Aliens vs. French peasants

Did someone say extraterrestre? What? Here, have a tissue…

Scoop Volante from Pix'Elle on Vimeo.

Al Gore liked this movie

The digital film is called Oceansize, it’s in German, and its main idea is: Mother Nature strikes back.

Oceansize from Oceansize Team on Vimeo.

Obama’s plan is working!

It is, it is, it is! Haven’t you heard: “The economy is gaining momentum and the Democrat-passed stimulus package is only just beginning to pay dividends to the American workforce, President Obama's advisers said Sunday, defending the administration against GOP accusations that the stimulus is falling flat. […] White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee […] says the economy is showing encouraging signs.”

Nu, nu. And the fact that unemployment is way worse than predicted and expected had the stimulus not been implemented is no big deal. Part of the game. Keep looking at this figure — all the evidence of Obama’s wisdom is staring at you:


(Blue and light-blue are models. Maroon is what actually happened. Oopsus… Click on the figure to see a larger version.)

At the same time, stupid-stupid Europeans refuse to see the light and (fed up with socialism) told liberals to go take a hike.

When socialism was implemented in Russia and Eastern Europe, the power was placed in the hands of low-lifes and bastards. When socialism was implemented in Western Europe, the power was placed in the hands of people who thought that just because a rose smells better than a cabbage, it will taste better in a soup¹. As socialism is being implemented in the US, the power is placed in the hands of overgrown children and clowns whom the children like for the bright-red noses.

__________________________
¹ The simile is borrowed from a quote by H.L. Mencken.

The circus is back in town

An interesting article on Voz Iz Neias: “What Obama taught me”.

Holocaust, schmolocaust.

Aren't those pesky Jews ever going to go away? Yes, denying the Holocaust is "hateful." But let's get a grip. Palestinians "endure . . . daily humiliations." Their lot's "intolerable." Israel "devastates Palestinian families." No wonder our president shunned wicked Israel during his trip - sending a clear, if unspoken, message that Jews are now fair game.

"America's strong bonds with Israel are . . . unbreakable." Yup. And they're issued by Chrysler.

Hamas is a legitimate, recognized voice of the Palestinians. Rocket attacks against civilians, suicide bombings and kidnappings really work.

Iran can have nukes.

Our president's acceptance of "peaceful nuclear power" for Tehran was coded language for "no pre-emptive military action."

Jordan doesn't matter.

So much for one Arab country's attempts at human decency. If you want attention from our president, you've got to be a desert gangbanger.

My wife wondered why Obama didn't make his speech in Indonesia, the world's most-populous Muslim state, where he would've been welcomed proudly as a home-boy. Obama just reinforced the stereotype that Muslim equals Arab.

Democracy isn't for everybody.

We're done peddling that particular drug.

What are my personal thoughts about our president’s speech? They are fully expressed in this video:

About stars

From the description:

An old Russian romance sung against a backdrop of landscape paintings by the 19th century Russian artist Isaak Levitan (who is considered the finest landscape artist in the Russian milieu).

Click on the link in the quote for translation of the song (just to warn: in Russian, the lyrics sound very romantic and poetic; in English — somewhat silly and cheesy).



I like the part about a “Russian” artist Isaac Levitan. From Wikipedia article:

Isaac Levitan was born in a shtetl of Kybartai, Kaunas region, Lithuania, into a poor but educated Jewish family. His father Elyashiv Levitan was the son of a rabbi, completed a Yeshiva and was self-educated. He taught German and French in Kaunas and later worked as a translator at a railway bridge construction for a French building company. At the beginning of 1870 the Levitan family moved to Moscow.

In September 1873, Isaac Levitan entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where his older brother Avel had already studied for two years. After a year in the copying class Isaac transferred into a naturalistic class, and soon thereafter into a landscape class. Levitan's teachers were the famous Alexei Savrasov, Vasily Perov and Vasily Polenov.

In 1875, his mother died, and his father fell seriously ill and became unable to support four children; he died in 1879. The family slipped into abject poverty. As patronage for Levitan's talent and achievements, his Jewish origins and to keep him in the school, he was given a scholarship.

…and the rest is history.

Obama is trying to recreate Japan’s “Lost decade”

It’s not foolish to trip and fall. It’s foolish to trip and fall on the same place twice.

From here:

The scenario was eerily familiar. A long real estate bubble that had expanded extra rapidly for the previous five years suddenly burst, and asset prices came crashing back down to earth. Banks and financial institutions were left holding piles of worthless paper, and the economy soon headed south. The national government responded to the crisis by encouraging more lending and spending previously unfathomable amounts of money on public works projects in an effort to stimulate consumer spending and restart growth.

But that stimulus did not save the Japanese economy in the 1990s; far from it. The ensuing period came to be known as the Lost Decade, characterized by multiple recessions, an annual average growth rate of less than 1 percent, and a two-decade decline in stock prices and corporate profits.

The Japanese government’s easing of credit rates, instead of spurring real demand, created artificial demand. Federal loans and stimulus spending were not economically productive, and they vastly increased the nation’s debt and prolonged the economic malaise. Worse, businesses spent critical time on the sidelines, waiting for government bailouts and other centralized actions, instead of speedily consolidating their losses, clearing their balance sheets of bad investments, and reorganizing.

