this blog is closed

Thank you all, it's been a blast!

not worth it

I was going to publish here something and then, why bother? People who remain anonymous and tell me that they enjoy the blog mean nothing to me. Enjoy yourself. If this is not a vehicle for human contact or revenue is it worth it? I will be back in a different place and time.

let's say there was a god

Praying to the blood thirsty thug would be beyond contempt. Associating with the hypocrites and sheep that cling to the sadist would be simply uncool.

Next Year in Nevada

Burning Man 2007 208, originally uploaded by jmannaz.

humanity down

I hate the Jewish Religion and specifically the culture around it as much as I hate communism. Both are designed to hold humanity down. No surprise since the communism is a spiritual outgrowth of Judaism.

The Vanishing Republican Voter

David Frum, NYTimes.com: The Vanishing Republican Voter:

"THE TREND TO INEQUALITY is not new, and it is not confined to the United States. It has manifested itself just about everywhere in the developed world since the late 1970s, and for the same two reasons.

The first reason is the revolution in family life. Not so long ago, most households were home to two adults, one who worked and one who did not. Today fewer than half of America’s households are headed by married couples, and married women usually work. So America and other advanced countries have become increasingly divided between families earning two incomes and those getting by on one at most.

The family revolution coincided with another: a great shift from a national to a planetary division of labor. Inequality within nations is rising in large part because inequality is declining among nations. A generation ago, even a poor American was still better off than most people in China. Today the lifestyles of middle-class Chinese increasingly approximate those of middle-class Americans, while the lifestyles of upper and lower America increasingly diverge. Less-skilled Americans now face hundreds of millions of new wage competitors, while highly skilled Americans can sell their services in a worldwide market.

As long as all Americans were becoming better off, few cared that some Americans were becoming better off than others. But since 2000, something has changed. Incomes at the middle have ceased to rise. The mood of the country has soured. Conservatives who disregard the mood of unease may forfeit their power to defend the more open and productive American economy they did so much to build."

head stand

During reception in a wedding, just befor "Hopa"., originally uploaded by dubi feiner.

regular readers

There are regular readers from OZ, from Vienna, from Paris. Why don’t you people introduce yourself, at least in private.

bring on the spunky flying moose lady

Sarah Palin in Kuwait 4, originally uploaded by asecondhandconjecture.

These look like the Alaskan Eskimo serving in Kuwait. It must be hot for them!

Ben Chorin: Obama is so yesterday.

"And yet. As Palin spoke, I realized that I now identify with those Americans who live in small towns, who love their country and feel deeply rooted in it, who carry guns for defense, who have large families, whose children fight its wars. That's my life now.

Obama is a decent person who seems like a really great guy to shoot the breeze with on the bench during a basketball game or in a dorm room. But, especially when contrasted with Palin, he and his wife and his hard-core supporters just seem like over-privileged whiners, self-obsessed careerists, for whom the poor serve as props in the tedious drama that is their quest for self-definition."

could it be any darker?

i am tired.

A Look at How the Kosher Sausage Gets Made

Forward.com: As Industry Faces Criticism, a Look at How the Kosher Sausage Gets Made.

sexual pesonae and the injustice of Sarah Palin

John McCain and Sarah Palin, originally uploaded by Celeste Van Kirk.

Sarah Palin’s appointment to the VP is insult to emancipated women everywhere. In fact the women lib trade off was the unfortunate realization that a woman has to sacrifice her family and children to balance off her career. Millions of women everywhere missed out on family bliss to advance socially and professionally.

But Sarah managed an end run to get appointed to the most senior position in the global superpower without sacrificing an iota of here personal life or taking education too seriously. To make matters worse she is still enchanted by her hunk of a husband. She actually didn’t seek the advancement instead she joined a scholl committee to make sure her children get the best education. This is beyond unfair.

How could this happen and why people are so fascinated by Sarah Palin? In fact we are witnessing the reassertion of sexuality. Just when executive women from Golda Meir to Hillary Clinton accustomed us to the idea that a powerful woman is asexual by definition, here comes a cross between Cleopatra and the naughty librarian fantasy. You know the stupid seventies hairdo, the glasses… And she actually has thin ankles so she can wear a dress, not those nauseating pent suits.

Perhaps we are surrendering to the primal archetypes or perhaps we are just succumbing to marketers. When expertise and knowledge is outsourced sex is the only thing that matters. Welcome to the wonderful bordello world, I mean this in a good way…

This post is dedicated to my teacher Camille Pagila.

Red Hat buys Israeli Qumranet for $107 mil

Globes: Red Hat buys Israeli virtualization co Qumranet.

Yosef Karduner: Shir Lama'alot

conspiracy theory of the day

Raționalitate commenting to mentalblog.com: Claim: Al-Zawahiri is guided by KGB successor agency.

