V = I·R

Halachic basis for Medicare?

2012-02-15T15:04:00.012-05:00

(George Washington, asking G-d whether he should socialize horse fodder production)

Jewish Law blog, to which I am subscribed, linked to the following article in its recent post. You can read the article yourself, but basically, it argues that Halacha supports or even mandates some sort of socialized healthcare provided by the government through taxpayers' money. I urge you to read the article.

These are my two responses to it. The first one is rather brief and does not address my view of Dina D'Malchusa Dina fully, for I did not (nor do now) have time and all the necessary sources at my disposal for a full answer. This is my limited answer then:

First part:

A few comments:

1. Of all the leaps of logic found in this article, this is probably the greatest in my opinion:

“Applying this ruling leads to the conclusion that once a person is part of a community, there is a broad scope of public services that a community can compel its citizens to pay for. However, it would seem that the communal funds must be gathered for the purpose of meeting a public need.

It would be easy to imagine that public medical insurance could meet this definition. Medical care is a service that everybody needs at one point or another and if a town decides to create a communal insurance system to address the issue, the town would presumably have the right to set up such a system.”

I can include almost every aspect of everyday life under the logic of the last sentence and then (following the logic of the quoted passage) include it under “a need of the community” that needs to be provided for by the government through compelled taxation.

For instance, cell phone service. Everybody in modern society, at one point or another, needs to make a call.

Food. Shoes. Clothes. Computers. Cars. Chairs. Housing. Etc.

This logic leads straight to socialism — all the property of the populace is transferred to a secular (or religious) “beis din” and then redistributed back according to the political or social calculations of the beis din.

Meanwhile, socialization of medicine leads to real decrease in the quality of services provided. Israel is a good example of how a potentially good medical system can be ruined by socialization.

2. The author of the article does not define a “thieving government”. My perusal of various Halachic sources suggests that the US government may very likely fall under this category.

3. Is there a source extending the rights of a Jewish king to eminent domain to a secular king (a king who is not a Jew or a Noahide gentile)? The article does not provide one.

4. I found this footnote curious: “19 Ad loc sv mahu; also see Rashi sv vayatzilah holding that it is forbidden to save oneself with the money of one’s friend” (p. 102 in the text).

The system of society that the Americans have established in the Thirteen Colonies during and after the American Revolution is not that of monarchy. This is not a trivial point. According to the philosophy of the Founding Fathers (explicit in the Declaration of the Independence, Federalist Papers, the Constitution, etc.), American government does not own the people. The people are not its subjects, and the government is not a sovereign.

The people are the government’s clients. The people are considered to possess certain natural rights to their property and livelihood, and they hire the government to protect those rights. They delegate their rights to the government. Thus, for instance, if I have a right to defend myself, I can delegate that right to the government.

That is the relationship between the people and the government. Now, if you follow Rashi’s stated opinion, if I may not compel you to save my life with your property (or use your property by force to save my life), I should not be able to use a company that I hired as my representative to do the same.

Second part:

This is all ignoring the question of even if it permissible for the current governments to tax people for whatever transfer-of-property scheme, whether it is a good idea for us to allow it.
I.e., just because something is halachically permissible, does not mean it is a good idea pragmatically. (One could even say that it does not necessarily mean it is moral.)

One point is the one I already raised in the [previous] post: allowing the government to manage any kind of industry (from shoe making to television to roads to medical care) basically ruins that industry. The best way that the decisions about direction of capital in an industry can happen is through free market — competition and cooperation between service-providers and the customers. The government (or any other single monopoloy) does not have necessary foresight to manage the resources most effectively. This argument is known as “economic calculation problem” and was presented by Jewish-Austrian libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises.

The other problem with government-provided medical care is that it violates people’s “natural rights” through taxation (the taxation is potentially justified only when the one taxed receives some products or services in return). Now, a frum Jew may not be worried about “natural rights” as presented by the Western philosophers of 18th-19th centuries, but, unfortunately, the history has shown that once you allow the government to violate natural rights for the supposed “common good”, you open the door for it to violate many different kinds of rights and interfere in personal lives — including Jews’ religious personal lives (not to mention their livelihoods).

All the regimes that constricted Jews’ freedom of religion have done so under the premises of “common good”. Indeed, if you follow their logic, they were doing Jews a favor by forcibly converting them to Christianity, not allowing their children to learn Torah, forcing them to send kids to secular governmental schools, etc. In our times, there has been a proposal to ban bris in San Francisco. It was rejected — but in many European countries, shechita and bris are banned. Homeschooling is banned. (So, if there are no private Jewish schools available in one’s area, one has to send kids to a public school or have them taken away by the state. Chabad shluchim in Sweden are currently facing this problem.) The list, from the past, the present and the potential future goes on.

Even in Israel, frum Jews are forced to listen to kol isha in the army, because a posek in the army has declared that it’s muttar. Well, these Jews’ poskim disagree, but the opinion of this, more meikel, posek is imposed upon them by the state. We see that Jewish governments and frum elements within them can be just as tyrannical.

Therefore, it seems to me that even if the government may have a number of powers granted to it by Halacha (a statement that I personally do not necessarily agree with), it may still be a bad idea for us to support a government that exercises these rights. Until Moshiach comes, the government that governs least governs best.

Advice for future parents

2012-02-15T10:55:00.002-05:00

If you love the animals, you eat them

2012-02-13T23:15:00.002-05:00

Or at least make them commercially useful. This way, not only do you ensure their survival as a species, but you also ensure their survival in the wild — since you create a competition to the poachers.

19th century vs. 20th century

2012-02-11T22:35:00.014-05:00

Someone, in a conversation with me, has claimed that if we went back to the gold standard, or at least, if the Central Bank did not inflate the currency, there would be zero economic growth (or even a recession).

I countered that we certainly did not observe this happening in the 19th century, when US and UK economies grew very rapidly.

He answered: Yes, they grew, but not nearly as rapidly as in the 20th century.

Let's see if he is right. One thing about the growth of the economy is that it is an auto-catalytic process: the product catalyzes the reaction, so the more product you have, the faster the reaction rate. If you start off with $100, your business will grow slower than if you start off with $100,000. (Your business will grow as a result of you re-investing a portion of your profit. The more you invest, the more it will grow. But since your profit from $100,000 will be greater than from $100, your business growth rates will be different.)

To correct for this, it's useful to look at the logarithm of growth, as opposed to pure growth. For those who don't know much math, logarithm is a function inverse of exponential function. So, if a graph shows exponential growth (as in the case of growth rate of an auto-catalytic reaction), its log will show a straight line.

After this introduction, let's look at the data. The following figures show growth of GDP in the United States, from 1790 to 2010. The graphs are logs (including the second one, despite the label). "Real GDP" is adjusted for inflation, as I understand (I may be wrong).

I don't know about you, but to me, growth rates seem very comparable. And GDP is just the first measure of growth that came to my mind and not necessarily the "purest" measure of the growth of "real wealth".

(Source: Measuring Worth > Datasets > US GDP)

This is also a rather interesting graph — Consumer Price Index, in logs:

Here are raw data:

If you go to the interactive graph, you will see that the prices rose rapidly when US entered a war (the US Revolution in 1776, the War of 1812, the War of Northern Aggres... I mean, the Civil War in 1861, and the First World War in 1916). Then, FDR took away Americans' gold, and the prices rose for the duration of the Great Depression and the Second World War. Then, in 1967, the last tie to gold standard was cut, and the prices were rising ever since.

So, basically, the effect of US government on the prices of products and services is similar to that of a war.

Yeah, but if there was no inflation, there would be no growth, right? Go back to the beginning of the thread.

Some more background:

First, this: http://www.tomwoods.com/inflation/

Second, this:

Effect of income tax on technological progress

2012-02-03T08:09:00.001-05:00

[A re-post with some new points]

Oftentimes people tell me that science would not flourish as it has in the 20th century had it not been sponsored by income tax. The idea of private sponsorship of science (either in a form of investments, like in any other business, or in a form of donations) would not work, or at least would not work on the same scale as it has under governmental sponsorship. Until recently, I thought so too.

Let’s see if this is true — what effect has income tax (introduced in the late 19th century and made permanent in early 20th century) and, in general, government’s funding of science had on the rate of technological breakthroughs?

I think the effect is pretty clear. Until the end of 19th century, technology has been developing at an extremely high rate. Then, in late 19th – early 20th century, the rate started to slow down and then started to decrease. Saying “look how far we got in 20th century in terms of technology after government started sponsoring its development” is the same as saying “look how far I got walking on my feet after I abandoned my car on the side of the road”.

Recently someone told me that without inflation, there is no growth (apparently, Rick Santorum believes the same). I answered that England and US have grown tremendously in the period of 1700–1900 (when the currency was not only not inflating, but was actually deflating). He said: "yes, but it was the fraction of growth US has experienced in the last thirty years". I challenged him to provide me with evidence that the rate of growth was higher in the 20th century than in the 19th. Meanwhile, Tom Woods claims the opposite:

Going back to the question of governmental funding of science — so, why would private businesses fund science (after all, aren’t they interested in immediate profit?), and why don’t they do so now? Also, even if the businesses did fund science (and of course, they still do), it would be only applied, not fundamental science, right?

This claim is repeated by most scientists I know. No wonder most of them love the government.

Well, think about this: oil companies invest money in geological research that will produce real profit 30 years from now. Sounds to me like investment into fundamental science that gives long-term profit. (I certainly hope that my personal discoveries will provide humanity, iyH, with some practical benefit, in addition to added theoretical knowledge, less than 30 years from now.)

Now, imagine if the government used taxpayers’ money to do the aforementioned geological research? Why would the oil companies spend money to do it then?

Meanwhile, the cost of doing science has risen greatly, because the companies that supply universities with materials know they can raise the prices, since the government will pick up the bill. The same is happening in medicine and education.

At the same time, the quality of service is going down. It is very hard to buy a good antibody nowadays (as opposed to, say, 10 years ago), since the market is full of antibodies that do not work or don’t work well. The companies mass-produce them and sell them, knowing that the government-sponsored labs will buy them no matter what, since they are less careful with their money spending (after all, the government will pick up the bill, and if you run out of one grant, there is always another to be applied for).

And this is just one example...

Double-convex yunzi stones

2012-02-03T02:44:00.002-05:00

Anniversary (ke"h) present from my wife:

Ordered on Amazon here (originally from Yellow Mountain Imports). The bowls and the bag look just like advertised:

If you're looking for something alternative to glass and cannot afford shell and slate, I recommend these stones very strongly. They are very beautiful and feel very nice when held or placed on the board. If you wash and oil them (make sure to use only mineral oil; definitely no food oils!.. afterwards, wipe the excess oil off), they will feel very smooth. And they have a nice feeling of heaviness and shapiness.

Black stones have deep, rich, chocolaty color to them. White stones have a beautiful light-greenish glow (hard to capture in the pictures) when sitting together in a bowl.

Honinbo Shusaku dissected

2012-02-02T17:07:00.005-05:00

I think this is an amazing video analyzing one of Honibo Shusaku's games. I don't speak Japanese, but because of the computerized visual aids used in the video, I understood everything that was said. I highly recommend it for the people to understand both the flow of a go game and Shusaku's style.

The content is for beginners in go.

Shusaku is playing Black.

Economic cycles before FED

2012-02-02T03:13:00.002-05:00

If students of Austrian economics school (such as Ron Paul) claim that economic cycles are caused by FED's machinations with money supply (i.e., inflation) and artificial manipulation of interest rate, what about the depressions before FED's existence? How do you explain those?

Please watch this video with one of my favorite speakers, Tom Woods:

Many people in discussions of pre-FED booms and busts will point to one of the most famous cases of those: tulipmania in Holland —

A period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then suddenly collapsed. At the peak of tulip mania, in February 1637, some single tulip bulbs sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. It is generally considered the first recorded speculative bubble (or economic bubble), although some researchers have noted that the Kipper- und Wipperzeit episode in 1619–22, a Europe-wide chain of debasement of the metal content of coins to fund warfare, featured mania-like similarities to a bubble. The term "tulip mania" is now often used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble (when asset prices deviate fromintrinsic values).

Please read an amazing article by Doug French: "The Truth About Tulipmania".

Cause of depressions in a nutshell

2012-01-31T16:44:00.012-05:00

From an e-mail exchange with my cousin-in-law:

What if Bernanke would write, from time to time, checks of fiat money to Honda dealers to buy some Honda cars and keep them in some FED garage? That would drive Honda prices up. But would the increased price of Hondas represent the increased demand of American public for Hondas? Surely not.

But to investors it would look this way (and not because they are stupid, but because that's how things normally happen — investors look for signs of companies doing better on the market, and usually, when the government does not intervene, they are correct), and they would invest extra money in Honda. So, Honda would expand its operations, hire more workers, buy more machinery, produce more cars, and then... American public would not buy all those extra cars. Not because they are evil or don't have money to spend, but because their interest in Hondas does not match the increased price and supply of Honda cars.

So, Honda would have to go bankrupt, or at least sell off its assets. The painful, but inevitable bust phase of the cycle would start.

Except in the case of artificially manipulating the price of money (the interest rate), it's the economy on the whole that's being misrepresented. And, following the above example, what Bernanke is doing now, is buying some more Honda cars, because Honda is supposedly "too big to fail" and that by buying them, he will somehow help the crisis.

The above argument was taken from various talks and articles by Mises Institute's Robert P. Murphy.

How can the government be criminal?

2012-01-30T17:18:00.003-05:00

Some people seem to ask this question, meaning to say: "Criminal means illegal. The government determines what is legal and what is not. Therefore, how can the government be criminal?"

Imagine the following scenario: A large ship goes on the shoals near a deserted island. The passengers safely escape and set up a small community on the island. Because most passengers are middle-aged Americans from Texas with strong sense of property rights, they don't really need a "government". Each passenger homesteads a piece of land on the island, builds a house, and harvests whatever local produce happens to be on his piece of land. Those close to the ocean catch fish. Those close to the mountains mine salt. Those close to the forest collect coconuts. Then these people trade with each other.

Now, imagine that among these people there is one person from California. He believes that because he made a mistake of homesteading a piece of land on the swamp, he is unlucky, and he deserves better. After a bit of thinking, he comes up with a scheme of how to become richer. He comes to the coconut guy, the fish guy, and the salt guy and tells them: "Each of you will pay me some of your produce, and I will protect you from your neighbors." Well, the peaceful Texans tell this guy to go jump in his swamp. They don't need protection.

Then, the next night, a coconut tree belonging to one of the islanders is set on fire. The next morning, the swamp dude comes back and says: "See, you do need protection after all, don't you?" From his demeanor and some other evidence (let's say, some shoe tracks under the burnt-down coconut tree), it is clear that it was this guy who set the tree on fire.

Now, would you say that his behavior is criminal or not? Do you need a government on the island to figure out whether this guy is acting immorally and violating other people's rights, or can you figure it out by yourself?

I think most people would conclude from answering these two questions that indeed you do not need a government to figure out which behavior is criminal and which is not.

Next scenario: imagine that the people were not from Texas, but from New York or Boston. Therefore, they were convinced by the Californian that he needs to be their guard. But after a while, the Californian decided that he can interfere in their private lives (for instance, he tried to tell them how to raise their children). Or he raised the price of his "service". Or he tried to regulate the trade that they do with each other. Then, even the New Yorkers and the Bostonians told this guy that they don't like what he is doing and they are not going to comply with his "laws".

And the story repeated itself. The guy came to the coconut harvester and burnt down some of his trees.

Would you now say that the Californian's behavior was immoral? Has anything changed between the first scenario (when the guy was not hired as a guard) and the second one (when he was)? Did the fact that he was hired as a guard give him permission to use force in any way except to protect his clients from attack by their neighbors? If he used the weapons that he was provided with in order to do his job as a way to increase his personal benefits and power, is he not a criminal despite being the "government" of the island?

In our everyday lives, today, our government is the Californian from my example. It is a criminal organization that violates people's rights, uses force in an immoral way, and is no better than a mafia bully. There is no sacred reason why people should obey the laws that the government creates. And I honestly believe that even covers the Dina D'Malchusa Dina (more about that later).

* * *

By the way, you can also say that the government's actions are illegal. For example, there is no law that says that citizens have to pay income tax, i.e., file the 1040 form. The filing is a case of "voluntary cooperation". The Supreme Court has determined that the government has no right to enforce income tax payment.

Even though lower courts said the opposite, they did so in opposition to the Supreme Court. Thus, their actions are not only immoral, but also illegal and unconstitutional. The reason they feel they can do it is most citizens don't have money, knowledge, or connections to bring their cases to the Supreme Court. In those instances when the citizens did bring their cases all the way up, the Supreme Court ruled every time that enforcement of income tax is unconstitutional.

Furthermore, in the IRS code, income is defined not as "wages" but as corporate profit.

So, the government has no legal basis for arresting people and seizing their property for non-payment of income tax. Yet, the government (and IRS) officials, the police, and the lower courts do that. How would you classify their actions if not "criminal"?

Critique of "benign democracy"

2012-01-30T12:44:00.002-05:00

Mon nombril me démange.
— Napoléon Bonaparte

[a re-post]

Question of the day: Most people in the West nowadays would object to the concept of a "benign tyrant"; so, why don't they object to the "benign tyranny" of a democratic government?

