Andrew Greene

I just received the following email:

Good news for you! Will is pleased to say yes on your [REDACTED] 15x, whose theme is very tight. This will make a nice Tuesday puzzle for the Times.

Shortly you'll receive an email from the Times with a constructor's agreement. Please complete and return it as instructed.

Congrats and welcome aboard!

My first solo sale! Woo-hoo!

Nice one, qaqaq. I'm amused that the first three entries I spotted were ( Spoiler )

I'm really pleased with the Garmin. I noticed the other day that as I was passing speed limit signs on Rte. 117 (taking the kids to camp) the speed-limit display changed in time with the signs. Now, wouldn't it be nice if it would alert you when your speed was over the limit? Maybe a yellow light when you're over by less than 5mph and a red light when you're over by more then 5? Or to be able to program it to chirp when you're over by more than a certain amount --- my parents' Buicks had that feature back in the 1970s, and I haven't seen a car with that since they added "Cruise Control".

It's great that it has a built-in MP3 player, but I wish the audio volume control were at the top level, rather than down a menu level.

I've been reminiscing lately about PDAs I have owned. ( Long enough to warrant a cut )

I don't know what my next PDA will be, or when I'll get it. I'm sure that at some point my needs will once again change, and I'm likely to find that a PDA or a "smart phone" is the right solution.

But I find it interesting to realize that the first PDA era of my life is actually over, and has been for a year.

I've had a sketch for a while for the fourth movement of Kabbalat Shabbat, which is Psalm 98. Yesterday I tried to shape it a little further, and I realized that while it's a nice enough little ditty, it's not really right for either the text or the place in the overall musical arc. So for the first time, I shelved an almost-completed piece and started over.

I'm much happier with the new setting. It's more interesting; it's more in tune with the text; it's more fun. A little more polishing and it will join its fellow movements on my website.

Overall, I think I now have enough material (even though it's not complete) to try to organize a small group to put together a demo recording this summer. This makes me happy.

Yet Another NYTimes Kvetch (looks like today is not a good day to be the NYT). Here's the opening of a book review:

One of the more trenchant cartoons of the Internet era features a stick-figure man typing furiously at his keyboard. From somewhere beyond the panel floats the irritated voice of his wife.

You probably can guess which cartoon this is. The idea that the offscreen voice is "his wife" just seems preposterous unlikely like several unwarranted assumptions glommed together.

From Why the Gay Rights Movement Has No National Leader:

Gay people have no national standard-bearer, no go-to sound-byte machine for the media.

(ETA for clarity: It's "sound bite", people.)

I reread most of Gödel, Escher, Bach today. And I finally spotted the true ending of the dialog with the fake ending. Duh!

Oops. When I posted my poem the other day I'd forgotten one of the rules of double-dactyls. (It's bad enough that I have to compromise on the second line.) Here's my revision:

Higgledy-Piggledy.
Miriam Kamens was
Going to horse camp. Of
That she was sure.

CLEarly, those dumBOS who,
Uncomprehendingly,
Run Continental knew
Not where they flEW 'R.

( Because images are nicer behind lj-cut tags... )

I would miss ads like the one at the bottom right corner of A15 in today's paper. Not that I entirely understand it --- Prisoners > Nuclear Weapons (who's more brutally?) --- but it's certainly heartfelt.

Tonight I transferred about 4GB of music onto our new Garmin GPS, and then I went to play a song to test it out. And I learned that the Garmin hangs if it needs to display a string that is entirely Hebrew. So much for playing "רק בישראל", which has some really great stuff on it. (Well, I'll retag those songs on the Garmin.)

Higgledy-Piggledy.
Miriam Kamens was
Going to horse camp. Of
That she was sure.

CLEarly, those dumBOS who
Run Continental had
Other ideas, so that's
Not where they flEW 'R.

Does it disturb anyone else that the font in the HP ads looks like the font from The Nightmare Before Christmas?