The United States in 2008–09, unfortunately, has started down the same path. Federal intervention and the expectation of additional government action are removing firms’ incentive to clean up their balance sheets by selling “toxic” assets. Why accept pennies on the dollar if a deep-pocketed new bidder (i.e., the state) looms large on the scene? The Japanese experience shows that when the government is an active participant in the market, many firms would rather accept state support than initiate the inevitable financial reckoning. Such a status quo does not provide a sustainable foundation for the economy. Instead, it restricts economic growth and creates a cycle of stagnation.

Read on, for a detailed analysis of the ongoing situation and general description of how bubbles form and burst, etc.

Anna Karenina, you say?

To kill a mockingbird

There is a bird that sings all the time in the mornings (“sings” is too poetic a word to describe that annoying noise) and doesn’t let me go to sleep — thank G-d it’s summer soon, so I will have to turn on my really old and really noise air conditioner.

The bird does it right by my window, which was surprising to me, because there aren’t really any trees right by my window (there are some a little father). Well, yesterday, when sitting in the car, I saw the bird, and I realized something: it doesn’t chirp sitting on a tree. It is chirping sitting inside my room’s wall (so, the house I live in is falling apart), where it made a nest — right in the wall, right near my window, which is right next to my bed (and my head when I am in the bed).


(If the clip doesn’t load, watch it here.)

Now I just need to find the right angle.

By the way, they say birds are attracted to sweet people. (Or was it mosquitoes?..)

On different responses

A response of a conservative and a liberal to what Obama is doing to the market:

Rabbi Mendel Gluckowsky farbrengens in Chicago after Siyum HaRambam

Part 1:

Rabbi Mendel Gluckowsky Farbrengens in Chicago after Siyum Harambam from JLI Chicago on Vimeo.

On love and marriage

An audio-lesson by Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb (right-click on “download” to… you know…):
— Love & Marriage (download)

More on the subject:
— Men & Women - Philosophical Intro (download)
— Men & Women - Philosophical Intro - Q's (download)
— Men & Women - Legal Intro (download)
— Men & Women - Legal Intro - Q's (download)
— The Roles of Women & Men - Deep Background (download)
— The Roles of Women & Men - Another Thought (download)

Of Russian haircuts

Of appartments and mitzvos

Although normally I don’t read Chabad.org so much, just now I read there a cute and somewhat touching article about looking for a dwelling place (a very familiar subject to me personally).

External links:
— Craigslist
— Bringing Heaven Down to Earth

Of people and robots

Alter Rebbe says in Tanya that for the most part people do not help other people selflessly (they do it to feel better about themselves, to get something out of it, etc. — which is why it says in Gemara that “kindness of nations is sin”). What about helping small wooden robots?

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Chemistry for kids

Oxygen from Christopher Hendryx on Vimeo.

Sichos for Shvues

... explained and taught by Rabbi Paltiel. Found here.

Each one is 15 minutes to half an hour. Very much worth it.

Government backs your waranty

So. Many. Jokes.

It is just too hard for me to determine which of the thousand or so jokes in my mind deserves to be voiced out. And besides, whatever I write, it is still going to be not as funny as seeing this clown speak himself:



The only question that comes to mind is: does he believe himself in what he is saying? Or is this the biggest mass-scale scam in the history of the Western society since Reform Judaism?

Messed up we-know-better-than-you thinking

A perfect example of a messed up method of thinking representative of a certain political philosophy (click to enlarge):


(source)

What’s a sign of a you-know-which political/economical philosopher? He thinks he knows better than a whole country of people what they really need.

“Who needs a new iPod? You need a new iPod? Are you kidding? No you don’t. What you really need is a big marble ball in the middle of a city and a park around it. To create which we will tax you, taking your iPod money away.”

Stay connected

(everything was created in opposites; source)

So, I only really just want to share the movie below (and update the blog a little), but since it is always nice to connect something to Torah, I will write three thoughts one can derive from this movie:

1. Unlike in this movie, our Creator did not abandon us. He put us here with a purpose, He knows about our struggles, and He is in control.

2. You should never want to be something you are not. Don’t desire to be like angels. Be Jews — with human guf, both Divine and animal souls, and the Essence of the soul which is part of G-d above, literally. We are better than angels and more fortunate — despite the fact (and especially due to the fact) that we are stuck in this lowly, limited, dark world. We have something they don’t have, perched on a tree in the Upper Realms. We have Hashem’s Essence.

3. Stay connected to your source. Every time you do something against Hashem’s Will (G-d forbid) or even when you do something which has nothing to do with Hashem’s Will, you’re disconnecting yourself. And at that moment, you are not alive — you are dead.

4. Did I say three thoughts? OK, here is a bonus: we do not serve Hashem for rewards. For pleasure. For the Upper Realms or the Lower Realms. Not even for the pleasure of His Essence. We serve Hashem because it pleases Him and because this is the purpose for which we were created. (How is this seen in the movie? Not sure — but it’s true nevertheless.)

Good luck with the marathon on your way to receiving Torah.

