Yesterday the person in charge of this asked me if I can read torah in two weeks, which will be the Shabbat in the middle of Sukkot. All the holidays (and their intermediate days, as in this case) have special torah readings, so I asked what it was. No one present remembered. I said sure, I'd take care of it; I could look this up at home. I hoped I wasn't biting off something that would be too hard on that timescale, but figured I could roll with it, whatever it was.

I pulled it up in Trope Trainer today (forget about its cantilation features; it lets me print nice big copies to practice from!) and started to read. I fell into chanting it easily -- too easily. Err, wait a minute, I recognize that turn of phrase. Heh -- I chanted this exact passage last winter. Ok, this just got easier. :-)

The Sukkot portion is from Ki Tisa, after the incident with the golden calf when Moshe talks God into giving the people another chance and they make the second set of tablets. There's a reference to Sukkot somewhere in there, which might be why it was chosen for this holiday, but I can't help noticing the parallel between the servicable fragility of the sukkah and the fragility of our people's relationship with God at that point in time -- and, perhaps, individually since then. So maybe I'll work that idea up into a d'var torah.

Rosh Hashana went well for me this year. Services were good, I got to participate, I had guests both days, and I feel like I've gotten some introspection time this season (need more work there, though).

My rabbi gave an excellent sermon that's hard to recap. (That's not a complaint; he is very good at sermon-craft in my humble opinion. Sermons are not mere bullet-points; they should settle in somewhat deeper.) He started (after making a connection from that day's torah reading) by talking about Rivka, who, on finding out that two nations were struggling in her womb, asked "lamah zeh anochi?" -- "why am I?" Why is she what, one might ask -- the thought seems incomplete. Or maybe it is complete, and she's asking "why bother?". From this he made a connection to other situations where we might ask "why am I?". There was a lot of good thought-fodder there.

We have a second-day service, which this year filled but did not totally pack the chapel. That's still pretty good for a Wednesday! I chanted torah (which I'd been asked to do the previous Saturday, but I did this portion last year so it was a faster prep). The other two readers read rather than chanting; I didn't know that in advance and I hope no one felt upstaged. I must remember for the future that the reading desk in the chapel is both a little too small and a little too tall, especially if the scroll is wound all the way to one end. We read B'reishit on the second day, so I read the very first verses of the torah. It was hard to see due to the physical setup. Next time I will ask for a step-stool!

Tuesday lefkowitzga joined me for lunch. We had: the standards (wine, challah, apples with honey), baked chicken with peanut sauce, roasted potatos/carrots/onions, something green (was it broccoli?), and pizelles for dessert (maybe soemthing else too). Drat; should have written that down sooner. Wednesday I invited some fellow congregants (including a pescetarian), and we had: the standards, starfruit, raw veggies with hummus, camembert with crackers (all that was a pre-set), and foil-poached salmon (served cold), brown rice, broccoli. Dessert was a yummy plum tart brought by a guest. I had, but forgot to serve, grapes as well. Wines were Rashi Claret (Tuesday, with leftovers Wednesday) and Rashi "white" -- not further specified, but tasty. The red was labelled "semi-sweet" so I wasn't sure how I'd like it, but it was nice. I'd drink either of these again. (My tastes usually run to pinot grigios or rieslings.)

Shabbat morning the "goofy question" was to name something we like about this season -- a piece of music, food, some aspect of liturgy, family connections, whatever. While there are many things I like, for me the big thing is that there is both the obligation and the opportunity to correct past problems. Opportunity? Yes: see, I have a lot of trouble approaching people to say "that thing I did many months ago? I'm sorry about that", not because of any issues with apologies, but more because I feel awkward -- I imagine that the other person is thinking "so why is she bringing this up now?". If I didn't spot and correct it at the time, I don't know how to go back later and fix it. Having a formalized time during the year helps with that, at least for other Jews. (Of course it doesn't really help with others.) As for the obligation, well, it's pretty easy to just keep putting things off; even with this time set aside I sometimes find myself doing that. If we didn't have the Yamim Nora'im (the days of awe, aka "high holy days" but that misses some important flavor), I'd probably never act. That would be bad. And looking around the room, I think my answer resonated with others too.