Alissa lost a tooth at bedtime. She said: "Abba, after havdalla, will you send the Tooth Fairy an email so she knows my tooth is in my tooth box under my pillow? Hey, how will she get under my pillow?"

Me: "She's a very very small fairy."

Alissa: "No, she's not. She's a person. She's Josh and Dinah's mother."

---

We've been reading Lord of the Rings to the kids as a bedtime story for the last few weeks. Tonight we got to ( Anyone need spoiler protection? ) Kids these days are just too media-savvy.

First, I want to apologize for not drawing the distinction between the literal reading of the Christian scriptures and the beliefs of many contemporary followers of Christianity. ( Cut for length. )

We must not forget that there are people on the fringes of society who hate. Most importantly, we must ensure that they stay on the fringes of society. Whether they hate Jews, or "non-Whites", or Muslims, or Democrats, or women or LGBT individuals or whomever, whomever they hate, once we start to dismiss their hate as unimportant, as not worth the effort to fight, we let their hate become acceptable, and then we let their hate become normal, and then we let their hate become expected, and sooner or later --- but all too often sooner --- we let their hate destroy us.

"Marginalize hate." It's a crappy bumper sticker, but it's the only way we'll survive.

A quick followup on my "market research" post from a couple of weeks ago about my siddur.

Posting here on LJ and on FaceBook got me expressions of interest from about a dozen people, about half of whom I don't know. (And some good questions which prompted me to add an FAQ page.)

After that traffic settled down, I sent the same basic message to the "announcements" list from Zamir. That drove another 20 people to sign up, most of whom I know. (And some more interesting feedback, about which more later.)

After that traffic settled down, I sent the message to my synagogue. Now I'd previously gotten a little interest from LJ friends, almost none from Zamir, and a lot from people at shul. And from the shul people...

... exactly two have signed up.

With apologies for length, but I think this is important to understand:

Today's Doonesbury contains three misrepresentations which add up to something that --- well, I don't want to bandy about the term "antisemitic", especially since I don't think Trudeau meant it to be, but it makes me very uncomfortable.

Canard One: "The Old Testament God is always cranky and snarky to everyone." This canard, of course, is 2,000 years old; it's like my kids calling me "meanest father ever" when I make them clean up their toys before reading a book. "And God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a help for him to match him.'" (Gen 1.18) "I have heard their crying out due to the taskmasters, and I know their sorrows, and I shall come down to deliver them out of the hands of Egypt, and to bring them up out of that land to a good land flowing with milk and honey" (Ex. 3.7) "Give thanks to God, for He is good, and His lovingkindness is infinite; He gives food to all flesh, and His lovingkindness is infinite." (Ps. 136:1, 25) And perhaps most famously, "God is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing. In grassy pastures He sets me down, by placid waters He gives me rest." (Ps. 23:1-2)

God in the Hebrew bible is a complex character, filling a parental and sovereign role, which sometimes means acting in accordance with the attribute of justice, and sometimes with the attribute of lovingkindness. "Always cranky and snarky to everyone" is a libel.

Canard Two: "The New Testament isn't about anger at all, it's about love. God's son is this total pacifist...." Well, there was that incident with the tree that wasn't bearing figs; even though it wasn't fig season God's putative never-angry-always-loving "son" blasted it.

And, fundamentally, which of these two is more loving and which more angry: the one who says "No one can come to the father except through me" and damns non-believers to eternal hellfire and brimstone just because they are not of the "correct" faith, or the one who says that there are seven basic moral precepts that all humanity is expected to follow, and religious observance is only obligatory on those who have accepted the "yoke of the commandments"?

Canard Three: "The moneylenders, Mom!" As I understand it, they weren't money lenders, they were money changers, like the kind at the airport. Their role was to allow pilgrims to exchange their foreign currency for the holy shekels that would be needed to purchase sacrifices. And (again, as I understand it) the issue was not even the moneychanging per se, but that the moneychangers had encroached on the outer courtyard of the Temple, bringing the tumah that was presumed to be on the coins into the tahor precincts.