And now the movie:

You gotta do what you gotta do

And the homework is… to write a compare-and-contrast essay comparing and contrasting these two videos:

Before:


After:


“Before and after what?” you may ask. Well, it’s obvious, ain’t it? Before and after political parties changed power. Oh, and also before and after Bush kicked terrorists’ ass, so we can all feel much safer and talk about how evil torturing terrorists is and stop being “reasolonable”.

In other news, I already wrote somewhere that I am not too worried about Obama — based on his track record (before the election) he will have trouble convincing the Congress to do anything too stupid. Well, some stupid things have definitely been passed, but still, reading the latest news about closing of Guantanamo reminded me of my prediction.

Whoops.

It’s fun to be a fundy

Old:

New:

Fresh news

(click on the video to watch a bigger version)

When I hear the words “public good”, I reach for my gun.

The greatest public good is to be left alone and not be taxed (except for protection), controlled and “governed” by politicians. Let the public good be managed by the public itself (did someone say “democracy”?) and by entrepreneurs — who are the real government of our society. Not the boys and girls who get salary for brainwashing the masses.

Besides the fact that the idea that bailing out press — of all industries — is the last example of “public good” I can imagine. The greatest public good would be to pierce this snake’s head with a sharp stake.

Put your actions where your words are

One of arbat’s commentors writes:

Calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” he warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” he said. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, he said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”

And why didn’t Americans elect the person who said the above their President? Oh wait, they did — it’s a speech by Obama himself.

I just had an idea — there are two of them out there: Barack Obama and Borat Obama. One of them, of course, is a [time traveller]. Borat sits in Washington and works on economic policy, while Barack travels around New Mexico and makes speeches.

In case you have no idea what it is he is going on about, compare the quote in italic from above with these charts:



In gray is evil conservatives’ spending. In red — you-know-who’s:



And finally, I love this figure:



Greg Mankiw comments:

To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had to be cut? By $3 over the course of the year — approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.

Nu, nu. I hope I don’t have to tell you that it’s your money, folks.

Keep remembering this: whenever the government “finances” or “stimulates” something, it does it with your money. Not just money out of your paycheck. The extra money you pay for products which did not become cheaper, because their manufacturers were taxed and did not invest extra money in product development. In those products that you cannot afford. In extra you pay for house, for your amenities. In all that civilization advances on which you missed out — about which, of course, you don’t know since they are not there.

So, I guess, in one sense it’s not so bad. It’s like living in 19th century without toilet paper. It sucks, but you don’t know it does, since you don’t know what you’re missing.

I hope you enjoy those stones.

The difference between the US and Europe

Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
— Albert Einstein

When writing “Europe”, I mean Russia first of all. But it applies equally well at one point or another to any other European country — with the possible exception of Britain.

(Speaking of Britain, yesterday I may have found a possible burial place of one of my previous gilgulim. The one after Rambam.)

And finally, let me leave you with a question of the week: is it really a good idea to start a war with CIA? I don’t mean if you’re KGB or FSB or Chinese government. I mean if you’re a not overly bright or overly honest politician, who (being a member of a certain party) possibly may have a lot to hide about yourself.

Some fun reading for the seekers of truth out there.

Petersburg by Petrosian

(by A. Petrosian)

The only part of Russia I truly miss.

My birthplace: Petersburg, the Northern Capital of Russia, through the eyes of the photographer A. Petrosian.



The tall building close to the center is Peter-Paul Fortress, the place where Alter Rebbe was imprisoned in 1799 before being liberated on Yud-Tes Kislev.

If you liked these pictures, here are some more by the same photographer. The part of Russia I do not miss. At all.

The biggest question is: how can these two Russias co-exist?

Tehillim for a baby affected with cancer, r"l

The baby’s name is Emanuel ben Ester. Please pass on.

Russian soul

These are the sparks that Chassidus harvested.

Russian Paganini (listen to the first piece only):



Train Home:



Music Box (he imitates playing a music box as beggars used to, a piano, a violin, and then plays some Classical and contemporary pieces):



Mozart’s Turkish March (Rondo alla Turca):



Eastern Melody:



On Tariverdiev’s (famous Russian composer who wrote many soulful scores for Russian movies) music:



Vanya:

World War II in half an hour

(the somewhat failed counter-offensive of the 1941–1942 winter)

Very-very awesome. Even if you don’t know Russian. Even if you haven’t lost most of your family. Still very awesome. Just wait for stuff to load, and when the “interlude” screen appears, just press the rectangular green button. Don’t press green or red arrows unless you want to see details (some nice pictures, videos, additional maps, etc.). Things will move themselves between the interlude screens.

“Победители” (Victors).

I have to say: after watching this, the opening of the “second front” by Americans and British in France looks very comic. Very-very-very pathetic and comic. Obviously, every soldier who fought anywhere deserves our gratitude, but there is a reason why Americans “don’t get it” regarding World War II. Even fighting in the Pacific was a joke comparing to what was happening in Eastern Europe. To see what I mean, watch the above link.


(“Yay, we took the beaches of France!.. Five years too late... While the Russians have killed about 10 million Germans and fought over the territory several times the size of Western Europe.”)

There is an app for that

(Warning: the video contains a few expletives.)

The Raven

(source)



Read the poem (and about it) here.

And more (about) cases

(Why are all pareve chocolate chips semi-sweet?)

