During the last few weeks when I haven’t posted at all, I’ve had a bunch of posts floating around in my head that for some reason I never bothered to write down. I’m just going to make them all rapid-fire in the next 2 days or so. You have been warned.

For some reason, an unusually large amount of alcohol has been consumed in my apartment over the past 2 weeks. (More on this later – I have pictures). This has lead me back to the CRC liquor list. Although there are many things there which are interesting (the issue of scotch alone is worthy of a lot more than I care to write), the issue of sake caught my eye. Sake is brewed by fermenting rice, in a process similar to that of beer (which most people agree does not need hashgacha). One potentially problematic difference is that with beer, the enzyme used to convert the starch into sugar (which can be fermented) comes from the beer itself. Sake uses the protease enzyme which comes from the aspergillus oryzae fungus, although there is now an artificial source as well. (For the record, I just learned this all on wikipedia about 10 minutes ago. I don’t know how I used to live without it).

The CRC clearly states that sake needs a hashgachah

Only recommended when bearing a reliable Kosher symbol.

The star-K on the other hand, disagrees:

Based on our understanding of industry practice, rice wine (sake) does not require kosher certification.

Surveying other people, the MK copies straight from the CRC. The Seattle vaad agrees with the star-K, saying that all unflavored sake is okay. Few other people have independent opinions, in part I’m sure because sake has not yet become a widely consumed product in North America.

Now of course comes the big question: who will I go by? I don’t see a clear reason why sake isn’t just considered the same as beer, but then I also feel like I really wish I knew the CRC’s logic before I simply dismiss their opinion. There is also the issue of consistency. Although I feel like the star-k’s opinion makes more sense, I go by the CRC’s opinion when it comes to scotch because that makes more sense to me as well. (By more sense, I mean that I like Rb. Moshe Feinstein’s take on the issue). I can’t simply pick and choose my sources based on who is the more lenient opinion in each case (or can I?). This is yet another case where I wish there were more openness in the kashrut organizations to allow consumers to make a more informed decision.

I went to the phantoms game last night, and while there I noticed for the first time that their mascot, Phlex, looks an awful lot like the Chigs, the fictional space aliens from the shirt lives sci-fi series Space: Above and Beyond.

I have a lot of thoughts on the Mitchell report which I’m going to write about later, but for now there is a letter in today’s New York Times which is so funny it bares repeating in its entirety.

To the Editor:

When I was growing up in the 1970s, parents encouraged their kids to participate in sports to help keep them away from drugs. Now the most prominent drug abusers are professional athletes.

From the cyclist Floyd Landis to the sprinter Marion Jones to the scores of baseball players named in former Senator George J. Mitchell’s report, the list of confessed or alleged drug users goes on and on. And if so many pros are using, one has to suspect that thousands of aspiring high school athletes are dabbling in performance-enhancing drugs, too.

I cannot in good conscience encourage my kids to participate in organized sports and chance getting mixed up in such unsavory and self-destructive activities. To keep them straight and clean, I might better urge them to grow their hair long and start a rock band.

Adrian Cho
Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich., Dec. 14, 2007

W00t is crowned word of the year by Merriam-Webster Inc. I don’t know whether to celebrate or mourn the impending death of the English language.

There’s a Simpsons episode where the police force confiscates marijuana and publicly burns it in a large outdoor bonfire. People of course get high off the smoke, and chief Wiggum smartly orders his officers to throw a bag of barber hair on the fire. Surprising as it may seem, chief Wiggum was actually smarter than Hamas.

First, there is the headline:

Hamas burns ‘confiscated’ drugs

Intriguing, but let’s hear more. There’s the standard news conference where they show off the loot:

Hamas displayed tables full of marjiuana, hashish, cocaine and ecstasy at a news conference to show the results of its operations.

The blaming of political rivals:

Mr Ghussein accused rivals Fatah of allowing a drug culture to flourish and collaborating with Israel to corrupt Gaza’s youth.

Then, the Simpsons-esque solution to the problem:

Later, black-clad members of Gaza’s security forces tossed the drugs onto a fire, sending plumes of smoke over Gaza City.

Really, I don’t think anyone could make this up.

I’m making my prediction now: The Patriots will lose this coming week to the Steelers. Just remember: you read it here first.

It looks like NY Jets fans are trying to take away Philly’s claim to having the most poorly behaved football fans in the NFL.

Major thanks to Kevin for bringing this to my attention. My alma matter (Wash U), is a school which frequently gets little notice for things like being the 12th ranked university or second ranked medical school in the country, or holding the record for most consecutive wins by a women’s basketball team. However this past weekend something occurred to make everyone sit up and notice.

At an on-campus concert a student (who was described as appearing under the influence), was unruly and asked to leave by police. He decided to become belligerent and resist arrest by dropping his pants. (He was already shirtless). According to a witness, “He was tased in the ass for a prolonged period of time.” (I cannot tell you how glad I am that the RFT published that quote because it makes the entire story).

The police then canceled the rest of the concert and evacuated the building. The concert-goers decided to start chanting “F— the police”, and at least one “instigator” was questioned. The student was sent to the hospital, and then jail, where someone gave him a shirt. The concert moved to a frat house.

I must say, I couldn’t be prouder that this momentous event occurred at an institution which I am connected to.

Make sure the check out the article in stud life. It includes a picture which “has be altered to mask the student’s nudity.” (Because we all thought the black box was a natural part of his body).

Someone trying to brute force SSH on my Linux machine (sucker! I require two factor authentication!), has brought account lockouts to the forefront of my thought process. Many people say that after 3 failed login attempts you should lock out an account and force the user to get a password reset. This is one case where I think the current security paradigm is way too strict and reactionary. Users frequently forget passwords and require 5 or 6 login attempts to get it right. (This is especially true for accounts that people log into infrequently such as an IRA, 401K, or CD account). Everyone realizes that the lower you set the threshold for account lockouts, the higher the overhead becomes, it’s simply another tradeoff that people have decided to make for security. However, I still can’t fathom why such a low number became commonplace. Let’s say the number was raised to 10, or even 100. How many accounts can be brute forced in 10 or 100 tries? If they can, you probably have other problems, and need to improve your password policy. I simply can’t see what real risk would be posed by raising your failed login limit from 3 to 5 or 10.

I think that poor English is becoming one of my pet peeves. (Somehow I never saw this coming). I’m generally not a grammer grammar Nazi, and I don’t really care about things like passive voice, dangling participles, and other common mistakes as long as the text makes sense and flows well. What I do care about are sentences which are jolted or entirely incorrect, and stupid typos that would be caught if the writer had bothered to review what he had written. (Seriously – why does no one take the simple step of reading what they write before submitting it?) I also don

In the running for “most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen”, I present to you the Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir singing sweet home Alabama. (Somewhere, Khrushchev must be rolling over in his grave.)