Martin C. Winer

On this anniversary of Sept 11, I am privy to a pre-release of a recent report from the 9/11 committee.  The report details the wholesale destruction of the US economy by Al Qaeda operatives operating within the United States in a coordinated strategy to bring the US economy to its knees. 

Evidently the terrorist attacks on Sept 11, 2001 were really just a smokescreen for the more prolonged strategy to destroy our economy.  It started with Fedr Al Grin, a high ranking operative deeply embedded in the US banking system, decided to lower interest rates under the guise of stabilizing the economy. 

Below is a transcript of the interrogation of the recently captured Al Qaeda operative Hanny P’Alsin:

This [Fedr Al Grin's actions] led to freely available money which the “infidels gulped up like candy.”  Fedr Al Grin smiled happily watching the infidels load up on overpriced housing and cars they couldn’t afford until 2005 when he started to tighten the noose he had placed around the necks of the infidels.

In 2005 Fedr Al Grin started to raise the interest rates, again under the guise of protecting the economy, and the foolish infidels fell for it.  Suddenly they all began to realize that they were living beyond their means as the money supply evaporated.  Fedr Al Grin played the clarinet as the mortgage market burned.  The Department of Homeland defense became wise to Fedr Al Grin and had him removed from office.  Under water boarding at Abu Ghraib, Fedr Al Grin admitted to many of his sins and wrote an expose detailing the turbulent times he had overseen. 

However, while Fedr Al Grin was on one hand admitting to the evils of the system he had overseen, he had already placed a backup, his protoge Bin Bernik in place.  Bin Bernik watched as banks suffered and fell.  In their weakest moment, he offered help with a secret system to bail them out with infidel taxpayer dollars.  Bin Bernik was well trained by Fedr Al Grin to use a financial terrorist tactic to counterfeit US treasury notes.  By printing too many of them and using this counterfeit money to bail out and own financial institutions, Ben Bernik was and is covertly taxing the entire infidel population into bankruptcy.

One by one the mighty infidels fell.  Bear Sterns, survivor of the great depression sacrificed itself at the feet of Ben Bernik and his plan.  Freddie and Fannie, sacrificed themselves to Bin Bernik saddling the infidels of America with $5 trillion dollars in debt in a single weekend.  Even to this very day, the great intelligence of this plan is still giving fruit.  Lehman Brothers of New York is faltering, soon to fall. 

The US infidel automakers are also rallying to the cry of Bin Bernik.  They too want this free money which secretly bankrupts the US economy.  Airlines, insurance companies, all too big to fail, will sing the song of Bin Bernik to their destruction.  Bin Bernik will happily supply all these companies with counterfeit currency and thus dilute the savings of all the infidels until their lavish economy implodes.

On this anniversary of 9/11 we as Americans have come to realize that all our problems exist overseas.  Clearly this latest report serves only to amplify our need for our continued efforts in the Middle East occupying more sovereign nations to ensure our freedom.  I call on all Americans to pick one of the non-invaded ‘stans (Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan) for immediate attack.  It doesn’t matter which one, clearly any country ending in ‘stan will harbor some sort of terrorist.  Only in so doing will we secure freedom for our children and security at home.

Randall Mills Holding A Hydrino Reactor

BlackLight’s physics-defying promise: Cheap power from water – Jul. 2, 2008.

“For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.”

  — G. K. Chesterton

It would seem that the same is true regarding our worship of fossil fuels.  As fuel prices skyrocket there has been a run on alternative energy ideas.  I’ve covered several on this blog. 

http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/over-unity-cavetation-water-heater/
http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/thane-heins-perpetual-motion-free-energy-or-simply-releasing-a-brake/
http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/perpetual-motion-claim-if-its-a-hoax-its-a-good-one/
http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/solution-to-the-energy-crisis-aluminum-hydrogen-cycle/

This one, like that of Thane Heins breaks some laws of physics.  In the case of Heins, it was the Law of Conservation of Energy.  Randall Mills has broken some laws of Quantum Mechanics in suggesting that there is a lower energy state below the currently known ground state of hydrogen.  Mills terms such hydrogen atoms in this new lower energy state: ‘hydrinos’.

