. In all my ranting about Western New York I never actually believed the place was as doomed as we made it sound. Apparently I was wrong. What do you do after the apocalypse? Thousands of layoffs. No more parks (even if they are a tax on the poor, they are still pretty). No more Zoo. No more libraries. No more Buffalos. So depressing.

I really feel like democracy has failed. Really and truly. Both sides, the legislature and the County Comptroller balked at raising taxes, and as a result Buffalo will die. Democracies don't do this. This is what de Tocqueville worried about and for some reason has never come to pass. Elected officials just decide to roll over and play dead. Now what? We can't make them be not-stupid.

Also, my Nonny is very ill...

Goodnight room. Goodnight moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon. Goodnight little house. Goodnight little mouse. Goodnight clocks and goodnight socks. Goodnight kittens and goodnight mittens. Goodnight comb and brush. Goodnight to the little old lady whispering, "hush". Goodnight stars. Goodnight air.

Goodnight noises everywhere.

- Goodnight Moon, By: Margaret Wise Brown, Illustrated by: Clement Hurd; Harper Collins Press 1947

a bird dies, a dream lives

My roomate brought home a live chicken sunday, and killed it. It was a treifa. I got to do a new m'doraisa I had never done before, "al kisui dam b'afar".

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, about my "personal life". I think I am unsatisfied with it, for a completely unexpected reason. I am also, as usual, confused about the women in my life, mostly because I'm 21 and don't know what I want. For some reason, the Philip Glass I am currently listening to sums it up perfectly.

To anyone out there who does not reign over apes, I assign the following task: procure a copy of Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49", open to chapter 2, and read the first paragraph. This is extremely important. Less important, but recommended, is reading the rest of the book, what is rather bizarre but full of brilliant, subtle prose.

The music switched to Mogwai (ok, I helped it a little bit.) Baruch Hashem.

Science and Error

My new question, which I really would like someone to answer for me is: What does error mean in science?

So I think it should be a two part answer. The first part consists of inaccuracy of models and equipment. Science will say "This is accurate down to 10^-10" which means that either (a) external stuffs in nature make it too difficult for our devices to measure said phenomenon [Uninteresting] or (b) the model we are using is flawed past a certain degree of accuracy [more interesting] In this case, Science knows where the barriers to its own models are, and tells you when it stops being a good tool. In theory some version of GUFT or TOE (Grand Unified Field Theory or Theory of Everything) would not have this sort of error.

The second part to the answer is error which we expect. That is to say in any test we expect between 15-30% of the data to miss the mark. So our theory somehow cannot account for these points of error. On some level I understand that statistics accounts for this, but it is still not simple. Even on a super-quantum scale (ie the scientific world not fundamentally tied into statistics) why should we expect to see this form of error? How and why is science limited by statistics in what it can measure and how often it can measure it?

This gained new momentum in my mind when during Law and Social Theory class we discussed the impact of science on social theory. During the premodern period people believed that Science was God's headlight, leading man in the proper direction. After science was severed from theology, science still took on more of a descriptive nature- what do we observe? But with the advent of particle physics in the mid 19th century incredibly precise models are being theorized which allow for us, based on mathematical laws (e.g. F=ma), to predict what we are going to see. Every exception to a rule becomes a path for scientific inquiry, a possibility to create a new rule. Social theory takes this and appears to do the following: There are no exceptions to the rule. Those who we consider abnormal are perfectly normal, rather out models and conceptions of normal are skewed. Social theory has fought the battle to normalize the abnormal for the last century.

Does the notion of error analysis apply to social theory?

A Horst is a Horst, of Course of Course

When I woke up this morning and went outside, I saw German flags flying on the streets. Fearing the worst, I returned home and quickly checked the news. It turns out, German President Horst Kohler is here to visit Jerusalem. In fact he was driving up and down my street all night and this morning making quite a racket with a host of limousines and Israeli police vehicles. No coup, no invasion -- just a German president driving to visit the Israeli president, prime minister, and Knesset.

Speaking of the Kenesset, he's supposed to speak there today. Many MK's are boycotting the speech because it will be in German, the language that the nazi's spoke. But as Yosef Lapid, himself a holocaust survivor, points out (cf. Jerusalem Post), Theodor Herzl also wrote his book Der Judenstat in German. Now obviously Mr. Kohler won't be speaking in Hebrew, but I think I have a reasonable compromise: why not speak in Yiddish?

When does Easter Fall?

Entering into a discussion with my co-worker at the Reg about Easter, I was wondering how one determined when the holiday falls each year. Turns out we're not the only ones with a whacky calendar.

As it comes up in Google searches a fair amount:
March 23, 2008
April 12, 2009
April 4, 2010

My rabbi quit today. I think I may cry.

I will never ceased to be amazed

Are people just stupid, or malicious? I'll let you decide.

What Kind of Elitist I Am

On Zev's recommendation, I took the Elitist Test. My results: apparently I'm a "Book and Language Snob". Here's their description of me:

"You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every book ever published. You are a fountain of endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and never fail to impress at a party. What people love: You can answer almost any question people ask, and have thus been nicknamed Jeeves. What people hate: You constantly correct their grammar and insult their paperbacks."

Now, in my defense, this is not all strictly speaking correct. For one thing, I do not insult people's paperbacks. For another, I don't remember people being all that impressed at parties.