Today I played in a test run of D&D fourth edition. None of us (except maybe the GM) had read all the rules in advance, though all but one of us had played extensively under the third-edition rules (3.0 and 3.5). And the GM had a module with pre-fab characters and quick-start rules, which is what we played.

It's different from third edition. Better? Worse? Don't know yet -- just different, with some interesting twists. We'll need to play more before I can make that judgement.

They have made first-level characters much more effective than in previous editions. That's a win in my opinion; it used to be that first-level characters were both fragile and lightly-powered, so you'd start an adventure, have one fight, hole up somewhere to lick your wounds, try again the next day, and so on. One bad role could send a healthy character into near-death (or actual death, if the party couldn't act immediately to intervene). Heroics were pretty much impossible.

Contrast this with the following sequence involving my first-level dwarf fighter under the new rules. The enemies were a priest with half a dozen underlings. They ambushed us and the priest opened by attacking my character with a spell. (And the underlings threw spears and stuff.) This knocked me down almost to half my strength (which is to say, down to 16 of 31 hit points). Our cleric gave me a quick burst of healing and I charged the priest, hitting him but not hard enough to kill him (no surprise there). In the next round the following happened, in order: the priest and about four underlings attacked me, knocking me into negative hit points (and to the ground); another party member attacked the priest from the other side and pushed him into my spot on the board (so he was standing over me); another party member gave me some (ranged?) healing that brought me back to consciousness; I, from the ground, made a big power attack (this character's once-per-day special attack), killing the priest and sending him flying; I stood up, looked at the line of underlings, and said "who's next?". It was fun. :-) And it was fun that I don't think would have been possible under previous editions.

(Now, mind, D&D is as unrealistic as it ever was: I asked if I could make that attack, the GM (and other players) concurred that it was legal, and I said "let me be clear: my dwarf is going to make a big power attack from the ground... with his two-handed maul?". You've got to be willing to suspend some disbelief to play this game, but if you are, it can be fun.)

( more rules and analysis )

At the end of last week I got a call saying my new glasses were in. (That was faster than I expected.) Monday morning I picked them up. The frames fit well; the side-pieces are a little more delicate than I had realized, and this is probably only noticable with lenses as thick as mine in the frame, but I think that will be ok. It was immediately obvious that the distance correction was better, and using the bifocals to read something in the office felt "different" but not "wrong".

Monday I had a little trouble with using the computer initially; I ended up adjusting the position of my monitor slightly, which helped. I know from past experience that it takes me a week or so to adjust to new glasses, so I just plugged away.

This afternoon I finally realized what was wrong about the bifocals (other than the focal distance having subtly changed); the placement of the left bifocal, relative to my eye, is a little different than on the old pair of glasses. I don't have quite as much bifocal-covered space to the left side of the field as before, and apparently it matters. Lens curvature prevents me from really comparing them "head to head", but getting them as close as I can I can see the difference. The bifocal looks fine in the lens; it's not obviously crooked or off-center or the like. But it's not quite right for my eyes, so Monday morning I will go back to see what they can do about it. (And I have learned to take a new measurement now: bridge to far edge of bifocal.)

I was going to keep wearing the new glasses over the weekend anyway (won't be using the computer on Shabbat, for starters...), but after doing all this comparing of lenses the new ones were dirty, so I washed them -- and the left lens fell out. Argh! I cannot get it to fit snugly in the frame; I thought I had it in at one point, but it slipped while I was putting the glasses on my face. I wonder what that's about. I inspected the frame with a magnifying glass and I can't see any hairline cracks. (I'm not going to try forcing things and risk creating one.) So now I'm back to the old glasses, and I can't do anything about it until Monday. And the distance vision isn't quite as clear. Bummer.

Rosh Hashana was good; I'll write about that later. In the meantime, have some survey questions (via baron_steffan).
( Read more... )

Tonight begins Rosh Hashana. L'shana tova to my Jewish friends, and happy Tuesday to everyone else. :-)

It looks like Congress is on the verge of passing the bailout bill. Sigh. I feel like I want to say more about that, but it's not coming. In the meantime, this background explanation from David Director Friedman seems sound to me.

