I’m not entirely sure how, but somehow, in the middle of countless other Rosh Hashanah related errands, I managed to finish all of mishna pesachim last night. I couldn’t get it in before sunset, but I was definitely done before hatzot (midnight). Ten chapters in about 2.5 days – that’s not half bad, although Phil would never have tolerated this lack of timeliness. In the future more time to analyze things in depth might be helpful, although I am learning Gemarah pesachim with a friend (we only just started), so I will be going over everything in great detail later.

Things I learned which somewhat surprised me:

1. The korbanot (sacrifices), which until now i’ve always ignored due to their lack or relevance, are actualyl kind of cool.
2. They’re also fairly bloody. For some reason I was reminded of the opening scene in Blade where the vampires have the sprinkler system rigged to spout blood and they have a “blood bath”.
3. My daily commute is just long enough to cover one mishnah in a reasonable amount of depth (meaning read the Hebrew, check the kehati where I can’t figure it out, and then also his commentary). I’m going to have to start taking advantage of this.

Now I’m going to Lower Merion for Rosh Hashanah. Although LM isn’t normally what I’d call a happening place to be, I am very much looking forward to hearing Jerry Gornish lead services. I’ve heard a lot of hazanim in a lot of different cities, and I have never heard one who can hold a candle to Jerry Gornish. (No offense to the countless hazanim, both regular and occasional who I count among my friends. He really is that good).

Shanah tova to all

That’s it ! I’ve had it with these ubiquitous snakes on this nefarious plane!

Several weeks ago, Phil Klein, one of the more paternal members of kesher Israel and a member of the gemarah shiur I was in passed away. For various technical reasons (yahoo groups hates my mailserver), I didn’t get the announcement from the synagogue, and was relegated to finding out about his death from David’s blog a day or so after it happened. (Admittedly that was much better than some potential methods of discovery, but still, yahoo groups earned a black mark in my book that day). Now comes another late surpise (courtesy of yahoo groups again). They’re organizing a group of people to learn all of mishnayot in honor of Phil during his shloshim. This is something I totally would have gone in for, but I only found out about this yesterday, and I have to be done by erev Rosh Hashanah, which by my count means Thursday evening. However, not to be deterred by lack of time or the human need for sleep, I signed up for pesachim and plunged in. (I should mention right here that I have the entire Kehati set of seder moed, which is the only way I could possibly get through this that quickly). I’m now seeing just how quickly I can cover mishnaot and still understand them. (Ironically I’ve been using the mishnah to practice my Hebrew lately, so I’m actually not so bad at it).

This post was not intended to be a complaint, but rather a commentary (whoops – I think I missed. I would fix it but I have ot get back to studying). I just finished a mishnah which reminded me a lot of Phil. Those of you who knew him will probably understand why.

מקום שנהגו לעשות מלאכה בתשעה באב, עושין; מקום שנהגו שלא לעשות, אינן עושין. בכל מקום, תלמידי חכמים בטלין; רבן שמעון בן גמליאל אומר, לעולם יעשו כל אדם עצמן כתלמידי חכמים.

If there was one way in which Phil carried himself, it was, in the words of Shimon ben Gamliel, that one should “always consider himself a torah scholar”.

Every so often I go digging on ebay and find something that surprises me. I think the last time I did tht was years ago (I just don’t have the patience for ebay anymore – I’m willing to pay little more money to get something easily and quickly). I happened to be looking for something else today (anyone know where I can get an individual volume of the steinsaltz small sized shas?), and I stumbles across a torah. That’s right, a torah is now being sold on ebay.

halle-freaking-lujah

Yet another example of why pearls before swine is one of the best cartoons in circulation:

The futon has been purchased, paid for, delivered, and already slept on (to very positive reviews). It’s already booked for Yom Kippur, but all other dates are currently open.

I was asked to do a UDP ACK scan today.

Hint: UDP is connectionless. There is no such thing as a UDP ack packet.

If I were a resident of CA, I would be calling my representative right now asking for my tax dollars back. The CA assembly has introduced a resolution calling the IAU “mean spirited” and asking to reinstate Pluto as a planet. Amongst the better arguments are:

WHEREAS, Pluto, named after the Roman God of the underworld and affectionately sharing the name of California’s most famous animated dog, has a special connection to California history and culture; and

WHEREAS, Downgrading Pluto’s status will cause psychological harm to some Californians who question their place in the universe and worry about the instability of universal constants; and

WHEREAS, The deletion of Pluto as a planet renders millions of [...] children’s refrigerator art projects obsolete, [...]

WHEREAS, The deletion of Pluto as a planet is a hasty, ill-considered scientific heresy similar to questioning the Copernican theory, drawing maps of a round world, and proving the existence of the time and space continuum; and

WHEREAS, The downgrading of Pluto reduces the number of planets available for legislative leaders to hide redistricting legislation and other inconvenient political reform measures; and

WHEREAS, The California Legislature, in the closing days of the 2005-06 session, has been considering few matters important to the future of California, and the status of Pluto takes precedence and is worthy of this body’s immediate attention[...]

full scoop at spaceref.

I spend a lot of time playing games, watching games, and thinking about games. Every so often I get into little “what if” games with myself, trying to exagerate certain features of a game in order to see what affect that feature has on a game. For example, adding a third dimension to tic-tac-toe makes the center spot exponentially more valuable because there are an exponentially greater number of combinations that use that spot, so much so that the player who goes first can take the spot and be guaranteed victory. (If you don’t believe me, challenge me to a game in the comments. Only rule is I get to go first and get the middle spot of the middle board). When you continue to increase the size of the board though, the center spot begins to decrease in value because in a longer game it is possible for the opposing player to block more of the possible victory combinations. (Incidentally I have played on a board of up to 9x9x9. It gets really hard to visualize things at that size though, and the best I can hope for against the computer is a draw.

Although I normally keep such nerdy observations to myself, this evening I found myself wondering what happens to baseball as you increase the number of bases. (assuming of course that the distance between bases stays the same, and I’m completely ignoring the defensive changes that would be necessary for such a game). It’s obvious that as the number of bases goes up, it becomes more difficult to score runs through conventional means, and therefore the value of the homerun goes up.

However, what happens to fast players? Since you can’t rely on homeruns all the time, those slow footted heavy hitters like David Ortiz, Frank Thomas, and Cecil Fielder are going to have to occasionally lumber around the bases. If there are six of them, this could be a serious disadvantage. It’s also clear that with a really large number of bases (say 1000) speed become irrelevant because there’s no way to score except with the long ball. In other words, if N is the number of bases, S is the value of speedy players, and H is the value of homerun hitters, then as N goes to infinity, S aproaches zero and H approaches infinity. However, I don’t think that S is a first order polynomial – I think it has some fluctuations before asymptotically approaching zero. (H is clearly a first order polynomial).

When considering a case with 1 base, it’s obvious that S is very high (after all, a bunt single is now as valuable as a 400 ft HR). With two bases it’s still high, but not as much. The question is: at one point does adding another base (say the jump from 3-4, or 4-5), make S go up, or does it continually go down? I think it does go up in at least a few places, but I don’t know where.