My, How Far Apple Has Come

/. linked to a really provoking article at I, Cringley about what Apple may be able to do. iFlix sounds like the coolest thing ever (not that they have gone and done it yet) and it is amazing to realize the potential of Mr. Jobs.

During the 90's (when Apple was Jobless, as it were) Mac was doomed. Microsoft needed to step in to keep Apple afloat to avoid its own anti-trust woes (even now Microsoft developers work closely with Apple to ensure that Office if fully compatible with Windows [An Office-less Apple would be a rotten one for sure]). I condemned Apple's practice of controlling the source of production for all its hardware, even as the Clones were killing the Apple franchise. At the dawn of 2005 Jobs looks not only like a Messiah (which he was in '99 (?) when he returned to Apple) but also a marketing genius. By creating kick-ars software, that leads the industry in what it does and ease of use, Jobs has finally been able to do what has never been attempted since 1984, give the PC a run for it. Just as no one could see back in 1980, when Macintosh first appeared, that the personal computer would be ubiquitous to the world of 2000, no one could imagine how Apple's model of making the computer the center of the digital home could transform computers. By lowered prices (finally!) and dropping the strickly high-end market business model, Apple is taking a huge leap, attempting to create the iPod style iBox for the prosumer.

The iPod is amazing in its own right. Who could have guessed that people would be willing to shell out $300 for a thing to listen to music? A really nice diskman was $200 and no one had those, they were for rich middle-age people. But iPod created a demand for something people didn't know they couldn't live without. I am considering buying an iPod and even though there are cheaper alternatives merely because the iTunes is that good. The razor is so good, I can't justify buying any other blade. Now with the Mac Mini they are trying phase II, and over-priced home entertainment system. Can the market support it? Someone must think so.

The difference is that iTunes preceded the iPod (from what I remember). Here there is no software that the Mac Mini will immediately latch on to. In all fairness the Mac Mini is not being billed as a home entertainment anything, but just a cheap option to Switch. It does set itself up well though. Creating the demand is the key. Apple must convince all of us young rich people that we want an expensive home theater that can stream HDTV, radio and movies and that we have the funds to afford it.

It is just amazing for the moment to reflect that a company which has failed for so long with its business model, which combined the software and hardware development, is now on the verge of being so successful with both. Who knew. (A. My Dad)

There is a difference, zev.

"I give thanks to thee, O Lord, my God, that thou hast set my portion with those who sit in the house of instruction, and has not set my portion with those who sit in street corners, for I rise early and they rise early, but I rise early for words of Torah and they rise early for frivolous talk; I labour and they labour, but I labour and receive a reward, and they labour and do not receive a reward; I run and they run, but I run to the life of the world to come and they run to the pit of destruction."

There are different ways to toil. From ShemaYisroel.co.il, on this weeks parsha:

The Ha'amek Davar adds an additional dimension to the concept of 'Am Segulah'. Before Matan Torah, he explains, anyone was able to serve G-d, each in his own individual way. But once the Torah was given, this changed. There are many gentiles who are ready to become servants of Hashem, he explains. It is no longer possible to achieve this however, unless one converts to Judaism and accept the entire Torah. Which is what the Torah means when it concludes "because the whole world belongs to Me". Even though all the nations belong to Hashem, the Pasuk is saying, there is only one treasury - Yisrael, and there is no way of becoming treasured by Him, other than via that treasury.

The avodah chazal talk about, of course, is avodas hashem.

In other news, I did dance and sing yesterday. Have a good shabbos everybody!

Arbeit Macht Frei

As the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp has been in the news a lot I cannot help but reflect on the iron sign which stands frozen in the landscape of history, "Arbeit Mach Frei". I hate that sign; I hate it because it is true. As I work in the Reg late into the night I cannot help but think of that motto. It seems to parody not only a attitude I greatly identify with, but also many maimerim of Chazal (e.g. HaYom katzar ve'melacha merubah or Al te'ye eved she'oved...). We are working, we are always working and toiling, for ourselves and for Hashem. And they turned it against us...
"זכר את אשר עשה לך עמלק" (Deut. 25:17)
As to V.P. Cheney's remarks ("The story of the camps reminds us that evil is real and must be called by its name and confronted." - NYT) No. The camps remind us that even our civilized brethren, Ubermenschen, as it were, can also be mass murderers. It is not a problem for others, but a problem for ourselves. We must guard against becoming the animals that the Nazis became.

On the Road to Damascus

For the vast part of my life I have puzzled over the line from "Yankee Doodle" (not a song about the Rebbe's son) "Stuck a feather in his hat and call it macaroni". None of my teachers in school could satisfy my mystification over that line. A feather is not a piece of pasta!!!
Lo, and behold! My boss at the Reg (Taylor) informed me of an alternate definition for macaroni:

2. A dandy or fop; spec. (in the second half of the 18th cent.) a member of a set of young men who had travelled in Europe and extravagantly imitated Continental tastes and fashions. (OED.com)

Now it makes sense! Hazzah!

(P.S.) I am far behind my work in school, so communication will be sparse. Except of course if something traumatic happens, say (to pick a random example) someone gets stabbed in the school-yard and you want to talk about it.
(PPS) In honor of Apple's 21st B-Day I changed the Easter Egg. When I get time I will change it for real.