It turns out, according to this article, that besides regular six deflection cases (more about cases) of Russian language — nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and prepositional — there are a few rarely occurring special cases: numeric-separative, depriving, waiting, local, calling, turning, and counting.

Am I the only one to whom this sounds like some list of spells from Harry Potter?

So many cases, so little time

Russian grammar is fun. Besides having word formation akin to a lego puzzle (a few prefixes, one-to-three suffixes and one or two endings to form a regular word), it has cases. Cases are always fun for students of Russian. Both the students who are native speakers and those who are not.

If you don’t know what cases are, they are instances of inflection, the process of changing the word such that its meaning and functional role in the sentence changes. In English, only four cases exist and only regarding (some) pronouns. Otherwise, the function of a word is determined by its position. Borrrring. (Blame the French. As usual.)

I gave you a book. — Nominative case
You gave me a book. — Dative/Accusative case
This is my book. — Possessive case.
This book is mine. — Forgot its name, but you get the idea.

Well, in Russian there are six cases, and they apply to all nouns, pronouns and adjectives that take them as antecedents. (In case of adjective–antecedent relationship, both have to be of the same case, number and gender — yes, I said “gender”; in Russian even non-living things have gender: for instance, a table is “he”, while a bottle is “she”. The window is “it”.)

Russian is not unique about this. In other manly languages the same thing is going on (both about cases and genders). For instance, in German and Latin.

Well, did I mention that numbers can also be deflected? Yep. Even long ones, like “three thousand eight hundred ninety two”. Each of the six words has to be deflected, and unlike in the case of nouns, where rules are relatively simple (you need to know the gender and grammatical type of the noun — of course, native speakers know how to deflect naturally; but, they don’t know the cases naturally, which means they still need to memorize the proper endings for writing), for numerals the correct endings can be tricky. Think of it as juggling six balls while dancing a tango. The balls need to be flying up, but also in the direction one is dancing.

Ilya Birman gives a few examples. (Sorry, at this point one needs to speak Russian.)

Так вышло, что мне нужно сделать небольшой тест по русскому языку и отправить его по почте на соответствующую кафедру в универе. Склоняю числительные. Чтобы не было сильно скучно, придумываю всякие предложения.

8. Просклоняйте количественное числительное 1245 (книг).

1. Тысяча двести сорок пять книг стоят на полке.
2. Тысячи двухсот сорока пяти книг недосчитался библиотекарь.
3. И тысяче двумстам сорока пяти книгам не рассказать всех несмешных анекдотов!
4. Уж тысячу двести сорок пять книг прочёл, а всё бестолку.
5. Тысячью двумястами сорока пятью книгами можно натопить небольшую баню.
6. О тысяче двухстах сорока пяти книгах мне надоело придумывать дурацкие предложения.

9. Просклоняйте порядковое числительное 3892 (преподавателя).

Если числительное порядковое, то почему «преподавателя»? Видимо, ошибка в тесте. Пришлось склонять сразу и так, и эдак.

1. Три тысячи восемьсот девяносто два преподавателя пинают плохого студента три тысячи восемьсот девяносто второй раз.
2. Трёх тысяч восьмисот девяноста двух преподавателей достаточно, чтобы вкрутить лампочку с три тысячи восемьсот девяносто второго раза.
3. Трём тысячам восьмистам девяноста двум преподавателям пришлось ещё раз дать по башке три тысячи восемьсот девяносто второму (в рейтинге успеваемости) студенту.
4. Три тысячи восемьсот девяносто двух преподавателей наказали за избиение три тысячи восемьсот девяносто второго (в рейтинге успеваемости) студента.
5. Тремя тысячами восьмьюстами девяноста двумя преподавателями (в смысле, таким большим составом) можно доехать на работу три тысячи восемьсот девяносто вторым троллейбусом (ПКиО — Юпитер)
6. О трёх тысячах восьмистах девяноста двух преподавателях можно составить в три тысячи восемьсот девяносто два раза больше бессмысленных предложений, чем о три тысячи восемьсот девяносто втором кабинете главного корпуса (тем более, что такого нет).
   

Which is not to say I don’t love English. I do. It just has other strengths. All of them derived from Latin and German, obviously.

Do schools kill creativity?

If you are not really interested in the subject, you may find yourself interested in the speaker’s accent and English humor. I especially liked the part about professors.



(source)

The barrage

I loved this part so much, I will devote a separate post to it. I actually did not know there is a monument to foolishness with initiative, but in fact there is. Of all places, in North Korea.

I think if Barack Obama asked, they would let him in as a special guest, to tour the country.

Tears of nostalgy

A joke by my rabbi:

A school inspector comes to a Soviet school in the 1930s and asks children:

— Little boy, what is your name?
— Vova.
— Who are your father and mother?
— My mother is the Motherland. My father is the Fatherland.
— What do you want to be when you grow up?
— A soldier to protect the Motherland and Fatherland.

Next child:

— Little girl, what is your name?
— Sveta.
— Who are your father and mother?
— My mother is the Motherland. My father is the Fatherland.
— What do you want to be when you grow up?
— A cook to make food for the the Motherland and Fatherland.

Then he comes to a little boy with Jewish features sitting in the corner:

— Little boy, what is your name?
— Yankel.
— Who are your father and mother?
— My mother is the Motherland. My father is the Fatherland.
— What do you want to be when you grow up?
— An orphan.