Electrons orbit the nucleus at well defined distances.  These distances (states) are finite, discrete or quantized as it were.  If an electron is excited by an influx of energy, it jumps to a higher state.  Conversely when an electron jumps to a lower orbital state, it releases some energy (a quanta of energy).  There is a theoretical limit to how low an electron can go in this scheme.  It’s called the ground state and it’s analogous to the lowest floor an elevator can go.

Hydrogen is the simplest, and most studied atom in modern science.  It consists of a proton and an electron.  It’s no wonder then that when Mills claims to have discovered a new ‘basement’ state below the known ground state that many physicists dismiss him out of hand.  If Mills is correct however, then this new ‘basement’ state could be used to cause hydrogen to release much more energy than simply burning hydrogen.

The crown jewel of science is the scientific method.  It avoids any political and otherwise human failings.  In short, can Mills produce this effect reproducibly and reliably.  The answer so far appears to be yes.  Mills’ company Blacklight has released prototype commercialized applications of his technology which are slated to be installed in power stations in 2009. 

During the interim, there is soft evidence which is also compelling.  Mills doesn’t want your money.  He has plenty of it in the form of $60 million in investments.  Mills also doesn’t want your help.  He has plenty in the form of an all star board of directors featuring many energy magnates.  All Mills needs to do now is to demonstrate his technology working on industrial scales.  He promises to deliver energy at 2 cents per kilowatt hour, whereas the current national average is 8.9 cents. 

This blog will continue to track events on this front.

At age 35, having recently been laid off, I found myself at a career exploration workshop run by the Jewish Vocational Services. [ed. note: The Jewish Vocational Service now serves people of all races and ethnicities. It is as identifiably Jewish as the star of Dennis; that is to say, not.] Coming from a lucrative yet unfulfilling career in Computer Sciences, I was looking to marry my other talents with my career or perhaps start a new career altogether. Other classmates were either seeking career guidance or training. Whatever our immediate goals, we were all in the same boat, fighting against the tide of layoffs and restructurings unleashed in this latest economic maelstrom. My shipmates flew the flags of many diverse nations, had charted the courses of many differing careers and hailed from all ages and walks of life. Just the same we found common steerage on our upstream battle for employment or fulfillment or perhaps the confluence of both.

Our first day consisted of pen and pencil cognitive tests adding numbers, mentally folding boxes, and figuring out which way a submarine will go when its control surfaces were adjusted. Rudely, I knew exactly where I’d like that submarine to go upon first inspection, but there was no entry on the form for my proposed destination. Despite the continued assurances of the counselors that these tests were only a part of the overall equation, they were a shot across the bow for many of us since these tests are becoming ever more popular in interviews. I personally lost several points on one test after falling into a daydream where I asked: “If I took a five pound weight and used a 10 meter lever, would it be enough to crush the infernal 5 minute timer which callously and repeatedly told us we were out of time?”

Were we out of time? Were we too old, too obligated to family, short on funds, or too far removed from Canadian culture to find the employment and fulfillment we sought? Despite healthy doses of gallows humour about the testing process and the general state of the economy there was a palpable weight on people’s shoulders. While we all smiled and shrugged off the indignity of the return to school days, we all feared that the next spatial visual acuity box we might fold might very well be a coffin in which we would be forced to bury our dreams.

Fortunately the rest of the program returned our egos to an even keel. Patricia, a course facilitator guided us through assessments of personality where the only wrong answer was to have no personality to speak of; fortunately this was a fate suffered by no one. She is a veteran of many lands, many careers and I imagine many recessions who seems to pay them no mind. Her right and proper British manner seems to remind us of Mary Poppins who would advise us all to take “a spoon full of [optimistic] sugar to make the [recession] go down.”

