No typing for me, use phone to reach me.
Public privacy: practices that protect against widespread privacy violation of the public at large, e.g. sending mail in envelopes. Or do you have a better phrase for it?
I love books. I love their physical feel, the beauty of text laid out on a page, and most of all the chance of seeing the world through someone else's eyes. But we book readers are an ever smaller breed, having faced first the onslaught of radio and television and in these later days the draw of video games and the Internet. Having first learned the love of books from my parents, long time readers themselves, the solution to this problem seems obvious: book readers must only marry other book readers. Only thus can we be certain that our children will not be tempted by other media. "The best way to have a home that expresses a love for reading books is to share your home with a life partner who loves being a reader."
That last sentence is, of course, not a completely accurate quote: it comes from Tough Questions Jews Ask, by Rabbi Edward Feinstein, a book aimed Jewish teenagers. The tough question in this case is "Why Should I Marry Someone Jewish?" Rabbi Feinstein first approaches this question with a musical metaphor (p. 123): "Suppose I love classical music. What would happen if I have an intimate relationship with someone who hates classical music but loves heavy-metal rock? I'm into symphonies ... she collects Metallica, Megadeath, Nine Inch Nails. ... I wouldn't be able to take my partner to the concerts I enjoy ... [or] share the thrill of finding a great CD... Such a relationship would mean that I would have to give up a great deal of myself. What kind of love is that? And how long could we be happy?" In other words, the Jewish reader should marry someone Jewish because only someone who shares their culture will truly make them happy.
Are classical music and heavy metal really so incompatible? I could point to the genre of symphonic metal, which is influenced by classical and operatic music (at least, according to Wikipedia, though I first heard of such bands from a friend who loves both jazz and heavy metal.) But a more obvious example is the Metallica album S&M, a collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra that came out in 1999, four years before Rabbi Feinstein's book. My girlfriend pointed to the band Apocalyptica, a group of "classically trained cellists" (Wikipedia again) who released an album of Metallica covers in 1996.
While it's certainly unfair to require Rabbi Feinstein to be an expert on popular music, I think his choice of metaphor is significant. He starts with the unobjectionable claim that one probably cannot be happy with someone whose culture is too different from one's own (p. 124): "Eventually, we get tired of all the compromising that such relationships require. We get tired of giving up the things that mean so much to us." But as we see with his approach to music, he goes further than that. Rabbi Feinstein believes that cultures don't merge or blend, but rather are distinct entities with clearly defined borders. Heavy metal and classical music are too dissonant to combine, and the same goes for religion (p. 81): "Being a Christian is very admirable ... [and] being a Jew is equally admirable ... but being a 'Jew for Jesus' combines things that are impossible to mix."
And yet organizations like Jews for Jesus and the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations do exist, and they at least would claim the combination is not only possible but necessary for their members. Rabbi Feinstein asks (p. 125), "if you think a lot about the Holocaust, about Israel, about Torah, wouldn't you be happier spending your life with someone who shared all this with you?" According to the UMJC's website they "envision Messianic Judaism as a movement ... committed to Yeshua the Messiah that embrace the covenantal responsibility of Jewish life and identity rooted in Torah ...", and certainly Israel and the Holocaust appear to be important to them. What Rabbi Feinstein sees as immovable borders simply don't exist at all to others.
...
That's how far I got before running out of typing time, and getting distracted by other ideas. Somewhere in the final result, if I ever get back to it, will be a pivotal event in my youth: my failure to stop two former classmates from burning a copy of the New Testament (their Rabbi told them to burn it.) I don't think Feinstein would actually support such a thing, but it peeves me when people tell me how deep in my soul only Jews are my brethren. Including, apparently, Jewish Orthodox men who every morning at the beginning of their prayers say "Blessed are Thou for not making me a woman." Hilariously, Feinstein describes the different Jewish movements (including the Orthodox) as different instruments in a single beautiful orchestra. Though Ultra Orthodox Jews believe a woman's singing is impure, so presumably they're not playing opera.
Sometimes I think Ha'aretz, admittedly one of the less militaristic newspapers in Israel, sugarcoats its English edition. Consider this lovely incident:
In another instance, soldiers at roadblocks choked 10-year-old Palestinians with their bare hands until the children passed out. "Hebron is like the Wild West and the army is the law," a soldier said. "We would see who could go without breathing the longest."
But here's what the Hebrew version said - I translated the rest:
"We would see who could go without breathing the longest. How do you check? You choke them. You block the trachea, push on the Adam's Apple. It's unpleasant. You look at your watch meanwhile, check who takes the longest to faint."
The English version of article talks about another incident where "one of the soldiers is accused of exposing himself." The Hebrew version says that one of the soldiers "was documented waving his penis in front of the face of a Palestinian detainee."
Of course, those involved will be put on trial, but it's worth noting what these soldiers' task is: enforcing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Consider this incident:
"We'd go on a patrol," one soldier told Channel 2. "If even one kid looked at us the wrong way, he'd be slapped. Rocks were thrown at us during one patrol, and we caught one of the kids who knew the perpetrators. We beat the crap out of him until he told us who did it." The soldier said that he and other soldiers tracked down a boy said to be involved, aged 14, and placed the tips of their rifles in his mouth. "We said, 'You want to die? Just say when and where,'" the soldier recalled.
