Friday: train to NY
Saturday night: Plane to Amsterdam
Sunday night: plane to Tel Aviv
Mon morning: Taxi to Jerusalem
Mon daytime: Aliyah l’regel (If only I could find a goat….)

Psyched.

(If anyone has any cool ideas on things to do either on or post pesach, feel free to make suggestions).

When I could find no information on the kashrut status of J

Last week Rabbi Moshe Tendler came to speak at penn on “torah meets madda”. The speech was a little on the dry side (although he did make his opinion abundantly clear in a manner which is frequently only aforded to those who have gained enough wisdom that they no longer care about blunting their words). One of the interesting things was at the end when a student asked if rabbi Tendler has indeed once taken a piece of matzah to a laboratory to see how much unbaked flour was really in it. Rabbi Tendler disavowed the story (he had apparently never heard of it or concieved of anything quite like it). He then spent about 10 minutes explaining why people who keep the minhag of gebruchts were wrong. In the middle of it he paused and asked the audience if anyone kept the minhag of not eating gebruchts. One girl half-heartedly raised her hand and then put it down, probably feeling embarassed. (The funny thing is that given the student body at Penn I would bet there were mroe people who kept that minhag, but were just too embarassed to even raise their hands). Of course as a Yek I appreciated the whole thing.

So this is either a very stupid, or completely brilliant Mario brothers rip-off. I still haven’t decided.

I sense a great disturbance in the force.

Rebecca is currently watching “America’s next top model”. My brain wants to kill itself.

First there were the Chuck Norris facts. Then, someone made it better (and by better I of course mean nerdier) by creating the Bruce Schneier facts.

Much good news to report.

The kesher Israel purim shpiel is online! W00t! I watched half of it last night (had to go to sleep), and will watch the rest later, but it looks great so far.

****************************
MIKE PANETTA
U.S. “SHADOW” REPRESENTATIVE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
March 13, 2007
****************************

snip…

** DC Voting Rights Act Passes House Oversight and Government Reform Committee **

Good news! Efforts to give DC a vote in the House of Representatives are building up momentum. Just today the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee reported favorably on DC voting rights by a vote of 24-5. Tomorrow, the bill is going to have a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, followed by a mark-up in the same committee on Thursday. Here are the details:

–> Judiciary Committee Hearing: Wednesday, March 14, 10 a.m., 2141 Rayburn;
–> Judiciary Committee Markup: Thursday, March 15, 2141 Rayburn.

If you can make either the hearing or the markup, please find me and say hello.

** FreeAndEqualDC.com **

Now that the legislation in moving in the House, it’s critical that Members of Congress around the country hear from their constituents on this issue. We need to leverage our friends and relatives who live outside the District of Columbia to take action on our behalf and urge their voting representatives in Congress to support the bill.

I’ve made it easy for this to happen. Just go to http://www.FreeAndEqualDC.com to take action. From this site you can forward a message to your contacts outside of the District asking them to take action on the site. Visitors to the site from places other than DC can send a message to their U.S. Senators and Representative in support of the bill. It only takes a few minutes, so please take action today.

** Voting Rights March on April 16th **

I hope you can join Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, DC Council Chairman Vincent Gray,
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, and thousands of other activists in participating in the largest demonstration ever for DC Voting rights on April 16th.

We’ll be assembling at 2:30 at Freedom Plaza and then marching our way up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol to demand voting representation in Congress. Thousands of people are expected to take the streets and deliver a strong message that it

While waiting for the Kesher Israel purim shpiel to be posted online (current over-under: Passover…. 2010), I decided to look at other people’s purim shpiels on youtube.

This one is proof that Yeshiva boys have too much free time.

sigh. One can only hope that the MA highway dept will sue the city for $2 million in damages.

A few weeks ago I was in NYC with my dad and brother. While hunting for a parking spot (a sport for New Yorkers more competitive than ultimate fighting), I started to think about the future of parking in big cities where space is at a constant premium. People can continually build skyscrapers taller because they also make faster elevators (as well as elevators that only server certain floors) in order to make workers commutes manageable. The only reason taking an elevator to the 57th floor is not a burden is because the elevator only goes to floors 50-80, so you don’t have to stop 50 times on the way up. With car garages, that doesn’t work the same way. Can you imagine if you had to drive up to the 57th floor of a parking garage to find a spot? It would take all day to get up, and you’d be seasick from going in circles. I began pondering, and ultimately came up with a car elevator type system which is remarkably similar to something that someone else apparently already came up with. Although this means I clearly wasn’t the first one to think of it, it is good to know my half baked ideas aren’t totally half baked.

Just click.