(or perhaps this post should have been called Why Doesn’t Olmert Get It)
A mind boggling story appeared in Haaretz of all places today. You can find the whole thing here.
For those of you too lazy too click through or even for those who will, I’ll quote the amazing part here:
“After Olmert updated Bush on Israel's indirect talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad, the U.S. president demanded, "Why do you want to give Assad the Golan for nothing?" the sources said. "It's not for nothing," Olmert insisted. "It's in exchange for a change in the region's strategic alignment."
Bush persisted: "Why should you believe him?" And to that, Olmert did not reply. “
For all his problems, even Bush realizes its pointless to give away the Golan to Syria. Why doesn’t Olmert get it?
This may not actually interest you as it does me, but since I probably know way more about the various NASA projects in the ‘50s and ‘60s (Mercury, Gemini and Apollo) than is really necessary, I found this latest Google development to be fascinating.
It seems that Google is now hosting and has available for viewing all the old Life images.
What makes this good is that Life of course has tons of pictures from their deal with NASA in the 50’s and 60’s.
For example, type in 1960s NASA and you will get to see all kinds of goodies like:
The truth is I don’t have much to say on the matter. I was/am not a big fan of Obama and you have to wonder how much damage he can do in four years. For most of us, our main focus is of course how things will affect Israel and I not optimistic on that – especially with Israeli Prime Ministers who will cave in to American pressure (and unfortunately I am including Bibi in that list.)
In addition, on a more local American scene, now that the Democrats control both Congress and the White House, they will be able to appoint as liberal judges and justices as they want.
But enough on that pessimism. The truth is by Monday night we knew that Obama was going to win.
For the past 18 elections going back to 1940, the Redskins are 17-1 in picking the winner.
It goes like this: If the Washington Redskins win their last home game before the election, then the incumbent party wins. If they lose, then the other party wins. Actually, until 2004, this had successfully predicted 17 straight elections. In 2004, the Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers, but the incumbent Republicans (George Bush) won anyways.
But even at 17-1, it’s tough to argue with success.
And lo and behold, the Redskins had to go and lose Monday night to the Steelers – presaging the Democratic victory.
And so us Redskins fans got stuck with a double whammy this week: both the Redskins and McCain losing.
I never was a big fan of Garfield. He was fun to try to draw but that was about it.
I have recently discovered a site (Garfield Minus Garfield) that offers a new way to read the comic strip. The site removes Garfield from every frame leaving only Jon doing seemingly odd things.
The site describes itself as:
Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle.
Here is a sampling:
The site also is very rss friendly and seems to me the way to read it. Even without Garfield, the comic is still not great, but it is amusing on some level that even a one sided conversation can still make some kind of sense.
It also makes you wonder how many other things – including real conversations – in life would still make sense if you take out one of the participants.
I think a fair number of them will which doesn’t say much for those converssations or the participants themselves.
There has been some questions on who sang the Adon Olam in the Master Of The Universe post.
The group that sings it is called A.K.A Pella. You can hear snippets of Adon Olam and other songs from that CD here. A careful listener might recognize most of the tunes from elsewhere. A lot of the songs seem to have a similar meaning or theme as the original song. (For example listen to the clip for Ki Malachav and see if you recognize it.)
For the curious amongst you, Adon Olam seems to be based on this song ( I am not sure of any meaning connection there – though it is a nice tune):
Here is another video set to one of their songs (SImilar to how the Adon Olam one was – though not the same powerful message). I am guessing a few of you will recognize the tune ( In this case I think the connection to the original is more obvious):
If you want, you can hear clips from their first and second more traditional CDs as well.
Here is also one of the lead singers of the group (Zevi Daniels), singing the National Anthem at a recent Orioles game:
Interestingly, people’s reactions to the video differ as upon seeing the clip someone commented to me: “Did you see the sheitel on his wife?”
I should also point out that I have never heard one of their whole CDs and just know them from these clips.
It definitely seems much easier to write entries this way rather then the standard blogger web interface. I’m not saying the entries will be more frequent now, but I think I will enjoy writing them more this way.
And now as a bonus, I recently came across this clip again. Many of you have probably seen it before, but I am guessing it has been a while and this is one of those clips (for of those of you who like this sort of thing) that are still enjoyable on a repeat viewing.