This video makes me a bit nostalgic. This stuff is in my past. If Democrats have their way, it may also be in my children’s future, chv”sh.



I have to say, Russia looked much nicer. At least it had some character. Culture. History. Currents boiling under the surface. A spark of its people’s soul not extinguished by idiots with initiative.

This just looks like a tin-soldier factory. Maybe I don’t get the Asian culture, just like my pianist friend doesn’t like their piano playing (“Great skills and mastery, no musicianship whatsoever,” he says). Perhaps we are both racist.



Sometimes there is an advantage of being an American.

We are in a hotel room. We were told it’s bugged. Not sure that whispering will help. Hello, hello! Hello! Come in. Come in, Tokyo.

And then, on the way back, you’re thinking: “This is the fourth largest army in the world, all along this border. And they have threatened the US with nukes, and Japan with nukes. How can they have nukes?! They don’t have electricity. They don’t have running water. They are a third-world country on the level of a turn-of-[20th]-century Britain, and they have nukes?!”

Keep watching.

Apple likes to get paid... not so much to pay

Oops...

Of branches, Galileo, and overcoats

One my favorite pieces of literature. Not for those afflicted with ADD.

From: Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer (The Story of Mr Sommer) by Patrick Süskind, translated to English by yours truly (I preserved the grammar, punctuation, style and the sentence structure — or what passes for it in this piece).


In the times when I still climbed trees — it was a long time ago, years and decades back, and I was barely above one meter tall, wore shoes of the twenty eighth size [my shoes are of the fortieth size — CA] and was so light that I could fly — no, I am not lying, I really could fly — or, at least, almost could fly, or let’s say it better: at that time it was certainly within my power to do so, if I were to very firmly desire it and try to do it, because... because I remember vividly how one day I almost flew, how it was in autumn, the same very year I started school and was returning on that day home, and the wind was so strong that I, without spreading my arms, could lean against it at the same angle as a skier, or even a larger angle, without fear of falling... and when I then ran against the wind, down the hill from the school mountain — for the school was on a small hill by the village — and slightly pushed away from the ground and spread my arms, the wind immediately caught me, and I could make without slightest effort jumps two-to-three meters high and ten-to-twenty meters long — or, perhaps, not quite so long and not quite so high, but what difference does it really make? — in any event, I was almost flying, and if only I unbuttoned my overcoat and took its tails in my hands and spread them out as wings, the wind would fully pick me up in the air, and I would with absolute ease glide down from the school mountain over the valley towards the forest, and then over the forest down to the lake, near which our house was standing, to the utter amazement of my father, my mother, my sister and my brother, who were already too old and too heavy to fly, then make an elegant turn over the garden only to glide back over the lake, almost reaching the opposite shore, and, finally, calmly coast back over the air and still be home in time for dinner.

But, I did not unbutton my overcoat and did not fly up in reality. Not because I was afraid to fly, but because I did not know how and where I would be able to land, and whether I really could land. The lawn in front of our house was too hard for landing, the garden was too small, the water in the lake was too cold. To lift off — that was no problem. But what about coming back down?

With climbing trees I had the same situation: climbing up was not problematic in the least way. I saw the branches in front of myself, I felt them in my hands and could test their hardness even before I lifted myself and then put my foot on them. But when I was climbing down, I did not see everything and was forced to find, more or less blindly, the branches below me, until I found a proper support — except, oftentimes, the support was not so firm, but rotten and slippery, and then I would slip or fall through, and if I did not have a chance to catch some branch with both hands, I would fall down as a stone does, according to the so-called laws of falling bodies, discovered already almost four hundred years ago by an Italian scientist Galileo but still acting even today. [...]

Gotta love our President

Such a charming fellow, this guy is.



I can definitely see this guy outshining Woodrow Wilson, JFK, and Jimmy Carter in his idiocy.



Oh, wait, he didn’t know. Right...

Speaking of FAA, did you guys know that every time a plane goes down in the US, this wonderful organization receives more funding? You did? OK, just checking. Imagine that your telephone company raised its bill every time you got a dropped call. After all, the fact that you get dropped calls means that you’re not paying enough money to ensure the quality of the service. Why, it all makes sense...

Simple desert people

(PG-613 post following. Beware.)

... following a civilized religion of peace.



In other news: two confirmed cases of swine flu where I live. Three questions come to mind:

1. Would swine flu ever happen amongst Jews? (Replace swine flu with plague, smallpox or AIDS.)
2. How did swine flu get transmitted from pigs to humans? (Replace swine flu with AIDS.)
3. What is the reason that it says in Gemara that a Jew is not allowed to lend his dog to a non-Jew?

A story about James Joyce

At a certain point in his life, the Irish writer James Joyce became disillusioned with Catholic Christianity and had a crisis of faith (mostly spiked by him finding a certain ritual involving crackers, wine and other bodily fluids very silly), as a result of which he left the church (yes, I know it’s supposed to be capitalized, but not on my blog).

A friend of his asked him then: “So, are you going to become a Protestant?” Joyce answered: “I told you that I’d lost my faith. I did not say I’d lost self-respect.”

