I’m finally getting around to switching web hosting providers. My current host has been great, but the truth is I simply don’t need all the features I once did, and I do need some new features I didn’t need when I signed up, and I can get what I need cheaper elsewhere, so it’s time to move on. Since all my domain are actually managed as one (one of the problems I intend to fix), you may find this site inaccessible in the near future (I’ll try to avoid it, but it might not be helped). Email to me may also bounce. If that happens, wait 12 hours and try again.

The most appropriate postmortem I have ever seen (from the NY Times of all places):

Mr. Buckley marshaled polysyllabic exuberance and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse.

A riddle commonly asked of young (Jewish) children is to identify a shabbat on which 3 torahs are removed from the ark. (Simchat torah doesn’t count). The common answer is when rosh chodesh chanukkah falls on shabbat. In a few weeks we’ll have another one – March 8 will be rosh chodesh parshat shekalim. In the same vein it occurs to me that when rosh chodesh nissan (my birthday) falls on shabbat, it would be parshat hachodesh, and again 3 torahs would be taken out. (Although for some reason, these later two are never provided as an answer to the riddle). I wonder if there are any more times I’ve missed.

This event happened to me about a year ago, but I forgot to blog it at the time.

There is a blind man named Eliezer who comes to this area for shabbat periodically. He usually gets a ride home from paratransit, but on this particular weekend, the paratransit van had a breakdown across town, and wouldn’t be available for several hours. I offered to give Eliezer a ride home, and it was then that I learned what should perhaps be a new rule for life: “never get directions from a blind man.”

I hadn’t heard of the street on which Eliezer lived (it was one of the many small streets that exist for only a few blocks in West Philadelphia, and although he had a rough idea of where it was, he could not give exact directions. The first attempt was doomed to failure as while we were going south on one of the numbered streets he didn’t recognize the names of any of the named streets we crossed (none were his street, as we were hoping), and we ended up too far south, and had to get on I-76 and loop around. The second time I decided to take Baltimore ave west until we hit one of the numbered streets that he lived between and then take that until we found his street. He kept saying that from Baltimore I had to “turn left and then left again”. I inquired if I had to turn immediately onto some other street, but he said no, I simply had to turn onto 58th and then turn left again. This made little sense to me and Eliezer could provide little explanation as to what he meant. When I finally got to 58th I made my left, and while about halfway through the turn Eliezer said “good, now keep turning”. To me this comment didn’t make a lot of sense as had I stopped turning I would have driven through the front of a Chinese restaurant, but then I realized that 58th and Baltimore don’t intersect at right angles. The turn I was making was significantly more than 90*. While to me this was barely of note, to Eliezer this was a significantly different turn from most turns, and that is why he felt as if we were turning twice.

From the NHL: Can you spell MVP without Malkin?.

Yes actually, you can. I realize the author is simply trying to praise Malkin, but the headline writer should really consider something that makes a little bit of sense.

It’s snowing, icing, and sleeting today. The kind of day that makes my usually 1 hour commute take 1.5 hours. The kind of day that makes me have a backup plan for if Philadelphia still hasn’t plowed tonight and I can’t make it home. (Drive to the Merion train station, park on a residential street nearby, and take the train to 30th street). The kind of day that makes half my coworkers call in sick. The kind of day that makes the sign “Caution: bridge may be icy” seem about as useful as useful as the proverbial glow in the dark sunglasses. Everything is icy! How about a sign that says “guess what: bridge may NOT be icy” – that would be something worth telling us.

In other news, when my cars skids, it apparently goes to the right 6 times out of 7, and to the left the one other time. I should probably get the tires looked at.

The NY Times (to which I am addicted) has an article on the cuttlefish. This sparked my interest mainly because when the Radzyner Rebbe first went looking for the identity of the chilazon in the late nineteenth century, he ultimately concluded that the cuttlefish was the chilazon. To this day in fact, the radzyner chasidim wear tekhelet made out of the ink of the cuttlefish. The Gemarah in menachot relates that the chilazon’s body is “like the sea”. As the NY Times article relates, the cuttlefish has the ability to camouflage itself in impressive fashion. I’m sure this fact contributed greatly to the Radzyner rebbe’s identification.