Then there was Derek, the course facilitator with a coy and sly smile which hinted at his razor sharp interviewing style sure to eviscerate any unsuspecting and inauthentic candidate. While we would rue having him on the opposite side of the interview table, luckily for us, he was on our side and was willing to share his insights. He built our confidence and ability to market ourselves and revealed some insider interviewing secrets such as having his secretary work on his behalf as a covert agent. Candidates be forewarned: be nice and polite to the secretaries – while you cannot remain silent, everything you say can and will still be used against you.

Career change is never easy, under any financial climate. I note that some attendees proudly claim that they can do anything while others are more reserved about their dreams and ambitions. Our facilitators would quickly point out that the differences in expressions were due to the different personality types we had studied that week. Both types of expression however are a defense against the underlying fear that our high flung ideas will run aground on McDonald’s Island where we’ll be forever enslaved serving cheeseburgers to other people who somehow managed to make it. There was tremendous talk among attendees of the economic climate and other external factors which the course could not possibly change. The course however, spent precious little time on the economic situation and instead looked to what it could adjust, our attitude and direction. Ultimately we all cast off and sought our own safe harbours but we did so with the benefit of a true and straight compass. For the beacon lighthouse JVS offered me in navigating a foggy and tumultuous job market, I am truly grateful.

My high-school English teacher taught us a module on the holocaust.  As part of the module we read ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel in addition to some other texts on the subject.  I remember quite vividly the stark transition of Elie Wiesel from an optimistic Torah student to a hardened realist by the end of the war.  At the beginning of the book he was discussing the notion that there were many pathways into the Garden of Eden (heaven).  By the end of the book you were left wondering which pathway coincided with the horrible events of the Holocaust.

I myself, like the young Wiesel, was an optimistic student of Torah.  I was convinced that everything would be alright and that the events Wiesel had endured would soon be redeemed by the imminent return of the Jewish Messiah.  Nothing would or could shake my faith or at least, so I though.

At the end of the module on the Holocaust, our teacher brought in a slide show.  He was a tour leader for ‘March of the Living’ which is a tour of high school students to the concentration camps of Europe followed by Israel.  I saw images of soap made from human bodies and fabric made of human hair.  These images attacked my shield of faith violently but the attack was repelled.

It was only when my teacher got to the image of the mausoleum shown above that I felt my shield give way a little and the sharp edges of that image met with flesh.  The damage was not done in a single instant.  The initial damage felt more like a pin prick, but like glass shards in carpet fibers, over time they wear into the pile until the underpad is exposed and bare.

My initial thoughts were defensive: “Perhaps there were the ashes from the wood included with the ashes of the bodies, accounting for the large volume?”  I had seen cremation urns however, and had previously remarked that the volume of ashes was remarkably small.   I had many other such attempted defenses but they all failed.

Again, the reaction to this image was anything but immediate.  It was a slow process which occurred over several years.  Whenever I hear God exalted and people sing the virtues of religion, this image was in the back of my mind.

This image just didn’t mesh with my view of the universe — a universe with a caring God that would soon make everything alright.  Some things once done, can’t be undone, no matter what the explanation.  When I decided that there would be no explanation that I would accept for the mausoleum at Majdanek, I was forced to conclude that there could be no active caring God.  That one image changed my entire world view.  I’ve never been the same since.

I typically shy away from watching American Idol. I find watching peoples hopes dashed by ‘judges’ akin to watching humans flayed by gladiators to the amusement of the dullard populace. Parenthetically, I wonder how the objectively questionable voices of legends: Louis Armstrong, Neil Young, Bob Dylan or Robert Plant would survive the scrutiny of the bastions of talent assessment found in judges: Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, and Paula Abdul. Paula Abdul. My automatic grammar checker is telling me that the sentence “Paula Abdul.” on its own is a sentence fragment; I couldn’t disagree with it more in this context. In fact, I find it to be a full paragraph.While I find the show irksome, mustering the power to ‘turn the other cheek’ is about as hard as turning to another channel and as such, I haven’t, until recently, paid it much mind. However, when this show chose to wax moral, I perked up my ears because when a Fox Network program discusses morals, this is bound to be something I want to tune into. (Words fail to express the sarcasm of the previous sentence.) The Fox Network is the same network which brought you the tasteful tidbit “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” and is the official station of George W. Bush and his war to eradicate weapons of mass destruction. (In a strange twist of fate, the largest [and only] weapon of mass destruction after the year 2000 in Iraq turned out to be George W. Bush himself.) This is the network that sought to sanction contestant Antonella Barba on American Idol after it was revealed she had some scandalous photographs found on the internet. Barba was voted off the show, but it was her voice that was cited as the final cause. Nonetheless, American Idol has previously removed a contestant “Frenchie” after pictures surfaced of her on an adult pay site.

