Marching we march

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

State circus

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

(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

(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

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

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

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

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

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

US Government is feeble and inept

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

To start, go here, for example.

Goté and senté

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

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

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?

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?

Connecting the dots

I recommend the interactive version.

Smoking in the restaurants

[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?

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."