about 2 years ago, I signed up for one of those free ipod offers using an email address I constructed specifically for that purpose. Today I checked that email address for the second time (while looking for spam of course – see previous post). I had 6600 emails waiting for me. Just to clarify, sign up for 1 free ipod, and you will get 3300 emails a year. And the worst part is, they don’t appear to be image spams. (so please keep sending me any you have – the more the merrier).

So this is sort of an odd request. I’m working in a project with a few friends to design ways to detect image spam. One of the things we need for the project is a large corpus of image spam. We’ve discovered that everyone gets their own unique brand of spam, mostly related to the speicfic spammers lists they’ve found themselves on, and we need a larger sample than just the stuff we’ve gotten ourselves. So, if everyone could check their spam folder and send me a couple dozen pieces of image spam, I would certainly appreicte it.

update: To clarify, I only need image spam, not any other kind of spam. Also I only need the images. If it’s easier to forward me the whole email that’s fine, but it’s certainly not necesarry. For our project we need a large number of images ot make up the corpus of spam we test on. We’ve set 1000 as the target, and we want to pull from as many sources as possible in order to make the sample as good as possible. And any of my email addresses will do (since I started this project I’ve started going back to all my old email addresses I haven’t used in years to try and find spam).

When I tell this story to friends, I usually get one of two reactions:

1. Wow – that’s really cool.
2. Oh my god. (usually said while running out of our apartment as fast as they can).

Rebecca and I live in a house that’s been converted into three apartments (one on each floor). We live on the ground floor and have access to the basement. The basement is rather…. unfinished. Think light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, a few walls crumbling, bare cement floors, and a boiler so old the phone number for the gas company is written as LJ5-5555. In a corner in the front room is a bird skeleton (which I finally decided to photograph today). It’s perfectly preserved and it’s in perfect shape. (The fact that it’s undisturbed also indicates that there probably arne’t any rats in the basement – hooray!).

Although the outcome of the Patriots-Colts game is clearly still up in the air, one difference between the two teams became obvious to me on the first touchdown of the game. The Pats has the ball near the goal line and Kevin Faulk fumbled. A Colts player tried to fall on the ball, and for a moment it looked like he had. However, as everyone knows, a fumbled football is sometimes harder to corall than a greased pig. Two Colts lineman started to run the other way signaling that they had the ball, and a few others just stood around wathching and celebrating, assuming the play was over. The Pats linemen did not. They ran towards the ball, which squirted loose into the endzone, and one of them fell on the ball to record a very rare touchdown by an offensive lineman.

update – this crow would taste much better with ketchup.
So almost the exact same play just happened in reverse. There have now been two touchdown scored in this game offensive lineman, which must be a first. (Or if not a first, it’s certainly one of only a few times it’s happened). From the replays they’ve showed so far, I couldn’t see what the Pats players were doing on the play.

For some entirely random reason, I got to wondering how many email I send. I’ve had my current work machine and email account for about 6 months now, so I checked the sent mail folder and found 2001 items (really), which means I send about 4000 a year for work. In the same sixth month span my personal email account registered 723 sent emails, but that’s low because I frequently send emails from other places, and I uses pop3 and do everything locally, so some emails are simply in other places, so I’m going to assume 1500-1600 personal emails per year. I’m curious as to what other people’s number are – post and let me know. (I wonder what “normal” is if there veen is such a thing). I’m also curious if various professions have radically higher or lower numbers. I would imagine that people in the political sphere and other communications-intensive environments send a lot, whereas other professions would be lower. Nerds probably send more personal emails, and chances are administrative assistants send more work related emails than anybody.

On the positive side, the Sixers are now practically a lock for a top 3 draft pick.

In my last post I off-handedly asked about the status of the color red in halakha. I also asked a few people in shul on shabbat, and one anonymous person was kind enough to come back with a very complete answer, which I will now share:

There are some things a person should not admit. Therefore I
will not say whether or not I actually own Od v’hadar lvusha
(translation: Modesty – an Adornment for Life) by Rabbi
Pesach Eliyahy Falk but I will say I have the book here at
my desk opened to find resources on the color red out of
curiosity and amusement – and thought you guys might be
interested in the hidden (ha. pun) secrets found:

I have the English version of the book. In Chapter 7
(Refined Clothes, Jewerly and Cosmetics) section B (Bright
red and highly conspicuos colors) R’ Pesach Eliyahu Falk
writes:

“Bright red is singled out by the Rishonim as provacative:
The Rishonim and later Poskim write that a woman must not wear a bright red garment in public, be it a blouse, jacket,
cardigan, skirt, dress or coat (Brachos 20a – Shach Y.D. 178:3 – Responsa Shevet Halevi 6:24:2) The following are the words of the Rebbeinu Nosson ba’al Ha’Arush (one of the
Rishonim) quoted in the Gilyon of Brachos 20a) “A red
garment, similar to the comb of a rooster, is not worn by
Jewish girls because it attracts attention and can cause
sin” see Mekoros 63:1-17.