Now compare it to another incident involving the same unit, recounted by a peace activist who took a video you can apparently see on the website:
"It was around noon; we were accompanying shepherds from the village of Tuba to a nearby Wadi, because the settlers regularly hassle them and throw stones in our direction," he recounted.
"The settlers demanded that the shepherds evacuate the area, and IDF soldiers who arrived at the scene also attempted to clear the Palestinian shepherds from their grazing fields; then, in the middle of the argument and for no apparent reason, the soldiers pulled down their pants and exposed their rear ends to us."
These soldiers will all return to civilian life in Israel in a year or two.
Email is best way to reach me.
So do these guys, whose song Paging System Operator I just heard on WMBR.
I heard about From Marx to Mises from Ken McLeod, who wrote his first book based on some of the ideas there. I started reading it yesterday, and it's readable and quite fascinating. So I decided to see what else the author, David Ramsay Steele, had written. Interestingly his latest book is on atheism, a subject Ken McLeod is writing his next book about. I also found a review of a biography of Ayn Rand, including this utterly hilarious (and accurate!) review of Atlas Shrugged, a book I had to give up after three chapters due to the unremitting esthetic pain it caused me:
Just as in real life Rand surrounded herself with yes-persons, hanging on her words and reciting them anxiously back to her so in Atlas Shrugged she creates a world of zombies mouthing her patented terminology and going into the zombie equivalent of convulsions of delight whenever they hit upon another of her conceptual gems. Galt's Gulch is indeed Rand's Utopia: a society where everyone makes speeches all the time expounding Rand's opinions. the listeners all blissfully nodding their heads in agreement The true plot of Atlas Shrugged is: how some good-looking individuals were saved by coming to agree in every particular with Rand, and how everyone else was eternally damned. The book has often been described as nightmarish; it has something of the unnerving quality of a delusional system made real which we find in some Philip K. Dick novels, notably Eye in the Sky. (But Dick could really write, and he was doing it on purpose.)
Of all modern tendencies in fiction, Rand's novels are closest in spirit to the socialist realist works favoured by the Stalinist regime. Stalin said: "Artists are engineers of the soul." Rand said: "Art is the technology of the soul."
One of the climactic points of Atlas Shrugged is Galt's long speech. which explains Rand's theories, in Rand's language, over all radio and TV channels simultaneously, and helps to bring about the downfall of "the looters". Actually, airing this tedious drivel over all stations would speedily lead to a revolutionary overthrow of the government which permitted such lax regulation of the airwaves, followed by the guillotining of Galt. With cretins like Rand's villains running the US, I reckon I could take over within a week. given a handful of marines and a few rock 'n' roll tapes, except that plenty of others would get in ahead of me. Galt's speech is 58 pages long, and I suppose 90 percent of readers skip most of it, as I did on my first reading. Branden claims that it took Rand "two full years" to write (266). It feels like two full years reading it.
"This perfume is a fine elegant fragrance exquisitely designed to meet the subtle elegance of a woman's sophisticated taste." - Pokemon Eau de Toilette
"I'll admit it. Shopping for a personal tank can be a bit daunting. Many times in the past I've purchased overpriced, so-called "battle tanks", then driven them into battle only to be wrecked in ten minutes by the first blow off of some insurgents home-made morter." - Badonkadonk Land Cruiser
"Ladybugs may be kept in a refrigerator after they are received (35 to 40 degrees F.) and released as needed. Ladybugs received March through May should not be stored more than 2 or 3 days since their body fat has been depleted. From June on, they may be stored 2 or 3 months. It is normal for there to be several dead Ladybugs in the container, especially those received from March through May. These bugs have reached the end of their life cycle. We have included many extra bugs to compensate for this." - 1500 live ladybugs
There are basically two schools of thoughts in mainstream (i.e. Zionist) Israeli politics regarding the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, who are not Israeli citizens (unlike Palestinians who live in Israel proper, who are citizens). One is that they can be ruled indefinitely; the other is expressed succinctly by the current Israeli Prime Minister:
"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz Wednesday, the day the Annapolis conference ended in an agreement to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008.
"The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us," Olmert said, "because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents."
This is why, though land is continously confiscated both "legally" and illegaly for the benefit of Jewish settlers, the Occupied Territories were never annexed: the Palestinians would have to be given equal voting rights. The old UN declaration that "Zionism is racism" is obviously bogus; it's a nationalist movement, nothing to do with race. But Zionism is not democratic. The State of Israel is democratic, with the Palestinian citizens having (somewhat theoretical) equal rights... but only so long as the Jewish majority is firmly in control.
All borrowed from the local library:
After which I will read Mises' Theory of Money and Credit. Probably after Emma Bull's latest book though. (She wrote the definitive Twin Cities/rock-'n'-roll/elves book, War of the Oaks. And co-authored with Steven Brust a historical fiction epistolary novel about Hegelian Chartists who hang out with Engels.)