Million Dollar Movie

I just feel impelled to post a little something about this moive I saw last night. Million Dollar Baby is a great film, and one of the heaviest movies I can remember. After the movie two of the people I was with bounced up; I lay anchored to my seat. If you want to read about the movie, Roger Ebert recaps this movie well (wo spoiling it!). I just can't remember the last time I felt such sympathy for the protagonist, as if I were there, in the gym, at the ring... I am very happy that the year after LotR won best picture, with a bugdet larger than many small counties GDP, this movie has a strong chance this year. MDB, which is just about movie making; lights, camera and action/acting.

Unrelated, I was thinking about Teshuva this weekend, and realized that it presumes the linear progression of time. That is for every x (time) there exists a point in space y (or the space of one's moral character), related by some aribtrary function, or whatnot. I sort of like the idea that time can loop back on itself, or exist in more than 1-D space. What really bothers me is that it seems to flagrently violate Zeno's paradox. How can now be mechapper then? The two are independent. My thought was that Rachamim is supposed to account for just that. Rachamim is the thing that we don't deserve, but we get anyway, due to this love/mercy (which I don't understand other to say that it is the answer to the paradox). But I don't know that it makes much sense...

Palestinian Police

Just to get something straight. I was told that there are about 25,000 people on the payroll of the Palestinian Police as of this summer. That between 1000-2,500 are being deployed seems underwhelming.

Thoughts on a Second Mid-East Democracy

Having returned early from the shuk on account of a bomb scare, I have found myself with some spare time to post to the blog.

In chapter 5 of The Prince, Machiavelli says, "When those states that are acquired, as has been said, are accustomed to living by their own laws and in liberty, there are three modes for those who want to hold them: first ruin them; second, go there to live personally; third, let them live by their laws. . . . For since such a state has been created by that prince, it knows it cannot stand without his friendship and power, and it has to do everything to maintain him. And a city used to living free may be held more easily by means of its own citizens than in any other moder, if one wants to preserve it" (Mansfield translation, University of Chicago Press: 1998). The examples Machiavelli then proceeds to give of those who tried the third mode are the Spartans and the Romans -- both republics.

Although the Israels have for a long time now tried some sort of mixture of all three modes, it appears that they are finally settling for the third mode. Problem is: it isn't clear that Palestine is a state "accustomed to living by [its] own laws and in liberty". If I recall correctly, even after the Palestinians were freed from Jordanian tyranny, they have resisted every attempt to allow them to live by their own laws and in liberty. Even generous offers of autonomy and control of territory have been rejected in favor of more suicidal public policy.

Yet Israel may have solved this problem by establishing not only a democracy for the Palestinians, but also borders for their territory. Perhaps like the Israeli republic, the Palestinians also seem to have no constitution. The moderate terrorist Abbas is also a new hopeful for the fledgling democracy, despite the fact that links between his Al Aksa Suiciders and the recent bombings in Gaza might seem to undermine his intentions toward any sort of peace with Israel. A strong enough wall, however, between Israel and Palestine should prevent most serious infringements on Abbas's desire for peace and stability.

Nonetheless, for those of us who live on the democratic frontier, there is more to worry about from across the border than a few Mexicans looking for work.

Newsflash: Science Tries to Explain Observed Phenomenon

WRT Mr. Summers remarks, (and kind of responding to Sean Carroll) I just can't find them so offensive. Back in the day when the Moderns tried to live according to Natural Law, such a remark would have been damning. By saying that it is not society, but rather nature that has put women in their place, the Moderns believed that society should attempt to preserve the Natural Order.
We now use science not as a tool for levying judgment, but rather to help humanity (ok, try to help). So if we see that a family is short, we will give them the option of giving GhG to the kids to help them grow taller. We don't say "You are bad because you are short." If science were to determine that women in fact were at a disadvantage then we could find ways to equal the balance.
Aside for the role of science, many people are gifted with many different talents. Venus Williams could kick my ass in tennis. But she is a woman, you respond. Doesn't matter, she could still kick my ass. Point is just because women are worse at some things than men does not mean that any given specimen is better or worse than any other. In tennis, however, we have seating to tell us who is better than who. In science there is a lot more to do, such as hard work, asking the right questions, rigorous quant. analysis etc. So even physicist who are not as good as others can still "be the best". (all my physics profs claim that they were "not the best in their class"). Thus, why any individual women gets offended is beyond me.
Even if we do say that women don't get it as fast as men, we are only making a descriptive comment, we are not saying anything prescriptive. As a closing comment; if there is discrimination against women it must be aressted. That is independent, in my mind, from saying that there might also be gender proclivities.

Stranded in Buffalo

I think I have figured something out. My life is stranded in Buffalo. I am stranded within a small Jewish and academic community which never really grows and never really shrinks. It just stays small. Everyone talks about leaving, but no one can. You wish it got bigger, you wish more people would come (like you), but it never happens. You resign yourself to live in Buffalo because you are not bold enough to leave and not dumb enough to move to Teaneck.
Hamevin Yavin.