Learning Tanya — two ways to view the world

(“Response” = egocentric strategy; “Place” = allocentric strategy)

In Neuroscience and Psychology, two strategies of navigation are described. The first strategy, egocentric, tries to memorize turns. It envisions the world rotating around self and connects in sequence the places where one must turn or go straight. The second strategy, allocentric, visualizes one on a map and tries to calculate how to get from where one is right now to where one’s goal is. What one sees in one’s mind is not the world rotating around oneself, but oneself being a dot on the world’s map. (See the picture above.)

There are two types of people who learn Tanya. People from the first group, as they learn, try to figure out what Tanya does for their own spiritual development, their closeness with G-d, their internal growth. People from the second group ask the questions: “In what way do I know more about how to serve my Creator? What am I lacking, and how can I cause more pleasure to Hashem and fulfill the purpose for which He created the world?”

The second group of people, following allocentric and altruistic strategy, are the true Lubavitch chassidim. (And the only reason, by the way, that they see in Tanya explaining how one can become truly joyous is that being joyous is a key to being the best possible servant of G-d. A depressed soul does not make dwelling place for G-d in this world as successfully. So, in the end, it’s all about making a keli — out of oneself — for G-d.)

* * *

One more thing. Just because one learns Tanya, it doesn’t mean he is not a misnaged or someone who dislikes Chabad. It just means he is not a complete ignoramus. It doesn’t take much to recognize that a modern Jew must learn Tanya.

(Source of the figure: “The Role of the Basal Ganglia in Habit Formation”; Yin and Knowlton, 2006)

A singing break from work

Thanks to le7 for sending me this. Only singing, no instruments. I already posted a version of this niggun, but it had some violins playing in the background, so I won’t link to it right now (even though I personally couldn’t really hear the violins).



A perfect example of Jews elevating local “sparks”.

The full album is available for download. Give a donation to Yad L'shliach and enjoy the album for free!

Of cookies and red-blooded Englishmen

(The man who first made me an atheist and then a chossid)

A story by Douglas Adams that I particularly like:

Cookies

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know… But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do aclue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought: What am I going to do?

In the end I thought: Nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought: That settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice…” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back.

A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies. The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

— From The Salmon of Doubt

Liberalism with initiative

Recently I wrote a post, in which I said:

There is a Russian saying: “A fool without initiative is better than a fool with initiative.” At least the first fool doesn’t do anything — he is just being an idiot quietly. The second one wracks havoc with his well-intentioned idiocy.

So, after that, I was washing hands in our new building’s bathroom and noticed that the water becomes progressively hotter as you have it on (the water turns on itself when your hands approach the faucet; if you want to wash your hands with cold water only, it’s not an option). To the point that if you wash the hands for too long, it becomes intolerably hot. And, of course, if you just washed hands quite thoroughly, and someone walks to the same faucet right after you, he is greeted with a flow of scalding liquid.

I wandered at that point what every programmer has wondered numerous times while working with Windows OS: is this a bug or a feature? (Somehow this statement always sounds better in Russian — perhaps because “bug” and “feature” are pronounced in English, with heavy Russian accent.) Is this someone making a mistake in plumbing, or is this purposefully designed so that people don’t wash their hands for too long, wasting too much water? In other words, is this a work of a fool without initiative or a fool with initiative?

At the time, I dismissed the second alternative as unlikely. It turns out, I could be right on target with it. Gizmodo reports in “Inflatable Shower Curtain: Be Green or Be Suffocated” —

Sure, there are other methods of conserving water in the shower, but none of them put your life on the line like the inflatable shower curtain from designer Elisabeth Buecher.

My approach to design can sometimes appear shockingly radical but I have got different reasons to legitimize that. An alarm clock is not what we can call a pleasurable object. It is often even painful to be awoken by it. However it is a necessary object, which regulates our lives and the society. That's what I call the "design for pain and for our own good".

Some of my designs seem to constrain people, acting like an alarm clock, awaking people to the consciousness of their behavior and giving them limits. People often need an external signal to behave more. In France the government added thousands of new radars on the roads to fight excessive speed. And it worked: there are far less people killed on the roads of France today. I call it "design of threat and punishment" and I use it as an educational tool.

Yeah, she’s not fooling around here. If you don't wrap things up in a timely fashion the curtain will inflate until you are a naked, shivering prisoner in your own shower. By the looks of things, if you aren't careful the damn thing could completely cut off your air supply. Personally, I would rather go with the Eco-Drop Shower — the philosophy is the same but it's far less deadly.

All I can say is that I am glad I don’t live in France. No, it has nothing to do with the fascist approach to drivers. I am just happy I don’t live in France. Well, yet. If the current government (and the particular group of overgrown children that supports it) has its way, this country will be turned into one giant iPhone. I.e., France.

* * *

In other news: “The Pirate Google Bay Gives the Finger to Record Companies, Studios”. Warms your heart, doesn’t it? Well, it warms mine. Every single victory over copyright fascism does.

Of galaxies and raspberries

I actually don’t know if I like this news, because I never liked raspberries. I was always suspicious of them harboring some alien life forms inside — and a mashgiach friend of mine once confirmed my hunch. In any event, if that is true, now we know why.