Of course, over history the role of the moneylender in Christian society was foisted on Jews, who weren't allowed into many other lines of business. The "Jewish moneylender" was a common trope throughout Christian literature; Shylock is merely the most famous of these representations. Look at many of the political cartoons of the 19th and early 20th century and you'll see swarthy Mr. Moneybags with his yarmulke and his designs on the good people of the United States, Germany, France, Russia, etc. And of course we have the infamous forgery by the Tsar's secret police, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Conclusion: By setting up a contrast between the libelous Christian canards of the "angry Old Testament God" and the "loving New Testament God", and then having his punchline basically be "But even the loving Christian God hates moneylenders" --- which many people will read as "But even the loving Christian God hates Jews, who are responsible for our fiscal crisis" --- Trudeau has, probably subconsciously, set off one of the big tripwires in the "they're going to kill us soon, aren't they" alarm system programmed (or pogrommed) into every Jew.

( Cut because it's my third post in an hour )

• Overall, had a good holiday, despite having sick kids. They mostly slept it off. We did end up having to cancel our lunch plans today, which was very disappointing: we were scheduled to have lunch with mabfan, gnomi, lcmlc, and other members of their family who don't have lj names. (lcmlc came by and visited later in the afternoon, which was wonderful.)
• Today, Temple Emanuel celebrated 20 years of service by Dan Nesson to their community. So after going to early minyan at Shaarei Tefillah I went over to Emanuel for the divrei Torah by Everett Fox and Josh Jacobson in honor of Dan. Unfortunately, I had to leave before the ad hoc group of current and former Zamir singers did their a cappella set. But it was good to see several of my old Zamir friends.
• I was the only Levi at the early-but-not-sunrise minyan yesterday, and there were four Kohanim. The gabbai announced "Kohanim and Levi, prepare for duchening." I think this is the first time that's happened to me.
• Today I was asked to lead Musaf (after Yizkor), and the gabbai announced "Kohanim and Leviim, prepare for duchening, unless you're shaliach tzibbur." I think he was having too much fun. I was pleased with my davening; my special siddur saved me three times and I was able to keep a good balance between having kavannah and davening quickly (with all the extra stuff for Shavuot, it was already 10:00 when I started, and we usually aim to be finished by 10am).
• introverte made the most amazing pesto-infused stuffed shells, and the best French onion soup we've had in years. We also had cheesecake, of course, and chocolate-chip cookies, and salmon and corn stew to round out the menu. I love Shavuot food.

Today, the second day of Shavuot, is when we read the book of Ruth in synagogue. I was really struck by chapter 4 this year.

( The Book of Ruth in summary behind the cut )

So the trivia question is: What is the name of this nearer kinsman? Look at the first verse of chapter 4:

וּבֹעַז עָלָה הַשַּׁעַר, וַיֵּשֶׁב שָׁם, וְהִנֵּה הַגֹּאֵל עֹבֵר אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר-בֹּעַז, וַיֹּאמֶר סוּרָה שְׁבָה-פֹּה פְּלֹנִי אַלְמֹנִי; וַיָּסַר, וַיֵּשֵׁב.

And Boaz ascended to the [city] gate and sat there, and behold! The redeeming kinsman of whom Boaz had spoken passed by; and [Boaz] said "Come over and sit here, John Doe!" And he came over and he sat.

Yes, the kinsman who was so concerned about his name being wiped out from among the families of Judah has had his name erased by the author of Ruth.

(The rest of the chapter is also a fascinating bit of political propaganda, drawing powerful parallels comparing Ruth to Tamar, Boaz to Judah, King David to Nachshon ben Aminadav, and the anonymous jerkwad to Onan. Hmm, maybe I could have phrased that better.)

Since several of you have complained that you don't read sheet music and my computer-generated samples are piano-only, I threw together a little Flash program that displays the lyrics in sync with the music. The UI is dead simple.