R’ Falk writes that red was and still is a very attention
seeking color and writes this applies when only part of the
garment is red quoting Mekoris 63:17 again. But don’t lose
hope boys. He writes you can wear red. “However, if the
cloth just has red stripes, the garment has a moderate red
pattern on it, or the garment is made of checked material
which has red squared within it the red is usually not eye
catching and the garment is therefore permitted – see
Malbushei Kavod pg 24.”

He says there are explanations for why red is mentioned in
Mishlei 31:21 and the red garments Shaul Hamelech made for
the wives of those who went to war on behalf of Klal Yisroel
(Shmuel 2:1:24) but I don’t feel like writing any more out.
I think the Hillel house has this book if someone has not
taken it out due to disagreements.

Are your clothes under proper rabbinic supervision? If not, we may have to do something drastic.

Okay, seriously, what’s up with red? I’m not exactly an expert in women’s tzniut issues, so is there a source somewhere for women not wearing red?

This is probably the best single piece I’ve read on the high level view of the US, Iraq, and our place in the world. I encourage everyone interested in the future of the world to read it.

After 9/11, the United States was given the opportunity to realize what kind of world it was part of. It might have used the opportunity

Recently, Congregation Beth Hamedrosh decided to expand their eruv in response to growing demand and shifting demographics. One of the articles mentioned that this brought the edge of the eruv “close” to the Lower Merion Eruv.

Actually, they’re closer than the article lets on. The main line eruv now abuts the LM eruv. A close examination of the eruv maps for both the main line eruv and the Lower Merion Eruv reveal that they share a common border – the R5 train tracks north and west of Highland avenue. Theoretically, I don’t see a reason why two eruvin could not be combined into one large eruv. In fact, there are only a few reasons I can think of that you couldn’t combine two eruvin:

1. Combining the two would lead to a situation where a given street or thoroughfare would now count as a reshut harabbim (public domain) thanks to the increase in traffic to a level of greater than 600,000 people.
2. The two eruvin are built using different shittot, each relying on a separate set of stringencies and leniencies which would ultimately make a combined eruv fit neither set, and be invalid by both opinions.
3. Political reasons or inability of two organizations or groups to get along.
4. No one has thought of it yet.
5. Each eruv only comes up to the tracks, and there is a halakhic or technical reason why the eruv cannot include the track itself, essentially creating an unbridgeable gulf between the two eruvin.

Although all are possible, number one is somewhat doubtful as the entire area is a suburban area with low traffic and not a single straight street. The only thing I can think of is route 1, which is already included in the Main Line eruv, but not the LM eruv.

Issue 2 is certainly possible, I have no idea which shittot the two eruvin were built by. I do vaguely remember that the LM eruv was designed to avoid route 1, and the ML eruv includes part of it. It could be that Rb. Levene (posek of the LM eruv) won’t accept the ML eruv for this reason.

The last reason is actually the most intriguing. The R5 line carries only 5.5 million people a year, so I can’t imagine it would ever get 600,000 people on any given day. (It also doesn’t go straight). I don’t think it’s large enough to count as a karpaf, and they are both crossable (once every few years someone makes the news for getting killed crossing the tracks), and used for a human purpose (transportation).

Okay, before I hit the post button I got an email from a friend of mine – it looks like they’re trying to work out the logistics, but there are some halakhic issues that need to be worked out. I can’t go into details, but it looks like my hunches were correct.

update: my uber-secret source (under the entirely mistaken impression that anyone reads my blog and might therefore get a mistaken impression based on my imprecise language), informs me that a better last sentence would be: “They are aware of the above and considering what, if anything, can be done.”

The bottom line for me is simly this: I’m glad someone else thought of the idea. I am unfortunately not privy to all the details of these two eruvin (rabbis rarely publish the details of their eruvin in publicly accessible places). I realize there are a lot of issues that need to be worked out, so I’m glad someone is looking into them.