If you look at a chart of historical oil prices, they started to spike right around the time al-Zawahiri joined al-Qaeda. That was also the start of al-Qaeda's oil-related terrorism. For example the East African embassy bombings, which al-Qaeda did most likely to draw America into Afghanistan. They didn't have to draw America into Afghanistan, but they did accomplish their goal: American investors fled from a proposed natural gas pipeline project through Afghanistan, and the plan collapsed. That was right around when he joined, but since then, the price of oil has skyrocketed, largely on the back of fear about political instability related to terrorism. They intentionally provoked America into a crusade overseas in order to drive up oil prices. They knew too well that the US wasn't gonna go and clean house and then all the oil would be on the market – they knew they'd blunder around and then finally give up, and meanwhile the region will still be just as authoritative (if not more), and instability will continue in the Middle East, which drives up energy prices, which is good for Putin and his cronies.

I've always wondered: who around the Italian secret services made the Niger uranium forgeries? Ya never know, but I can't help but remember Litvinenko or some other defector saying that the Italian secret services were crawling with Russian agents.

Photographer's Journal: Following McCain

The New York Times: Photographer's Journal: Following McCain.

AlJazeera - the last Jew of Babylon, a love story

Dora and Miriam Rakowski

Two Jewish sisters point out their journey to America on a wall map soon after their immigration to the US, originally uploaded by ~~*♥♥♥Michelle♥♥♥*~~~.

Marie Claire (now Miriam) Rakowski is the daughter of Ephraim and Blima Rakowski, a Jewish couple from Poland who had moved to Belgium in the interwar period. Marie was born in Brussels during the German occupation on December 23, 1943. She had one sibling, Dora (b. 1939). Shortly after Marie's birth, the Rakowski's placed both their children in hiding. Dora was sent to a Catholic convent school and Marie was placed in the home of a Belgian pharmacist named Hicket. The Hickets had no children and treated Marie as their own flesh and blood. During the occupation Ephraim and Blima were deported to Auschwitz, and Ephraim perished there. Blima survived but was too ill to care for her daughters. After the liberation she contacted the Hicket family and asked if they would care for Marie for another two years. At the end of that period Blima wanted to resume custody, but the Hickets, who truly loved Marie, refused to give her up. Blima then authorized a Jewish organization to kidnap Marie and bring her to Switzerland. Marie was traumatized by this experience since the Hickets were the only family she had ever known. Marie's reunion with her natural family was not a happy one. Her mother was still too ill to care for the children, and Marie felt that her sister resented the fact that she had spent the war in the home of a loving family. While Blima struggled to regain her health, the girls were sent to a series of foster homes. In 1949 the family received papers to immigrate to the United States. However, Blima, who had been born in Poland, had to remain behind, since the Polish quota was filled. Once in America, the girls were placed in another series of foster homes under the sponsorship of the orthodox Agudat Israel movement. The only stability in their lives was provided by the summer camp they attended each year. Blima finally arrived in the US to reclaim her children in 1953. Marie was already ten years old when she went to live with her mother. The scars of the war were too deep to be easily healed, and when Marie was sixteen she went to live in a group home for girls.
Courtesy of www.ushmm.org

50 ft spider roams Liverpool

La Machine Liverpool, originally uploaded by pharmcat.

Scenes from Iraq

Boston.com: Scenes from Iraq - The Big Picture. (note picture No. 4)

intoxicated on the poisonous opiate

We are destined to trace the same mistakes. We don’t want or unable to learn. If there was one thing that I would find satisfying it is the unrealistic hope that no more souls will be destroyed by the Jewish religion. The elaborate neuroses that originated amongst Jews and passed on as to the world as a Christian messianic virus or Islamic creed continues to claim the lives of millions. I hope this will stop. I especially hope there would be no more BTs intoxicated on the poisonous opiate. I feel sorry for their lives and choices, they are trapped and they realize this when it is too late.

The commies were right about that one after all.

midnight rant

Things are afoot. I have been blogging for a while. Thankless task. You blog because you have to. But the only lasting reward is a few real friendships. Words turned into voices. There have been less that ten people perhaps.

I don’t care if you don’t comment. But I do care that you have not tried to get in touch.

I am growing more apart from the very community that have been the core of the readers. I often think that in real life I would like to be completely apart from observant Jews. I don’t resonate with the ethos. I find that there is something troubling inside this decaying culture, it often makes communications strained.

So here, I feel less and less that there is any reason to post. I want to leave this world and chapter behind. I find my entire involvement with the traditional community to be a grave mistake of my life.

I think the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the rest of the Gdolim were well meaning charlatans. But I mostly regret the fact that there is one thing in the world that I really crave, meaningful connection with humans. And I was stupid and naïve to through myself headlong into a community of obsessive compulsive aspergers sufferers, the worst place to be human.

I will remain encouraged by the friends I made in real life.

