Some interesting links

Today we have some interesting links for our readers.

The 40th year of Eli Cohen's (Our man in Damascus) Yahrtzeit is coming and so some articles are starting to be written about that.
Here is one that has some interesting information on his personality and how or why he got caught. (Note: registration is required)

On a different topic altogether, here apparently is the future (or at least one future) of Jewish music. It seems, Matisyahu has started quite a trend. For full the full effect, make sure to watch the video there as well.

First Refuge of the Scoundrel

Though I am running the risk of turning this blog into an analysis of various famous quotes, I will present another good quote

Michael Crichton: "'Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.'"

Any connection between this quote and the actions of the pro-hitankut crowd in their constant assertions that the majority of Israelis wanted such a giveaway is made at your own risk.

Write for yourself

I can't say I completely understand this but I think today's quote of the day can be a good theme for this blog.

Cyril Connolly: "'Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.'"

I will paraphrase this as:
"Sure, no one reads what I write, but at least I agree with myself."

I Cry

This is making the rounds with author unknown and needs no further introduction:

I Cry by Unknown

I cry, Arik Sharon.
I cry for ten thousand Jews whom you brutally forced from their homes.
I cry for the ten thousand Jews who live in hotel rooms, in poverty, and degradation.
I cry for the innocence of the young idealistic Jewish soldiers whom you
forced to participate in brutal crimes.
I cry for the glee of the world as they watched a Jewish prime minister
order his solders to beat Jews and bulldoze their homes.
I cry for the glee of the world as they wondered why Jews are upset when
they order areas to become Judenrein by force.
I cry for the kavod of the Jewish people and the God of Israel which you
desecrated.
I cry for the tens of innocent teens whom you imprisoned with hardened
criminals because they utilized their democratic right to protest your
policies.
I cry for the honorable soldiers and police who lost their livelihoods and
financial security because they refused to harm their brothers.
I cry for you, Arik Sharon.
I cry for a beloved hero of Israel who sank into corruption.
I cry for your good name which you besmirched.
I cry for your neshama, which you lost.

Israeli Talk Shows

Someone sent me this Calvin and Hobbes with the caption "Israeli Talk Shows" and I think that about says it all:

Happy Birthday

I just wanted to wish a very Happy 29th Brithday to Rochel.

May you have many more 29th Birthdays.

Hevron

What has been going on in Hevron the past week or so is enough to turn your stomach and
I am not talking about those the media likes to refer as lawbreakers. These kids and people protesting are heroes who deserve all the credit in the world. The Govt is wrong here. But, right now I am really and more importantly talking about how the media is protraying everything that is going on there.
The media, the so-called watchdog of democracy, has once again gone out of its way to portray the events from one side of the story. There is no semblance of balance at all to the presentation of events. As long as your attacking right wingers, apparantly everything goes.

To get a more complete (and accurate) picture of what is happening it's important to find alternative news sources. Read one such account here plus there are some good pictures here.

Sudoku

Here is a post that's slightly different but the technical ones out there (which at this point I think is all of you) may enjoy it.
It's about Sudoku (which if you haven't heard of - go do a quick google search on it.
(A side note: I'm not so sure why Sudoku, of all logic puzzles, has become so popular - but that's a subject for a different post)
As a programmer, the first thought you have (OK maybe not THE first, but at lest on of the first ) when seeing a game like Sudoku is how hard it would be to write a program to solve such a puzzle.
Of course, with a little thought you realize that to solve Sudoku wouldn't be that hard. It's not much more then the famous Eight Queens Puzzle we all learned in one of our first data structure classes. It's nothing that a nice recursive algorithm couldn't solve. But this is just your basic brute force approach.
The more interesting thing is to write a program that solves the puzzle logically. This would be much more challenging to write and helpful to a person trying to solve the a problem and is looking for a little help.
At most the brute force approach will be able to do is figure out the solution and then give hints to the solver by filling in squares for him. But the solver will learn nothing from this.
What would be much more useful is a program that dynamically solves and figures out the next logical move to the puzzle and explains to the user why it's a good move.
One of the best examples, I have seen of this is in a game called FathomIt (created by Har Nof's Moshe Rubin which some of you may know) which is a pretty good solitaire puzzle game. But what makes it great is the solver which does exactly that (i.e. logically explains what your next move shoud be and why.)
So, in my spare time, I have started working on a program that will do exactly that for Sudoku. (Of course my spare time seems to be somewhere around a half an hour a week - so I am not progressing too fast :-) )
The other reason (and probably the real reason) I am doing this is as an excuse to learn a new programming language called Ruby. (More on Ruby another time)
So, since I am trying to learn Ruby at the same time, it is really going slow.
But to quote from a well known source "Life's a journey, not a destination".