A Google search of either girl will reveal an onslaught of the related pictures as well as 50 pop up adds suggesting you need a larger penis, methods for fixing the problem and several contests you’ve won which should provide funds for any such programs. After closing the fog of pop ups, the pictures that emerged were at best Maxim or FHM worthy. To those not versed in the realm, Maxim and FHM are to Playboy and Penthouse as light-filtered-cigarettes are to cigars. My initial reaction to the pictures was flaccid causing me to momentarily rethink closing all the previous pop ups. After that moment I realized that I was unimpressed because it was clear to me that these pictures had absolutely nothing to do with the talent of the contestants. For the record, Frenchie has moved on to a promising career on Broadway. Instead, these pictures had everything to do with our confused morals.

Some will immediately protest: “the show is called American IDOL” — emphasis on ‘idol’ — and hence part of the criteria must be if such people are worthy of being idols. As soon as we open this can of worms, it’s necessary for American Idol to somehow consider the morals of the contestants. Morals and ethics are complicated and I’m certain that the Fox Network lacks the acumen to address the issue. In fact, I find it very hard to determine if it was revealed that Barba mutilated puppies would it have received more or less press and attention? I hear the conservative drone say: “the children, the poor children, whatever will we do if they see those pictures?!” To such parents, I point out that what would happen to children if children watch the evening news? I will attend that point momentarily.

Only in such a state of moral asymmetry could we even begin to ask these sorts of questions. Let’s look at the issue. Pornography: bad, good, neither, both? Dr Phil’s ‘Occam’s Razor’ style argument on the topic goes like this: If you wouldn’t want your daughter involved in porn, then why would you watch someone elses’ daughter? Dr Phil, President Bush and the Fox Network are experts at providing short answers to complicated questions that sound reasonable and under scrutiny turn out to be faulty. At the risk of being guilty of the same thing I accuse Dr. Phil, the short answer to Dr. Phil is: I don’t want my daughter to be a sanitation maintenance engineer (the politically correct term for garbage man/woman) but that doesn’t stop me from taking my trash to the curb. However, let’s take a deeper look at the issue, and to do so, we’ll restrict the general porn issue to examining going topless at a beach. If anyone reading the rest of this article derives that I carte blanche advocate pornography, I invite them to reread the previous sentence.

(An unremembered comedian [likely Bill Maher or Robin Williams] once quipped that to, the overly simplified criminal justice mantra, “three strikes and you’re out” is the answer to gays in the military “four balls and you walk”?)

I’d like to ask Dr. Phil if he’d let his daughter go topless on a beach. I suspect strongly that he’d say no. Then I’d like to ask him if he’d let his daughter go topless on a beach in Brazil where the practice is commonplace (certainly more common place) and considered about as common as walking around in a bikini. I suspect he’d still say no, but the question would have got him thinking (and hopefully you as well). People will hem and haw over this point but that’s only because we’re dealing with the cusp of what’s currently considered ‘ok’. Then I’d ask him if he’d let his daughter wear one piece swim suit (not a bikini). I suspect he’d say yes. Then I’d finally ask him, if he lived in the 1800′s (when woman swam in the equivalent of a ‘Burka’) would he also let her wear a one piece swim suit? I’d like very much to hear his answer. Whether he says yes or no, he’d be forced to admit that his ‘morals’ have more to do with the time (society) he lives in than what is actually ‘right or wrong’. Star Wars got it right when George Bush gawks: “You’re either with us or against us” and Obe Wan Kenobi replies: “only the Sith believe in absolutes.” It’s my personal belief that the ‘Sith’ is a code for George Bush and the conservative lot (Sith = Simple Ignorant THeists).

