It's enough to make you sick

Once again, the Israeli government has decided to destroy Jewish houses purely for political reasons.
All talk of law and order is just a big smokescreen to distract from the real reason. If law and order was the only thing that motivated these people then they would also be busy demolishing all the illegal Arab building that is going on.

But as before, the media acts as the smoke generator for the law and order cover story rather then clearing the air about what really goes on.
By reading or listening to the general Israeli media you would have thought that all the Police violence yesterday was caused by the cops having to defend themselves rather then them coming in swinging as the following story from the Arutz 7 email news report describes:

"We were outside the 5th house, with the goal of forming a line to stop the police from climbing into the windows. We had planned in advance, because of modesty and the like, that when the police would tell us to go, we would go right away. But they didn't let us. They just set upon us - all of them: Yasamnikim, Border Guard, soldiers, everyone - and didn't give us a chance. I screamed, 'I'm going by myself!' but they didn't care; I heard them saying, 'Smack them! Get them!' They hit me with a club on my leg, and then they pushed me to the ground and smashed me with clubs twice more - once on my face, right near my eye. Miraculously, he didn't hit me on the skull; I saw others right near me bleeding from their heads, unconscious - it was just terrible... It was just by miracle that nothing worse happened to me."

Someone commented to me that it's enough to make him want to join Neturei Karta. I am not sure if I agree 100%, but I can understand the sentiment.

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".

Label yourself

OK its been a while, but here is some interesting stuff, which allows you to do the fun thing of putting labels on people.

Someone sent me two tests to take to help identify yourself.

The first is a test to define yourself politically and you can take the test here
I took it and here are my results:

You are a
Social Conservative
(38% permissive)
and an...
Economic Liberal
(36% permissive)
You are best described as a:
Centrist

You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.

This shows what I have been saying all along that I am a centrist and everyone who disagrees with me are exremists.

(I think I would come out less centrist if this test was centered around Israeli Politcal issues though)
The truth is this test surprised me, since I didn't think I would end up where I did.


The next test has more of a religious bent and is here

For this my results are:

Left Wing Modern Orthodox: 17%
Right Wing Modern Orthodox: 55%
Left Wing Yeshivish/Chareidi: 74%
Right Wing Yeshivish/Chareidi: 45%

This means you're: Left Wing Yeshivish

Enjoy.

Reminder of a classic

Today's Quote of the Day immediately reminded me that this same lesson can be learned from one of the great literary classics:

Cecil Baxter: "'You don't get anything clean without getting something else dirty.'"


That classic of course is "The Cat in the Hat Came Back"

which once again reminds you that "Everything important I learned in Kindergarten" - which is the name of an apparaently humorous book but one I haven't read. But, being able to reference books - even without having read them is an important part in appearing intelligent.

Expect Nothing

Relating to the earlier theme of my welcome message, this quote is quite relevant:
Alexander Pope: "'Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.'"

Of course, there are related Jewish ideas (Hasmeach Bechelko and all) but my quote of the day feed didn't give me those.

Israeli Politics

Somehow Israeli politics makes this quote even more applicable:
Larry Hardiman: "'The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'.'"

Welcome

Here is the blog.
Some may think that the name of this blog (Ein Shem) is a placeholder for one till I think of somwthing better.
But no, I think it kind of symbolizes this blog.
Most blogs start with a welcome in which people promise how their blogs will do this or that and will grow as they have new ideas to put there.
Not me. I promise nothing from this blog. I may never have anything good to put here. That's what makes this so much fun.
It's kind of a "maybe you'll get lucky" kind of thing. But as in life - you probably won't.

Enjoy.