To explain:

Oftentimes, I hear from different people that they believe in the necessity of the government stronger than a minimal one — i.e., one that does more than just protect safety of our lives and property, locally and nationally — because they believe in something that needs to be done (charity, public education or medicine, liberating people from tyrants, checking for safety of food and drugs, prayer in school, etc.). As my mother-in-law put it another day, "I am a moral person, and I believe that some things are right, and some things are wrong, and I believe in supporting those things that are right."

Interestingly, these people can be either conservatives or liberals. Obviously, their views of what's "right" and must be done by the government are different, but they believe that they must have a strong government, because they believe in X and they want the government to do X.

Here is why I believe that these people are wrong.

[Before I explain what I mean, let me state that I take it self-evident that the government that governs least governs best and that any application of law is violence and therefore must be done minimally, only when there is no alternative to the government using the force. I.e., I am not going to justify in this post the basic tenets of libertarianism. I am only going to explain why the people who wish for a strong democracy that would enforce these people's pet peeves are logically wrong.]

Most people in the Western society today would rather live in a democratic state, in which the government doesn't do all one wants it to do rather than live under a tyranny. For instance, imagine one is in favor of gay marriage. Or, one is against abortion. And the democratically elected government in one's state (or country) bans gay marriage and supports abortion. Well, I assume most people would rather live under democracy that does these things despite their will than live under a tyranny that would acquiesce to their wishes in these two areas.

So, for the same reason, I would rather live in a free society (with limited, or, better yet, decentralized government) even though not everyone would do in it what I would want them to do ideally (for instance, some rich people would not give charity).

Furthermore, the above argument — I believe in a strong government, because I believe in X, and I want the government to uphold X — can be extended to a tyranny too: a tyrant who would uphold X would be more effective. But you don't want to live under a tyranny, right? You'd rather take X-less democracy, because you believe it to be the lesser of two evils. Well, I'd rather take X-less free society, free of a strong (even democratic) government.

Otherwise, what you're getting with a democracy is a slightly more benign tyranny — and slightly more benign because for the most part, in terms of legislative process, it is less efficient — that sometimes takes your point of view.

Last point. If one lives in a democracy that bans gay marriage, but one is a supporter of the gay marriage, as I mentioned before, one does not say: "Let us institute a tyrant that will support gay marriage." One says: "I will continue living under a democracy, but I will lobby for gay marriage to be allowed." In other words, he will try to convince as many people as possible to agree with his point of view.

Well, what prevents one doing so in a free society? Let's say, one believes that rich people are not giving enough charity. Well, why, instead of making a tyrant out of the government and getting it to take money from the rich people by force, he won't try to "lobby" the rich people? Try to convince them personally to give more charity. Try to convince their customers to "lobby" them or not buy their products if the rich people won't give more charity. Etc.

Remember: the connection between the vox populi and the response of the entrepreneurs is always much tighter than the connection between the will of the people and the response of the bureaucrats and politicians.

Stepping stones

2012-01-25T14:17:00.001-05:00

One of the things that immediately attracted me to go was its visual beauty. Some pictures from Flickr:

"Driving is not a right; it's a privilege"

2012-01-25T01:09:00.005-05:00

That's the statist propaganda they always tell you. That's what the "law says". So, a law can take away someone's right to use his private property in public space. Hello, Mr. Jefferson.

(Not that people should not be able to restrict someone else's rights in self-defense. That's a different story. Pay attention, as one local Israeli chossid says.)

Another thing: apparently, in Massachusetts, a driver no longer has a right of way. The other driver has responsibility to yield. We don't really have rights. We have responsibilities to society. (Sounds like Santorum, I know.)

It's incredible how America is slowly becoming a fascist state, and both liberals and conservatives are not only clueless, but are actually cheering on.

Final item in our collection. If a police officer demands a Breathalyzer test, and you refuse, you will be taken to prison. Then, if you're given a test there, and you pass, you still get your license suspended for 180 days. If you ask a statist "why", he or she answers: "Because why would you refuse the test if you weren't over the limit?" How about because I don't want an invasion of my property (my body) without a due cause (without clear evidence that I am invading other people's property)?

Imagine the following logic: A police officer stops you and demands a cavity search. You refuse. He takes you to police station, where you get searched. They find nothing. You get your license suspended for 180 days. Why? Well, why would you refuse a cavity search?

When a liberal person tells me that she hates being frisked by TSA in airports, I have no sympathy. You voted for a government that takes some of our liberties away, and the Republicans voted for a government that takes some others. You guys can bicker which liberties should be taken away in the name of "society", while I will continue to say that we need to go to the basics: upholding human rights to their property, to themselves, and to their lives and freedom.

The government can "step in" and use violence (in a form of law) only when someone clearly violates someone else's property rights. Otherwise, it's a tyrannical government that attempts to enslave the populace.

Double-seki

2012-01-24T14:13:00.002-05:00

Seki is a situation in go when two groups have locked each other in a stalemate. I.e., normally, by the end of the game, a group is either alive (because it has two eyes) or dead (because it does not have two eyes and is surrounded by another group). In seki, if the Black moves in a given part of the board, he loses his group. And the same goes for the White. So, neither of the players can move locally. Liberties surrounded by stones in seki are not counted (according to the Japanese rules).

This is an example of a double-seki (on the left top corner and on the left-middle):

(source)

As you can see, if the White moves within the seki (e.g., at D17), its group gets captured (by Black E15). The same goes for the Black (D17 leads to White B17). And the same is true for the other two groups (playing at C11 by either Black or White leads to an immediate capture).

In fact, it’s also true for the White’s "inside" group and the Black’s group around it (White can threaten to capture the Black’s "middle" group by playing at E15, but then it gets captured at D17). So, this can be called triple-seki!

It's a typical situation in these typical times

2012-01-24T01:06:00.000-05:00

Meanwhile, a screen-shot from MA online defensive driving course:

Go Seigen vs. Kitani Minoru

2012-01-23T04:10:00.004-05:00

Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru are two of the greatest go players of the 20th century. Both were great innovators in the game. Go Seigen (born in China) is considered one of the biggest geniuses in Go since the game's importation to Japan from China. Kitani Minoru, in addition to being a famous Go player himself, is also well known for his dojo, in which many great masters of go were taught as his students.

As Wikipedia states:

In 1933, along with his great friend Kitani Minoru, Go Seigen developed and popularized the shin fuseki ["new opening" theory] that broke away from the traditional opening patterns. It is for this very important contribution that Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru are recognized as the fathers of modern Go.

This happened during a series of matches between the two great players. The games of the match are described in detail in a very good book by John Fairbarn, Kamakura (named after the temple in which the match series happened). The author describes both the games themselves, with deep but accessible analysis, and the historical background surrounding each game. You can read the few excerpts from the book here.

An episode from the movie about Go Seigen, The Master of Go, that shows the first of the matches:

Sad stone

2012-01-22T03:14:00.003-05:00

A very interesting thread on the Life in 19x19 forum. It's a game which two people play publicly, at the same time commenting on their thought process and receiving comments (but not suggestions, I assume) from others. (I am guessing the opponents cannot read each other's comments, or choose not to, since the comments are "hidden".)

I found this comment funny:

If you listen carefully, you can hear sobbing.

In addition to not helping the corner much and begging to be sealed in, it damages the two-space extension on the outside.

Anyway, I recommend looking at these these so-called Malkovitch games (after the movie Being John Malkovitch, in which the main character gets to enter the actor John Malkovitch's mind.) Not only are they entertaining, but also quite instructive.

As a bonus, an interesting part from Hikaru no Go (unfortunately, the embedding still doesn't work properly):

Trying new things

2012-01-20T03:42:00.003-05:00

A good sense that go players acquire is in how to balance trying out new things and relying on already known concepts and techniques.

For instance, if you're not sure how to invade that corner, maybe choose the safer option of settling on the side. And in general, don't create over-complicated situations that require reading beyond your skills (I noticed recently that I tend to do that); instead, play solidly.

On the other hand, if you don't try new things, you will get stuck on your current level.

The way I tend to resolve this dilemma is by learning a new concept in a book, trying to see how it is applied by pro players in their games, doing some related go problems, and then, when I feel confident I understand (at least in theory) the concept, I try to apply it in my games. Usually failing the first few times...

Anyway, what lead me to thinking about all of the above? This cartoon:

(source)

Speaking of corner invasions, interesting post.

Parking habits

2012-01-19T15:12:00.005-05:00

Last night, at the go club, one of the stronger players explained to my wife another reason why one of the names for go is "hand-talk". When he was in Japan a few times, he had a few opportunities to play with some Japanese players at go clubs. Without speaking a word of Japanese, he was able to guess their personalities from the style of their play. Some were timid, some were aggressive, some were balanced, some were conservative, some were experimental, etc.

An excerpt from a book on go:

Rebel without a cause
	Being a rebel (I sometimes park my car at the wrong side of the street) I would like to start off with black 1. It's not much of a move but from one thing you can be assured, your opponent will be surprised and suspect that you are either 1. Totally insane and do not know anything about go 2. A very crafty fellow with a profound knowledge of hamete

Good for Black
	This is one of the few variations which is nice for black, unfortunately there are lots of sequences excellent for white. In this case white 7 is not the proper move.

Better for White
	White should play white 7 at 1 in this diagram. This may look as a nice result for black but pros think white is thick and doing better here.

[ad kan]

I have to say, though, that while I like parking on the wrong side of the street (as my parking-ticket history shows), I prefer more conservative game style. On the other hand, my wife says I like to get in fights (on the board). Maybe that happens only when I am playing with her?..

Go is a family game

2012-01-19T00:22:00.006-05:00

Enjoying a go game on my new go board with my new go stones with my (same) wife. We were playing at Sharon Go Club, at Walpole Mall's Barnes and Noble. My wife took nine stones.

(sorry for picture quality; taken with my old phone's camera)

Close to the end of the game:

My wife won by 4.5 points. Go wife!

Speaking of the new stones, I am getting used to the feel of single-convex stones. Although they do not produce the same "click" as the double-convex stones do (at least in my hands and on cheaper shin-kaya boards), their sound is deeper and somehow richer (one must learn not to slam them on the board as one does with the double-convex stones, but release them off one's finger nail in a double movement). When one puts them down, one gets a satisfying feeling of "completeness" as they snap onto the board without wobbling. Placing these stones on the board is less aggressive, but more precise and elegant. People have said that to them these stones look too flat and lifeless, but to me, they look somehow more secure and hugging the board.

All this discussion about the feel and look of the stones may seem superficial (and it is), but Go is called the game of "hand-talk" not without a reason. This is one of the many examples when a good medium facilitates the flow and expression of thought.

During the game analysis we did make use of the stones' single-convex feature by placing them on the opposite sides to mark the variation moves.

Anyway, to each his own, of course. I am considering ordering yunzi double-convex stones from Yellow Mountain Imports in the future.

Speaking of Yunzi stones, one has to make sure to wash and oil them in order to enjoy their texture and look fully. More than complete instructions here.

Ladders, ladders

2012-01-17T21:10:00.000-05:00

My new go stones and board. Picture taken with my old phone (sorry for the quality). This was not a serious game. More like a midnight snack.

How many ladders can you find in this picture?

The Hand of the Imbecile

2012-01-16T12:39:00.004-05:00

In Japanese manga Hikaru no Go, a Japanese pre-teenage boy Hikaru Shindo is "haunted" by Sai, a spirit of an ancient Go player who first plays Go through him, then teaches him Go, and eventually encourages him to start his own journey as a professional Go player. In the manga, Sai reveals that he had also haunted a real-life Go player, Honinbo Shusaku, a 19th-century Go master, who is considered to be one of the best Go players in the history of the game (it is said that in 200 years, if only three Go players are remembered, they will be Honibo Shusaku, Honinbo Dosaku, and Go Seigen).

Basically, it's a Go equivalent of being haunted by the same spirit that haunted, say, Shakespeare or Einstein, and led them to their discoveries and inventions.

Sai claims that he had haunted Shusaku and is now haunting Hikaru because he wants to find Kami no Itte ("the Divine move"), a perfect move in a Go game.

I am sure that more than one Go player would love to have such a private Go tutor. In real life, however, things sometimes are different...

(Source. In general, I recommend ChiyoDad's blog. He hasn't updated in a while, but if you click on the archives on the right, you can read some fun posts about Go)

Away with dangling modifiers!

2012-01-14T23:00:00.008-05:00

(make sure to increase video quality)

At 1:15: "By putting pressure on the White stone, White is required to respond...".

Surely the speaker did not mean that the White put pressure on its own stone. The correct sentence must be: "Because of Black's move putting pressure on the White stone...", or "By putting pressure on the White stone, Black forces White to respond", or simply "Because of the pressure on the White stone, White is required to respond". (Note that saying "...it is required to respond" is an example of a similar problem: pronoun–antecedent ambiguity. Grammatically, it is not clear what it refers to: the pressure, the stone, or, perhaps, the White.)

In my experience, this is one of the most common and annoying problems in modern colloquial English. It is worse than saying "please e-mail my wife and I" or misusing the apostrophe-s. In the latter cases, the meaning is clear. Dangling modifier (or pronoun–antecedent ambiguity) damages the clarity of meaning very badly.

Otherwise, despite having slightly annoying English, I liked the video. (Nice stones too.)

The "play right — first, play left" skill that the speaker mentions is a Go technique, in which, when a player wants to play "right" (for example), he first sets up reinforcements on the "left" usually by playing a series of forcing moves (for instance, invasion or capture threats) to which the opponent has to respond locally. Thus, the player does not really care about the "left". He is playing there because having stones there will provide support for his operation on the "right". (Of course, the nature of the forcing moves is such that if the opponent did not respond to them, they would be continued into an even more damaging sequence.)

In the video above, before playing a pincer from the top on the white stone (on left side of the board), the Black first prepares a wall of his stone below the white stone (at about 2:24). Now re-watch the video and try to see what I am talking about.

Tesuji Flash I

2012-01-13T02:47:00.016-05:00

Does anyone have any ideas as to what's happening on the left side of the picture? (Click on the image to enlarge.) My guess is that a doctor is removing an arrow fragment from a samurai's arm, and the samurai is using Go as a distraction from pain.

It's also interesting that the samurai is playing White (one might imagine that his opponent was the court master of Go, whose job would be to entertain and teach the samurai; so, the master would take White, being a more skilled player; then again, maybe the opponent is simply another samurai), that they are sitting on chairs, not on the floor, and that they are playing on a table board, not on a traditional floor goban (I guess that ties in well with the chairs).

[Update: see below.]

Also note the samurai's beard. Actually, the guy in the middle also has a beard and looks a little like Rabbi Y.Y. Jacobson.

In any event, on to the main part of this post:

Tesuji (local move combinations) are my favorite aspect of Go games right now. Therefore, I present you with with the following Tesuji Flash from Go World magazine, No. 1, May–June 1977.

Update: Regarding the picture — it turns out, the main character of the picture is Chinese general Guan Yu. From Wikipedia's description of the picture:

A 19th-century Japanese woodcut of Guan Yu by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. In this scene he is being attended to by the physician Hua Tuo while playing Weiqi [Chinese name for Go].

I guess that explains the table board and the chairs.

Sai vs. Toya Koyo Meijin

2012-01-09T23:16:00.013-05:00

Quoting some classics never gets old. This time, it’s again Hikaru no Go.

Match between Sai and Toya Koyo. I am skipping to the best part (in my opinion), but feel free to watch the whole episode.

As a bonus, a rather funny video poking gentle fun at Hikaru no Go:

Single-convex go stones

2012-01-08T20:22:00.012-05:00

Everyone knows the traditional Japanese bi-convex stones for Go:

Fewer people know that another, Chinese, variety of go stones exists — the single-convex stones (compare the one on the right with the rest):

(source)

A bit of information from one of the places one can buy these stones nowadays, Yellow Mountain Imports:

These stones are "single convex." One side is flat with a slight rounding on the edge, the other is fully rounded. Whether to play with single convex or double convex is a matter of personal taste. In general, Chinese Go players prefer these single convex stones for their feel and louder solid "snap" when played on the board.

One can hear this "snap" when viewing this game commentary made by a Chinese professional go player.

In addition to the aesthetic quality, the single-convex shape has three more uses: a) when analyzing game variations, one can put the discussed stones with their flat side up — this way it is easy to see the "side-variation" of the board position vs. the "main version" of the game; b) single-convex stones are less easily dislodged from their position if the board is bumped (or if one accidentally drops a stone from the above or touches stones with his sleeve); c) according to Chinese rules, one must count the stones placed on the board as a part of one's score — turning stones over marks them as already counted.

On the other hand, they are a considered to be a little more difficult to pick up from the board at the end of the game or when removing captured stones — but I have not found it difficult at all; you just need to apply a little leverage with your thumb (although it's true that you can't pick up two or three at a time as with the bi-convex stones). If you watch the video linked above, you'll see that the player picks up the stones quite easily.

Also, here, a boy picks up a large group of captured single-convex stones (at the same time demonstrating the "snap-back" tesuji):

The most famous material for making these stones is yunzi (although nowadays, bi-convex yunzi stones are also available):

(note the greenish glow around the black stone)

When buying single-convex stones, one must make sure he has the appropriate board for them. Only size 3 stones will fit the standard Japanese boards (where the spacing is slightly smaller than on the Chinese boards). Sizes 4 and 5 are for Chinese go boards only. Of course, one can get Chinese go board (or a full set), but some people prefer Japanese shin-kaya or kaya wooden boards to Chinese bamboo ones because of the Japanese boards' beautiful acoustic qualities.

