Blog/December 2019/Dec 20th

December 20th

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Happy birthday Daniela! Sorry we couldn’t be there…

This week we had a festive celebration: Sarah’s belated birthday party, with her friends. As I mentioned last week, this was our yearly nod to Thanksgiving — but it was entirely vegetarian, and the only traditional T-Day fare was corn-bread. The girls had fun trying to figure out what “corn-bread” would be in Hebrew: it’s not something people eat here.

Since Esther was doing actual real work that day, I made the meal (except for the apple-pie which Esther had made the night before at Sarah’s request). I tried my hand at “lemon-meringue pie” for the first time, ever. Actually, the first time I’d ever made a pie of any kind. It was very tasty, but the texture wasn’t firm enough. So when I next make one, in twenty years, I’ll try to remember to cook the filling a bit longer.

I also baked the absolute best bread I’ve ever made: sourdough rye from my friend’s recipe. Turned out incredible, I’m keeping my starter on the counter now: this will be an every-week thing. I’ve become quite the domestic.

In any event, the ladies had a good time, and we escaped with full stomachs.

Various things:

• Dilbert’s take on climate-change.
• A bit on the Trump impeachment by Kevin D. Williamson.
• Dum, de-dum, dumb: this is why criminals get caught.
• Obama says women are better leaders than men. I’d be inclined to agree that most women would have been better leaders than he was.
• The “Reform movement” declared its support for reparations for African-Americans. It would be nice if they concentrated more on actually Jewish concerns, you know? I mean, most American Jews’ families arrived in the US many decades after the Civil War.

The scientifically illiterate are beginning to annoy me. This week, someone insisted to me that vitamin B12 comes from the ground, and not from animals. As in: eating dirt should be beneficial. Note to my readers: B12 is present in all animal-derived foods, and in some fortified plant-based ones. It does not “come from the ground” (it’s synthesized by bacteria living in the ground, but we can’t process those bacteria with our guts; hence we need Bessie the Cow et fam.).

On Gab there’s an entire sub-culture of “Flat-Earthers”. They insist that our planet is actually a disk, the sun is only 1000 miles away, gravity is a hoax, and other similar nonsense. Naturally, many are also anti-Semites. They are immune to logic and mathematical proofs (known to the ancient Greeks, for Heaven’s sake!) that the sun is in fact a boatload of miles away, and that the Earth is roughly spherical. I despair of humanity’s future.

And, if you’re worried about the new “5G” cellular technology causing cancer or something, please don’t be. Just like your microwave, or current tech cellular, the “radiation” is non-ionizing — it doesn’t break down molecules like UV and X and gamma radiation can. You might experience mental deterioration from seeing more cat-videos on the internet, but not cancer.

Just stop it, learn some bloody science!

I made the last scheduled release for 2019 of 8th this week. It had a whole lot of changes and fixes, and hopefully I didn’t mess up too many things in the process — though my trusty users have already pointed out a few glitches. And so it goes…

The weather’s been cold and sunny, and will continue that way for another week (they say).

It’s just us three again this shabbat. We’ll have:
homemade ḥalla, vegetable soup, roast beef, turnip purée, roasted beets, various salatim, and marble cake.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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