1 Weekend

2 Airports
6 Minyanim
1.3 lbs of Meat per person
64 oz of Salsa (4 lbs!)
3 lbs of Tortilla Chips
2 tubs of Gummy Bears
4 boxes of Matt's Cookies
29 beers
300 ml of Argle-Bargle (Ardbeg 10)
500 ml of Vodka
196 oz of OJ
23 Jeremy stories (give or take)
2 kugels
1 chulent
2 Movies
1 lecture on Social Justice (JFREJ)
1 Shiur by Shmuel
= 1 weekend*
For everything else, there's NY
Thanks Oren.
* see, I can do arithmetic.

I am un chien! Andalusia!

THANK everyone for a wonderful stay in Chicago. You all rock. Go you.

Charles Mingus rocks.

I had a funny day at work last thursday, another long conversation with my boss where another dimension (literally) of my job which I had been previously unaware of was revealed to me. So much to learn, so little time. It's somewhat ironic that after all these years I'm ending up as, basically, an engineer. I was always different from most of the other mathy/technical people I knew, much more "theoretical" and pure-math minded - a number of my professors in high school had me pegged for a math professor, as did my family and most of my friends. It's fitting that I trade exotics in the interest rate space, pretty far out there on the theoretical/intuitional side of things. I am however, a trader, different from a "quant" (researcher); at the end of the day, I need to make money (the equivalent of an engineer's bridge remaining intact), and I am far, far, far more grounded than most researchers are forced to be. It seems to be a good fit for me so far - I have a personality which is better suited to one-week or shorter term problems than things beyond that horizon (though I'm also pretty certain that my intellect is aligned in exactly the opposite way.) Whether or not this is my "true calling", I'm very well situated - surrounded by great people, with a great "team" dynamic (I realize this sounds like management rubbish, but it happens to be true) and a willingness to spend time on junior members and bring them up to speed. The people are also generally more interesting than, well, the stereotype of Wall Street.

I've decided to start reading again, which I am doing. What do new yorkers who work crazy hours do for books? The NY Public Library is apparently never open and rather annoying to get books from. I may just start buying books and amass a collection, but having stacks to browse really makes choosing books a lot easier, and, well, I miss libraries. I think I may have to settle for reserving books online and going downtown to one of the central libraries to get them (they're open a bit later than the ones up north.)

You should all see the movie "Zorba The Greek." That's all for today, I'm off to bed.

Making the Impersonal Personal

This afternoon we (inc. Rebecca Feldman) were partaking of a leisurely lunch, discussing celebrity gossip as we digested a heavy chulent. Half asleep we played the rather obnoxious game of "Hot or not Hot".

"A Certain Actress in Holywood."
"She's ok."
"I was in a class on Brecht with her at (blank) and not only did she look like trash, but she was also making comments, which were rather uninteresting."

Woah. I did not think this game could get personal like that. Sheesh.

Best Movies

Here it is. The final version (or ver. 1.0 at least) of the best movies before 1980, courtesy of my Dad. Be advised though, they are not all the movies, e.g. not every Ingmar Bergman movie is there, just one (maybe a few). That is not to say that the movies don't merit, just that you can't put them all in your top 100 (or so).

Thoughts on Abbas (overdue)

I think that his election is not bad, but certainly not the best thing. He is a "moderate" and not as corrupt as Arafat. This means he might actually live up to future agreements and money that the international community will provide to the Pals will not be stolen (at least not as much). I think that the attack yesterday at the Karni border crossing is evidence of Abbas' weak position (ie the lack of a swift Pal response is evidence of a "slow" transition"). People elected him to be the leader of a state, not the leader of a revolution. That is, I do not think it is Abbas that will be strong enough to end the violence or foster a new Palestinian understanding of the world (like possibly Dahlan or Barguti). To compare to Russian history, he might be a Gorbitchov, but he is no Yeltsin (and even a Putin can follow a Yelstin).
I think it is also helpful to think about what we hope from the Palestinians under the term of Abbas. An end to terror is slowly coming based purely on the difficulty of carrying out the attacks. The real thing I think we can hope of Abbas is creating a strong federal infrastructure. That (not with all the Jeffersonian checks and balances) I think he can accomplish with some modicum of success.

Day off

I have MLK day off. What should I do? Call me.

Translation of Euripides' Chrysippus (Fr. 839)

אין דבר נולד שמת

אלא חלקיו מתפרקים כל אחד למקומו

ויקבלו צורה אחרת

I.V.Tea

"If f is continuous on [a,b] and K is any number between f(a) and f(b), then there is at least on number c in the interval (a,b) s.t. f(c)=K"
-Salas et al "Calculus: one variable" 8th edition

I was thinking about this in the context of my cup of tea this evenning. It is funny how the mind plays little tricks on us. In my mind I know a time where the tea is too hot, and then a time where it is too cold, so I imagine that there is a time when the tea is at just the right temperature. I may never have even drank tea at said temperature, but in my mind's-eye, I know I have.
Kinda like life...