Some more pictures of single-convex stones (source):

Stones from Russia:

(As you can see, Russian single-convex stones are more convex than the modern Chinese оr Japanese ones. I am not sure how easy they are to handle.)

Then again, if you're a fan of bi-convex stones, you can go nuts and get these:

Atomic bomb game, cont.

2012-01-03T01:26:00.001-05:00

Description of the game here.

Roads and privatization

2012-01-02T16:30:00.007-05:00

(Russian roads are a form of national defense — footage from WWII)

Oftentimes, I hear people use roads as an example of something the government benevolently creates for us.

But, of course, without the government there would also be roads — privately owned and maintained roads. (And, for instance, most railroads in this country were built by private transportation companies.)

I immediately hear the protest: "We would have to pay for them!"

Well, my friends, we are paying for our roads NOW. And we are paying more than our share. We are paying much of the 1%'s share.

Think about it: who uses roads the most — common people or owners of large businesses? Of course, the latter (for the most part, for transportation of goods across the country through highways, which are the most expensive to maintain). And whose taxes pay for the roads? Does the proportion of your taxes that goes towards the road maintenance equal your proportional usage of the I-90? Or the bridge in San Francisco? I doubt it. I think a rich business owner gets much more profit from the interstate highways than you.

Under privatized road system, rich owners of large companies would pay for the majority of expenses of using the roads (through toll system), and most of the expense for maintenance of the roads would fall on their shoulders.

Furthermore, pricing of tolls would reduce traffic, since more desired roadways would cost more to use. People would be able to make a decision — whether to use a more expensive but less congested roadway, or less expensive but a more congested one. This would spread out the traffic over more roadways and indicate to the people where there is more or less traffic.

People say that under "anarchy" there would be chaos. Well, it's difficult to imagine how much more chaos than can be than the one produced by the government. For instance, I cannot see how things can be much worse than this (pictures of traffic in Moscow).

Plus, if the roads were privately owned, they would be better (and more efficiently) maintained. Because private road owners would be interested in not having a lot of roadblocks (since they would the traffic to flow smoothly), they would choose most sensible times to fix the roads (when there is little traffic). And, obviously, there would be economic pressure on the private road owners, just as on any business owners, to provide good service. While on the civil servants, there is only bureaucratic and political pressure.

For more reading on privatization of the roads, I refer you to Walter Block of Loyola University (and Mises University):

Interview: "The Road to Freedom"
Full version (the book): Privatization of Roads and Highways

Also see this video:

Say no to tyrants

2011-12-24T21:51:00.004-05:00

... and house-elfves:

(source: NL, anti-Putin demonstration in Moscow)

If you’re wondering what Doby has to do with anything, look at this face:

Oh, sorry, wrong one. I meant this:

Oh no, sorry. I am really confusing my totalitarian right-wingers today. I meant this:

We always knew it

2011-12-19T15:28:00.002-05:00

Mr. Claus is a Jew.

(source)

Why I support Ron Paul

2011-12-18T16:24:00.007-05:00

1. Because my wife supports Ron Paul. Enough said.

2. I wanted to copy what I wrote on the Facebook in response to someone criticizing Ron Paul:

A. Realistically, he is the only politician that I know of (certainly, the only candidate) who shows any evidence of knowing what's going on with the economy. And, his changes seem reasonable to me: get rid of all the junk — departments in the government, FED, cut military spending (100 bases in Europe!.. against whom?.. Putin?), etc.

As to the "big guys", as my link about Bernanke shows, they are the last people who are willing to change the system. They are getting free money from FED. We need to bypass the big guys.

That is why Ron Paul is ridiculed in the media: because the big bankers want to keep getting bailed out (on a daily basis, as it happens) by Bernanke.

B. I think the biggest problem that faces us today is break-up of American society from within. Economic problems are only a sign of a greater stagnation and degradation of American society that had been happening since Woodrow Wilson took office. One can blame Wilsons, Carters, FDRs, Obamas, but these people would be unable to do what they did, had they lived in the 18th or 19th century.

So, yeah, I feel a little uncomfortable about Paul’s foreign policy. For the most part, not because I disagree with anything specific he says, but because I have been a Conservative Hawk for longer than I have been a libertarian.

I do think US needs presence abroad. I don’t necessarily think it must be done at the taxpayers’ expense. It must be done by private armies (competing with each other on free market) hired by international trading companies who have a direct stake in international stability. If those companies then want to include their "army" expenses in their bill to us (e.g., in the cost of gas), that’s fine. Let them all compete with each other on a free market to find the cheapest (and most acceptable from PR point of view) solution to the world stability. Much better than just giving an empty check to the Pentagon.

Otherwise, we’re getting a perpetual repeat of Barbary Wars. US merchants were being kidnapped by Barbary pirates, but instead of trading with another country instead or hiring their own protection, they got US Congress to build ships (using taxpayers’ money) to protect their trade.

But the bigger point is that whether one agrees with Paul on foreign policy or not, the problems we face at home are much-much greater than any potential, theoretical threat from Iran, N. Korea, or Russia.

C. Another point about economy is that it’s not just some numbers at the bottom of TV screen. It’s not just the price of tomatoes at local Shaw’s Market. Economy is the interaction between people of the society. It IS the society. Division of labor and successful exchange of goods and services are what makes up a civilization. So, "fixing economy" is fixing the society itself.

Reality is more awesome than Skyrim

2011-12-18T05:11:00.011-05:00

Rough translation:

On July 13th, 1941, coming from Pesets district, Red Army soldier Ovcharenko was delivering ammunition for 3rd Machine-Gun Company, being four-five kilometres from the division.

Ovcharenko was attacked and surrounded by fifty German soldiers and three officers on two motor vehicles.

A German officer left the car, ordered Ovcharenko to lift hands up, beat the rifle from his hands and began to interrogate him. In the vehicle's trunk, Ovcharenko had an ax. Without losing spirit, he beheaded the German officer with the ax and threw three grenades at the German car.

Twenty one German soldiers were killed; others ran away in panic. Ovcharenko pursued a wounded officer with an ax in his hands. In the town Pesets, he caught up with the officer in a garden and decapitated him. Third officer managed to disappear.

Without losing initiative, comrade Ovcharenko took documents from all the killed soldiers, maps from the officers, schematics and records and presented them to the regiment headquarters.

The vehicle with supplies and products was delivered on time to his company. Comrade Ovcharenko continues his military life. He was raised to a machine gunner.

— Commander of the Southern Front, General-Lieutenant Ryabyshev. Member of the Military Council, Korniets.

I do have one question. I know it probably did not escape other people's attention, but I just have to ask it. What happened between the "hands up, beat the rifle out of hands, interrogation" part and "got an ax from the trunk of the car and decapitated the German officer"? Is it just me, or is there a step missing there? Like: "Umm... Headquarters? Wait a second. Umm. I actually have a map to Stalin's headquarters in my trunk. Yeah. Just one sec... just stand there... just... whatchuhgot!.. slash..."

Anyway, I have no idea whether any of what the article describes actually happened, and if it did, what actually took place, but it's obvious that some Soviet newspapers had more action packed in them than some Skyrim let's-plays (hide annotations and skip to 2:00):

Spiritual timelessness of Judaism. Special days of Kislev

2011-12-14T23:45:00.000-05:00

(source)

In one of his shiurim on Chanukah (listen also to this shiur on the whole month of Kislev), Rabbi Paltiel explains that time is also a creation. Besides the time that is bound to space (which Einstein’s theories of relativity talk about), there is a more general, “background” time. Every moment of this time has its unique spiritual energy — Sunday has one type of energy, Monday another, etc.

This explains why certain holidays in Jewish history came and went, and other holidays remained. The particular day on which a particular holiday happened had its unique spiritual energy. The holidays with “universal” spiritual energies are still celebrated by Jews. For instance, the 15th of Nissan (the day when Jews left Egypt) had an energy of liberation, redemption from slavery, overcoming of one’s limitations and so on. This is why Pesach is celebrated throughout generations — not (only) to commemorate the leaving of Egypt, but mainly because the day itself is liberating; the same spiritual energy that allowed Jews to leave Egypt many years ago on this day appears again every year.

This applies to any holy day on Jewish calendar. On Rosh HaShana (New Year), the source of energy that allows the world to exist is renewed. By celebrating Rosh HaShana, we are celebrating literal rebirth of the Universe.

Shabbos is not merely a day to commemorate the fact that G-d “rested” (i.e., did not create the world actively); on this day, the stretch of time itself (and as a result, the world that exists in this time) is holy. The same mode of creation that was during the first Shabbos — through “thought” as opposed to “speech” — happens every Shabbos. It is as if on Shabbos we did not exist “outside” of Hashem, but inside His “mind”.

Rabbi Paltiel gives another example. In Sha’alos veTeshuvos min haShomayim (“Questions and Answers from Heaven”), a book in which halachic questions are asked “beyond the Curtain” and answers are recorded, at the end of one such teshuva, it is written: “Today is 19th of Kislev, Tuesday, and it is a day for celebration”. For a thousand years it was not known why 19th of Kislev was a happy day — until 1799, when on a Tuesday, 19th of Kislev, the first Rebbe of Chabad Chassidus, R’ Shneur Zalman of Lyadi (“Alter Rebbe”) was released from prison. This day became known as “New Year of Chassidus”, and it is generally recognized amongst Chabad Chassidim as a day instrumental for dissemination for Chabad Chassidus, which is a recipe for bringing Mashiach.

Yud-Tes Kislev is a lot bigger than Chabad. It is not New Year of Chassidus Chabad; it is New Year of Chassidus. In Yud-Tes Kislev lies spiritual victory of Baal Shem Tov. Baal Shem Tov was a special soul that came from heavens to introduce new, special type of Judaism, and it was being judged. [...] And the miracle of Yud-Tes Kislev effected not just Chabad Chassidim, but all Jews. [Listen on for explanation.]

The same is true regarding Chanukah. The day of 25th of Kislev has the special spiritual energy of renewal and dedication of Beis HaMikdosh. When the Mishkan was built, it was ready to be dedicated on the 25th of Kislev. Moses was told by G-d to wait until Adar, but the energy of this day revealed itself when it came time (on the same day) to renew and rededicate Beis HaMikdosh after victory over Greeks.

So, it is true that we celebrate the historical occurence of each holiday, but this occurence is but a keili, a vessel for the spiritual energy behind the occurence. We are really celebrating the spiritual occurence of a particular day (that is happening on that day), but since we live in the physical world and cannot “grasp” the spiritual events in their purity (they are beyond this world) — nor should we do this, because the ultimate purpose of creation is making a dwelling place for G-d in this, physical world, — we “dress” the spiritual energy of a particular day in the “vessel” of a particular holiday, with its history, customs, special prayers, symbolism, etc.

That is why Purim, for instance, could be meaningful even for Jews in the middle of Holocaust. While the historical relevance of this holiday was seemingly distant and reversed by contemporary events, the spiritual relevance (Purim is higher that Yom Kipur, as the Lubavitcher Rebbe explains in one of his ma’amorim) was nevertheless there.

* * *

This brings me to the question often asked about the “reason” of mitzvos. I will give a relatively obscure example. At the end of having a meal, before saying the main after-blessing for the meal, it is customary to wash one’s fingertips and pass the fingers over one’s lips. Men do this (usually, using a special cup and plate that is passed around the table); women do not. The explanation given on a nigleh (“revealed” or legal) level is that this custom was instituted to protect someone who had just eaten from the salts present in the food that may be harmful for one’s skin.

The question why this customs does not apply to women has several answers. One of them is that traditionally, women were involved with preparing food and therefore washed their hands anyway. Another is that the act of publicly washing one’s hands at the table is an act of doing something normally private in public, with the table’s attention drawn to oneself. Because privacy is more important for women than for men, it is generally recognized to be improper for the former to participate in attention-drawing events (which includes other activities, in which women normally do not participate, such as holding a public office, being a Rav, getting an aliyah, etc.).

Today, if we see in this custom nothing but a medical warning, it may seem somewhat irrelevant, to say the least. It may be surprising why this custom survived, while other, seemingly more important customs of past did not. The same logic that applies to holidays, however, applies to customs and mitzvos. They have both physical (historical, ritual, pragmatic) and spiritual dimension. The former is but a vessel for holding the latter.

Indeed, regarding washing of one’s fingertips after the meal, we find in the commentaries of AriZal (Rabbi Itzchok Luria, the founder of the most comprehensive contemporary system of Kabbala we have today — on which Chabad Chassidus is based, by the way) that through washing of our fingertips after the meal, we dispell the forces of klipah (spiritual impurity) that may have been attracted to us (similar to how the same forces are attracted to our body during our sleep and linger in the fingertips after we wake up, making it neccessary for us to wash them). Indeed, this is the kavana (conscious intent) one needs to have while washing one’s hands after the meal — to get rid of these forces of impurity.

So, why don’t women wash their fingertips? Apparently, because the forces of impurity do not affect them in this case. How do we know this? Because women are not required halachically to wash their fingertips after a meal. The most important lesson that Chabad Chassidus teaches us is: we must realize that ein od milvado — there is nothing but G-d. There is absolute unity of G-d with His creation, both space and time. All events happen in time and in space when they are supposed to happen according to the grand design of creation. Spiritual at all times is connected to the physical, both in historical events and in Torah.

Therefore, if — for whatever historical reasons! — women were not obligated to wash their fingertips at the time that this custom was instituted, it must mean that whatever the spiritual dimension of this custom is, it did not apply to women but applied to men. Even if nowadays the particular physical causes of this difference (and the reason for the custom itself) no longer apply, their spiritual aspects still do, making it necessary for us to honor the custom.

What's with the high prices?

2011-12-14T23:36:00.002-05:00

And as a small bonus:

Defending hedge funds

2011-12-11T01:14:00.002-05:00

Hugh Hendry, a manager of hedge funds, against a socialist bastard.

I find what he says at the end especially powerful.

It's really amazing how a socialist face just invites a punch.

I want the other half of the pile

2011-12-10T18:40:00.002-05:00

In this post I wrote:

On the other hand, the situation is the same as in Republican primaries: all of the candidates suck, with the exception of Ron Paul. Choosing between these parties is like choosing between two weevils.

I remember how my rabbi's father explained the difference between Catholic and Protestant church: when you're riding in a horse-driven cart, sometimes the horse does its business on the road. And sometimes the wheel drives through the horse's present and divides it in two. Now, what's the difference between the right half and the left half? That's basically the difference between Newt and Romney, between Communists and Putin in Russia, and between Democrats and Republicans in the US.

An illustration of this concept:

(source)

The poster says: "I did not vote for these bastards. I voted for different bastards! I demand a recount of votes!"

Point being: vote for Ron Paul.

Extra-extra-extra

2011-12-07T17:12:00.002-05:00

An update to the previous post about Russian parliamentary elections.

This is an snapshot of the results in Rostov region displayed on Russian TV. Add up the percentages.

Crystal-clear

2011-12-07T16:50:00.001-05:00

I actually oftentimes hear the examples of such logic from people around me.

If slavery wasn’t abolished, women wouldn’t be able to vote, we wouldn’t have things such as the refrigerator, and women wouldn’t be able to work.

(source)

Zero here, one there

2011-12-07T12:18:00.002-05:00

Dmitri Surnin writes:

According to the official results of the Regional Voting Commission 1701 (where he worked as an observer), these were the local results of Russian elections (party names are loosely translated):

KPRF (Communists): 285
United Russia (Putin's party): 271
Just Russia: 218
Apple*: 167
LDPR (ultra-nationalists): 133
Right Path: 16
Patriots of Russia: 15

The above are the results that the local commission signed and sealed.

These are the results that were officially posted:

United Russia: 662
KPRF (Communists): 295
LDPR (ultra-nationalists): 133
Just Russia: 118
Apple*: 67
Right Path: 16
Patriots of Russia: 15

Apple (Yabloko), by the way, is the only party that is even worth mentioning (it's probably as bad as American Democrats, but at least it's not as bad as Hitler or Mao, represented by the top two choices). As we can see, Apple was the one at whose expense Putin's United Russia (I know, sounds like an airplane company) rose to the top (plus, some "dead souls").

On the other hand, the situation is the same as in Republican primaries: all of the candidates suck, with the exception of Ron Paul. Choosing between these parties is like choosing between two weevils.

I remember how my rabbi's father explained the difference between Catholic and Protestant church: when you're riding in a horse-driven cart, sometimes the horse does its business on the road. And sometimes the wheel drives through the horse's present and divides it in two. Now, what's the difference between the right half and the left half? That's basically the difference between Newt and Romney, between Communists and Putin in Russia, and between Democrats and Republicans in the US.

How anyone can even consider anyone besides Ron Paul as a serious choice for the president of this country boggles my mind. How do you choose between one sleazeball and another? I am not even talking about the ideas: just look at the people themselves.

Jacob's stones

2011-12-01T16:03:00.002-05:00

Talmudic tradition teaches us that a bunch of stones were quarreling on top of which of them Yakov Avinu was going to sleep. In the end, they joined into one stone. This teaches us about unity and bittul: that in order for a group of people (two or more) to become one, they need to nullify themselves to a common goal and purpose.

What most people do not realize is that this is how the game of Go was invented: Yakov took a bunch of separate stones and connected them into a living group.

Purum-pum...

Leaving options open

2011-11-29T14:31:00.051-05:00

When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. This does not mean that the enemy is allowed to escape. The object is to make him believe that there is a road to safety and thus prevent his fighting with the courage of despair.