By the way, in case you’re wondering what that big gaping darkness in the middle of the galaxy is — yes, it’s a black hole. At least we suspect it is. No one has actually seen it.

Plagiarizing from G-d

How to stay joyous? The Chabad approach

Chapter 33 of Tanya with Rabbi Posner, the shliach of Boston.

“And this is the whole human being.” G-d’s penetration of all the worlds. (Meaning what?) How to stay joyous. And where exactly is the dwelling for G-d? What does it mean to be a Jew? What is the only reason to convert?

If you haven’t learned this, in one way or another, you don’t know what Chabad Chassidus is.


Watch live video from chabadboston's channel on Justin.tv


Watch live video from chabadboston's channel on Justin.tv


Watch live video from chabadboston's channel on Justin.tv


Watch live video from chabadboston's channel on Justin.tv


Watch live video from chabadboston's channel on Justin.tv

Of shoes, corkscrews and bittul

A friend of mine said: “Shoes are directly related to self-esteem”.

In Lubavitch, we spit at self-esteem. Who are you? You are a nobody. You are a vessel for Hashem’s work in this world. Sure, a vessel must be fitting. A shoichet’s knife must be sharp. A writer’s keyboard must be crisp. An electrophysiologist’s pipettes must be well-pulled. A Jew must not look like a shlepper. But to go beyond that and give a special touch to one’s look where it goes beyond your mission? The external looks are for beheimos. For the beheima within yourself (your nefesh ha’bahamis) and for the beheimos outside who look at you and whom you are trying to influence. It is important not to identify with either of them.

A story from Frierdiker Rebbe’s diary:

For Passover of 5650 [1890] — I was several months short of my tenth birthday at the time — a new suit of clothes was made up for me, together with a brand new pair of shoes.

In my hometown of Lubavitch, the preparations for the festival were conducted in a meticulous and thorough manner. On the day before Passover, a strict procedure was followed: first, all chametz was searched out and eradicated from the yard, chicken coop, and stable. The caretaker, Reb Mendel, was busy with this for a good part of the night before and followed up with a double-check in the morning. Then, the chametz was burned, following which we would go immerse ourselves in the mikvah, dress for the festival, and bake the matzas mitzvah for the seder. Finally, there were always the last-minute preparations to be taken care of.

Among these final odds and ends was a job entrusted to me: to remove the seals from the wine bottles and to partially pull out the corks. The latter was a most challenging task, for one had to take care that the metal of the corkscrew should not come in contact with the wine.

That year, I was busy at my appointed task in my father’s room. I went about my work with great caution, careful not to dirty my new suit and, most importantly, not to dull the shine on my new shoes.

My father noticed what was uppermost in my mind and said to me: “The Alter Rebbe cites the following metaphor: A great nobleman sits at a table laden with all sorts of gourmet dishes and delicacies. Under the table lies a dog, gnawing a bone. Can you imagine the nobleman climbing down from his chair and joining the dog under the table to chew on a luscious bone?”

My father’s words so affected me that I was ashamed to even look at my new clothes.

This is education.

There is another story about bittul. A few old men are sitting and repeating: “Ich bin gürnischt, Ich bin gürnischt.” (“I am nothing, I am nothing”). A young man walks in and starts mocking them: “Ich bin gürnischt, Ich bin gürnischt”. One of the old men looks up and says to the young man: “Du bist takeh gürnischt” (“You really are a nothing”).

It is important to be ayin, one with G-d and not giving any significance to one’s existence. But, at the same time, not to be takeh gürnischt. If Hashem cares about your existence, it means you must care too. But for the same reason that Hashem cares.

The saying “Ein am ha’aretz chassid” (“An ignoramus cannot be a chossid”) is well known. One has to be a scholar of Torah, an intelligent, educated and wise person (besides being humble) to be a chossid. One must, however, also be a mentch.

Subjects to the Government

(Lithuania in 13th–15th centuries)

As everyone knows, everything that the nations can do, Jews can do better. (Except basketball.)

In the same way, everything that the Europeans can do, Americans can do better. (Except culture. And cooking.)

This includes negative things. Like slavery.

By Philip Chaston, from London:

Once I was born a British citizen, and enjoyed the suzerainty of a long-standing liberal democracy. I knew my liberties as they were embedded in common law and understood the rights and privileges which were my birthright. This was a common culture that was shared in many forms by my fellow pupils at school, by my family and by those who desired to make this country their home.

In 1997 I was still a citizen. Now I am a subject: not a subject of the Crown but the subject of a new beast, one that stretches from Whitehall to Brussels. Roger Scruton has defined a subject as follows:

Subjection is the relation between the state and the individual that arises when the state need not account to the individual, when the rights and duties of the individual are undefined or defined only partially and defeasibly, and where there is no rule of law that stands higher than the state that enforces it.

This is a contentious argument, but our rights are overdetermined and overdefined on paper, arbitrary in exertion, incompetent in execution. Moreover, the European Union under the Treaty of Lisbon confers the authority of a bureaucratic state based upon a law no higher than itself, which can annul and strike out all rights, as power overrides law.

In practice, bureaucratic accretions, quangos and the vomit of regulation have encouraged a culture of subjection. This may have roots prior to New Labour but it acquired its final flowering under this pestilent regime, and discarded the final brakes upon its power: demanding that we are subject to them, civil servants in name, masters in form. ID cards, databases, surveillance and dependency.