Here is a great video which can help put you in the right frame of mind for the upcoming Yom Kippur. Admittedly, it really would be more appropriate for and in the spirit of Rosh Hashana when we crown/acknowledge Hashem as King of the World. However, the underlying message is still really powerful and can help focus you for your tfillot.
One more thing which comes to mind, when seeing some of the scenes in the video though, is how amazing this world that Hashem created is. It's great that we were created in such a way to appreciate the beauty and grace in such "little" things as a sunset or even a spider sitting on its web. I know evolutionists have theories how every little thing can be explained by natural selection but I find some of it to be a bit far fetched. I mean, how does a genetic mutation to allow us to enjoy the sight of a field of sunflowers help someone survive better?
Along similar lines, when I was taking physics in college, we were learning about calculating the pressure of liquid in a tube and the force when the tube branches. The professor explained that apparently the most efficient angle for such a split to get the most flow in a branching tube is something like 77a degrees. The professor then went on to say that they did some study of all the branches in the veins in a persons body and the average angle for all the branches was.... (wait for it....) 77b degrees. When I heard this, I, of course, was struck by how perfect Hashem made our bodies. The professor then concluded this whole thing by saying: "You can see the power of evolution at work."
a - Under the heading of Honesty in reporting, I should point out that since this happened a few years ago and I don't remember all the details, I just made the number 77 up. Please don't let that detract from the story which I am guessing is still relevant whatever the number actual number was. b - The same caveat would apply to this number 77 as well - though at least I am consistent when I make numbers up.
I should start off by pointing out that by the time I got around to writing this blog entry, it has lost some of its punch. But its main point still remains: Today, a Palestinian woman through acid in a soldiers face. When Haaretz first reported the story, they did it in a very strange fashion: (Now here is where I lose my punch since they have already changed the headline. But, the original headline went something like this): "Near Nablus, Woman Throws Acid in Soldiers Face" (Again my wording may be a bit off a bit but the main point is accurate) Note what is written there - a very vanilla, adjective free - Woman. True if you drill down through the link and read the article there was mention that said Woman was a Palestenian Woman. But just by reading the headline there is no mention of that. For all we know or can tell, (and I am sure Haaretz is hoping you will think that) it might have been a Settler Woman who threw the acid. Of course, you can be sure that if it was an actual Settler Woman who threw the acid (not that they would have done that) but if one had - it would have been clearly spelled out in the headline and left no doubt in your mind that it was the evil, violent, extreme right wing, Settler who threw the acid.
As mentioned above, Haaretz has actually changed the headline - it now calls the perpetrator as a Palestinian Woman - but I think my main point remains. In fact, if you read the article, you can see how Haaretz takes every opportunity to attack the Settlers - and takes advantage of the situation to again make mention of the supposed "Settler Rampage".
This has been going around and so you might have seen it already but I wanted to just add in my thought. In case you missed it, here is the Ray Chews Boy Choir sing a Carlebach classic:
When I saw it, my first thought was at least they picked a good song for learning and singing phonetically ( I am assuming here that not all the choir members know Hebrew.) I mean Ki Va Moh Ed is a lot easier to say then singing all of Pischu Li was for this Gospel Choir:
Well, it appears we seem to be getting back into this blog thing again. So here is something a little different. Esquire magazine (oddly, my subscription seems to have run out but it is available online if you want) has a segment with the history of men's fashion over the past 70 years. It's interesting to see some of fashion's development - from single to double breasted suits and back. Call me old fashioned, but the clothes from way back are kind of cool. While it would be cool if double breasted suits came back, I think we can leave the bowler in the closet.
Long answer: I recently got a new phone from work (the best - or at least cheapest :) way to get a phone but that is a topic for another post) and it has a camera built in. I have never had a phone with a camera before (though the wife already has had two - but that is also a topic for another post). After I took a picture with it, I noticed that there is an option to send the picture to a blog.
As a technical guy, I wondered how it worked and as a (former) blogger I was intrigued with the potential. So I waited for something that was blog-worthy. When I was at the pool last week, I noticed that it was quite crowded (also a topic for another post) but for some reason, one corner of the pool had space. So I took a picture and today I tried sending it the blog. It actually worked really well and you can see it there in the previous post. (Typing on the number pad to send the picture with some interesting text is another challenge in and of itself).
After checking the blog to see how it worked, I thought that perhaps an explanation as to why a post suddenly appeared was necessary. Hence this post. But, will I carry on? It seems doubtful to me but one never knows, do one?
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