Blog/January 2017/Jan 20th

January 20th

The Torah portion this week is shemot, or “Exodus” — the beginning of the book of that name. It begins by listing the names of the sons of Israel: “Now these are the names of the sons of Israel, who came into Egypt with Jacob; every man came with his household”. According to traditional commentaries, at least one reason the book begins this way is to inform us that the Israelites maintained their identities even while being in Egypt.

Another possible insight comes from the structure of the opening sentence: the sons are sons of “Israel”, whereas they came into the Egyptian exile with “Jacob”. The names Israel gave them were prophetically inspired, but once in Egypt in that first Exile, the boon of prophecy was removed.

A widely accepted Jewish understanding is that when parents name their child, they are given a bit of prophetic vision. That’s my clumsy attempt at a segue to inform you that Chaim and Ariele named their baby boy “Netzach Matasiyahu” (נצח מתתיהו) at the brit-milah we attended last shabbat. You can ask them for the reasoning behind the names. I got to hold the baby during the ceremony, and he thanked me by pooping on my shoes. I hope that’s not an indicator of our future relationship.

We had another busy week, mostly working. The week started when we attempted to leave our hotel in Jerusalem, after shabbat. We got into the elevator (rated for 18 people), hoping to get to our room on the eighth floor and check out as quickly as possible. Initially there were about 8 of us in the elevator, but on the next floor a bunch more people entered. There were 16 or so people in it; it broke down and sunk to the bottom floor. It took the maintenance people some 10-15 minutes to get to us and extract us from the elevator. Then it took another 30-40 minutes to get an elevator to take us back to our room. We didn’t get out of there nearly as early as we had hoped.

Anyway, it was and is an eventful week:

• Almost nobody seems to care about Obama opening up NSA warrantless search data to any agency that wants it. “If you like your Fourth Amendment, you can keep your Fourth Amendment!”
• Another privacy concern: WhatsApp encryption has a backdoor built-in, which permits it to change encryption keys for a message without informing the user. What that means is that it is possible for your favorite governmental TLA to subvert the encryption and intercept your messages, with you none the wiser. But they wouldn’t ever do that, right?
• And the service I use for my SSL certificates is being abused to create misleading certificates. Not fair!
• The “Trump dossier” is almost certainly fake. But that didn’t keep “news” outlets from reporting as if it were true. Sad!
• I know, you will be shocked beyond belief to hear that the Clinton Global Initiative is shutting down. I mean, the “Clinton Cash Machine”. Shame!
• In a story which really does qualify as ‘fake news’, Naftali Bennett is the leading “right-wing” “candidate” in Israel for Likud. Except that he’s not a candidate (nor, arguably, “right-wing”). Oh and there aren’t elections happening just yet. Yeah, and he’s not part of the Likud. But other than all that, the headline makes perfect sense. Fake news!

(N.B.: my various exclamations are an attempt to channel my inner Trump. Don’t be afraid!)

So, one night this week I got a call from some guy in Canada. He wanted to discuss his project, so naturally I'm listening and making comments and asking questions. After a few minutes, he says he would like it if I could work on an 'equity' basis. I said no, thank you, I only work on a cash basis.

He didn't hang-up, but continued discussing his project with me for more than an hour! After which, he asks again if I would be willing to work on an 'equity' basis. I gave him the same answer as at the beginning, and told him the amount I would charge for the first phase of the project. I expected a counter.

He did counter. He said, "My budget is $0, but I might be able to scrape up something in the low hundreds". He tried to convince me that "it was only a couple hours of work". So first of all, even just figuring out what needs to be done would be a couple hours of work. And, no, we did not reach a meeting of the minds...

The weather is warming, it will be pleasant for shabbat.

We’ve got guests for Friday dinner, and have been invited out Saturday day. We’re preparing:
brisket, baked potatoes, baked yams, corn pie, vegetable soup, various salatim, and “ice-cream”.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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