YUTOPIA: Meta: February 2004 Archives

Meta: February 2004 Archives

February 25, 2004

Obligatory Updates

I've just about finished with the weekly pilgrimages to the cRc, which has been taking much of my time recently. They have all been incredibly helpful, especially Executive Director Rabbi Joseph Ozarowski. I'm not planning on publishing the paper, but if you're reading this, know that they do much more than Kashrut., including (but not limited to) a new rehab program.(Free reg reqd)

I am officially plugging The Queen of Persia from Shazak Publications. Highly recommended for all ages.

Also on the Purim front, I'm working on some shticks, and typing up my shiur from last year on the real halakhot of drinking on Purim. Rav Gedalia Schwartz, the Av Beit Din of the cRc, recently gave a shiur on Purim drinking which confirmed my initial analysis of the sources.

In other news: I'm going to an AIPAC conference for university students on Sunday. I've never been to one of these things before, but I have a feeling I'll have fun one way or another. I'll try to write up some highlights from that. Also, I'm working on my take of Evil in the Talmud and a brief introduction to Jewish Law. Oh yeah, and a thesis of some sort.

I've realized I really missed sitting down in the library and just writing. It's always unfortunate when school gets in the way of education. At any rate, if and when things calm down, I can get back to the good 'ol days of semi-regular pseudo-intellectual blogging.

Posted by Josh at February 25, 2004 2:28 PM © | Permalink | 1 Comment

February 4, 2004

What's In A Blog?

In an ironic Kuro5hin article, James AC Joyce writes "Why your Movable Type blog must die."

One complaint is, "You are all sheep:"

Whenever you discuss a subject about which you all fake your knowledge, such as "metablogging", the lot of you tend to throw out random and completely false opinions and then temperately argue each other down to a single, unified viewpoint. Which is completely wrong.

Aside from the inherent hypocricy in posting this to a blogging type site, he does raise some interesting issues. It's bad enough we have a new forum for idiots to easily and anonymously run off their mouths, but the blogs mess up search engines. Let's say you're a history major looking for something about Archduke Ferdinand. My shiur, while interesting, doesn't exactly help you all that much.

If it's any consolation, I've been slacking recently, and if things go well I might slack even more in the future.

But if the search engine thing still bothers you, you're free to write a better one, because of course, you can never have enough search engines.