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Ch. VII

In Judaism, there is a law (in halachos of warfare) that one should not enclose a city completely during a siege, leaving an option for the besieged to leave the city (I am not sure whether to flee or to surrender). This way, not only are you being merciful to the besieged, giving them an option not to perish, but also the ones who do not immediately decide to surrender will fight halfheartedly, the option of leaving the battle always on their mind. If, on other hand, you seal them in completely, they will fight to death — much more fiercely.

When talking about relationships, Rabbi Gottlieb compares the above to the difference between being married and dating. When one is married, one is "sealed in" (although one can still get divorced, chv"sh, the barrier to do so is much higher than to breaking up). As a result, any problem that one encounters, one will fight on much more severely and stubbornly than if one were merely dating. Even if one is in a so-called "long-term relationship" — let's say, a couple has been together for close to a year — it is much easier to break up over the same problem that one might encounter during one's shanah rishoina.

I think the same distinction applies not only to secular-style dating, but even to the shidduchim. On the one hand, one wants to find out as much as possible about his perspective spouse. On the other hand, certain things are better left unknown — until the couple are married, when such things should be dealt with. Once one is "sealed in", one fights with a greater effort and can accomplish things he did not know he could.

I am talking about things that can theoretically be solved within the context of marriage (i.e., there is a good chance that the couple can deal with them — even with some difficulty — once they come up). Obviously, many things should be known before one commits. It is a matter of balance. I suspect that the balance may be off-set in the modern shidduchim, contributing to so many people unable to find a partner for a long time.

This also touches on the idea of length of a shidduch. The shorter the shidduch, the less one finds out about one's perspective spouse. This has the danger of remaining ignorant of things that one better find out about before one is married. But the longer one dates, the more one is likely to find something out that will ruin the general "mood" of the shidduch — something that could be certainly dealt with once the couple were married.

That is why in certain communities (including, to a large extent, Lubavitch community), the general custom is to find out about the most important, crucial things, and leave the rest to be worked on during the first year of marriage.

* * *

In a game of go, one is oftentimes confronted with choices. It goes without saying that there are many choices of good moves on the board during most of the game. But sometimes one has a choice between specific moves in a specific location. For instance, if I play 1a, my opponent will respond 2a, to which I will respond 3a. If I play 1b, he will respond 2b, and I will respond 3b. Etc. The micro-situation on the board will change depending on my move.

The idea I heard a few days ago is that sometimes it is useful not to play any of the choices and just tenuki — play somewhere else on the board. (The important assumption is that the sequences a, b, and c have equal value to me. Obviously, if 1a–2a–3a exchange is more valuable than the others, I should play 1a.)

Why tenuki? Well, the point is that the situation on the board is still uncertain. Let's say, the center and the right side of the board are still unsettled. Although I may have some semblance of a plan of what I want to do, I don't know perfectly how my opponent will respond. Because of this, a situation may arise on the board that favors 3b move over 3a or 3c. But if, at that point, I will have already played 1a, it will be too late to take advantage of 3b. So, best leave things unsettled, sequences still hanging in potential, until the situation changes and I have a better idea of what is more beneficial to me.

What if the opponent chooses one of the sequences himself? Well, in that case, you will respond accordingly — and you will have played (hopefully sente) somewhere else on the board first.

Last night, a situation like that actually happened. I was playing a game in a local Barnes and Noble coffee shop and had a group on the left in which there was a choice of how to make two "eyes" (two independent sets of internal liberties necessary for the group to live). The game moved on, and the bottom and the center of the board got settled. The group which was pushing on the my left-side group from the outside found itself in a shortage of liberties if I played the right tesuji (a combination of moves). But, this tesuji was possible only because I left the left-side group alone, having not chosen in which of the two ways I can make eyes. (Obviously, if my opponent would make a move there, I would have to respond. But, he also left the group alone.)

* * *

The above concept from go can be applied to everyday life in a number of ways. The obvious lesson is to leave the options open. Don't burn the bridges. Don't seal things in until you have to. In relationships too, sometimes it is helpful not to make up one's mind about a person and leave a space for the development of the relationship and your opinion about him.

In one of his articles (most of which I happen to dislike, but this one is good), Tzvi Freeman compares it to an advice that most of us heard at some point of our lives: don't tighten the screws all the way until all of them are in. You may want to leave some "wiggle room" for things to re-adjust.

* * *

Something interesting: miai (read until the end of the introductory section).

"I only believe in the statistics that I doctored myself"

2011-11-28T21:30:00.002-05:00

Here is a really interesting example of "liberal statistics".

In non-unionized Texas, the average SAT scores are lower than in "progressive, unionized Wisconsin". But, if you look at Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics separately, each group scores higher in Texas. (It's just that the proportion of lower-scoring Hispanics and Blacks is higher in Texas than in Wisconsin.)

This is why one needs to know basic statistics to realize that although average A may be lower than average B, each sub-category of A may be on average higher than each corresponding sub-category of B.

So, nationally:

Texas: 47th
Wisconsin: 2nd

But, for 2009 4th Grade Math:

White students: Texas 254, Wisconsin 250 (national average 248)
Black students: Texas 231, Wisconsin 217 (national 222)
Hispanic students: Texas 233, Wisconsin 228 (national 227)

For other grades and disciplines, it's the same: Texas scores consistently higher than WI and national average, while WI scores just barely above (and oftentimes below) than the national average. See for yourself.

So much for Paul Krugman's assertion that not all is well in Texas.

[source: arbat]

Baseball, go and fundamentals

2011-11-28T03:32:00.005-05:00

From Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go by Toshiro Kageyama. I think this concept can be applied to many aspects of life.

Each spring sees the opening of another baseball season. This is one of my favorite spectator sports, but every year there is one thing that bothers me about it. That is the way that semi-professional, university, and sometimes even highschool stars enter the professional leagues and immediately display a skill that puts their veteran teammates to shame.

There hardly seems to be any difference at all between amateurs and professionals. Amateurs play for pure enjoyment, while professionals play to make a living. The difference between them ought to be much greater.

In every confrontation with a real American professional team it seems that what we need to learn from them, besides their technique of course, is how uniformly faithful their players are to the fundamentals. Faithfulness to fundamentals seems to be a common thread linking professionalism in all areas. If we consider the American professionals as the real professionals in baseball, then I think we have to consider their Japanese counterparts, who tend to pass over the fundamentals, as nothing more than advanced amateurs.

The reason for the lack of polish in Japanese baseball is probably just the short history it has in this country. Each year, when the visiting American team makes its tour, I sense an improvement on the Japanese side, so that in another few decades, or another century perhaps, when the necessary progress in technique and mental attitude has been made, I expect to see a world championship spanning the Pacific. I feel certain that no racial physical inferiority consigns us to second place.

The opposite case, where the difference between amateur and professional is most striking, is Japanese sumo wrestling. There even the collegiate grand champion has to enter the professional ranks in the third division down from the top and work his way up while being treated like any other raw recruit. Collegiate wrestlers lack nothing in body, weight, or strength, and they are gifted with the advantage of intelligence. The potential is there, all right, but on the other side there seems to be what can only be termed a thick barrier between amateur and professional, built by a long tradition among professionals of almost superhuman effort. It takes more than just bodily size and strength to become a professional sumo wrestler.

In the world of go also, a long tradition of intellectual combat has distilled the professional into something that an amateur can never hope to become. A professional has undergone elite training in competition from childhood; he has learned to view every other person as an opponent to be beaten down and crushed. His mental, physical, and emotional strength all have to be fully developed. If he lets up anywhere, it will show in his performance on the board and he will fail the professional test. The realm of competition is stark.

No professional regrets the time he has had to spend studying. "I've never spent a minute studying in my life," declares Yamabe, 9-dan. Let two professionals get into a post game analysis, however, and they will go on endlessly, completely forgetting about time. Who will say that is not studying?

The way young players have taken over the game can only be called terrifying. The time they spend studying every day defies the imagination.

Professionals do this unquestioningly. Even a gemstone has to be polished. "A man is always moving either forward or backward," says Kano, 9-dan. "He never stands still." This should be every go player's motto, and he should keep piling effort on top of effort no matter what his age. He can be confident of always making progress.

And now, a lecture from Dywin on orthodox opening (make sure to increase the quality to at least 480p):

Influence

2011-11-25T04:18:00.009-05:00

An incredibly entertaining lecture that shows the importance of influence. More of a hyperbole of a game, but still very interesting to watch. Very low-level of knowledge about Go is required. (Make sure to hide annotations and increase video quality to at least 480p.)

This game reminded me of the fight between Jin and Mugen from Samurai Champloo:

Later, Jin (the guy with glasses, a ronin) comments that Mugen's fighting style is "the lowest of the low" in terms of technique. Because of his superior agility, Mugen wins his fights — except against Jin, whose professional samurai training and knowledge of the fundamentals makes him undefeatable by such "brute force" (from agility point of view) approach.

This is similar to how the Black player in the first reviewed game above was able to progress to amateur 7 dan by playing in an unusual and tricky style. But against a professional, who knows how to use influence of a stone wall, he is powerless.

Not that there is no room for creativity and use of unusual situations:

Will they be armed?

2011-11-24T20:15:00.004-05:00

Recently, I heard a relative of my wife tell a story of how she visited her brother on a kibbutz in Israel, back in the day. Her brother was a philosopher genius, who lived a reclusive life on a kibbutz in his own world of ideas.

"I will never forget", she said, "how one time he had to go somewhere. He got up, took out his gun, put it on his shoulder, and left. And after that experience — seeing my quiet, thoughtful brother with a gun — I have always hated guns. I hate all wars, all violence, and I hate guns. Gun control. That's right."

Now, it's quite obvious to any intelligent person that my wife's relative's logic has topology of a Möbius strip. We can agree that violence in and of itself is bad. But, presumably, her philosopher brother was picking up a gun not to go hunt some Arabs, but to defend himself from them. That is a very good argument against gun control. Obviously, if even he had to carry a gun, the government was powerless to protect him. So, he had to protect himself against the Arabs who had guns. Imposing gun control on him would take his protection away from him. Arabs, obviously, would still keep their guns.

This is a very good illustration for one of the standard arguments against gun control: making guns illegal will take the guns away from the hands of law-abiding citizens. The law-breaking criminals will look for a way to obtain a gun whether or not owning one is banned (if they are not afraid to risk life in prison for murdering someone, surely they will not be afraid to risk whatever punishment they'll get for owning a gun).

(By the way, I told my wife's relative that the states with the lowest amount of gun control have also the lowest amount of crime. Her retort to this piece of statistics was an expression of incredulity which I shall not quote here.)

But the reason I am posting the above story is that it reminded me of a quote from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels:

Eddie: They're armed.
Soap: What was that? Armed? What do you mean, armed? Armed with what?
Eddie: Err, bad breath, colorful language, feather duster... what do you think they're gonna be armed with? Guns, you [moron]!

Potential and actual

2011-11-22T15:39:00.005-05:00

One of the analogies for the opening moves of a Go game is creating military bases throughout the world or a country. These bases do not equal territory under control, but they result in influence over a given region which, after a properly executed campaign, may become a territory.

This is one of the most interesting aspects of a Go game: to balance the potential with the actual, a struggle that also exists, lehavdil, in Judaism, both in Halacha (e.g., Beis Hillel vs. Beis Shammai) and Chassidus.

To play a stone in an empty region of the board to create influence over it before your opponent does or to play a conservative move that strengthens an already placed stone (or an already existing group) bringing existing influence closer to becoming a control over a territory? Such questions are asked throughout the opening of a Go game.

(Of course, these are just very basic concepts that are applied for more abstract calculations. Oftentimes, an attack on an enemy's base results in a sequence of moves, after which the enemy, defending his area of influence, has built a secure territory, and you have built a wall facing the center that now has a great deal of influence.)

The above introduction was to explain the following figure. In it, most of the stones played in the fuseki (the opening) of a game between two strong amateurs are marked with triangles (some stones are not there because they were captured in the mid- or endgame). The figure itself shows the end of the game. It is interesting to see which territories resulted from which opening moves...

(source: Invitation to Go by John Fairbairn)

Judge Napolitano: "Taxation is theft"

2011-11-22T14:57:00.001-05:00

The people love their leaders

2011-11-22T00:39:00.000-05:00

Nascar and Michelle Obama:

Russian boxing fans and Vladimir Putin:

Tunnels and patches

2011-11-20T19:29:00.000-05:00

An excerpt from Direction of Play by Takeo Kajiwara, 9-dan:

Whales and Green Peace

2011-11-20T18:12:00.001-05:00

A very interesting post about the history of sperm-whale killing, demand for sperm-whale oil, and what stopped the killing.

When the world relied on whales as a source of hydrocarbons, they were too expensive to use as fuels, and the demand was self-limiting.

When the whales were “saved” by petrochemical industry, it was only a short respite. Petrol-powered machinery required new types of lubricants that increased rather than decreased the reliance on sperm oil. Petroleum was plentiful, the cars filled the world, and it is at that point that the whales began to disappear.

Literally nothing was done to save these whales until the cars evolved to the point when the engines started to operate at a higher temperature; the latter was caused by the concern about human health and efficiency rather than the well being of these whales. The environmental activists drove their cars just like everyone else, and they consumed transported goods and benefitted from sperm oil based lubricants in a myriad other ways, sustaining the demand. It was not their attention grabbing activities that stopped killing whales, but the unsung efforts of chemists finding a synthetic replacement to sperm oil.

Meanwhile, human lives were lost through multiple transmission failures.

The reason why so many whales were killed in the 20th century was the distant ramifications of replacement of whale oil by petroleum. It took another 100 years to find solutions to these ramifications, and only then it became possible to save the whales. Ecological activism did not play significant role in all of these developments; neither did the numerous well-meaning international treaties, moratoriums, and other chest beating displays.

A chemist who saved the whales has not merited a Wikipedia entry. His name was P. S. Landis and he was a researcher at Mobile Oil.

Also, from the comments:

We still have the national strategic whale oil reserve, and if you badly need it (and can prove that to the US government), you can obtain it from there. I've heard that the gears in the Hubble Telescope were lubricated with sperm oil, though I do not know if this is true. For applications at low temperature it remains unsurpassed. BTW, it still remains unknown what makes it such an exceptional lubricant, there are only theories.

By the 31st century, no fossil fuels will be left in the ground, so we'll be back to recycling atmospheric CO2 in the sustainable, socially responsible way, of which whale harvesting is an example. The Futurama guys get it right.

I personally think that if there is one thing that the governments are useful for is to protect the intelligent beings that cannot protect themselves (against humans). That includes old ladies and sperm whales.

Triple Go

2011-11-20T01:37:00.000-05:00

A game of three-color go on a 13x13 board. Final position (Black wins through resignation):

(source)

Ko

2011-11-15T15:52:00.000-05:00

If you don’t like ko, don’t play Go.

— Janice Kim

A is in ko. Black (or, rather, blue) to move. I see one ko threat.

Marching we march

2011-11-13T23:14:00.003-05:00

As an addendum to the previous post, a Bobover wedding march (make sure to watch in high quality):

State circus

2011-11-13T20:35:00.003-05:00

In Boston, when the circus is in town, it is based in the Government Square, right in front of all the bureaucratic buildings. Everyone agrees it is a very fitting place for it.

While watching the following video, two things come to mind:

1. These countries have nuclear weapons. A blast from one of these weapons is sufficient to offset the orbit of the Earth enough to create an eternal winter, chv"sh.

2. Can you imagine Apple and Google doing something like that? Any private company? With people cheering, etc. I guess, private sports teams come close. Which make sense: after statist patriots, sport fans are the second in idiocy.

Yes, you're thinking of this:

Or this:

Importance of Akeidas Yitzchok — spiritual perspective

2011-11-11T14:04:00.000-05:00

(limit at infinity)

In an earlier post, I covered logical arguments concerning akeidas Yitzchok. This event, however, has a very important spiritual lesson, which Avraham had to learn: we can define G-d’s expression in this world, but we cannot define His Essence.

In parshas Lech Lecha, Torah tells us that Avraham circumcised himself. In parshas Vayeira, he receives news of Sodom’s and Gamorra’s planned destruction and argues with G-d that some righteous individuals may live in them. Later, Yitzchok is miraculously conceived and born, and later yet (fast-forward thirty-odd years), G-d orders Avraham to sacrifice Yitzchok. What’s the connection between these events?

Initially, Avraham understood G-d as the Creator of the Universe. He deduced necessity of G-d’s existence from the fact that Universe functioned in an obvious order, which necessitated the source — only one — of that order. He preached monotheism and eventually received revelation of G-d, who told him to go to Eretz Kna’an to become an ancestor of a great nation. Before G-d’s revelation, Avraham’s understanding of G-d was limited to that of a Creator, after revelation — to whatever aspect of Himself G-d chose to reveal to Avraham. His understanding of G-d also was limited by his own nature. Avraham was kind and thus perceived G-d from this point of view, as a source of kindness in the world. Next came the circumcision. Chabad-Chassidic commentary on parshas Vayeira states:

When, as a young boy, Sholom DovBer of Lubavitch learned [the verse “G-d appeared to him”], he came in tears to his grandfather, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch (the Tzemach Tzedek), and cried, “If G-d appeared to Abraham, why doesn’t He appear to me, as well?” In reply to his little grandson’s anguished question, the Tzemach Tzedek told him that Abraham merited having G-d appear to him because, although he had indeed refined himself enough to attain very sublime levels of Divine consciousness, he at the same time knew that G-d is infinite and that therefore there were still an infinite number of levels of Divine consciousness to attain. This recognition left Abraham feeling grossly inadequate, as though he were still encrusted by layers of insensitivity to Divine awareness that needed to be removed — to be “circumcised” — in order to bare his heart before his Creator.