A Creative Misreading of texts - Harold Bloom

A Relative disreading of lex - Daryn Gloom
A belated misfeeding of tex - Larry Cloon
An unpropitiated grating of hex - Marry Loon
An unsubstantiated mating of hens - Karen Toom
A recalcitrant dating from Friends -Lauren Goon
A malcontent hating of Ken's -Barry Moon
...a substantial gating, for soon... The Hapless Spoon

The bicycle uttered for the last time and fell to bits.
Indeed.
(I should note - after a long and drawn out BA session concerning plagiarism - that the last two lines are not mine, but that of the late Edward Gorey's "The Epiplectic Bicycle")

Forged Inscriptions

There is now much controversy in the Land of Israel. The IAA (The Reshut HaAtikot, or Israel Archaeological Authority) claims that five men lead an operation to forge inscriptions on relics and pass them off as real. These relics are some of the most notable ever found and include the Jehoash inscription, James' ossuary and the Solomonic pomegranate.
I was so happy with the news. Hershel Shanks, my least favorite man in archeology has used his magazine BAR (Biblical Archaeology Review) to promote these artifacts which are obviously fakes (esp. the ossuary) and continue the debate surrounding these items long after the archaeological community has proclaimed these items inauthentic. Now he looks like a total fool.
I told my former boss at the IAA of my enthusiasm and he told me, "An indictment doesn't mean a conviction. Lets see who looks like fools in the end." In light of this he showed me today's posting on the ANE listhost (great listhost, BTW for anyone interesting in archaeology you get to keep up on all the current discourse for free) on behalf of Robert Deutch which is certainly interesting, and to be considered. You can also check out this thread from today's postings which are abound with discussion of the matter.
Which leads me to another matter. What does the ROM insist on still showing the relic of the ossuary? If reputable collection will pay good money for these artifacts it will create a market for forgeries (duh). These museums seem to care more about grabbing headlines than presenting real works. Not to broach the discussion concerning how relevant relics are (theologically, etc), but (in as much as it is important) it is not fair to be honest with patrons as you are their only source for objectivity. It is sort of like a judge saying "Well this is a small torts case, it doesn't really matter who I award the money to." Economically it will not set of fireworks if small claims courts were somehow arbitrary, but we need faith in the system, at all levels. Here at the highest levels museums seem not to care that objects which they present the public are highly controversial at best.

Being Unbored

So as break ends I finally figure out what I should have been doing with my time: watching good old movies. My father composed a list of his 100 Best Movies (before 1980) which is worth a glance if you want to get yourself netflix-ed up.

So, this time I will just link to a poem, a classic:

Howl

Most of you have probably read this, and if you haven't you should (warning: it's really, really gay.) What you probably don't know is that I read about 5-10 minutes worth in front of my 10th grade english class - which was rather intense at the time. It's kind of odd that that would be harder for me, now, than it was then; and this isn't because I have any fear of public speaking. Reading poetry in public (esp. ginsberg) is really ... emotionally vulnerable? That's not exactly what I'm looking for, but something like that.

Rav Reichman is the man. I went to his thursday night "chabura" (for lack of a better word); it was an odd experience for me. For some reason, my mind was swimming with all sorts of chassidic/kabbalistic nonsense on the way home - though he hardly spoke of such matters - I was drawing all sorts of weird connections between what he had said, and sefirot, and various platonic stuff, and stuff in my life, and random aggadot I had heard, and some science I know, and none of it made any sense but it all seemed perfect and really important at the time. I went to sleep dreaming of weird webs (I actually saw graphs in my head like the ones you do in graph theory) of analogies between fire,water,sin,torah,flooding,sand,geulah, noach,enoch, the republic and a thousand other things, it was very weird and mildly hallucinatory. This was especially odd because the things he had spoken about were mostly mundane. It was also a weird experience because of my own reaction to his extreme right-wing-ness - stuff that used to get me fired up, but to which I have a very different reaction nowadays than I used to, which I need to sort out. I should note, however, that on the whole the experience was really awesome, I had missed that sort of thing greatly, and I plan on going every week if possible. It was just odd.

Shabbos was nice. Go Shabbos. I got to explore with some friends, sneaking onto the roof and into some of the towers of the main building. Quite an adventure. Good fun was had by all. We also had a nice dinner at my place with like 8 people. Having goyim at shabbos dinner is so funny, it's basically like everyone is speaking french or something, and the poor guy is trying to follow the conversation, and every few minutes he notices that someone said something about him.

After a few slow weeks at work, it promises to pick up rather heavily starting tomorrow, which should be good.

Happy new year everybody, send some love.

Why We Care About Some Brown People but not Others

I just don't get why we get emotionally (often = $ (units aid)) involved in some natural disasters and not others. In the last year alone 20,000 people were killed in Iran and 10,000 killed in Venezuela (not to mention this one). Why is there such attention to the tsunami? Is it because the death toll is four times higher than a large disaster? Is it because it was an inter-continental disaster? Is it because people are in the mood to care? It is really funny that one day the Media tells us "20,000 people died today, don't get too worked up" and then some time later they say "40,000 people died, you don't care? What are you, some kind of monster?"
Obviously no one says this explicitly, but it is implicit. It is primarily told by how many days running stories are carried. Stories that are only told for one day are the "shock and forget" kind, whereas the week long ones are the "shock and care" kind. So when the tsunami hit I expected a "shock and forget" story (initial reports were only of 2,100 dead- NYT) but it was in fact a "shock and care" story. I now have to reorient my whole emotional approach (not to mention how I discuss the topic). Whose editorial job is it to tell me when I should care?!!!
(I should have personalized the title- but I can't take that much responsibility for myself)