To maybe bring some cheer in the wake of that, it's clean-out-the-browser-tabs day:

The sanctuary in the desert, modernized by hobbitblue:
You can go North, South, East or West
>N
There is a table of bread here
>Eat bread
You are not hungry, trust me.
[...]

The great schlep -- an organized campaign to send kids to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama. Or, at least, they'll visit. :-) Link from browngirl and mamadeb.

Duckling scam from zachkessin.

Q: How many children of a dysfunctional family does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Your brother would know.
Passed on by siderea.

Sarah Palin Disney (video) forwarded by tangerinpenguin made me laugh.

hrj made mock sushi.

I want this lamp (from nancylebov).

I found this video touching, right before Rosh Hashana (it has no religious content). Forwarded by 530nm330hz.

And finally, sing to your pooky is a thoughtful entry from scaharp.

Pittsburgh has an annual foot race, and I have the misfortune to have the starting line just outside my bedroom window. (The sellers did not disclose this... which actually led to me going to traffic court the first year over a parking ticket, but that's another story.) I understand the necessary noise from a crowd of 10,000 people, but the unnecessary, gratuitious noise of loudspeakers blasting music at 7AM (!) has been an annual irritant. (We're talking loud enough to rattle windows.)

Last year I wrote to the mayor (who, by the way, was facing an election six weeks later) and asked that they alter the race (location or start time) and kill the unnecessary music. I did not receive a reply, not even one of those generic brush-offs that politicians routinely send. When the web site for this year's race went up I sent my request again via their web form -- again, nothing. And in early September we received a letter telling us about the race and its parking restrictions (hey, first mailed notice in nine years of living here!), and the letter included a phone number, so I tried that. (At this point, obviously, I was focusing only on the music issue, as all other aspects of the race were fixed.) I never succeeded in reaching a human at that number (possibly by design?) and left a message, which -- do you see a pattern here? -- was never answered.

I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised to find this morning that the obnoxious music was gone! The loudspeakers fired up around 8:30, but they were making announcements, not blasing music. It didn't become unbearable until close to 9, and it was all over by 10.

I never tried to coordinate a campaign with the neighbors (thought of it too late), so I have no idea if others complained too. Was this a coincidence, did they receive complaints from multiple people, or did one person actually effect this change? I'll never know, but that's ok if this sticks.

This week I will be following up with thank-you notes/calls in hopes that we can keep this modification next year. (It would really suck if the lack of music was just due to a technical difficulty or something...)

Dear LJ brain trust,

I'm having folks over for lunch on Wednesday (second day of Rosh Hashana) and I want to serve salmon. I almost always buy fresh fish the day I'm going to cook it, but that won't work then. The Google-aggregated wisdom of the net seems to hold that you can keep salmon in the fridge for two days. But I would want to buy it Sunday rather than adding a grocery stop to Monday, which will already be hectic with trying to get home from work in enough time to do prep and get to services that night.

What are my options? Can I freeze fresh salmon -- and if so, would I regret it? Do any of you have recipes that I can cook Monday that would reheat ok on Wednesday? (I was going to bake it.) Any other ideas? I guess the current default is that I'll buy frozen salmon filets if I can get them, but I was hoping to cook one big piece -- it looks mice on the big platter surrounded by veggies and stuff that way.

About a week ago I started receiving spam ("that you signed up for" -- um, no) from the Obama campaign. Complaints to their postmaster have gone unheeded (and have not bounced). My first letter took the tone of "this must be a mistake" and I commended them on the otherwise good experiences I've had with their campaign while asking them to correct this error; the second was closer to "you are reflecting poorly on your candidate". Still nada. As a matter of security I do not follow "unsubscribe" links in unsolicited email (who knows what they'll really do?), though I did go to their site (through the front door) and leave feedback reporting this problem.

The problem is not only continuing but escalating. I can set my spam filters to take care of this, but it's bad manners on their part and seems unwise when they want my vote.

If anyone reading this has ties to this campaign, you might want to tell them to knock it off. I would point out that the opposition has not stooped to spamming me so far. (If I'm really lucky, perhaps this post will snare a campaign person following referrer links.)