Renfro - Escape from Landscape

Liverpool Biennial - International Festival of Contemporary Art - International 08: MADE UP - Diller Scofidio Renfro.

Chrome - new browser from Google

It is pretty neat and very fast. Even faster than the Firefox 3. Google Chrome - Download a new browser. I just tested it with the cloud apps like Docs or Calendar. It is amazing!

True Romance

Facing fear and Facebook

I often hear from many people that they don’t want a Facebook account because they would not put any personal information online. I am sure everyone heard it many times.

Facebook have been propelled by students where peer pressure relieves the fear and caution. Yet there is some rather common phenomena threaded through the fear logic.

Firstly any online and off line innovation is always greeted with fear. There are always objections to change. Inevitably most of the objections are true and justified. What these objections fail to take into account is the new experience that could only be understood by an immersion. Without the experience all you left with is the objections.

Let’s say at the turn of the last century there was a large migration from villages to urban centers. Someone who lives in a village might greet the idea of the move with dismay. He will mention the crime, the dangers, the cultural peril, etc. But all of the objection could not envision a quantitative leap and the multi layered experience of urban life.

I remember when I started blogging people would be obsessed with protecting their real identity behind a nickname. Now nobody really cares (except Gandalin).

Back to the Facebook, it is an experience and it is hard to describe without taking this thing for a ride. Personally I think the weakness of Facebook is that it is trying to do too many things. Inevitably there are tools that do virtually every Facebook task better (except networking). Facebook is not match to Flicker with photos, to blogs with posting of content, no match to email and IM clients, etc.

When I hear someone tell me that they are not interested in Facebook my thinking is that it says nothing about Facebook but it says that these people are old, really old in the way they face the world and its creative wonders.

the King is the field

So I hear the Melech is in the fields again, this certainly makes it more convenient for Him to stop by and leisurely kiss my peasant tochas. He is welcome to it anytime, especially now when he is getting some fresh air.

Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae

Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (frontispiece), originally uploaded by peacay.

BibliOdyssey: The Great Art of Light and Shadow.

Ray Charles - What'd I say

Preparing Space Shuttle Atlantis

It is scary how complicated is this machine and how many small things can really go wrong, mind boggling. These pictures should be showed in every Yeshiva as an example of human achievement. We as people need to shake the albatross. Boston.com: Preparing to rescue Hubble - The Big Picture.

Who is to say that Lincoln is great in any way after all?

Zeitgeist commenting to mentalblog.com: McCain just hit it out of the park: Wait a minute, who is to say that Lincoln is great in any way after all? Many gedolim have regarded him as the embodiment of a clear-cut curse for what he did. Supposedly even the universalist Rav A.Y. Kook is reputed to have stated that Lincoln deserved to be assassinated in divine retribution for his brutal wars against his OWN people that eventually set the slaves free.

There is actually NOTHING "great" about Lincoln (a mountain hick from the outbacks with no real education -- he was self-taught), beyond him being a great prize-fighting bullying war monger, and it is perfectly valid to hold the view that the Confederate States of America under President Jefferson Davis (a high ranking officer, decorated war hero, and long-time senator -- all prior to the Civil War) had a just cause and were fully entitled to do what they did and that Lincoln was the epitome of chutzpah and hate for launching a brutal civil war against his own brothers and sisters to destroy the South and empower him and the North at the expense of over half a million dead (more Americans died during the Civil War, than in all the other wars America has participated in, including the two world wars, Korea, Vietnam and to our day).

So from the perspective of classical Judaism one can rightly and logically claim that Lincoln was an absolute roshah merushah who destroyed a legitimate fellow country (the Confederacy) in the name of a cause he believed in.

No wonder the brains and guiding spirit of the Confederacy was Judah Benjamin a brilliant educated Sephardic Jew who, like almost all Jews in the South fought for the Confederacy -- and they knew what they were doing too. President Jefferson Davis did not make any major political moves with Judah Benjamin's input in all ares of government. These men are heroes for standing up for their beliefs. They were not war-mongers like Lincoln and the Northerners.

This thing about Lincoln being "great" is pure misinformed non-thinking hype and brainwashing by NORTHERN unionist liberal society.

Indeed, there is no connection between the Republican Party Lincoln established and the ethos of the modern day Republican Party that is conservative in its outlook and not liberationists, although in John McCain's choice of a woman as his running mate and in his general liberalist outlook he embodies the progressivist element typical of the old-time Republican Party of the Episcopalians (into which McCain was born and bred.)

So let's quit holding Lincoln up as an objective example of a hero, because as far as classical Judaism is concerned he is not.