Yussef Massad

While bored at the library this morning I found my way onto jpost (which I try to avoid) because my boss supposedly had an article there, but he didn't. So I clicked on the story of anti-Israel and Columbia and I remembered that the dude who is getting all the flack spoke erev-Shavuot my first year. He was really asinine, as I recall and claimed that Jews all descended from the Kazzars (thus we have no claim to Palestine, etc).
Not the point, really. So I went to his website and he has a long-winded apology exclaiming how he is really a good guy. Here is my favorite excerpt:

As for Noah Liben, who appears in the film according to newspaper accounts (I have not seen the film), he was indeed a student in my Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies course in the spring of 2001...He asked me if I understood his point. I informed him that I did not. Noah seems not to have done his reading during the week on gender and Zionism. One of the assigned readings by Israeli scholar and feminist Simona Sharoni spoke of how in Hebrew the word “zayin” means both penis and weapon in a discussion of Israeli militarized masculinity. Noah, seemingly not having read the assigned material, mistook the pronunciation of "zayi" as "Zion" pronounced in Hebrew "tziyon."
Indeed, he would write me E-mails, even after he stopped being my student, to argue with me about Israel. I have kept our correspondence. On March 10, 2002, a year after he took a class with me, Noah wrote me an E-mail chastising me for having invited an Israeli speaker to class the year before when he was in attendance. It turned out that Noah’s memory failed him again, as he mistook the speaker I had invited for another Israeli scholar. After a long diatribe, Noah excoriated me: "How can you bring such a phony to speak to your class??"

Oren, can you imagine being berated after three years for not having done the reading one day! Talk about a tape-recorder memory, Massad remembers everything. Reading this I thought of a debate between a supremely articulate Side-Show Bob and the more urbane Krusty the Clown. How can you juxtapose the word "excoriated" with "phony"? I find it funny more than anything else.
For the whole apology go here

Batya taught me that I do not need titles for my post. I am fully aware that the Matriarchs watch over me.
It looks like Site Meter has recorded 1000 hits. As Maxim pointed out, many of them are mine (he said that they are all mine, which is only close to true) but still it is a warm feeling. So thanks to those who click on this thing who are not me.
Maxim got the latest issue of Notices last week, and there was one article I am still going through. It is about diffeomorphic spaces in R5 and their folding tendencies... er no.
It is actually a list of the canonical math jokes in the business, of which I heard half from Yehuda already. The link is here, and I recommend all ya'll print yourself out a copy and have a good laugh (I only get a few at best, but at least they are funny- to my head).
Here are my favorite:
Q: What’s purple and commutes?
A: An abelian grape. (Yehuda's favorite)

Q: What do you call a young eigensheep?
A: A lamb, duh! (I actually get that one- how sad)

Q:What do you get when you cross a mountain goat and a mountain climber?
A: Nothing—you can’t cross two scalars. (or any variation thereof)

How to prove it. Guide for lecturers.

Proof by vigorous handwaving: Works well in a classroom or seminar setting.
Proof by forward reference: Reference is usually to a forthcoming paper of the author, which is often not as forthcoming as at first.
Proof by example: The author gives only the case n=2and suggests that it contains most of the ideas of the general proof.
Proof by deferral: “We’ll prove this later in the course.”
Proof by reference to inaccessible literature: The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found in a privately circulated memoir of the Slovenian Philological Society, 1883.
Proof by importance: A large body of useful consequences all follow from the proposition in question.
Proof by accumulated evidence: Long and diligent search has not revealed a counterexample.
Proof by cosmology: The negation of the proposition is unimaginable or meaningless. Popular for proofs of the existence of God.
-And my favorite-
Proof by intimidation: “Trivial.” (Thank's Ilya)

Best People Ever

On the list of "Best People Ever" MK Rav Melchior scores very high. This is why...
Although I do not agree with his economic policy (socialism does not lead to productivity or a more even distribution of wealth) he is more articulate than any I know, wrt the religious/political divide (certainly in English).
I have also added a link, at the behest of Chaim Neria to Maariv/NRG Yahadut section. He claims that the talkback section (as well as the articles themselves) are proof of the diversity within the Dat-Leumi community- which otherwise goes unrecognized. I remain skeptical.
I composed a long rant about the Orange Badges worn in Gaza by stupid mitnachlim, but the post was erased. The long and the short of it was: stop Chomsky-izing the Holocaust! Needless to say these antics do not give me cause to reinvigorate my admiration of the above mentioned D.L. community.

Skype

For those interested in calling Israel: there is a new internet service called skype (http://www.skype.com/) which allows you to make computer to computer calls all over the world for free. I use this service often and can tell you that the quality is better than any phone connection I've had yet with the States. Download it and call me up. My Skype name is yshalper.