So, we see a gradual progression of Avraham’s understanding of G-d’s nature. He started with definition of G-d as a creator. Then he progressed to understanding of G-d as one who does kindness, chessed — from the “right” pillar of the kabbalistic tree of Divine Attributes. After his circumcision, Avraham achieved a level of being able to see the whole tree, with left side present. He was able to perceived that G-d is also a judge (as can be seen from his arguing with G-d about destruction of the Cities of the Plane: “Shall the Judge of the whole world not judge fairly?”). Birth of Yitzchok pushed the definition even further: not only was G-d the source of the world’s order, of Nature, but He was able to do miracles, transcending definitions of natural laws.

So, what did ordering Avraham to sacrifice Yitzchok accomplish? It elevated Avraham to understanding that G-d is beyond any definition or limitation whatsoever. Not of a Creator, not of a Kind Creator, not of a Just Creator, not even of someone who promised Avraham to become a father of a chosen nation. Avraham was not allowed to place any kind of limitation on G-d: natural, intellectual, emotional or logical. This new level Avraham achieved through an act of bittul, nullification of one’s ego and its importance. When being kind, Avraham related to the level of G-d’s Kindness (chesed). When asking for justice, Avraham asked for the level of G-d’s Justice (gevurah). When raising Yitzchok to become an ancestor of the Jewish nation that would proclaim G-d as King, Avraham was relating to the level of G-d’s Kingship (malchus). But what to do to relate to G-d’s undefinable Essence? Only through an act of sacrifice, nullification, removal of all definitions.

In our lives, we must do kindness, be just, keep all the mitzvos that make us G-d’s nation. While doing all this, however, we cannot allow any definitions or barriers to limit our relationship with Torah and G-d (as the Rebbe teaches). We must live in a constant act of self-sacrifice of our lives, our self-interests, our pleasures to G-d, reaching up to His Essence.

The final part of the story teaches us another lesson. In the end, G-d did not allow Avraham to slaughter his son and showed that He intended to keep his promise. Although G-d does not have to be limited by any characteristics, definitions of promises, he chooses to do so. He chooses to continue creating the world which defies His Oneness. He chooses to be the source of Kindness and Justice (and other eight spheros, whose vessels limit and define G-d’s Infinite Light). He chooses to continue having Jews as a chosen nation.

Giving us His Torah, G-d defied His own Infinity by limiting Himself to 613 commandments, to the physical world through which they are kept, to a specific nation, to whom a promise was given. A promise G-d intends to keep: that Jews through their efforts will bring about an Era when G-d’s Essence will be revealed in the materiality of the physical world, the Era of Mashiach. May this happen speedily in our days.

P.S. This also means that Hashem’s choice of us is limited to the specific 613 mitzvos. We can’t just serve Hashem in any way we want.

Atomic bomb game

2011-11-11T04:07:00.009-05:00

(the exhibit presents the position of the game at the moment the atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima)

Interesting bit of Go history (source):

The number of go tournaments held in Japan during World War II were far fewer than those held before the war. Many young players were being drafted into military service and, because of a paper shortage, newspapers were compelled to reduce their size. Go columns were among the first to be dropped. In spite of this, newspapers continued to sponsor tournaments and games, even though they would probably never be published.

As the war dragged on, conditions for staging even the most important games became extremely difficult. In the spring of 1945, Kaoru Iwamoto, 7-dan, earned the right to challenge Hashimoto Utaro for the third Honinbo title. However, finding a venue for the title match in bombed-out Tokyo had become impossible.

A venue for the games was finally found in Hiroshima. However, the police chief of the city, who was an amateur go player, ordered the players not to play there, since it was too dangerous. However, when the police chief was called away on official business, the players, taking advantage of his absence, ignored his order and played the first game of the match July 23-25 under a rain of bullets from strafing airplanes.

When the chief returned and heard that a game had been played, he was furious and fabade players in no uncertain terms from playing any more games in Hiroshima.

Another venue was found in Itsukaichi, an outer suburb of Hiroshima, and the second game was played there Aug. 4-6.

On the morning of Aug. 6, Hashimoto happened to be in the garden when the atomic bomb was dropped. He saw a brilliant flash of light and the mushroom cloud rise above the city. A tremendous blast of wind shattered all the windows and turned the playing room into a shambles. The position on the board had to be set up again. Under these circumstances, they managed to complete the game; Hashimoto won by five points.

That evening, atomic-bomb survivors started to pour into Itsukaichi and the players began to understand the magnitude of the disaster and just how lucky they were. The house in which they were to have played their game was destroyed and its owner killed.

The war ended a week later and the match was resumed in November, ending in a 3-3 tie. A playoff became necessary, but Japan was in such disarray that it was not until July 1946 that a best-of-three playoff was arranged. Iwamoto won the first two games, and thereby took the Honinbo title.

Hashimoto and Iwamoto were important forces in the go world during the years following the war. Had they been killed in Hiroshima that fateful day, the history of go today would most likely be quite different.

Iwamoto defended the Honinbo title against Minoru Kitani in 1947, but Hashimoto came back in 1959 to recapture it. Then, with the prestige of holding the top title in the go world at that time, Hashimoto broke away from the Japan Go Association and formed the Western Japan Go Association. Although, a bitter rivalry existed between these two organizations for a while, they coexist amicably today and cooperate on many levels to promote go in Japan.

Iwamoto, who will be 97 on Feb. 5, has contributed much to the popularization of go in the West. In 1929, he retired as a go player and immigrated to Brazil. However, two years later he returned to Japan and resumed his go-playing career. Perhaps it was this experience that caused him to want to make go a truly international game. He has gone on numerous overseas tours and has established go centers in Amsterdam, Sao Paulo, Seattle and New York.

Just for the record, let me say this: after reading about this game, I started reading about the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, bombings of Tokyo, etc. It is my opinion that targeting civilians by bombing raids the way Allies did in the World War II in Japan (not just the atomic bombs, but also bombings of Tokyo with incendiary bombs) and Germany (e.g., Dresden, Berlin) is not much different from what Islamic terrorists do today. Probably not different at all. And therefore, there is not much difference between President Truman who made a decision to destroy two cities full of thousands of civilians (eventually leading to the deaths of close to 200,000 people) and Osama Bin Laden.

I am ashamed of the times when I excused such things by calling them collateral damage. This was not collateral damage. This was terrorism.

Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?

— Leo Szilard

Go Seigen vs. Fujisawa Kuranosuke, 1953

2011-11-09T23:23:00.006-05:00

By the way, Go Seigen (born in China) is still alive. He is in his late 90s. Here he is young:

Apparently, after the war, Go Seigen joined some sort of religious organization/cult and as a result had to leave Japan's national Go organization. He was unable to participate in the national championships for a while. Not to worry: he played in many games against the strongest Go players; the encounters were sponsored by the newspapers and Go journals that published the records of the games.

Just another evidence that you don't need government to sponsor art and intellectual pursuits such as board games or science.

Clever and wise

2011-11-09T11:06:00.002-05:00

I just opened my iGoogle page and saw two things:

1. All the news headlines about the Euro-crisis
2. A quote from Albert Einstein (from my daily quote gadget): "A clever person solves the problem. A wise person avoids it."

The thing is: getting the government out of regulations of the economy is both clever and wise. It would cure the existing problems by allowing the capital in the markets to flow back to the proper targets (something that the politicians' regulations and attempts to "solve" the problem is actually preventing). It would also make sure that the future crises do not happen.

More reading: "Real Causes of Boom-and-Bust Cycle".

Playing Go in Russia

2011-11-07T16:43:00.005-05:00

A good player tries to read out [ahead] in his head before he puts the stones on the board. He looks before he leaps. Frequently he does not leap at all; many of the sequences his reading uncovers are stored away for future reference, and in the end never carried out. This is especially true in a professional game, where the two hundred or so moves played are only the visible part of an iceberg of implied threats and possibilities, most of which stays submerged.

You may try to approach the game at that level, or you may, like most of us, think your way from one move to the next as you play along, but in either case it is your reading ability more than anything else that determines your rank.

— Elementary Go Series, Volume 3: Tesuji, James Davis

(source)

Sister and wife

2011-11-05T19:08:00.009-04:00

I have returned to my garden, my sister, my bride.

— Song of Songs

I have read an interesting idea from a sicho on parshas Lech Lecha this Shabbos.

The episode of Avraham Avinu and Sara descending to Egypt is well known. During their crossing the Nile river, Avraham told Sara that she should pretend to be his sister, lest she is seized by the immoral Egyptians and he is killed, chv"sh.

On a spiritual level, parshas Lech Lecha (whose main theme is the journey of Avraham Avinu to Eretz Yisroel from the place of his birth) is a metaphor for the soul's journey from the upper worlds to this world.

The concept of "sister" represents the soul; the concept of "wife" represents the body. (In this case, Avraham Avinu represents the essence of the soul, cheilek Elokah mima'al mamosh, yechida shebenefesh.)

The soul's relationship with Hashem is natural, like that of a sister and a brother (while a sister and a brother may get in a fight, it is only under extreme circumstances that they will lose all relationship, G-d fobid). The relationship of the body with Hashem is that of a wife with a husband. The relationship at first is not "natural" (in the sense that a newlywed couple have to grow accustomed to each other and when they just meet are strangers); thus, if it is not cultivated properly, it can fall apart, chv"sh. On the other hand, if it is nurtured and grows, the relationship between a husband and a wife can become much more explosive and stronger than that between siblings can ever hope to be.

This is the lesson for our avoidas Hashem. When our soul enters this world (similar to how Avraham descended into Egypt), it is in a state of weakness. It must be on guard against the foreign and potentially destructive elements of the material. Therefore, it must rely on its "natural" relationship with Hashem — similar to that of siblings, a relationship which is the result of the soul's origins. That is why the beginning of the soul's life in this world (the childhood and youth), as well as the times of special spiritual closeness to Hashem (Shabbos and holidays) must be spent with the focus on study of Torah and davening. (Also, of course, the soul must renew and strengthen its connection with Hashem on a daily basis by learning and davening at set times.)

On the other hand, the whole purpose of the soul's descent is to elevate its relationship with Hashem to a completely new level. That can only be accomplished by becoming Hashem's "wife" — by using the body to do the mitzvos that transform the world into a dwelling place for Hashem (similar to how a wife transforms an empty and cold basement apartment into a home for her husband). That is why one cannot spend all his time only learning and must also do mitzvos and interact with the world for the purpose of making it holy.

I also think, on a deeper level, that although one must originally shy away from those things that interest the body (I do not just mean bodily pleasures; I mean, more generally, the pleasures of this world, including the aesthetic and intellectual ones), eventually, it is one's purpose in this world to connect the explosive nature of these endeavors with holiness.

A tale of two cities

2011-11-02T22:29:00.000-04:00

Or, rather, two tales of four agencies.

First two agencies are FBI and Russian Foreign Intelligence Office. The latter sent some spies to America. The spies were identified and monitored by FBI which recently released the materials. It turns out that in ten years of living in the US, this group of Russian spies did not do a single assignment. It has not collected any intelligence, has not contacted any American citizens (Anton Nosik says: "Not even a McDonalds worker, let alone a US government official"). Basically, they were just living in the US on the money of Russian taxpayers, waiting until their government comes up with some clever spying scheme.

Meanwhile, a group of FBI officers were busy monitoring these Russian "super-agents", also drawing salary of American taxpayers.

This would go on for another ten years if not for a diplomatic incident, in which the US government was forced to reveal the information about the Russian spies as a diplomatic move against the Russian government.

Anton Nosik summarizes: "Purpose is a concept very foreign to any bureaucracy. And Intelligence Service is [despite its name] the worst stage of bureaucratization for the brain."

(Sneaky Russian spies serving their country)

The second tale of two agencies is the tale of how a Florida trooper arrested a Florida police officer. See in this video:

Torah response to terrorism

2011-10-29T22:54:00.002-04:00

US Government is feeble and inept

2011-10-29T21:14:00.001-04:00

This is the response of the White House to the petition to investigate the injustice done by the courts to Rubashkin:

Thank you for signing the petition "Call an Investigation into Allegations of Prosecutorial & Judicial Misconduct in the Case of Sholom Rubashkin." We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on WhiteHouse.gov.

As explained in the We the People Terms of Participation, the White House may at times decline to comment on certain specific matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or agencies, federal courts, or state and local governments in its response to a petition. For important policy reasons, this includes specific law enforcement and judicial ethics matters. With respect to law enforcement matters, the Department of Justice is charged with investigating crime and enforcing our laws. The Department also has mechanisms in place to investigate allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, including through its Office of Professional Responsibility. With respect to judicial ethics matters, the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980 vests primary responsibility for investigating and adjudicating claims of judicial misconduct with the Judicial Branch.

This petition calls for an investigation into allegations of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct in the case of Sholom Rubashkin and for action to correct the “gross injustice” in his case. For the reasons given above, the White House declines to comment on matters raised by this petition.

So, basically, US White House is completely inept. That we knew before. And who is in charge of investigating the misconduct of the Judicial Branch? The Judicial Branch itself.

This is what happens when you have a monopoly, boys and girls. Nothing to add.

Message of the day

2011-10-28T00:30:00.003-04:00

To start, go here, for example.

Goté and senté

2011-10-27T14:15:00.004-04:00

This small section (from a Wikipedia article) describing two Go terms shows why I love Go so much. You don't have to know much about Go to understand it. It shows the kind of tactical and strategic encounters one sees during a Go game that makes it so much fun and also so useful for teaching one skills in everyday-life decision making. The last two paragraphs are especially interesting to me.

(Note: the terms goté and senté are pronounced as "go-teh" and "sen-teh" respectively.)

A move that leaves the player an overwhelming follow-up move, and thus forces the opponent to respond, is said to have "sente" (先手), or "initiative"; the opponent has "gote" (後手). In most games, the player who keeps sente most of the time will win.

Gote means "succeeding move" (lit: "after hand"), the opposite of sente, meaning "preceding move" (lit: "before hand"). Sente is a term to describe which player has the initiative in the game, and which moves result in taking and holding the initiative. More precisely, as one player attacks, and the other defends in gote, it can be said that they respectively do and do not have the initiative.

The situation of having sente is favorable, permitting control of the flow of the game. Applying these concepts to a whole sequence is basic to higher strategy. If Black starts a sequence that properly ends in an even number of plays, Black retains sente in doing this. If Black starts a sequence that properly ends after an odd number of plays, Black loses sente and takes gote.

Accepting gote should only be in return for some profitable exchange. Correct play in the yose (endgame) can consist of playing available sentesequences, and then taking the largest gote sequence on the board. That description is a simplification, though. A reverse sente play is a special type of gote play, preventing the opponent from making some sente move. The relative value of reverse sente plays depends on the overall position, but one can count it as twice the value of what it would be if purely gote.

A player has sente if he does not currently need to respond to moves made by his opponent. This can be achieved by tenuki (ignoring the opponent), as a kind of gambit. A player can break out of gote, and can gain sente, by choosing to accept some future loss, on the local level, in order to take the initiative to play elsewhere.

In the case that neither of the players directly respond to each other's moves, the game can become difficult. Both players will have sente on their turn, and the moves they are making are gote. This will likely end in large exchanges, or one player will be shown to have a weaker position, and will have to start answering to avoid heavy damage.

Parshas Noach — floodgates of teshuva

2011-10-26T15:25:00.006-04:00

On Shmini Atzeres we prayed for rain, which we received next day on Simchas Torah — the rain of Torah, which starts with the account of the creation of the world. This week we are reading the next parsha: about Noach and the flood. Because nothing in Torah is random, we should be able to examine the connection between all these ideas.

Torah is compared to water in many places. In Tanya, Alter Rebbe compares Torah to water that falls from high and cascades from level to level until reaching its final destination, down below. So does Torah originate in the Will and Essence of Hashem, beyond creation (Torah is one of the things said to precede creation), and cascades from one spiritual world to another, taking form of each world, along the chain of creation, until it reaches our lowly and physical universe and takes in it the form of physical laws regarding material objects.

The importance of this analogy is two-fold:

First, we need to understand that all the halachos of Torah (and the physical events described in Torah) are nothing but the superficial aspect of Torah, whose essence is beyond mere physical laws and forms. We must strive to understand the inner essence of the laws, always remember where they came from, and never allow our observance of mitzvos to take superficial, routine form of execution of rituals.

Second, just like water that originates from great heights is destined for the lowly valleys, Torah, despite originating from great spiritual heights is destined for this world — and once it reached it, it stays here.

All the spiritual foundations of our physical laws exist so that a Jewish soul can descend into this world and bind these spiritual and lofty phenomena with lowly material matter. We must be, therefore, extremely careful with Halacha and very respectful to even minute aspects of it — there are no “more” or “less” important mitzvos. Even the slightest, minute mitzvah closes a circuit connecting the matter of this world with infinitely removed spiritual heights.

In the first chapter of Torah, Bereishis, we learn about the creation of the world, whose center is human being. The energy sustaining our world’s existence has recently been renewed on Rosh HaShanah, commonly called “Jewish New Year”. The day of Rosh HaShanah, however, is not the first day of creation, but the day when human was created — because the purpose of creation is for human to transform the physical universe into G-dly world, to unite the infinite and the finite, revealing thus the Oneness of G-d.

