Blog/February 2019/Feb 8th

February 8th

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Well, we’re pretty much back to normal, B”H! Still coughing (except for Mom, who’s remarkably unscathed by it all). Esther did resume work despite not being quite up to it, and I also leapt back into the fray. I also went back for a consultation with the doctor who sent me for an MRI. Turns out he’s of the opinion that my knee will probably not heal on its own, and he’s not sure surgery will help a lot either. So as I mentioned, I’ll get a second opinion soon…

Sarah hopped over to the US to visit Daniela, Jeremy, and the babies. She took a “discount” itinerary, and ended up with empty rows to sit in. Maybe cheaper is better, even if it takes longer to arrive. In any event, she’ll be there for two weeks enjoying the Olde Country and her sister’s family.

My USAn readers are probably aware of the brouhaha this past week over the attempts to pass a “third trimester abortion” bill in Virginia, and the chilling interview the Virginia governor gave (even justifying post-delivery murder of the baby). So much for “safe, legal, and rare”. But I digress.

From my perspective, it’s even more disturbing that some Jewish women in the US expressed their anger after the RCA (an Orthodox Jewish rabbinical group in the US) compared abortion to murder. The disturbing part is that any religious Jew should know that Jewish law (halakha) considers abortion to be exactly the same as murder, and that the only extenuating circumstance which permits it is if the mother’s life is imminently at risk. In that case, halakha permits the baby’s life to be sacrificed in order to preserve the mother’s life.

Lest you think that’s obvious, I’ll mention two things: first, halakha has to invoke the law of “kill the pursuer” to justify such abortion, since we have a general principle that one life is not more valuable than another. Second, halakha only permits it for Jews, since the “kill the pursuer” law only applies to Jews. The RCA omitted that part, as far as I understand; presumably, because it sounds discriminatory (and Heaven forbid we make distinctions in this day and age).

It’s absolutely chilling that actual infanticide is being normalized in 2019. Truly evil stuff.

One of the justifications sometimes given by proponents of abortion-on-demand is that the world is already overpopulated. It turns out that the world, in fact, may run out of people.

And now for something different:

• Interesting and relatively neutral VICE video about young black conservatives.
• Ireland’s obsessional hatred of Israel.
• The “Prince of Peace”, Abbas, blocks Rami Levi from attending a peace meeting.
• Be careful with “crypto-currencies”. There are bad actors out there.

One of the things I worked on this week was fixing the way 8th deals with “big files”. In this context, “big” means “bigger than 2GB”. It seems like my users haven’t used 8th to mess around with really big files, but such files are pretty common (think: movies). So I’ve fixed how 8th thinks about file sizes, so that it can handle enormous files properly. You’re welcome.

We had a couple days of decent rain, and it looks like the weekend will also be drizzly and chilly (high of 11C/52F). We’ll make sure to keep warm and dry!

Once again, just the three of us this week, having: homemade ḥalla, chicken soup, lamb roast, basmati rice, veggie cholent, various salatim, and belated birthday-chocolate cake.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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