The mishna teaches: if a man says to his wife "this is your get (bill of divorce) if I do not return within twelve months" and he dies in that year, it is not a valid get and she is not divorced. However, if he says "this is your get from now if I do not return", and he dies, it is a valid get. The mishna later makes clear that a get's "effective date" must fall within the lifetime of the man issuing it. (76b)

I have heard anecdotally, though I don't know how common it was, that men would sometimes write gets before setting out on dangerous journeys, lest they be killed but that not be provable (e.g. sea voyages). That would be to avoid the problem of the agunah, the woman who cannot remarry because she has no get (and it cannot be proven that her husband is dead). I suspect that the mishna here is discussing that sort of case, though it does not say so explicitly. (Why else would someone set up a time-delay divorce?)

Some things are not part of the formal Jewish learning process. I understand how to behave at a shiva house (house of mourning), and I've puzzeled out some of the rest by observation, but I'm curious: what typically happens with food? There are a couple facets to this (and I am blessed to not have first-hand knowledge yet).

The community generally provides meals for the family so they don't have to cook during that week. Sometimes there seems to be someone coordinating ("can you do Thursday?"), but either this is usually not the case or those people rarely call me. Assuming no one has yet emerged in this role, the behavior I've learned is to show up with something that can be reheated (and is freezer-safe) and hand it to whoever seems to be in charge. Correct?

(When there is someone in the coordinator role, how does that come about? Does the family ask someone? Does someone volunteer to the family? Does someone step up but work through the community or synagogue?)

The other facet is refreshments. This might be a function of the liberal Jewish community (the only one in which I've attended shiva minyanim), but it is almost always the case that the family has put out a spread -- cookies, cakes, fruit, and sometimes more-substantial food. So even if I'm not bringing a meal I always bring something to contribute to that. This (the spread, not the contribution) feels weird -- the family in mourning should not be forced into the role of host, I would think. Is this normal?

I've been wondering about these things for years, and just happened to remember to do something about it after a visit tonight. (Well, if sending questions out into the void counts as doing something. :-) )

A conversation with a coworker today prompted a memory that I realized I never actually wrote about.

A few years ago, my cat Erik had to have surgery, which had complicated after-care -- feedings were on a 6-hour cycle while some drugs were on an 8-hour one, both inflexible. I work full-time. Clearly this wasn't going to work.

We had just moved into new office space and parts of it were not complete. Specifically, we have a shower that was still missing some of its plumbing, so not usable as a shower. My manager arranged for me to be able to use that room for a week, stashing Erik in there and just going in when I needed to do stuff to him. This was neither a secret nor widely-known; people who saw me walk into the building would have seen the carrier, but it's not like there was an announcement. (Though a couple people who knew about it made visits to the room too.) I put a sign on the door saying "please don't open; find me if this is a problem" and signed it.

My company was, at the time, in its first year of having been acquired. Large companies are not always as casual as the small companies they buy. We had, fairly recently, had a manager from the mothership transfer to us, perhaps to help steer us in the right direction in the larger world.

I only heard about this incident some weeks after it happened: this manager and one of our software developers were walking down the hall past this room when Erik meowed. The manager stopped, looked at the door, and said "you have a cat in there". The developer looked at the sign, said "must be Monica's", and continued walking, having given this fact all the attention he felt it deserved. Apparently the look on the manager's face was special.

At the time the manager had no reason to know who I was. Now that he does, I infer that he's forgotten all about the cat in the office. Or, if he hasn't, he has declined to bring it up. :-)

The mishna teaches that if a man is seized with delerium his instruction to write a get is disregarded. The gemara asks what delerium is. From this begins a discussion (several pages in length) of various medical conditions and their cures. Some examples from today's daf:

• For cataracts, take a scorpion with seven colors of stripe, dry, mix with stibium, and drop in the eyes. (Careful not to use too much!)
• For night-blindness there is a complex ritual involving tying one's leg to a dog, processing through the streets with children calling out, and feeding the dog from different houses.
• For toothache, crush garlic, put it on the thumbnail (on the side corresponding to the tooth), and wrap it in dough, but do not let it touch his flesh lest it cause leprosy.
• For stomach pain, drink 100 grains of long pepper in wine daily for three days.