I’ve been shopping online for a camcorder. (Something I think every new parent does). I hit upon the model I want, and while I wait for Sony to release it (they appear to have moved up the release date for their new line to the end of Feb), I decided to do some price comparisons. (I reasoned that it’s close enough to the release date that everyone should have it listed so I can preorder it). Somewhat unsurprisingly, I found several places that have the camcorder I want for well below retail price. All of them:

• Close early on Friday
• Are closed on Saturday
• Are located in Brooklyn

Seriously – do non-Jews even go into the electronics retail business anymore?

Now of course comes the real question: Do I really even want to order from these guys? I hate to say it, but all of the stores have the same feel, and they all feel sketchy. I’ve been to these types of stores before, I’ve had them bait and switch me, and I’ve had them try to sell me inferior or “international” merchandise. The price is right though, do I risk it? Regardless of my personal stake, do I want to support those whom I know to employ such sketchy tactics?

I read a while ago on fatwallet about a deal that could get free magazine subscriptions for watching ads. The only magazine of note was popular science, but I figured that if I just used my fake spam catcher email account and a fake name I didn’t have much to lose if I let the ads run in the background while I worked. When I got enough credits to get my “free” subscription I gave them my address and assumed I would get nothing from it. To my amazement, I got my first issue of popular science a few weeks ago, and my second issue this past week.

I saw this graphic in this past Sunday’s wall street journal. I don’t know which of the numbers they present shocks me more. What year was this survey done in anyway? I am very bothered that in 2008, nearly one in five Americans would have some reservations about voting for someone simply because of the color of their skin or their sex, and I still don’t know why so many Christians are wary of Mormons. (And even more bothered when I remember that these are the people who were willing to admit it!)

sighIt’s times like I’m forced to remember the one cardinal rule of surveying Americans – 7% of us still think elvis is alive.

With all this talk of a stimulus package, I’ve been thinking about the national debt. (Yeah, I’m really a wet blanket aren’t I?) The national debt is currently 9.245 trillion dollars. More accuracy is not possible, because it will have grown before I can finish typing this post. To put this in perspective, the national debt is 6 and a half times larger that the total amount of money in circulation!¹ If congress sucked the money from every wallet, bank vault, and checking account in the country, that would still not pay for even a sixth of the national debt.

Divided up by person, every American is about $30,000 in the hole due to the national debt. (Before you total up how much your household owes, remember that this includes children and people who don’t earn any income).

The debt is 2 and a half times larger than the combined market capitalization of the 20 largest US companies.²

footnote 1: when defining “all money in circulation”, I’m using the M1 definition, which includes all cash (bills or coins), plus transactional bank accounts (such as checking accounts).
footnote 2: I’m defining company size by market cap.

My sister (who is a lot funnier than I am), writes about her experience in a snow “storm” that hit Jerusalem last week. (By “storm” I of course mean 4 cm of snow). She works in a bookstore which sells English books.

I sat in the store for about 2 hours until I realized that the only people on the street were Russians, who are not exactly huge consumers of English books during snow-storms

(Russians: Do you have any books in Russian?
me: no
Russians: Tell me, why are all the stores closed? Is it a national holiday?
me: no, it’s just that it’s 200,000 degrees below comfortable
Russians: exactly! It’s that good weather which caused us to make aliyah
me: (thinking they are kidding) ha ha
Russians: (puzzled) what’s so funny?
me: uh…nothing. Nothing at all.
Russians: We would also like to celebrate this glorious national holiday. Can you tell us where we might buy vodka?

Other than that only one lady came in to my store: She is the neighbor from upstairs and she was clearly surprised that a store would be open today. She tried to understand what my rationale for opening the store on such a day could have been. “Do you have somewhere to live?” she asked. When I said that I did she seemed puzzled and then asked if my husband beat me, if the place had a roof, and if I remembered how to get there from here. When I denied and confirmed things in the correct order she seemed even more confused, so I explained that I was Russian. This seemed a logical explanation for her and she subsequently brought me down a glass of tea with vodka in it and then retreated back into her apartment. That’s when I decided it was time to go home.