Palestinians Complain of "Two Palestines"

JERICHO, West Bank, Dec. 23 - Palestinians in 26 West Bank towns and villages voted Thursday in orderly municipal elections, the first since 1976 and a prelude to a presidential vote in just over two weeks.
The turnout was large and the voting went smoothly, with no major glitches or security problems reported.
The Fatah movement, founded by Yasir Arafat and the dominant force in Palestinian politics for decades, was expected to make the strongest showing. However, it faces a challenge from Hamas, the militant Islamic group, which is taking part in elections for the first time.
Hamas made a strong showing in local Palestinian elections in 26 communities across the West Bank on Thursday, according to preliminary elections results. Official results will be announced Saturday night.
This is the first time the Islamic faction has competed in the polls.
Some 150,000 eligible voters choose among more than 800 candidates in the election. Sixteen percent of the 360 local council seats were reserved for women.
According to the preliminary results, the ruling Fatah movement won a majority in 14 towns, while Hamas took control in nine communities. In two, a joint Hamas-Fatah slate won. The outcome of the vote in one community, Ya'bed, was not immediately available.
However, Hamas officials said they had won a majority in at least 17 local councils, based on reports from their election observers.
Many Palestinian analysts see this divide as a possible rift in Palestinian society. "What you are seeing here is not a mere political swing, but a deep ideological divide." said Rahim Sajib, a senior political analyst from the Center for Arab Studies. "The two parties stand for polar ideologies... This is in effect, a fundamental socio-political split."
Many locals also complain of the fierce rivalries between the two groups. "Its like there are the red towns and the blue ones." Says local olive grower Mahmud Abu Zuhri. "If Hamas continues to win these elections, I am thinking about returning to Jordan!"
While many others feel that this sentiment is rash, Hamas does explain that they are serious about their agenda. "We are a religio-political party, we won't make any bones about that." Salim Id, Hamas spokesman says "We believe in Islamic and family values and we will not let these secular jahiliah strong arm local politics and morals."
While Fatah struggles to maintain a majority under Hamas pressure, they are also considering changing their message. With an aging leader and liberal values, many in the Fatah party question their ability to compete in 2008. "Maybe these Muhamed-freaks have something going?" queries a senior Fatah spokesman. "We might need to abandon some of our more liberal policies to conform to a increasingly conservative nation. The important thing is not to alienate voters. If they want to see the destruction of Israel, who are we to stand in their way?"

(I borrowed text from here and here)

כתיבת בני אדם

This week I went to a conference on the Rambam held at the National Library in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, most of the lectures that I heard involved discussions of Arabic linguistics and the inadequacy of Hebrew translations. I should also mention that people were quoting the Rambam in Arabic without bothering to translate and Rambam's Arabic is well beyond my capacity to understand. What I was able to understand was an interesting powerpoint presentation of how the National Library digitally copied all of the Rambam manuscripts in their possession and published them online. This collection is very good and the copies are very good and can be enlarged easily.

Lest one should infer from this that the National Library is very high tech and resourceful, I will say explicitly that it is not. For one thing, not all the books are on the computer catalogue -- for many of them one still needs to use paper library catalogue cards. Also, not only do normal people (including students and professors) not have access to the stacks, we cannot check books out from the library. That means that we either have to read the books in the library or photocopy the books, in violation of international copyright laws.

But, you ask, isn't there is a library just for the University on Mount Scopus? Yes and it even bears a structural resemblance to the Reg. Imagine the Reg. Now imagine that it had only five floors. Now imagine that one of those five floors was a copy room / bomb shelter and another was wasted on administrative offices and study spaces in which people are allowed to talk. That leaves us three floors of books. Now imagine that there were no stacks, i.e., three floors of reading rooms. Now imagine that more than half of the books in those reading rooms has an attempted translation into Hebrew written in between or on the lines of the text itself. What you are imagining is our university library.

Nonetheless, people do seem to be doing a lot of interesting work here. My own classes are exciting and I seem to have found a new direction for my own thinking which seems to include some Jewish thinkers as well.

Seasons Greetings, folks

So, what's new in my life?
1) My apartment was painted, it looks hot
2) I love my cornet
3) My friends are the best people over, they all come visit me.
4) I finally have a chavrusa, and
5) it's really really cold.

On that note, here is my second favorite cummings poem:

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father's fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father's dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
yes humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
--i say though hate were why men breathe--
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

If you can guess my favorite, you get a dollar. Happy birthday to all, and spread some love.

That Which Really Ties the Room Together 

That Which Really Ties the Room Together

Due to the trend Oren has started on reporting domestic affairs, I have decided to report on my own neat new acquisition: a rug. It must be said that it ties the room together, but I think in this case it really does. Now the only thing we need is a couch.

I am away from the office

I am on "vacation" for the week and won't blog. If anyone is wondering why I am not updating.
Querry: In the song "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" there is a line:

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake

Isn't the whole point that you are being good so Santa will shower you with riches? What is this "goodness sake" nonsense?
Happy Eighth day!

Dimebag Darrell ז"ל

"Indeed, Abbott's playing was powerful, innovative and unpredictable. He was equally capable of churning out crunching, staccato riffs as ominous textural arpeggios, and while he was metal to the core, his Texas roots and love for ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd gave his playing a southern swing that, in the early years of Pantera's success, was dubbed "power-groove." In addition, Abbott flavored his songs with squealing harmonics and tuneful lead licks that became an integral part of his rhythms. However, he may be best known for his searing, virtuosic leads, which were filled with lightning-fast runs that cascaded from his amplifiers like torrential rain." - MTV News
They use the word "arpeggio" in the same article as Dimebag Darrell. This could only be a eulogy. Dimebag, we will miss you.

Man, what a great night.