Thus, questions of moral propriety are very hard questions to answer, and I sure as hell don’t want the Fox Network to even make the attempt. The question of where this moral confusion arose in the first place begs answering. I can only offer an answer in a form of an allegory of two presidents. First we have a story of an otherwise good president who had sex in the oval office; He was impeached. Next we have a story of a president who didn’t have sex in the oval office and sent a nation to war to get rid of weapons of mass destruction which didn’t exist. This president who sent thousands to their deaths for no reason at all was, was… was… Oh, nothing happened to him.

The take home message of all this confusion is that morals are hard. You’re going to have to turn off the TV and think about them if you want to have a chance of getting them right. In turn, the only take home message one can glean about the state of American morals from all this is that Americans are fine with boobs only so long as one doesn’t post pictures of them on the internet and instead elects them to office.

Update: There will be a History Channel special on this: “Quest for the Lost Ark” on March 2, 2008 at 8pm.

I was reading a recent article in Time magazine and had to double check that I was reading an article in the “Health & Science” section instead of a book review of the most recent Dan Brown novel. The article can be found here:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1715337,00.html

Since this generation suffers from a mass case of ADD, let me use bullets to demonstrate how Tudor Parfitt, a professor at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, reveals the Ark to be a multipurpose carry-all for religious relics which doubles conveniently in times of war for a cannon. Yes, you read correctly.

• A Southern African tribe called the Lemba claimed to be a lost tribe of Israel. (They practice circumcision and call meetings using a rams’ horn.) No one believed them until it was discovered that the Lemba priestly cast had the same frequency of a specific marker to the Jewish priestly cast (cohens).
• The Lemba also claim to be custodians of the Ark of the Covenant. Based on the now verified first claim, Parfitt began to investigate this second claim.
• The Lemba call Ark the ngoma lungundu.
  • “The ngoma,according to the Lemba, was near-divine, used to store ritual objects, and borne on poles inserted into rings. It was too holy to touch the ground or to be touched by non-priests, and it emitted a ‘Fire of God’ that killed enemies and, occasionally, Lemba. A Lemba elder told Parfitt, ‘[It] came from the temple in Jerusalem. We carried it down here through Africa.’”
• His search led him to the ancient city of Senna where Parfitt believes the Lemba and their ancestors may have converged where he uncovered several clues as to where the Ark may be today.
• His search ended at the Harare Museum of Human Science in Zimbabwe where he found a drum like object, with remnants of the carrying rings and crossed reeds indicative of biblical origins.
• Neither Parfitt nor the Lemba contend that this object is the original Ark of the Covenant. The object was carbon dated to 1350 ad, which is some time after Moses. However, the Lemba folklore holds that the original ngoma destroyed itself and was rebuilt upon its own ruins by the temple priests.
• Parfitt contends that the Ark was in fact a drum which was a repository of relics and a cannon!

Don’t believe it? It’s hard to believe I admit, however, it is interesting to note that the Ark of the Covenant is brought into many Israelite battles at the head of the attacking force. Now do you put your relics at the head of an attacking force, or do you put your greatest weapon?

Truly the Lord hath delivered into our hands all the land; for even all the inhabitants of the country do faint because of us.” [Josh.2:24]

Still can’t believe it? I admit, I’m having similar trouble. Worshipping a weapon? I keep conjuring up images of “Beneath the Planet of the Apes”:

Bob Dylan and his entourage strolled casually, with nary an introduction, on to stage at Copps Coliseum and began to play.  Missing was the standard introduction to most Bob Dylan’s recent concerts:

“Ladies and gentlemen please welcome the poet laureate of rock ‘n’ roll. The voice of the promise of the 60′s counterculture. The guy who forced folk into bed with rock. Who donned makeup in the 70′s and disappeared into a haze of substance abuse. Who emerged to find Jesus. Who was written off as a has-been by the end of the 80′s, and who suddenly shifted gears releasing some of the strongest music of his career beginning in the late 90′s. Ladies and gentlemen – Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan!”