(67b mishna, 69a-b gemara)

(I suggest that this last one will at least alter your stomach-ache. :-) As for the scorpion... err, what?)

The bookshop that has all the books in the world -- except one is a lovely 8-page graphic short story (link from shewhomust).

Joel on Software and Coding Horror (I hadn't heard of the latter before but looks interesting) have launched Stack Overflow, which looks like it could be a good resource for answering technical questions. (I hope that by logging in with my LJ OpenID from home and saying "always accept", I'll be able to answer questions with that ID from work where LJ is blocked.)

Programmers as carpenters (short).

Harold Feld's analysis of the Palin camp's attack on Oprah (part one). This story fizzled soon after hitting CNN on Monday; I hope that's the last we hear of it, but it seems plausible that it could come back on a slower news day. Sheesh. Usually it's folks from the left who assert that freedom of the press means you're entitled to someone else's press.

A few on the economy, some serious and some light (because sometimes you have to laugh to avoid crying too hard):

• We've all seen that ABC graph comparing the Obama and McCain tax plans (sorted by bracket). Here's a version that's closer to scale (link from anastasiav).
• Scott Adams surveyed economists to try to find out what the experts think about the candidates. A surprising (to me) number said it doesn't matter which candidate wins (on this set of issues).
• An article on the current troubles by one of the Nobel laureates in economics. Interesting on first reading; I haven't dug deeper yet. And, as demonstrated most recently in the previous bullet, economists don't tend to agree on much.
• This picture turned out to be sadly ironic.
• Didn't anyone consider this angle on the looming economic disaster? (Onion video from rjlippincott).

A while ago I asked about opticians. Thanks for the pointers. On the basis of the feedback I got from a coworker, this morning I took my prescription over to Optometric Associates of Pittsburgh, who seem to have the right amounts of customer care and attention to detail (and proximity doesn't hurt). So far, thumbs-up. (Of course, the real evaluation won't be possible until the glasses come in.)

The optician I met with, Jan, asked me what I was looking for in frames; I said my priorities were lens size/shape, fit, and "not garish", and all other properties were solidly second-tier. I said I wanted lenses no smaller than my current ones because these are my do-everything glasses (not into separate reading/computer glasses), and asked her to turn those comments into recommendations.

I was pleased that for every frame she pulled, she started by having me put it on so she could check the fit of the bridge and withdraw any that weren't right. (I have a small bridge, apparently.) Of the four frames she handed me three were good candidates, and my explanation of why the one wasn't led to some of the other options.

She had been doing this much just by looking. At this point she measured the lenses on my current glasses and the top candidate; the new ones are exactly one millimeter bigger in each of length and width. Score; the current ones turned out to be 1mm smaller than specified. :-) (We had been talking about the size-weight tradeoff; too small and I wouldn't be able to see, but I was mindful of being too heavy, too.) The shape of the new ones is pretty similar to that of my current ones.

I told her that bifocal placement was very important to me (had problems with that in the past), and that one of my current lenses is good and the other is a smidge high. She said the difference was obvious, though the folks who made the glasses had claimed it didn't exist; it turned out to be a difference of half a millimeter. She measured the distance between my pupils with a machine rather than a ruler, explaining that it was more precise. (Having now read a bit about it, I'm glad to see that it "reads" my eyes rather than depending heavily on my maintaining focus in one area. One of my eyes wanders and is hard to keep on target sometimes.)

She was very friendly and accommodating when I explained past problems I've had and would like to avoid. She explained the quality-control process ("you won't even see the glasses until I've confirmed all these measurements are exact"). Even if that's just part of the patter, I left feeling confident. Now I just have to wait a few weeks.

( stats )

We had some people over for gaming yesterday. (Alas, there was something I wanted to go to at my synagogue in the evening, but I didn't know the schedule until after we had committed to hosting.) Four other people played Descent, and I played a four-player game of Iron Dragon and two three-player games of Puerto Rico. After all that, some folks played Estimated Time to Invasion, which was new to either everyone or everyone but Dani. (He brought it home from Origins.)