Jewish sources describe Adam as extremely wise human with prophetic abilities. How could he sin then, knowing what his actions will lead to? The answer is: he knew the Ohm’s Law. If you raise resistance, you also raise voltage. If you connect to G-d through holiness, you are revealing G-dliness in light. If you are connecting to G-d through unholiness, you are revealing G-dliness in darkness, a much more intense revelation. In order to connect to G-d through darkness, he had first to know of light and of darkness, and he reached for the source of this knowledge.

Adam was right: the connection to G-d through darkness is much stronger. This is why this world, the world of darkness and concealment of G-d’s existence, was created, and that is why our souls descend into it. In order to know how to find life in death, however, one must first taste life. Adam first tasted death and was exiled…

In the generation that followed, Adam’s error became increasingly difficult to rectify. The world was exposed to sin, to darkness, but inner essence of darkness, the Hidden Light, was difficult to access, because this Light was not tasted a priori.

This is what the Flood accomplished. It erased the sin and made teshuva (repentance) — an act of transforming sin into mitzva — easier. The original plan was to taste Life first and, “cook” the physical world with it, enfusing it with this taste. The plan did not work — raw flesh of the deadly and dark world was tasted first. That taste had to be washed out with the Flood, and a new sequence had to be invented: humans would not come into darkness with a priori experience and knowledge of light; they would be born in the darkness and discover light hidden in it.

It was not, however, until Avraham Avinu, when this process started. In his ma’amor Bosi LeGani, the Previous Rebbe of Chabad quotes medrash that explains that through the sin of Adam, Presence of G-d that was in this world departed. Through sins of following generations, it departed six more times, further and further.

Through actions of Avraham and his descendants, the Presence started to return, until It did so completely with the giving of Torah. The damage done by the sin of Avraham was reversed; the job of the Flood of teshuva has started. Now came the time to bring the world to its desired state: the state of unity between G-d and the world.

The sparks of Adam’s soul returned into this world in a form of Jewish souls to finish the job that he started: to do the collosal act of Great Teshuva: to return this world into the state of its oneness with G-d. Throughout the history, this process had success and had failure. Sometimes the end of Teshuva was near; sometimes it drew farther. Yet the Presence of G-d never departed this world again, as long as Jewish children were learning Torah.

Three centuries ago (as predicted beforehand by Kabbalah) the floodgates opened again. Not the floodgates of destruction, but the floodgates of life. The final act of teshuva started happening: the Essence of Torah was revealed in teachings of Chassidus — a recipe of how to complete the Return of the world to its source. At the same time, the floodgates in the material reason also opened, starting the era of discovery and increased understanding amongst the Nations. Today we have access to the deepest phenomena of the physical Universe that reveal the source (albeit incompletely studied and understood) of the physical phenomena. At the same time, we have access to teachings that reveal the source and essence of our Torah.

Just like a physicist can understand the classical phenomenon of friction better with knowledge of quantum mechanics, a Jew can understand — lehavdil — five classical levels of Torah knowledge (pardes — pshat, remez, drush, soid) much deeper with the help of essential level of Torah, Chassidus. More importantly, however, one has access to explanation of how to complete what was started in the first six days of Creation, what (after Adam messed up) was started by the Flood, by work of Avram Avinu and his descendants, by Exodus from Egypt, by giving of Torah, by building of the Temple — how to bring about the Era of Mashiach when the great teshuva of the world will be complete, and the revelation of G-d’s Oneness will be higher than it was before the physical world was created.

May this happen speedily in our days.

Norman Borlaug

2011-10-24T23:44:00.000-04:00

Interesting fact: Norman Borlaug, a farmer from Ohio and a "capitalist pig", saved, according to some estimates, over a billion people from hunger by introducing new farming technologies, while the "green" wusses were screaming that the world would not sustain rapidly increasing population.

In other words, he saved singlehandedly more people than the fascists and communists combined killed. Than all the liberal lobbyists combined even tried to save. By: 1) doing research, 2) making money.

In the past 200 years, ever since the “floodgates [of both Chassidus and secular reason] have opened”, research and capitalism made the world better — and Chassidus saved Judaism.

That makes me think there is something right about my views.

Touching or idiotic?

2011-10-24T17:01:00.003-04:00

In this picture (source: Artemiy Lebedev), a soldier of Latvian army is wiping the snot from under the nose of another soldier standing in some sort of ceremonial guard (Latvian version of those Scottish guards in London or Russian guards of Lenin's mausoleum).

(original here)

The idea being, obviously, that on the one hand, the guard should be immobile, on the other hand, it's cold, and he can't control his nose's internal functions, and on the third hand, it's not nice for the guard of (insert whatever presumably honorable thing he is presumably guarding in a symbolic way) to stand with snot dripping from his nose.

Some people would call this cute or touching or romantic. I call it idiotic. Heartless, non-sentimental libertarian that I am.

I call it idiotic because of the nauseatingly cloying statist pathos. But also, if you think about: someone who cannot move to wipe his nose should make a terrible guard. I wouldn't want a brainless statue guarding my property, especially if the property had some sentimental value attached to it.

Third, I find this idiotic for the same reason that I find foolish the teachers who forbid their students to slouch (or put their legs on some sort of platform in front of them) because it presumably interferes with the learning. That concept is stupid on so many levels, I'd need a separate series of posts to address it.

Is science a private good?

2011-10-24T04:15:00.001-04:00

Connecting the dots

2011-10-24T04:11:00.001-04:00

I recommend the interactive version.

Smoking in the restaurants

2011-10-22T22:18:00.004-04:00

[via Alex Exler]

For those of you who are wondering what I, as a libertarian, think about allowing smoking in the restaurants and other places accessible to the public: I believe that one should not invade another's property — including his body — without permission. That's called trespassing. When one smokes, and the smoke from the cigarettes trespasses my body, that violates my rights to my body.

This doesn't mean that there cannot be restaurants, bars, or private bus stops (e.g., for the bus companies that decide to make this move) that allow smoking on their premises; whenever one enters such a place, he automatically signs a contract that allows other people to invade his body with airborne carcinogens.

Why don't the Lubavitchers sleep in the sukkah?

2011-10-16T17:56:00.000-04:00

My wife told me that loshon horah is not a good thing. So, I'll put it this way:

Lubavitchers don't sleep in the sukkah so that they should never have a cause to say: "I am sorry, you cannot use our sukkah. We have people sleeping in it sometimes."

Keeping us safe

2011-10-11T17:05:00.002-04:00

Is legal always moral or safe?

Keep watching (around 1:20).

Gmar Chassima Toiva!

2011-10-07T13:53:00.000-04:00

If I have offended anybody up to this point, I am asking his-or-her forgiveness.

RIP Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T23:40:00.007-04:00

Apple has announced that Steve Jobs passed away today, after a long battle with cancer. I was quite sad to read the news. First and foremost, because a really talented person passed away, someone's friend and a loved one.

Although I have often expressed that I am not a big fan of many Apple products and, especially, its politics of micro-managing what its customers install on their own property (plus, I don't like Apple's abuse of IP), I have always admired Steve Jobs. It is clear that he has made lives of many people better by guiding Apple towards creation of many very useful products (useful to many people) and their introduction to the market. First of these products, by the way, was a computer mouse (and the resulting computer operating system based on the user clicking on icons, as opposed to typing commands... which ended up revolutionizing the way we interact with the computers).

In addition, the products that Steve Jobs and Apple introduced to the market led to other companies developing similar technologies (sometimes, despite Apple's best efforts), some of which I use as well. I already mentioned the mouse. Also, although I am not a big fan of the iPhone, the concept of a touch-screen smartphone is a very powerful innovation, and I personally enjoy using my Android phone (which I have found very useful in many areas of my life, from work to play to study to Yiddishkeit). As I have previously enjoyed using my mp3 player (mostly for listening to Chassidus at work), whose invention was probably inspired by the iPod.

I have have often used Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as examples of the people who really "govern" our society. It is entrepreneurs like them, not the pencil-pushers and demagogues in the capitals, that direct the progress of the civilization. They deserve to be richer than most of the populace, because they improve our lives in a very tangible way.

I never liked the whole talk of "giving back to the society" (even though both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gave a lot of money to charities). What do you mean, "give back"? These people don't "take" from the society; the society gives them money willingly, in exchange for the more useful (to the society) products and services.

By buying Steve Jobs's products, people voted for him (with their money — literally) to be one of the people in charge of "directing the progress". That's the fallacy of those people who believe that we need to tax the rich in order to send their money to pay for the "government" and its projects. That's quite ridiculous: the rich themselves know how to invest money in order to create new jobs, as well as new useful products and services that benefit our lives (that's how they became rich, after all).

As many people have said in their blogs, what Steve Jobs has accomplished an average person would not accomplish even in ten lifetimes.

Rest in peace, Steve. You have made this world better.

Welcome to the 21st century

2011-10-03T10:13:00.003-04:00

My wife points out that Capital One commercial (I was showing her one on Youtube to explain why I say "What's in your wallet?" every time she mentions Capital One) says: "Welcome to the 21st century" after mentioning that Capital One has (supposedly) the highest APY of all the banks.

Which is ironic, since in the 20th century, the APY rates were higher, but, because of the governmental manipulations of the interest rate, have been steadily moving towards zero.

What the commercial should say is: "Welcome to the traditional banking." But, of course, that would be a fantasy.

Give us life

2011-10-02T00:17:00.002-04:00

On Rosh HaShanah we asked Hashem to give us life. During the Ten Days of Repentance and on Yom Kippur, we repeat the request.

But what does "life" mean? Of course, it refers to the physical life, health, sustenance, etc. But what about the spiritual life?

There is the famous story of a chossid of the Alter Rebbe to whom Alter Rebbe gave a blessing for a long life. The chossid responded: "But not a peasant's life." I don't think he meant that he was opposed to agriculture as an occupation. He meant that most peasants at his time were people whose lives were more like survival: they went to work, came home, ate, and went to sleep. There was no purpose, no visible grand design in their lives.

The chossid wanted a life filled with meaning.

In Judaism, something is alive when it is connected to eternity. When a potential for life leaves a woman, she becomes spiritually impure. In order to cleanse herself from the spiritual touch of death, she has to connect herself back to "life": to go to a mikveh, a reservoir of natural water. But halachically, a river that dries out even once every seven years is not fit for a mikveh. It is not a permanent, eternal river. Something which is alive for a finite period of time is considered to be really alive.

How do we become really alive? By connecting to the Source of Life; the only being, the only existence that is truly alive: Hashem.

So, we ask Hashem to give us this kind of life. We ask Hashem to help us be good Jews, help us connect to Him, so that are lives are meaningful and filled with purpose.

But then, don't we also ask for the material "life"? For health, children, success in our work? What is the connection between the two requests? First, one could say that whenever someone has health, money, and success, he does not worry about such things and as a result has a peace of mind to serve Hashem.

One can, however, go deeper. What does it mean that we serve Hashem? We don't do it by meditating in a monastery somewhere in the mountains, smelling incense, and eating dried figs. We serve Hashem by interacting with the world and doing mitzvos and learning Torah — in the world, not apart from it. (Otherwise, why would our souls descend into the world? Surely no secluded monastery in the mountains surrounded by bamboo forest is as "spiritual" as the spiritual worlds from which our souls descended.) We must create a Dwelling for Hashem specifically in the Lower Worlds — the ultimate purpose for which Hashem created the world.

So, really, it's not like we are asking for two different things: for material life and for spiritual life. We are asking that Hashem allows us to be His servants in the physical world by a) granting us the physical tools with which to serve him (money, health, professional success), b) by granting us the spiritual tools (ability to daven with proper concentration, to learn Torah at depth, be meticulous about the performance of mitzvos, etc.), and c) by helping us unite the two levels, making sure that they are not independent but complement and enhance each other, and that all our accomplishments in the physical are only l'shem Shomayim, for the sake of Heaven.

And of course, the ultimate level of this unification between the physical and the spiritual will be achieved when Moshiach comes and Hashem's Presence is revealed in this world.

So, may Hashem grant us life — real and full life — this year!

Non sequitur

2011-09-26T12:05:00.011-04:00

"Why is blowing shofar forbidden on Shabbos? Because the worry is that a Lubavitcher chossid will want to go on mivtzoim to blow shofar for other Yidden and will bring the shofar with him."

— A joke

I was just thinking that to me, the logic behind many takkanos and gezeiros of the Chazal seems very obscure. When I say this, I am not being cynical or self-denigrating or playing the Devil's Advocate. I am just stating what I think. And I imagine many Orthodox Jews probably feel the same, especially when studying some of the reasons (I stress the word some) for Halachos for the first time. We still obviously keep the Halacha, but the afterthought (if you're being honest) is still there.

It's not like this is such a bad question. Chassidus also questions the fullness of logic for some of the justifications for rabbinic enactments, with the most famous example being not blowing shofar on Shabbos. Blowing shofar is an amazing mitzva, which literally renews the spiritual energy that sustains this enormous universe and the spiritual universes "above" it. And Chazal forbid doing it on Shabbos because there is a slight worry that some ignoramus may carry a shofar?

I think there are several ways to answer this.

First, which I call the Litvish way, is that such is the law. Hashem said in Torah to listen to Chazal, and whether it makes sense to you or not doesn't matter.

The second, which I call Chassidic way, is to say that the historical and social justifications are merely a kli, a vessel, for the mitzva.

Examining the validity of Chazal's reasoning (even if one were permitted to do so) is as useful as literally judging a book by its cover. Imagine you pick up a book that someone recommended to you as truly wonderful. For instance, The Master of Go. You look at the cover and say: "I really disapprove of the publisher's choice for the cover." OK. So what? Who cares about the cover? Even if does make no sense, why do you bother examining it when you have a chance to look inside?

We were sent into this world to make it into a dwelling place for Hashem. The mitzvos are instructions for doing so. We create the world into a dwelling place for G-d by purifying it spiritually and carrying out His Will in it. The fact that His Will expressed itself through rabbis being concerned about a low-probability event does not truly matter, just like it doesn't truly matter what cover a publisher chose for a book or what color is the binding.

(Make no mistake: the kelim for the mitzvos — the legal content of the laws, the description of the actual physical activities that one must, may, or may not do, as well as the physical activities themselves — are the only way we can have access to the oir that is the essence of the mitzvos. Furthermore, according to Chassidus, even if we had a direct access to the oir, it would still be preferable to access it through the physical world, since Hashem wants the dwelling specifically in the physical matter of the Universe, it being the lowest level where He can be revealed and therefore the ultimate way of expressing His Kingship.

My point is just that when we start worrying too much about the physical reasons for the mitzvos, we must remember that the binding of the book is there merely to hold the pages, and the pages and the ink are there only to transmit the ideas.)

So, the above two explanations are quite classic.

But I was thinking this morning that we don't necessarily understand the "cover" either. I am talking especially about the people like myself that are only starting out with learning Halacha. I remembered a conversation that I had with my rabbi about "politics" within Jewish communities.

I forwarded to him a letter, in which a friend of mine wrote:

I know that [a local OU representative and a rabbi] used to eat at [a local restaurant]. I've heard that he doesn't anymore, even though the standards were tightened across the Vaad several years ago. (Since he used to eat there when the standards may have been more maykil, it would seem to me that it's a 'political' issue for some, rather than a Halachic issue).

I do know that outside of Boston, the KVH is considered a widely accepted/respected Hashgachah (even internationally). It may be a local/polical issue.

My rabbi objected to the statement "it may be a political rather than Halachic issue". He said: there is an idea of community standards. Members of a certain community may not trust a mashgiach or an organization that is lax on a certain aspect of Halacha, because the members of the community themselves chose to be makpid on these aspects. They are not necessarily saying that the food is treif, but they would rather "when in doubt, go without". (Furthermore, even if a person is not necessarily lax on kashrus, the fact that he is lax in another area of Halacha — according to the standards of this community — creates a worry about his overall level of observance.)

The same goes for the members of one community not trusting hashgacha from the members of another community. When the second community says themselves that their goal is to make Torah as accessible to the masses as possible, and therefore, they find a heter upon heter to justify the behaviors that members of the first community would not justify, the members of the first community choose not to trust the second community's members' hashgacha. It may be about "politics", but it is still a Halachic issue. It's not the sort of politics when the president of the shull doesn't like that the rabbi got the best parking spot and therefore tries to undermine him all the time. It's the sort of politics when you hear a cook say that he doesn't believe in the existence of bacteria and therefore washing hands after the bathroom is silly — and decide not to eat his food. Or if you don't go to a neurologist whom you heard proclaim that we only use 10% of our brain.

My point with bringing this example is to say that oftentimes we look at an issue, but without a proper application of logic or knowledge of all the facts. "Does it make sense that it is ossur to move a fork on Shabbos because back in the day, people used to stomp on grapes in their keilim on Shabbos?" The ultimate answers are the first two: whether or not it makes sense to you, it's the Will of G-d, and, furthermore, the historic reasoning for the mitzva is its superficial aspect anyway; the reason we don't move muktza is ultimately spiritual.

But I also think it's unwise to think that we know all the social circumstances under which the Chazal enacted a given takkanah and all the levels of the logic according to which it still applies today.

That's why I also think it is quite arrogant and unwise to say things like: "Keeping cholov Yisroel nowadays is completely ridiculous. There is no reason for it at all." Sure, this statement is wrong from the point of view of appreciation of the process of psak din (i.e., it doesn't matter what you think; it matters what our Halachic authorities think — and it matters what the specific authorities that are your authorities think, as well as what the general consensus is). But it may also be wrong in its appreciation of reality.