The final transition can never be dated. It is not in the interests of the Tories to row back on such change, as they will lose the power that they have looked upon so enviously for a decade. So, when I vote in 2010, I will know that we are each capable of acting responsibly as a citizen, but we are now viewed as subjects, to be feared and controlled.

Sounds familiar? Especially the part in bold.

By the way, I do hope you enjoy paying your new tax when buying things online.

On copyright Nazis

I will quote fully the newest post about copyright idiocy from Mises.org:

Another great institution is being taken down by the copyright terrorists. This one is beyond-belief hilarious/ridiculous/evil because of course we not only own the full rights. We have put the book into Creative Commons and are desperately trying to give the book away to the world.

Observe the insanity!

Dear Ludwig von Mises Institute,
We have removed your document "America's Great Depression, by Murray Rothbard" because our text matching system determined that it was very similar to a work that has been marked as copyrighted and not permitted on Scribd.

Like all automated matching systems, our system is not perfect and occasionally makes mistakes. If you believe that your document is not infringing, please contact us at copyright@scribd.com and we will investigate the matter.

As stated in our terms of use, repeated incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your Scribd.com account and prohibit you from uploading material to Scribd.com in the future. To prevent us from having to take these steps, please delete from scribd.com any material you have uploaded to which you do not own the necessary rights and refrain from uploading any material you are not entitled to upload. For more information about Scribd.com's copyright policy, please read the Terms of Use located at http://www.scribd.com/terms

Sincerely,

Jason Bentley
Director of Customer Care
jason@scribd.com

I guess this means that the Mises Institute will no longer use Scribd. Who needs this nonsense? And now everyone who ever linked this, embedded it, or sent it to friends is made to look like an idiot, and all the time we wasted getting this on the scribd in the first place is completely wasted.

Oh what a lovely world the copyright police are creating for us! How much better off we are having our own "intellectual property" rammed down our own throats!

Meanwhile, copyright may be unconstitutional. But nobody cares about that particualr document anymore. Almost every single thing that the government is praised for and that it and people working for it consider its main job is unconstitutional. Constitution? Pshh...

More on copyright.

Of shidduchim, conversations and musketeers

A horror story to some, a funny story to others.

A friend of mine told me a story about his grandparents. His grandmother was a chatterbox. When she was going through a shidduch with his grandfather, he was very talkative too — so, the bride-to-be was happy: she had finally found someone she can have a nice talk with.

After they got married, the husband stopped talking. Initially she thought he was shy, or it was a shock from the wedding, new responsibilities, etc. But as the time passed on, the husband was talking as much as Grimaud (the servant of Athos from The Three Musketeers).

Eventually she asked him: why wasn’t he so talkative anymore? The husband answered: “I said everything I had to say.”

Update (for le7): And after that they lived for the rest of their happy lives in comfortable silence.

Crisis solved!

Nah, just kidding. In your dreams.

About two and a half weeks ago, some brave genius nicknamed Anonymous wrote the following as a comment to my post in which I said that I hope Obama’s efforts will fail:

I used to say the exact same thing when it came to the Bush Administration and the conservative congress. However, there is one big difference between our view ... mine has come to pass and has been proven correct and yours is just speculation.

Bad grammar, style and punctuation aside, let us now see what results the plans of Bush-haters — also known in zoological taxonomy as Homo liberalis — have given birth to. Wall Street is certainly looking happy:

Top bankers have been leaving Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and others in rising numbers to join banks that do not face tighter regulation, including foreign banks, or start-up companies eager to build themselves into tomorrow’s financial powerhouses. Others are leaving because of culture clashes at merging companies, like Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, and still others are simply retiring early.

So, regulations are working out well then. Arbat comments: some of the bankers leaving these firms are actually the same ones who voted for Democrats who had promised to regulate these banks. I don’t know whether this is a comment on the character or intellect of Homo liberalis, so I won’t say much further.

But — you may ask — what do I care? I am not a banker. I am simple tax payer. Well, it may just absolutely shockingly turn out that “Exodus of Top Bankers [is] Bad News for the Taxpayer”:

The message couldn’t be clearer: no seasoned investment banker worth their salt wants to work for the government if they can help it. Unfortunately for the taxpayer, who now shares in the prosperity of Goldman Sachs and Bank of America via the recent bailout packages, the bankers who packed their bags and jumped ship last week are arguably some of the most seasoned professionals the industry has to offer.

[...]

The exodus suggests that there is far too much bureaucratic oversight going on at the big banks right now. Silly schemes such as 90 percent taxation for higher-paid employees at government-aided firms ought to be quickly put to rest. Otherwise banks will continue to lose the very employees they need to steer them through this crisis, and enable taxpayers to get a quick and handsome return on investment.

Instead, we’ll be left with a range of new privately-owned financial houses staffed with the best finance has to offer — which the taxpayer reaps no reward from.

So, the liberals buy the banks out with the taxpayers’ money and then regulate them to death, while the only people who can possibly steer the boat away from the shoals are leaving it as quickly as possible. And this is bad for taxpayers? I am absolutely flabbergasted. Nobody could have ever seen this coming.