As Tziona says:
"you guys- you have no idea
hashem is just the best!!!
(trust me on this one)
and that's all i have to say for now."

Chag sameach.

UofCers Dream Come True

I found this out from Crooked Timber, but Judge Posner and Gary Becker have a new blog(???!) It is like having a doughnut with doughnut filling, or something. Although CT does seem to believe that it is a hoax. You can tell that they really want it to be bona fide though... Will thinks that it is kosher for the time being (as Posner has been known to guest blog before). And this does certainly gives credibility to it:

We wish in closing this brief introduction to our blog to thank Lawrence Lessig, Jacob Wachman, and Matthew Haughey for their valuable assistance in setting up the blog.
-http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2004/12/introduction_to_1.html

And Lessig has apparently seen the blog, and not called out. In any case it is definitely a good read for the time being. I am currently writing a paper for "Democracy and National Security", so I was happy to see Posner & Becker's post on preventive war.
I fixed the Crooked Timber link and got the correct link for IMRA (which I really recommend). And as far is links go, here is the latest paper put out by the World Bank on Disengagement (if you like staying in the loop).

Let's talk about me, a little bit.

Some random stuff from my life:

Sunday. My roomate and I decide to spruce up the old homestead, and so we split ways; he heads off to Bed Bath & Beyond, and ends up getting some very nice chairs, a funky paper floor lamp (very cool, his remark was "it's trendy, right?"). He also picked up a lot of CRAZY stuff from his grandmother's place... we now have an incredibly imposing picture of his greatgrandfather, the Iluy of Maichat, hanging in our living room, overlooking every meal. He's got a big beard and peircing eyes; it's like having Mesilas Yesharim hanging on your wall.

He also got a lot of really fancy serving dishes and stuff; things that no one under 80 can serve on, except, of course, for us - there's this one silver pitcher which has GARGOYLE legs which looks awesome, you really have to see it, it's outrageous. Anyway, the same day, I drove a lot; went to fair lawn to get a car, then to Elizabth NJ to get to Ikea (more on this later), then back to the heights, and then back to fair lawn to drop off the car. I got a nice dining room table and a lounging chair.

I then spent basically the whole week at home building ikea furniture. For those not in the know, I am in love with Ikea; and building the stuff is a lot of fun - this week I've built the dining room table, one bookshelf, one lounge chair and footstool, and doors for two other bookshelves I'd already built. All in all, about 6 hours of work. Now I get to fill my bookshelves. And have people over for shabbos. And the place looks really cool too, much better than it used to.

Friday I was able to leave work with just enough time to make a chulent; we went out for dinner but had 9 people over for lunch. It was great, I had really missed making big meals. The people were a lot of fun; there was a good mix of ages and personalities, and a good time was had by all. We will have leftover food for a while.


And now, some e.e. cummings: "Humanity i love you"

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

Once again, have a good week everybody, and send some love (and to zev too.)

לשון בני אדם

So I was learning 1:12 הלכות יסודי התורה with Jose this morning and I was wondering why the Rambam invokes לשון בני אדם here. He could have said that the Torah is written in homily, or it is דרך סוד, but instead he uses this funny phrase, the "language of man". Jose and I came up with two explanations (although I don't think the Rambam would like either one, necessarily).
1. We, as people, are somehow fundimentally bound by language (see PI), all the concepts which we are given are restricted by the words we have to talk about them. The Author realizes that man is limitted and thus using phrases like "zroah netuya" are equivelent to something like "in an awesome manner". The same way "low table with a back" and "things that holds you when you are squatting" might be the same for someone who lives in a universe w/o chairs, they are both equadistantly wrong from the right formulation. (I am not happy with this example, I will try and fix it later)
2. Merely by talking about a chair in a universe without chairs you are already uttering blasphemy, so you might as well write in a form that the audience can understand. (As there is no formlessness that we are familiar with that is of the same kind of formlessness of G-d) Thus the chumash embrases a humanized prose in order to make it a work for humanity (eg the argument between Moshe and the Malachachim wrt for whom the Torah was written)
In any event there has to be understood that there is a qualitative difference between לשון בני אדם and the True לשון. That is only one of the many paradoxes about "scripture" (ie תורה שבכתב)
I am still left feeling empty because I don't think that the Rambam would buy either of these two answers. Maybe they are really one answer. Oh well.

Pub Night

For all those wondering (i.e. me) why we got a funky molecule on our Class of 2005 Pub Night glasses it is for this reason:
Glucose (C6H12O6) is the main sugar that will be converted to alcohol. Many reactions take place inside the yeast that ultimately convert each glucose molecule into two molecules of ethyl alcohol (CH3CH2OH) and two molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2).

C6H12O6 => 2(CH3CH2OH) + 2(CO2) [this equation is written in tiny letters on the side of the glass]

Very funny.

Storm's a Brewin'

My dad currently stands with 10 points.
I have a question: Why do all the normative critics decry Bush for hegemonic practices when it was the former Pres. Clinton whom terrorists seem to have responded to? (1993, McVeigh, and 2001- preceeded by various fatwas in the '90) It seems that Clinton's more open and normative policies only prevoked terror. Thus giving the Bush administration the easy retort, "Well that obviously did not work, so..."
I apologize to all of you who figured this out years ago- I just had the lightbulb go off today in class.