Blog/September 2009/Sep 4th

Sep 4th (See this week's devar torah)
Send Ron feedback on this blog

Hi again!

Another full week. This time, Sarah got her bagrut scores back -- and we were very pleased with her results (so was she). 94 in math, though she was barely taught math back in the US, is a simply amazing score. Her classes this year are mostly Judaic studies of various kinds, and she's got a lot of them -- but we are sure she'll do well, B"H.

Daniela has been getting back into her studies as well, and she's taking a huge load. But her computer seized up this week, and then the water went off in her building, and the "body conditioning" class was painful... so we wish her an easier time next week. Parental advice: don't worry, you'll be ok.

This coming week, Esther will be undergoing some abdominal surgery. So I'll be working from home to take care of her. Nothing too complex, but it's never fun to have holes cut in you. If you keep her in mind for a refuah shelema, she would appreciate it. Because of the timing with the surgery and hospital stay, I don't know if I'll be able to put out the "blog" next week, so don't be concerned if it doesn't appear. It's also not the best timing, since Rosh Hashana is just one week after the surgery, but you do what you have to do.

I've been given a difficult research task at work involving low-level hardware detection, which will be an important part of our product line going forward. The catch: my code has to work equally well on Mac, Windows and Linux. But then, that's the kind of stuff I like to work on. Not to worry, they keep me mostly busy with the other work I've been doing so I don't have a lot of time to work on this "most important" project.

Today we harvested olives from our two trees. Here's a picture of the raw olives. Quite a few, though one of the trees didn't produce much. Here's a picture of the olives after washing, separation of tithes and cleaning. We'll change the water for the next four days, then soak them in a brine for several weeks. Maybe we'll be able to eat some during sukkot, but I'm not sure of that.

Geek/tech news:

• The Vim editor proved its worth this week, when I was asked to correct typos in a lot of files. My boss suggested I write a perl script to do this, to which I replied that I could do it more easily with my editor. Ten minutes later, I was done -- and he was astounded. The moral of the story is not that vim is so great, but rather: "pick a powerful tool and learn to use it really well".
• Scam of the century: "global warming"! The scientific illiterati who try to shape public opinion (and spend our money) ignore the effect of the sun on global warming. I refer you to a user of my Reva Forth for a quite technical analysis of planetary warming. We may not agree on a lot of topics, but we do on this one. My only complaint regarding his analysis is I don't see any discussion of the 40TW (est.) or so of nucleotide heating of the Earth. Maybe it's insignificant overall, but it would be good to mention it. In any case, that thermonuclear bomb in the heavens is by far the most significant contributor to Earth's overall thermal cycle.

Arab (and fellow travelers) propaganda:

• According to the "Palestinian Authority's top cleric", Jews have no history in Jerusalem. I guess the entire "Temple" thing escaped his notice, as well as the explicit references in his very own quran to Solomon's Temple? How exactly are we supposed to make peace with these numskulls?
• You keep hearing about the terrible suffering Gazans. How Israel is preventing food and other necessities from entering their stricken city. Well, here from "Palestine Today" (in Arabic) is a series of pictures taken this Ramadan showing the starving Arabs in Gaza (the caption reads: "holy month of Ramadan atmosphere in the cities and villages in the Gaza Strip". Notice how scrawny they are? How little food is available in the shuq? A cynical person might say they are in more danger from obesity than from Israeli "aggression". Yeah, that's right; the Arabs play the West like suckers. By the way, Google Translate is a very useful tool for reading what they say in Arabic, which is NOT what they say in English!
• One small point in the ongoing saga of the "displacement" of the Arab squatters in East Jerusalem. The very neighborhood in question was mostly Jewish until those fun-loving, "partners for peace" started their massacres in the 20's and 30's. Must have been they knew the modern State of Israel would be formed, so they were upset about the occupation-to-be. Or maybe they're just a pack of murderous bastards?
• And to cap off the scandalous Scandinavian "diplomacy" of the past two weeks, Norway has decided to divest itself of Elbit stock. Good! May they sink even further into the oblivion they so richly deserve.

Obamanation:
A recent Jerusalem Post poll concludes that only 4% of Israelis think Obama is pro-Israel. Shocking! What the hell are those 4% smoking? The truth is, we have no shortage of dangerously delusional people -- mostly on the "lunatic Left". With due respect to Obama, he seems to be occupied with making-nice with the Muslim world at the expense of Israel's existence. Perhaps he would do well to be really, really concerned about the imminent Iranian bomb? Does he really think "Happy" Ahmadenijad wouldn't love to blow New York City to smithereens? Or does he not really care?

"Settlements"
As you know, we live in Maale Adummim -- which is a few kilometers east of Jerusalem, and happens to be on the "other side" of the famous "Green Line". Therefore, in common parlance it is "a settlement". I object to that usage (as I explained to one of you this week), on the grounds that it implicitly accepts the Arab narrative which says Jews have no right to any part of the Land of Israel because they are all "settlers" from Europe and elsewhere, and therefore prejudices any discussion from the outset. There are almost 40,000 residents in M"A. There were zero residents before the city was built (no Arabs were displaced, no land confiscated). The land was occupied by the Jordanian government (and before them owned by the Turks, and before them ...). But you see, the Jordanians had the bad luck to attack Israel, and Israel had the good fortune to win its defensive war. So the land on which my house is built and where I live was territory gained in a defensive war -- not "occupied territory" and not even "disputed territory" according to international law. The Jordanians have since signed a peace treaty with Israel, so the putative former owners have relinquished any legal claim to this parcel of land.

We have a mayor who is getting really pissed off at the "bend over and smile" subservience of Netanyahu towards American pressure. This coming Sunday he's going to lay the cornerstone of a "new development" in the E1 neighborhood of Maale Adummim. This neighborhood was "approved" years ago. But successive governments, following a disastrously misguided notion that the Arab murderers would suddenly play nice if we gave them everything without demanding anything in return, "froze" construction there (and in most of M"A as well). I'd like to attend, but it's during work hours and I probably won't be able to make it. Maybe I'll play hookey...

Until next week,
Shabbat shalom!

---

Top: Blog

Prev: Aug 28th

Next: Sep 11th

---