Putin is running for the office of the president of Russia

2011-09-25T04:47:00.006-04:00

And will probably become the next president.

A number of people online used this clip from Friends to illustrate how surprising this news is:

P.S. From arbat: Obama got scared that he'd lose Florida and a few regions of NY, so he did a pro-Israel speech. The problem is, however, that nobody believes in the honesty of a whore. Quite the opposite: if she tells you she loves you, you start suspecting betrayal. So, Israelis are wary about his speech, while the Arabs are furious.

Peter Jackson vs. Tolkien

2011-09-22T02:58:00.007-04:00

First, Peter Jackson took Tolkien's middle-aged witty gentleman Frodo Baggins and turned him into a boy with the eyes of a raped rabbit. (I am not even going to mention the whole Frodo–Sam relationship on-screen.)

This is how Frodo was supposed to look:

Now Peter Jackson is going to abuse the Hobbit.

Tell me, when you read the book, did you think the dwarves looked like this (full image)?

Now, these are some good actors. James Nesbitt (Murphy's Law, Jekyll), fourth from the left, is actually properly cast. But Richard Armitage (probably known to the most from Robin Hood), in the center, cast as Thorin Oakenshield, makes the King Under the Mountain look like a playboy.

And Aidan Turner (from Being Human), first on the right, looks actually more elven than dwarven. In fact, perhaps he should've been Legolas. Or one of the forest elves from the Hobbit. (And what is he holding in his hands? Is that a sword or a bludgeon?)

According to my wife, the dwarves are supposed to look more like this:

(source)

This is my cast of Balin, my favorite of Thorin's dwarves (although Rabbi Kaplan is actually very tall, so casting him as a dwarf would be difficult):

And my cast of Thorin (not necessarily due to the looks, but due to the character):

Interesting statistics

2011-09-20T15:46:00.002-04:00

First of all, here is a link to the written-down version of the "Inflation and the Fall of Roman Empire" talk from the previous post.

It has interesting information about Eretz Yisroel of the times of 3rd–4th centuries, when Roman government began to put a tighter grip on Roman economy, resulting in a loss of freedom for the masses. This is just about land ownership; see the talk for the other aspects of economy.

The peasantry, known as the coloni, were leaseholders on both imperial and private estates. They too were formerly a free class. Now under the same kinds of pressures that all smallholders were in in this situation, they began to drift away, trying to find better opportunities, better leases, or better occupations. So under Diocletian the coloni were now bound to the soil. [As a part of government regulation making sure that the peasant class doesn't erode into more profitable occupations. Diocletian did the same to other professions, essentially instituting a cast system.]

Anyone who had a lease on a particular piece of land could not give that lease up. More than that, they had to stay on the land and work it. In effect, this is the beginning of what in the Middle Ages is called serfdom, but it actually has its origins here in late Roman society.

We know for example from studies of Palestine, particularly in the Rabbinical writings, that in the course of the 3rd and early 4th century the structure of landholding in Palestine changed very dramatically. Palestine in the 2nd century was mostly composed of peasant landholders with very small acreage, perhaps an average of two and a half acres.

By the 4th century those smallholders had virtually disappeared and been replaced by vast estates controlled by a few large landowners. The peasants working the estates were the same people, but in the meantime they had lost their land to the larger landowners. In other words, landholding became a kind of massive agribusiness.

In the course of this, the population of Palestine, still principally Jewish, also changed in that the ownership of land passed from Jews to Gentiles. The reason for that undoubtedly was that the only people with large amounts of cash who could buy out these smallholders who were in distress were, of course, the government officials. And we hear of them being called potentates, powerful ones. In effect there is a shift in the distribution of wealth in Palestine; and obviously, from other evidence, similar things were happening in other places.

So, the class of people who came to own the land were actually government bureaucrats in charge of collecting taxes. They offered to buy the land from the peasants and then rent it back to them, promising in turn to "take care of the taxes". Of course, what ended up happening is that they raised the rent above what the peasants would pay in taxes.

All this lead to a development of a land-owning class who were not capitalists in modern conception. They were actually tax agents of the government who gradually became feudal lords. Because barbaric kingdoms and the Middle Age kingdoms that descended from them were not run as a bureaucracy but as an army hierarchy, with a strong chieftain hiring other chieftains to fight for him and then giving them out land in reward, the feudal lords of the Western kingdoms did not receive their land as a part of holding a bureaucratic office, but as a position in the king's army (generally speaking). But it amounted to the same.

Going back to Roman Empire, we see that this process started when the government started caring about benefiting the bureaucratic class instead of the free, private people. As a result, land and businesses passed from the hands of private individuals to the hands of government officials.

Now, let's look at the statistics provided by arbat: if you normalize the new workplaces that appeared in Texas and Massachusetts, you get that per 100 thousand people:

140.4 workplaces appeared in TX, 2.4 of which are in the government
75.8 workplaces appeared in MA, 92.5 of which are in the government

Not 92.5%, but 92.5 places (per 100,000 people). What does that mean? It means that not only did all the new workplaces in MA are in the government, but the government even "ate" some of the private workplaces.

Inflation and the fall of Roman Empire

2011-09-19T15:06:00.002-04:00

“We came to disperse the darkness”

2011-09-19T01:04:00.000-04:00

Nadav Bachar (guitar) and Oren Tzur (violin):

(source — download the video)

I’ve never seen before a violin being used like balalaika. Can you do this with all stringed instruments (play them with fingers)? Can you use bow on guitar?

Also, at the beginning of the video (0:07–0:09), is that a monkey, a cat or a squirrel sitting in the yard?

More by Nadav Bachar (and on MySpace):

(download)

Of Normans and hobbits

2011-09-18T23:10:00.001-04:00

— Did you know that Tolkien really did not like the French, partially because of the Norman invasion of England? [The invasion erased much of the original Anglo-Saxon culture that was very dear to Tolkien.]
— I am sure the body odor did not help either.

How the tax system works

2011-09-18T02:45:00.005-04:00

(Source: one of the comments here.)

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer, and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.” Drinks for the ten now cost just $80 total.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men — the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 ( 25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 ( 22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,”but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!”

“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works.

That's also the problem with taxing the rich. Next day, they won't come back to the bar. I.e., move their business elsewhere. This is what happened in Sweden and in Finland, and it might happen here too.

Activating trash

2011-09-18T02:01:00.005-04:00

Continuing the previous conversation of why the government cannot "activate wealth" by investing into garbage.

First, it seems to be a very clear idea that if a company failed, it happened because the consumers chose not to buy its products, but went for the competitors (it's not like Americans decided they have no money for cars; it's also not like nobody in the world buys cars; Americans buy cars, and people throughout the world buy cars — just not the Fix Or Repair Daily brand). Investing more money into such a company is throwing bad money after the good. What needs to happen is for the company to sell off its assets to the companies that know what to do with them and let its workers be hired by the companies that can employ them to a better use.

Second, it seems that if the government has to invest in a business, it means that the private investors decided that this investment is not worth it. (The argument that some CEOs are overly reckless with their ivestments, because their personal gain from a return outweighs the possible risks of the failure which are shared equally by the investors, actually makes this point even stronger: even such overly reckless investors did not deem such garbage companies as GM worth investing in!) So, someone who supports stimulus basically thinks that Obama and his advisers are better at finding investment targets than entrepreneurs.

Now, let's read the news from National Palestinian Radio about Solyndra:

Administration officials defended the loan restructuring, saying that without an infusion of cash earlier this year, solar panel maker Solyndra Inc. would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, putting more than 1,000 people out of work.

Even with the federal help, Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month and laid off its 1,100 employees.

No way! A company was on a bring of bankruptcy; it got a loan from the Federal Government, and it still filed for bankruptcy and fired all of its workers (plus extra 100 which it apparently hired after getting the loan). So, we are back to where we were, except $528 million poorer.

Now, there is no way someone could have foreseen that happening.

Oh, wait. I am predicting the liberal rebuttal: the problem is that we did not invest enough! Had we invested a couple more billion, the company would not go under and fire all those poor workers. This tragedy happened because of all those stingy Conservative bastards.

SEC doesn't know!

2011-09-18T01:05:00.007-04:00

SEC on Ponzi schemes

And now, pretty funny clip:

And finally, what the Mind of the Nation had to say on Social Security being a Ponzi scheme.

[via arbat]

Why is it a bad idea for the government to invest?

2011-09-15T11:41:00.002-04:00

As an addition to the discussion that I had in the comments section of this post, I'd like to post what this user wrote on one of mises.org forums:

* * *

The problem with a government investing money is severalfold, from practical considerations of incentive structures and consequences of the investment, to economic considerations of what investment really is and means, as well as where the money itself is coming from.

1. Incentive structures:

Probably the biggest reason why the government investing money is a poor investment strategy is that governments do not own the money they are spending, and will not receive back any money that is earned. This is to say, that the bureacrat spending the "public money" draws a wage solely, and the cash did not come from his pocket; and any money returned from the investment also does not go into his pocket. Thus, whether he makes a good investment or a bad investment, there are no consequences to him personally — he cannot be fired, nor gain any profit from the investment, and thus no incentive to weigh all the options, do due diligence, and make an informed choice.

Just look at the Obama administration's $500m investment in some energy company. The only gain the administration received from that was political gain, some talking points, some press coverage. They had no idea if that investment would actually help the economy, they just wanted to help a political ally (green energy).

2. Economic considerations:

All investment done by private citizens is surplus wealth reinvested. This means that a multitude of minds are involved in looking into investments, putting money where they each think it would best be invested.

How many people were taxed to garner $500m? Probably something like 100,000 people or more. The ability of those 100k people to hear about new investments, to network, to hear of problems with existing investments, or to stumble into a good investment dwarfs any government body of 10 or so appointed people, no matter how expert they are. And they are each investing their own money and directly receiving the pain of loss or joy of gain depending on how well they invested, which recalls incentive structures.

And if each thinks the investment they put it into isn't doing well, they can pull it and move it elsewhere. While the Obama administration was tossing around hundreds of millions at a time (into a single company!) 100,000 investors would've invested in stocks, bonds, entire portfolios of companies, resulting into hundreds and thousands of companies receiving funds to further their productive action. Which would've prevented the total loss of the investment as in the Obama's green-energy case.

And who in the Obama administration got fired for losing $500m? No one. It's play money to them, because they didn't earn it:

3. Where the money came from:

The reason the Obama administration could spend $500m of other people's money is because of statements like, "wouldn't it be a good thing if...?" It could be "wouldn't it be a good thing if retirees had free medicine," or "wouldn't it be a good thing if everyone had free education" — and the problem with such statements is that they obscure the consequences of implementation. Wouldn't it be a good thing... for who? and from who? Because every act of the government is done at the cost of human man-hours of productivity, turned into a wage, and then confiscated. Wouldn't it be a good thing if we had renewable energy? Sure, but who will pay for it?

To tax someone's wage to invest in a company is akin to saying that their income and effort must be sacrificed to the whim of politicians and their political goals. This money was taken from people who individually could've put it to much better use.

If a company is a good investment, let the free market invest in it, where the actions of many, based on their own judgment, and to their own gain or detriment, will make a choice free of political considerations, ensuring that it will not be the politically connected that get funding but rather those actually being productive.

[Bottom line:]

The main problem is centralization. When you take money from dozens or hundreds of thousands of people, you cannot invest it better than they could have. This creates natural inefficiencies. Smaller amounts of money invested in more companies with more eyes watching the outcome of the investment, tracking it, and with the incentive to make sure it does well will always outperform a fiat decision by government.

I suggest Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions for a closeup look at the inefficiencies between centralized decision-making and decentralized decision-making and why that means communism and it's variants can -never- be as economically efficient in any field as free capitalist economies are.

[Ad kan.]

That's a trippin' piano!

2011-09-15T09:50:00.003-04:00

For those of you who don't know, TRP's career consists of playing pianos in parks when it's a nice weather outside, and, when it's cold, washing hands at the weddings:

Some more music, now Chopin:

Do tzaddikim make mistakes?

2011-09-14T15:14:00.001-04:00

I read this in the weekly e-mail that I receive from the Avner Institute and was amazed at how the Rebbe was able to explain very succinctly and clearly the concepts of tzaddikim not erring but doing teshuva and in general, if "these and these are words of Living G-d", how can one path be more appropriate than another:

Many years ago, a group of students visited the Rebbe. When told that the spirit of G-d spoke from the Rebbe’s throat, one of them exclaimed, “Does that mean the Rebbe never makes a mistake?”

When they entered the Rebbe’s room, one of them asked the Rebbe pointblank, “If the Rebbe never makes a mistake, why does he have an eraser on his pencil?”

The Rebbe quietly answered, “A Rebbe does not err, but today he is greater than yesterday and today he adds to what was written yesterday. In other words, it’s not in order to erase a mistake, but to erase what was correct yesterday. Today he is of a different, higher stature.”

(source)

To us, this is not only a lesson in appreciation of who tzaddikim are and what their avoida is, but also in our own personal lives. We are not tzaddikim and will make mistakes. But that's not the only reason to have "erasers on our pencils". Even if something we created yesterday was good, today we can make it better.

An injection of your own blood

2011-09-13T18:15:00.002-04:00

If Obama can re-use his first stimulus speech from a few years ago (although I think he just plagiarized Hoover's 1931 stimulus speech), I can re-use one of my old posts:

Government can't really stimulate economy.

Why not? Read here:

Any statement about the economy that contains a mechanical metaphor is more than likely wrong. We’re told government must “jump start” the economy. How can it? Think about what happens when a car is jump started. Cables connected to a charged battery convey juice to a dead battery. Energy is injected into the broken-down car from outside.

Politicians and court economists want us think this is analogous to government’s jump starting the economy. But it cannot be. Since the government has no money lying around waiting to be spent*, it will have to borrow close to a trillion dollars to carry out the program President-elect Obama and the congressional leadership are planning.

But borrowing money for their pet projects injects nothing into the economy. It merely moves money from where it currently is in the economy to where politicians want it to be. How is that a stimulus?

Moreover, the debt will be covered (monetized) by the Federal Reserve by creating money out of thin air. That money will then be spent and “invested,” but notice the problem. Creating money is not the same as creating wealth. Imagine you were stranded on a desert island. Overhead you see a plane. It drops a large box down to you. Excitedly you tear open the box expecting to find food and water. But instead you find a printing press and a large supply of green paper. An instruction sheet states: “Print all the money you need.”

Are you better off?

All resources are scarce. A quantity of steel, for instance, can be used to make a washing machine or a machine to produce more steel. It can’t make both at the same time. When the Fed creates money, it increases the demand for scarce resources — but no new resources. How can that be a path to prosperity? Rather, it’s a path to higher prices and lower real incomes.

But it’s more than that. Since the new money gets into some hands rather than others first, monetary expansion — that is, inflation — changes the pattern of prices and production that would have resulted from voluntary exchange under sound money. Among the prices distorted are interest rates. By doing so, inflation transfers resources from those who produce wealth to others.

Inflation, therefore, is one more government income-distribution program. The lucky early recipients of the fresh fiat money gain purchasing power — command over scarce resources — at the expense of everyone else. The market process is thereby corrupted. In the absence of inflation (and other government interference), it is a system in which entrepreneurs pursue profit by pleasing consumers.

What makes this work amazingly well is the price system, which communicates to producers and consumers the relative scarcities of products and factors of production, the relative demands for such things, and the degree to which people prefer goods in the present to goods in the future. This permits production to be guided by consumers’ preferences.

Inflation distorts those relative prices, garbling the signals and ill-serving consumers. In the end society is poorer than it would have been. When the inflation is finally stopped, the economy suffers depression and mass unemployment as it corrects for the malinvestment. Or, if the inflation accelerates to hyperinflation, as it did in Germany in the 1920s and in Zimbabwe today, society will be thrown into chaos.

This is where the Obama-congressional “stimulus” plans will lead. Nothing is more dangerous than a politician who thinks he must “do something now”.

The last statement points at the root of the problem. People think of government as some creative force — government creates things (products, services, initiatives) and directs civilization. This is a model of a slave society, where people belong to the society, which itself is a big beehive.

On the other hand, a model of a free society, where each person is an individual who belongs to himself but agreed with others to build a society together, involves only one function of the government — not creative, but restrictive. Such a government merely protects people’s rights allowing them to make decisions in building civilization, providing services, inventing new products, etc. — something people have been doing just fine by themselves (and better than when government got involved).

In a free model of a government, the latter has no mitzvos aseh (“thou shalt”) — it only has mitzvos loi ta’aseh (“thou shalt not”).

___________
* Now, it's not actually true that there is no way to inject money into an economy from "without", as one injects juice into a dead battery. There is. Hitler, y"sh, used it to "jump-start" German economy. What you do is invade another country, rob it of its resources, and the "inject" those resources in your economy.

The only question is: should we invade Mexico or Canada? The first is full of cheap labor, but we already have more of their cheap labor than we know what to do with. The second is full of liberals and hippy guitar players (yes, I am thinking of Tzvi Freeman), and we seem to have too many of those too. Perhaps we can invade an oil-rich country and... oh, wait...

Sapkowski's world

2011-09-06T03:00:00.002-04:00

(see full version)

Typographic illiteracy

2011-08-31T19:19:00.001-04:00

My wife asked me after I complained about some information on a cereal box Starting With Capital Letters As If It Were a Title: who cares? Yes, it doesn't make sense, but what's the big deal?