( Read more... )

This is (approximately) the d'var torah I gave on yesterday's portion:

( Read more... )

I chanted torah yesterday; the passage was short and didn't have too much difficult vocabulary, so I translated from the scroll instead of reading from the book. (My rabbi was there; I can't remember if I've done that in front of him before. I think so.)

My translation of the sixth aliya of Ki Teitze (Deut 24:5-13):

( Read more... )

goldsquare's post on 9/11 is short and to the point. I wrote and deleted more words before seeing this, so I'll just point you there.

Tonight I got one of the most polite political-solicitation phone calls I can remember receiving, from the local Obama campaign. With all the dirt, both real and manufactured, in the political arena, it was nice to have a pleasant and non-pushy conversation. Had I not been on my way out the door, I would have accepted her offer to answer my questions. But I am welcome to stop in at their local office three blocks from my home any time I like, she said. (I assume she doesn't really have anything that isn't on the campaign web site, but sometimes the human interaction is nice.)

This was more timely yesterday, but: http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/ is worth a look. Do look closely. :-) Thanks to browngirl for the link.

From a recent conversation about workplace diversity: "We have a very diverse department. We have emacs and vi users." :-)

A pet butterfly? Link from mabfan.

A light-hearted comment on the economy relayed by thnidu.

The mishna teaches: if a husband instructs another man to take a get (bill of divorce) to [the first man's] wife or to receive a get on her behalf, and the husband wishes to retract it before his wife receives it, he may do so. However, if a woman instructs a man to receive a get on her behalf, then once he does so the husband may not retract. The issue is not when the wife receives it but, rather, when she or her appointed agent does so. (Receipt by the husband's agent is not relevant regardless of how the husband instructs him.) The mishna grants the husband an out, however: when the wife's agent collects the get the husband may say he does not agree to his agency; in that case the man carries the get to the wife but she is not divorced until she receives it. (62b)

This does raise the question of why the husbnad would go to all that trouble, particularly in the last case. Under what circumstances would he want to initiate a get but delay or prevent completion of the divorce? Remember, no cell phones -- intercepting the agent once he's on his way isn't necessarily easy.

In the comments here we were talking about health care in the US. The current system is broken in many ways, but the "nuke it and start over with some nationalized program" proposals are scary too. What incremental improvements are possible? I have to believe that there are some.

One idea I'm interested in is what would happen if we separated paying for routine care from paying for catastrophic care. What would happen if people could be on their own for the former but could buy a policy to cover hospitalizations, major illnesses, and the like? How effective would that be and what would it tend to cost? What would having that in play do to the over-the-counter (uninsured) price of routine care? (Yes, I know that not everyone can afford to pay for routine care out of pocket. I'm exploring a suite of options, not choosing a single one.)

On the flip side, would medical practices or insurance companies be willing to sell affordable plans that cover all your routine care (only), if they were not on the hook for catastrophic losses? Could that get things down to the point where the average family could afford regular checkups, preventative care, and routine tests (which helps prevent some catastrophic issues)? Such plans exist now in niches (vision and dental, most commonly in my experience), but I haven't heard of one for general medical care. Why not? (Am I totally misunderstanding where the profit centers are in the insurance business?)

Both angles are important. What I'm labelling catastrophic incidents are (as the label implies) financially devastating if you don't have sufficient coverage. Outside of elder-care issues I'm not sure how common they are, but it's the sort of thing I wouldn't want to take a chance on. I insure my car and house, after all -- how much the moreso should I insure my health?

What I suspect has a bigger impact on the poor, though, is the routine care. If you don't have insurance, you're looking at a three-digit number to walk into your doctor's office. Throw in some kids and you're in trouble. (This is why I asked what would happen to those costs if catastrophic care were a separate factor.) Could plans that just cover routine care be made affordable enough for most people? This doesn't solve the other problem, but neither does the current system -- we rely on hospitals' obligations to treat (which is a legitimate public demand while they pay no taxes), or medicaid/medicare/SSI in some cases, to get through those. Remember, incremental improvement.

