Now that the evil preceptor is out of the way, I hope to have a thesis draft done by the end of the week. Although there’s much I’d like to write about now, expect blogging to be anywhere from “slow” to “non-existent” until the draft is completed.
I have to say I’ve missed reading my weekly e-mail updates from Dei’ah vdDibur. Today I found out that “content cell phones” are “wreaking spiritual havoc.” Apparently, the dangers cell phone are so great, that even the public announcement doesn’t say what they are. At any rate, the Hareidi community is implored to safeguard their children’s purity and of course, “the deference to gedolei Yisroel shlita.”
So basically, the “Torah TrueTM” Hareidi educational system itself isn’t enough to instill the appropriate values such that the bochrim themselves cannot be trusted with temptation and the only solution is to ban anything that might cause “agmas nefesh.”
Who knew Hareidim were closet Democrats?
Also, it seems that there was a scandal in which a government report claimed that Hareidi schools received two or three times the amount of their secular counterparts. It also seems that this report was flawed in several ways. DvD Editor Mordechai Plaut recaps the hows and why of the mistakes, and even appeals to “the first rule that beginning students of statistics learn.”
Plaut’s argument implies that math might actually be important. However, we know from his newsletter that teaching math and all of its subversiveness will ultimately destroy the Hareidi community.
Does this mean it’s now assur to read his column?
What if I get it on my cell phone?
My mother came back from x-rays on her knee and it seems as though the broken kneecap is fixed. This has several positive implications. Not only does she not have to wear the brace anymore, she can now bend her knee (though not completely yet) and even start putting pressure on it. This means she can also start doing weight-bearing exercises and start rehabbing the hip.
Yay Imma!
She also told me that Sunday night was Kushner’s fundraising concert featuring Neil Sedaka. This would explain why so many teenagers were unsupervised and open to mischief.
Actually it does give me an idea. As a nice middah k’negged middah punishment, how about forcing the students to go to another Sedaka concert?
Or would that constitute cruel and unusual punishment?
First there was that whole messiness with McGreevey donations and witness tampering. Now, the school named after Charles Kushner’s family has over 40 students busted for drugs and alcohol.
I have several friends who teach there, my father contributed to the curriculum when it first started, and I’m sure there are many positive things to say about the school. Still, I know this school has had such problems and it’s been going on for years.
But now, not only does this happen, but I first hear of it from FARK of all places.
Hopefully this will be embarrassing enough to the school, the board, and the students to actually effect some change.
I can’t say I’m terribly optimistic, but that’s for another time.
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
“I know you are, but what am I?”
Long before Freud gave it a spiffy name, many cultures and people have addressed or acknowledged the concept of Psychological Projection. The basic theory is that instead of dealing with your own faults, you “project” them on to other people by holding them accountable for your own shortcomings or by screwing around with their heads such that they’re as messed up as you are. Though not always intentional, projection can still be harmful. Not only does it make insecure people feel even worse, it may also make satisfied people start to question themselves.
We’ve all had such experiences, and for me this has been an especially busy week.
Just found this CNN article:
I can’t say if I’d hold the agency responsible for background checks, since its relatively easy to lie on these things. However, the response to “endure” the abuse – especially when they could have easily provided her wth a way out – is so intolerable that I can’t disagree with the judgement.
Introduction
Anyone part of a “single’s scene” knows how difficult it is to find that special someone with whom you can spend the rest of your life. Bars and mixers might help put similar people in the same room, but such forums rarely result in successful relationships. To help narrow down the field of compatible singles, some entrepreneurs took advantage of the Internet, resulting in sites like Match.com or E-Harmony.
Jewish dating is perhaps even more difficult for a myriad of reasons which won’t be discussed here. Still, there are some Internet dating sites created specifically for the Jewish community, such as JDate, Jewish Caf?, Future Simchas and Frumster.
Like many other on-line dating services, singles complete profiles which contain generic information as well as some space for the individuals to elaborate. When singles search for other singles, they do so on specialized fields – each depending on the particular site. For example, Frumster allows one to search based on such fields as education, height, body type, and religious observance. However, with Frumster one can be certain of a minimum degree of observance, as it is the only one which serves the Orthodox community exclusively.
During one of my random Frumster searches I noticed that there were more women in my results page who were divorced. I found this odd since the age range for which I was searching was up until 30 years old. What bothered me wasn’t that divorce’s were suggested. I don’t believe that someone divorced should be any less of an option than anyone else. Furthermore, there are cases such as abuse where divorce would be the obviously preferable option – the sooner the better. However, there is an unfortunate stigma against being divorced, and for divorce’s Frumster might be the only option. There are many questions which need to be asked to interpret the meaning of any phenomenon.
What occurred to me that Frumster could be a useful resource for obtaining Orthodox Jewish sociological data, necessary to at least begin to understand what is happening within our community.
A few months ago, I switched from Mozilla to Firefox as my primary browser. You might have seen some news coverage about its latest release, and could contemplate the switch. Aside from being secure and stable, there are several useful plugins to make browsing easier. Some of my favorites:
And there are loads more from which to chose. Now that I can do blog spell checking1 from Firefox, I officially have no more use for Internet Explorer other than to handle MS’s own websites.
Vive la revolucion revolution!
1. Yes, I do that occasionally.
Blogging may be a little slow for a while – certainly don’t expect the longer postings to continue.
My mother came home from rehab on Sunday. Rehab will continue at home, but it’s unclear how long it will take. Normally, rehab for hip surgery requires more support from the other hip/leg side. In my mother’s case, the other side is still hampered by a broken kneecap. Therefore, she can’t do the weight-bearing excersizes just yet so rehab may take longer than usual.
On the plus side, she is able to work at home – her boss installed a cable modem in the house. If you’d like to send wishes, you can e-mail Rabbiyuter at aol dot com. I’m sure she’d love to hear from random strangers.
I’ve gotten conned into regiving my shiurim at the Hillel here. The research is done, and I could use the hazara. Also, it gives me the opportunity to write out the shiurim instead of just putting up sources.
Finally, Izzy Kramer has been on fire in sending me loads of chords, and it’s been hard to keep up posting them.1 If I have any spare time, I’ll be working on automating some things using PHP.2 If there are any interested volunteers, please let me know.
1. Also transposing. Izzy uses a lot of barre chords – as well he should – but many players including myself have difficulty barre-ing acoustics.
2. At the risk of a flame war, I think PHP is cooler and faster than Perl – that and I forgot most of Perl and I’ve been wanting to learn PHP for a while. ASP.net isn’t really an option since YUCS isn’t running Mono – and there just isn’t a need for it. From looking through the documentation and speaking to friends, PHP can best do what I need/want it to, even without MySQL
I had some of these in an update of the last post, but I’m seeing some really good articles on Arafat. Here are some of the better ones I’ve seen thus far (might add more).
Thanks Zev