Well, to someone who knows about these things, it "cuts the eye", as a Russian expression goes. It's like bad writing to a literate person. Like bad breath to someone who has a sense of smell.

Artemiy Lebedev gives an interesting example of this. Yesterday, when I was visiting a local library, I saw a sign, where letters were squeezed to fit into a certain horizontal space but remain a certain height. As a result, their proportion was ruined. It looked something like this:

Most people probably don't notice such things. But to someone who knows very-very little about the fonts, it "cuts the eye". The opposite (bloating letters) is also true. As Lebedev writes, "A person who knows something about fonts chuckles at the sight of bloated letters like a child who’s seeing his reflection in a fun-house mirror".

In short, the effect on "squeezing" letters is the same as doing this to a photograph (source):

Now, not all cultures have appreciation for all aspects of beauty. Germans have a bad sense of humor. English people, as is known, kill their food twice: first, when they kill it, and second, when the cook it. French don't appreciate the value of deodorants and clean hair. Russians and Americans have the "imperial font complex" where all notices are written in caps (plus, Americans place their punctuation inside quotes).

Chinese do not mind shifting the original proportions of a photograph (source):

Dancing and fashion in a century

2011-08-31T14:20:00.004-04:00

Definitely the 20th century will be known as the Little Dark Age. I think this is exemplified not just in politics, but also in fashion and dance/music. The clip below shows a man and woman being dressed in clothes of every sub-period from early 20th century to our times and doing the popular dance moves of the time.

I can’t really comment about the clothes (although to me, they eventually start looking not just more casual, but also more random and less thought-out), but after a certain point (after the War... or, should I say, after the reign of FDR), the music becomes more like sounds of a grandfather clock falling down the stairs, while the dancing looks increasingly more like epilepsy.

(This video obviously shows a man and a woman dancing. In the later parts of the video, the dancing is somewhat suggestive, but not pornographic. One could argue that since one is watching this video for illustrative/educational purposes, it's not, strictly speaking, ossur, but those who are makpid about such things, beware.)

Don’t get me wrong. Nobody who has seen me dress could ever accuse me of being fashion-conscious. My idea of a comfortable clothing is jeans with a striped short-sleeved collared shirt (and your regular penguin look for Shabbos with the simplest shirt and shoes possible). And my idea of dancing is a bunch of men in a circle with hands on each other’s shoulders.

Western culture is not my culture. And a spider’s web is not my idea of a house. But I can objectively observe that a spider’s web is becoming more intricate and laid with meaning or purpose as the time passes... or less so.

Libertarianism vs. conservatism in peace and in war

2011-08-29T11:53:00.005-04:00

I think it's quite interesting that current Texas governor and also the presidential candidate, Rick Perry, is a good example of why I am not a conservative right now, why I used to be a conservative, but defined myself as a "moderate conservative", why I realized that that's really not the proper way to describe myself and why I eventually became a libertarian.

Perry's views, without going into too many details, exemplify the solid right-wing conservative philosophy (if they don't, let's assume for the purpose of the discussion that they do, because I don't really care about the specific candidates; I care about the concepts). Let's give a few examples and see what a libertarian may think of those issues.

1. Economy

Perry boasts that de-regulation and low taxation attracted businesses and increased employment in Texas. There isn't really much to talk about here. Obviously libertarians agree with this. One could say that Perry didn't actually do anything constructive here; he merely "did no harm". True. And that's what is different between him and the liberals in this issue.

On the Nolan chart (see above), the views of conservatives and libertarians about economics coincide. At least in theory. In practice, most conservatives engage in as much regulation as the liberals and do things like banning trade with Cuba. This is the reason why I originally said that it might be a good thing that Obama was elected; McCain would continue the "compassionate conservatism" policy of Bush, mess up the economy just as badly as the liberals — but in the end, the free market (which is erroneously associated with compassionate conservatives) would be blamed.

2. Defense

I actually have no idea what his stance is, but let's imagine he is like most Conservatives: believes in aggressive defense — i.e., bringing the war to foreign shores (not that once a liberal president was elected, he did anything different; he continued all the wars that Bush started and even contributed to another war... except in a somewhat shlemazletik way). Let's give in to the liberal propaganda and say that this also includes defending American economic interests throughout the world and "trying to run the world". And the latter includes trying to topple foreign dictators — but only when it suits our interests. Sure.

Well, what are the problems with this view? I definitely agree with the concept of defending oneself. I also don't really have the problem with the concept of bringing a war to foreign shores, except that in practice, the public that pays for this war has little control over what is going on and has to rely on the eternal wisdom of the Supreme Commander to make the right decisions.

For instance, instead of spending billions of dollars on building machinery capable of transporting troops across the ocean and then spending millions of dollars on actually doing that and supporting the troops overseas and carrying out the military operations with major (or minor) loss of life and money — how about, instead of that, invest enough into defending one's shores and then invest into foreign intelligence and in training snipers that will take down the leaders of foreign regimes that cause troubles? This may also result in less collateral damage. One could say that I don't know what I am talking about because I am not a military specialist or a diplomat or a historian or have a Ph.D. in international relations. Well, the point is that nobody knows, because without the market and competition of different companies doing different things, one cannot be sure that the strategy we are using is the best possible in terms of money, lives, and the result.

So, this is why, seemingly, anarcho-capitalism has advantage over statism in terms of the defense (the same actually goes for defense of our own shores, not just bringing war to their shores). Now, one could say that dissolving the government into anarcho-capitalism is not feasible today. That's true. But privatizing defense is not completely impossible. The government can give contracts to various defense (or attack) agencies, both competing and co-operating with each other, whose job will be to topple a foreign aggressive regime. The agency that does this in a most efficient way (money- and lives-wise) and the most humane way (the least collateral damage to the civilians) gets more contracts.

After all, we have privatized the production of arms. We don't have state-run facilities that make tanks, like those in the Soviet Union. We have private companies that compete for government contracts. So, why not do the same with the defense?

The argument that private companies will do whatever they want is ridiculous, because the same can be said about the government. The same forces that presumably constrict the government from doing whatever it wants (journalists, public opinion, etc.) will constrict the government from giving contracts to the companies that will do whatever they want. In fact, quite the opposite: when we have a government carrying out a missile strike against a terrorist, and on average ten civilians get killed as a collateral damage, we say: this is the best we could do. We can allow this guy to blow up a bus with fifty of our civilians or kill him and ten of the civilians surrounding him. But we don't know really if this is the best we could do, because, again, we have no competition. If we had three companies, one carrying out air strikes with a smaller average collateral damage than the others, we would know what is the "best we can do" under the circumstances.

What about running the world? Isn't it a good thing that Gaddafi was toppled (or so it seems)? But then, answers a liberal, isn't it the case that we topple only those dictators that we don't like? Isn't that hypocritical? Well, it may or may not be so, but that is not a good reason to stop toppling dictators. That's a good reason to topple more of them. Imagine a doctor who cures only white kids. Someone comes to him and says that he should stop doing business because it's not fair to the kids of other races and what he does is evil. Well, that's absurd. The fact that he doesn't cure other kids just because of their race is arguably evil (although one could also argue that it's his business, and he is free to do business with whomever he wants), but that he does cure white kids is good, and closing his business would be itself a bad thing!

The same goes for toppling dictators and getting involved in the conflicts. Just because we only get involved and do good when it suits us doesn't mean we should stop getting involved. It would seem that a bleeding-heart liberal should agree with this point. Unless he is a pacifist who thinks that we should have allowed Saddam Hussein to continue gassing whole villages or should have allowed Hitler to take over all of Europe and not get involved, because "war is evil". That's like saying that cutting a person with a knife is evil, and therefore, one should not cut out a tumor, r"l, because one "does not commit evil to eradicate evil".

One could make an argument, however, that even if toppling dictatorships is a noble thing to do, it's not our job to do that. Furthermore, one could argue that American government gets involved in certain conflicts only when pressured by the gas companies' lobby. I don't really know if the latter argument is true, but a conservative person could say to both arguments: we live in a democracy. People vote (indirectly, by electing representatives who they think will vote a certain way) for things they want this country to do. Sometimes you're in majority; sometimes you're in minority. I am willing my taxes to pay for toppling a dictator, and I am happy to support a war that will make gas prices cheaper. You're not? Tough. You are free to try to convince the rest of American public not to support this war.

Well, there is a problem with that argument and an easy solution. The problem is that a majority is forcing a minority to pay for the majority's interests. Exactly what Thomas Jefferson was afraid of: "the tyranny of the majority over minority".

What's the solution? How about we privatize all the industries which do not directly cover everyone's interests? For instance, forget about privatizing roads (for the moment). Everyone uses roads. So, we pay taxes that support the roads (that doesn't explain why someone in New Orleans should pay for the Big Dig in Boston, but that's another issue). Fine. But, not everyone uses public education. Not everyone wants to contribute to public education. I think it's a good thing for poor kids to go to school for free, but I have poor relatives who have bad health and need help with that. Out of my meager salary, I'd like to help them first. Those who think that sending kids to college to get a B.A. in French Literature for free is a good thing (after all, the more people we have analyzing Victor Hugo, the more prosperous our society will be, so in the end, we are investing in ourselves) and are willing to pay for it, let them give money to private charities or private scholarships.

So, let the government use our taxes to defend the realm. Let it never get involved in toppling other dictators or defending one African tribe from being butchered by another African tribe. But then, in addition to the government, let us have private companies running armies, whose business is to do "peacekeeping". Where will these private armies get funding? Private donations from that same majority that was in favor of toppling Saddam. And the minority that does not want to give money to that will send their charity to scholarships. Or food stamps.

The same goes for "the interests of gas companies". Instead of lobbying the US government to get involved in the wars in oil-rich regions (just like New England merchants lobbied Thomas Jefferson's administration [I know, ironic] to build a fleet and wage a war against Barbary pirates), let the gas companies support the private peacekeeping companies that will insure stability in the region.

And by the way, if you're thinking right now about the East India Trade Company (and Captain Jack Sparrow), remember that it was a monopoly. The British government gave it exclusive rights to trade with India and then, eventually, to run it. What a shocker that this resulted in a mess on all accounts...

So, we see how one can accommodate the liberal opinion with the conservative opinion, but instead of being a "moderate" (i.e., someone who either does half-measures or does some things this way and some things that way), one can create solutions that use the best points of the two approaches.

3. Gay marriage: to be continued... (I borrowed this view from my rabbi who expressed it even before I heard about libertarianism.)

Compassionate idiocy

2011-08-28T17:54:00.001-04:00

From arbat:

Rosewood is an endangered species of Brasilian trees. It is endangered because Brasilian farmers need land. Liberal government places embargo on rosewood trade.

Question for the audience: what's the worth of the rosewood to the Brasilian farmers now? Correct answer: zero. While before there was an incentive to keep some rosewood alive in order to trade in it, now it's just complete garbage...

More examples of idiocy: lobsters and 'illegal' wood from India for guitars.

The level of intellectual maturity that one sees is that of a toddler in a sandbox. So, the local, tactical point is that whenever you have a liberal making decisions that involve any emotion, (1) he will do so completely irrationally, (2) the effect will be for the most part opposite of the intended. We see this with charity, education, environmentalism, traffic, medicine, etc.

The more global point is: these are the people who are supposed to "govern" the country. They are presumably in charge of helping the economy "recover". These are the people that make treaties with other nations on our behalf. These are the people whose decisions have direct effect on our everyday lives.

Without going too deep into the specific nuances of politics and economics — why would you take someone who doesn't wash hands after going to the bathroom and can't bang a nail into the wall and allow him to perform an open-heart surgery?

What’s the worst-case scenario?

2011-08-26T11:24:00.003-04:00

Shaving, mirrors, world-views and contradictions

2011-08-22T10:28:00.024-04:00

(Rav Moishe Feinstein and Rav Hutner)

I was reading a seifer by Rabbi Getsel Ellinson on hilchos of tznius yesterday and saw two strange teshuvos from Rav Moishe Feinstein. They were strange not individually, but in combination.

In the first teshuva (Igros Moishe, "Yorei Deiah", vol. II, 61), Rav Moishe says that even in the times of Tzemach Tzedek some poskim allowed trimming the beard with scissors (or applying depilatory cream) to achieve a clean-shaven look. And that the Tzemach Tzedek says that doing so is begged isha (wearing women's clothes or, by extension, beautifying oneself) seems strange to Rav Moishe because when Gemara talked about beautifying oneself, it meant specifically the way women do it, which means make-up and clothes, not making sure that one's face has no hair (even though a woman's face usually has no hair, it's not due to her efforts*). And anyway, a man's face, even when shaven, is not indistinguishable from a woman's face (one can see the roots of the hairs, etc.).

So, fine, fair enough. Rav Moishe disagrees with the Tzemach Tzedek, which he is entitled to do.

It's very possible that their "world-views" were different anyway. The author of the seifer quotes the Tzemach Tzedek earlier, but says in a footnote that it seems that the Tzemach Tzedek was "influenced by his world view, and by Chassidus and Cabbala [sic]", which is also true and fair enough. We do not deny that, and if anything, we are definitely happy about that. (Arizal mentions that when one learns nigleh and, especially, when paskens nigleh, one has to go back and make sure that his learning of nigleh, and especially the psak, are consistent with Kabbalah. And one of the Acharoinim says that this is what "veshinantem levanechoh" means — to make sure that the outer aspect of Torah corresponds with the inner aspect. And, actually, Vilna Gaon said the same. The chiddush for us, therefore, is not that the Tzemach Tzedek was influenced by Kabbalah and Chassidus, but that there were poskim who were not influenced by it.)

So, the fact that Rav Moishe disagrees with the Tzemach Tzedek is not surprising or especially interesting to me. What's interesting is his second teshuva: about using a mirror. Rav Moishe says (Igros Moishe, "Yorei Deiah", vol. II, 61) that it is ossur for a man to use a mirror to improve his looks (i.e., for medicinal purposes, such as to remove food from your teeth or remove a splinter from your nose, it's fine, but to brush your hair or mustache, for example, it is not; also, it's obviously permissible to use a mirror in the cases such as when driving a car). He explains that the fact that in the end of the day the man does not wear women's clothes or that he does not do in front of the mirror what women do (put on make-up, pluck eyebrows, etc.) does not matter. What matters is that by using the mirror, he shows that he cares about his appearance! And that constitutes begged isha.

So, I am confused. And the fact that a man shaves shows what? That his face is too hot in the summer? Clearly men shave to improve their appearance (in their eyes**). Whether it is for the purpose of satisfying their vanity or because they want to look presentable for their professional environment does not matter. Rav Moishe clearly indicates in the second teshuva that he does not care about the final purpose of "priming" oneself, or even the end result — he cares about the intention of standing in front of the mirror: to improve one's looks, which is ossur for a man.

It would seem to me, the same should apply to shaving.

If anyone has any input, I would be most interested to read it in the comments. (Later, I will quote Tzemach Tzedek's teshuva in a separate post, be"H.)

[By the way, although Rav Moishe permitted shaving, he himself did not, as you can see from the picture above. Nor did he drink "cholov stam" milk.]

On the topic, see also:

"Who or what is Tzemach Tzedek?"
"About shirayim"
"Frierdiker Rebbe on 'modern' Judaism"
"Beards are natural"

___________
* It seems that one could say that even though it is true that most women's faces naturally have no visible hair, in the unfortunate cases when they do, women oftentimes will make an effort to remove that hair. Although one could say that they do so not through shaving, but through plucking or laser treatment, the end result and the purpose are the same as with men shaving.

** Some could say that if one had the sensitivity and cultural standards of the Jewish tradition, a male face without a beard would look as ugly to him, as, for instance, a face without eyebrows or without a nose, G-d forbid. In fact, there was one godol who said that whenever a Jew without a beard came to visit him, the godol would instinctively experience vomit reflex. Which doesn't teach us a proper way to treat a fellow Jew, but shows the way that someone steeped in the proper Jewish mesoira should instinctively feel. The same goes for the arguments that certain examples of ervah are no longer such, because we have grown used to them. Perhaps if one had the sensitivities of the traditional Jewish community, one would not be used to the sound of adult female voice, etc. I mean, the people living around us are desensitized not just to female voice or forearms... Therefore what?..

Speaking of fads... and Tzfatim

2011-08-18T20:53:00.003-04:00

"Dancing mania (1374) — Northern European religious fad in which people danced uncontrollably for hours. They formed circles in streets and churches and leaped, screamed, and rolled on the ground, often shouting that they were possessed by demons and begging said demons to stop tormenting them.

Caused by nervous hysteria and/or the wearing of pointed shoes."

(Bellwether, Connie Willis)

Now I understand where the behavior of Tzfatim (many of whom are French-speakers wearing pointed shoes) comes from. And, as the book by Connie Willis suggests, to start a fad, one needs a bellwether: a sheep that leads the rest of the herd.

Fads in child care

2011-08-18T17:00:00.000-04:00

"Dr. Spock (1945–65) — Child care fad, inspired by the pediatrician's book, Baby and Child Care, growing interest in psychology, and the fragmentation of the extended family.

Spock advocated a more permissive approach than previous child care books and advised flexibility in feeding schedules and attention to child development, advice which far too many parents misinterpreted as letting the child do whatever it wanted.

Died out when the first generation of Dr. Spock–raised children became teenagers, grew their hair down to their shoulders, and began blowing up administration buildings."

(Bellwether, Connie Willis)