THE SLAVES COULD HAVE ATTAINED THEIR SAME RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS OVER THE NEXT HUNDRED YEARS THROUGH POLITICAL REFORMS OVER TIME, IT WAS ABSOLUTELY NOT NECESSARY TO FIGHT THE SOUTH, HAVE OVER HALF A MILLION DEAD AND MILLIONS OF WOUNDED, TEAR THE COUNTRY TO SHREDS, ADDED TO THE RISE OF THE KKK AND RACIAL HATE ENDING SOUTHERN RACIAL COOPERATION EVEN UNDER SLAVERY, WHEN THE END RESULT WAS JUST A HUNDRED YEARS OF SEGREGATION IN THE SOUTH, WHICH MAKES LINCOLN AND HIS CREW LOOK LIKE JUST A BUNCH OF HOT AIR HYPOCRITES WITH THE BLOOD OF 500,000 PEOPLE ON THEIR HANDS, MILLIONS OF LAME AND CRIPPLED AND TENS OF MILLIONS OF DESTROYED FAMILIES AND LIVES ALL FOR NOTHING, AND FOR RESULTS THAT IN ANY CASE CAME ABOUT A HUNDRED YEARS LATER NOT FROM REPUBLICANS (THE PARTY OF LINCOLN) BUT FROM THE OPPOSITION DEMOCRATS IN KEEPING WITH THE NEW POLITICAL REALITIES OF FREEDOM AND LIBERTY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY FULLY SET IN MOTION AFTER THE TWO WORLD WARS.

For a hundred years it was in fact the Democratic Party that became the home of Southern whites who used segregation to undo Lincoln's goals. This was undone in the 1960s Civil rights era and it was then that white Southerners and conservatives began to defect to the Republicans and to reshape that party into a bastion of conservatism alien to Lincoln's political ethos driving out many moderates into the political wilderness.

As proof of Lincoln's bloodthirsty cruelty and brutality one need look no further than his search and appointment of Generals Grant (who issued the first and only anti-Jewish government edict in the history of the USA, the notorious General Order No. 11 of 1862) and Sherman as he sought them out for their ruthlessness in battle as killing machines using scorched earth strategies and take no prisoners tactics, worthy of the Romans and the Nazis, to destroy the will of the South to fight on. Grant and Sherman are no better than Attila the Hun and his hordes that laid parts of civilized Europe to waste and no one thinks that Attila the Hun was great either.

The world would have been a far better place had Lincoln not ruled and had the Confederate States of America been allowed their freedom and given the time to mature as a society in a world that accepts alternate political systems.

Чунга-Чанга

cash crunch is getting to Leviev?

First AI sold its properties in Israel and now they are restructuring NY holdings. The article doesn't disclose if the sale of properties, closed less than a year ago, is at a loss. Lev Leviev sells properties in New York: Africa-Israel sold two downtown properties and half of the Clock Tower and The Times building in midtown Manhattan.

London at night

Boston.com: London from above, at night - The Big Picture.

McCain just hit it out of the park

Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, originally uploaded by J Medkeff.

NYTimes.com: McCain Said to Choose Alaska’s Palin.

The Afghani Front

Defense Tech: Afghanistan Sold Short -- Allied Troops Die.

Forbes lists The World's 100 Most Powerful Women

I can't believe Sheila Bair made No. 2. This fast talking meidel amuses me. Forbes.com: The World's 100 Most Powerful Women. I think the flaw in the list is that they assign you the assets you control. So Sheila has control of the Federal US assets and this propels her to the top, while in reality she has no that much influence. Similarly Oprah is down the list because they don’t make distinction between private and assets under your control. This is not “the richest list”. For same reasons Hillary is down the list because NY State GDP is no match to Sheila's Federal Reserve. For same reason corporate CEOs move to the top of the list on the strength of the controlled assets.

Village Voice does Meshichism

I no longer have patience to read this crap. The Crown Heights Lubavitchers - Village Voice. But I find this cursory quote amusing:

“You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in Crown Heights who could point to a single character flaw that the rebbe possessed—or still possesses, because people like Sara Kanevsky insist that he never died.

Kanevsky's is a world of constant miracles. Pictures of the rebbe plaster the walls of her third-floor apartment. Every night, she and her friends put on a trance CD of traditional Yiddish hymns set to techno music, and they dance for hours. They take belly-dancing classes that can start at midnight. Her cell-phone ringtone plays the Hebrew messianic slogan Yechi ha Melech, which roughly translates as "Long Live the King Messiah Forever and Ever." She answers the phone with these same words.”

Am I missing any trance techno-Yiddish raves?

SpeedDate Scores $6 mil. Series B

techcrunch: SpeedDate Scores $6 Million For Matchmaking In A Hurry.

Sholom Keller in Denver

The Rocky Mountain News: Iraq vet aims to fulfill mission at Tent State: DNC 2008. (via 7fatcow )The dude is still into uforazto:

"What I feel is a big problem with America today is that we don't have a citizenry that's as engaged as it should be," Keller said. "But then I come out here, and I say, 'Hey, we have something.'"