I'd also like to explore the effects of reducing drug regulation, letting people buy from anywhere that's selling and reducing barriers to getting things onto the market. I know the standard argument against this (those high prices pay for R&D), but I'm not sure how much I believe that. What are the other considerations?

Where else could we look for incremental improvements?

(In case you haven't figured it out, I am not a medical professional, an economist, nor part of the insurance industry.)

I've been thinking about this November's election, and the presumption that PA is a swing state and That Matters, and voting for the lesser plausible evil versus voting one's conscience. I started to write about this in comments in someone else's journal (where it was arguably off-topic), so I figured I should bring it here.

Most of the time we vote in elections to address that particular election -- a tactical move (and an important one), in the grand scheme of things. I'm coming to the conclusion that no third party can ever advance so long as everyone does that, so I'm strongly leaning toward making a strategic vote this year, recognizing that the payoff will be delayed if present at all.

( Read more... )

I bought a new calendar today and, to my surprise, among the candle-lighting times on each page it lists Pittsburgh. (Usually we don't make the cut.) While looking at this I noticed that sunset in September is moving by about 12 minutes per week, but that in March it only moves by about 8 minutes a week. Shouldn't it be symmetrical? (The delta for sunrise and sunset changes over the course of the year, with the widest swings being at equnoxes and the smallest ones at solstices. I grok that; I don't grok that they don't match.)

Friday night I saw something unusual at services: a man lit candles and a woman made kiddush and there was no special occasion dictating that. For all that egalitarianism is a core principle in my movement, I don't think I have ever seen a woman make kiddush in our sanctuary before, unless there were special circumstances (sisterhood service, a bat mitzvah, etc). Gee, maybe there's hope that someday I will be offered that honor after all. (There's still another barrier: there is a strong meme of giving that pair of honors to a couple. This was violated this week, too.)

Yesterday morning after services our newest rabbi (hmm, I need a shorthand notation for him -- the others are "senior rabbi" and "associate rabbi") talked with the group about adult education. He wanted to know what we want to learn, when we want to learn it, and how we want to learn it. It was a good discussion; I wish im luck in distilling down feedback that, in aggregate, meant "all of it". :-) He seemed a little surprised by the idea that, actually, we'd love to learn on Shabbat -- ideally right after services, but late afternoon leading into havdalah would be acceptable to some. I hope that idea bears fruit. (Of course, he was asking the group of people who self-selected to stay around after services for the discussion... but every option doesn't need to appeal to every congregant, only to a critical mass. And we also discussed the idea of giving the same class multiple times, in different kinds of timeslots -- a teacher's dream, but for some reason we don't tend to do it.)

At the end of the discussion he said something interesting, so after it broke up I asked him "did you just imply that you're available for individual study?" and he said yes. Heh. I'll be in touch.

Short takes:

I assume that everyone has by now seen Jon Stewart on election hypocrisy. You might not have seen Language Log's discourse analysis on Karl Rove.

(I have not posted about the election; it's not because I don't care, but because there's so much as to overwhelm and lots of other people are already posting good, thoughtful pieces.)

I recently found myself in a discussion about internet discussions and used the phrase on the internet nobody knows you're a dog. I later went looking for the cartoon; it shouldn't surprise me that it has a Wikipedia entry, but it did surprise me a little that Google suggested the phrase after I'd typed only "on the internet". That real-time search-guessing thing is good sometimes. (I also went looking for a recipe for a dish I ate last night at Ali Baba's, and when I'd typed only "mujdara" it offered two completions, "recipe" and "calories".)

Speaking (sort of) of internet discoveries, this article from Real Live Preacher taught me about the Caganer, a figure we don't often see in nativity scenes these days but apparently quite normal in times past.

This article on using the internet for identity theft (link from Raven) didn't have anything new for me, but it's a good summary to give to people just getting started. It did remind me how annoying I find the canned security questions used by most banks -- things like "mother's maiden name" and "city of your birth" were way too easy to crack even before the net was ubiquitious. (And the ones that aren't tend to be non-deterministic, like "favorite color".) Fortunately, in most cases your bank doesn't really care about the answer; it's just a password. So lying adds security at little cost, assuming you can remember the lie. (What do you mean my first pet wasn't named "as375m~@z"? :-) )