For now, I just did it for the first movement of Kabbalat Shabbat. Let me know if this is useful; if it is, I'll generate pages for the other movements.

Come swing by labs.acrobat.com to see our newest offering, a really cool Flash-based tool for building presentations. That's what I've been working on for the last six months. (Well, I have been working on some of the invisible underpinnings. The part you'll see is by other people.)

That puzzle I posted about the other day? I've livened it up a bit and it is now sitting in a sealed envelope, ready to send in. I'm really pleased with this one and am hoping for my first solo sale.... We'll see.

We've been putting this off, but with a road trip coming up this summer we're thinking of buying a GPS receiver for our car. But we don't do a lot of driving in general, and doubly not a lot in unfamiliar territory, so we don't want to spend more than we have to. $150 is our goal, $200 might be able to justify itself, $300 is absurd.

What features sound better on the box than in your hand? I'm thinking we want widescreen and text-to-speech for road names. Lane assist sounds like it could be a big win, but is it? And is Garmin worth the premium, or would we be satisfied with another brand?

Edited to add: Thanks for the useful feedback. We've decided on the Garmin 760, which lacks lane assist but we've decided we don't need that. It seems from our research that the price premium for Garmin units is justified.

Today's xkcd is about Mathnet.

Hey, I thought Randall was much younger than me. How does he know Mathnet?

Oh, right, I watched it in college. Because that's the kind of nerd I am.

I've had an idea for several months for a Monday or Tuesday level puzzle. But every time I started on it, I got stuck.

Tonight I finally got the theme entries placed right, and the blocks placed right, and I have a fill I'm happy with and a preliminary set of clues. Whew!

Now to let it sit for a few days without looking at it, and see what needs fixing. :-)

So that email outage I blogged about the other night? Turns out it was a power problem at VPSlink. They just sent an email explaining everything that went wrong, what they're doing to make sure it doesn't happen again, and instructions on how to file a ticket so we get account credit for the downtime. (It would be nice if the last bit were automatic, but hey, at least they are reminding their customers that we're entitled to money back and making it easy for us to get it.)

This is the first downtime I've had with them since I started using them 1.5 years ago. I'm pleased with the customer service I've had with them, the price is where it should be, and I recommend VPSlink to anyone who is looking for an unmanaged fractional virtual hosting service.

I'm also amused that their new backup means of communication if their entire data center has lost power will be a Twitter stream. It's a perfect fit. I guess I'm going to have to start reading Twitter after all. (Maybe I should suggest that JCDS set up a Twitter stream for school closing announcements.)

In the continuing saga of too many irons in the fire at once....

Last summer I started the Dafcast, my project to prepare an open translation of the Talmud with an accompanying podcast. Long-time readers of this blog are aware of the ups and downs of that project.

When I started, I was able to register dafcast.net and dafcast.org, but dafcast.com was taken. It seemed dormant, but whatever.

I got a bunch of spam over the weekend from domain name poaching companies telling me that, as the owner of dafcast.net and dafcast.org, I'd probably be interested to know that dafcast.com had lapsed and was about to become available. Knowing enough about the domain registration process, and secure in my belief that there wasn't going to be a lot of demand for this domain, I didn't respond to those emails, but starting at 2pm today I tried registering dafcast.com through 1and1.com, my regular service provider.

At 2:30 it became available, I grabbed it, and the DNS has propagated. The Dafcast, in all its humble glory, is now equally available in the .com, .net, and .org top-level domains.

Gee, all I need now is to get back to generating content.

I realized that not all of my KabShab resources online were up to date. So, here they all are. (PDFs are hosted online at Acrobat.com)

1: Lechu Neranenah: MP3 | PDF
2: Shiru Shir Chadash: MP3 | PDF
5: Yirgzu: MP3 | PDF
6: Havu Ladonai B'nei Eilim: MP3 | PDF
8: Lecha Dodi: MP3 | PDF
10: Adonai Malach, Geut Lavesh: MP3 | PDF