I suppose that no introduction is needed when it comes to Bob Dylan, but it’s good to keep that introduction in mind when considering his performance last night.  Dylan opened with “Cat’s in the Well” and it took me most of the song to figure out that that was what he was playing. 

The acoustics at Copp’s Coliseum were set for a hard rock band.  Everything was loud to the point of reverberation.  This made Dylan’s failing voice impossible to make out and his harmonica playing resonate painfully in my sinuses.  There were no theatrics or effects which was a good thing, save one:  A large display showing Dylan and his band would have made the event seem more intimate. 

As for Dylan’s performance, his voice has, with age, lost the ability to inflect.  It sounded like Dylan was speaking most of the songs and even at that, he was speaking in a foreign tongue.  When the ever present cannabis wafted my way, there was a moment where I could understand him quite clearly, but the moment was fleeting.

Had last night’s performance been the debut of some band, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it at all.  Just the same, the performance being Dylan, I was able to make out some of my favourites and appreciate his legacy as an artist if not his artistry that very night.

The songs played where:

1. Cat’s In The Well (Bob on keyboard)  
2. It Ain’t Me, Babe (Bob on keyboard)  
3. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again (Bob on keyboard)  
4. Girl Of The North Country (Bob on keyboard)  
5. High Water (For Charlie Patton) (Bob on keyboard)  
6. Just Like A Woman (Bob on keyboard)  
7. Rollin’ And Tumblin’ (Bob on keyboard)  
8. Tryin’ To Get To Heaven (Bob on keyboard)  
9. Highway 61 Revisited (Bob on keyboard)  
10. Moonlight (Bob on keyboard)  
11. It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (Bob on keyboard)  
12.  When The Deal Goes Down (Bob on keyboard)  
13. Thunder On The Mountain (Bob on keyboard)  
14. Ain’t Talkin’ (Bob on keyboard)   
  (encore)
15.  Like A Rolling Stone (Bob on keyboard)  
16.  All Along The Watchtower (Bob on keyboard)  

I’ve heard better versions of every one of these songs.  While that’s a criticism of last night’s performance, it’s an accolade to the songwriter whose songs have been lovingly covered by so many others.  From last night’s performance alone, here are some of the originals and their covers:

It Ain’t Me Babe
(A song about a rebuffed love which is really a thinly veiled reaction to his fame.)
Dylan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImpKzFXO1WI
Johnny Cash/ JuneCarter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkeBgz_7brI
Joan Baez: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cmNRVL1drA

Just Like a Woman
Dylan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueGuzmotwaI
Richie Havens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDfqkTVD0ls

How Does It Feel
Dylan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO0gSJGJ7Fs
Rolling Stones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuGjBNSRi1c

All Along the Watchtower
Dylan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_ncQgjIlFM
Hendrix (At the Isle of Wight) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCwCBh0z3Hs

Those are the covers from last night performance.  However, Dylan’s legacy goes far beyond that.  Some highlights are:

Blowing In The Wind
(a 60′s anthem)
Dylan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ced8o50G9kg
Peter Paul Mary : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LoBwkVLVKU

Times They Are A Changin’
(another 60′s anthem)
Dylan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D9S48A81os
The Byrds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzFulFba3HA

Forever Young:
Dylan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P22cMZFvJAs
The Band + Dylan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TLygQpSiyU

I Shall Be Released
Dylan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtjIf1iSbB8
The Band + Dylan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLjNjSpZxzg

Hurricane:
(A protest song on behalf of Rubin Hurricane Carter featured in the movie The Hurricane )
Dylan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=few4kiKjNzw

Knocking On Heaven’s Door
Dylan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-5JvACzGp8
Eric Clapton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh4WwCzjtL4
Guns N Roses http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcWTTs8QVRc

Mr Tambourine Man:
Dylan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia06DeCxhTM
The Byrds:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVnU_WaTvdc

Gene DiNovi Presents Benny Goodman...

http://www.jccc.on.ca/calendar/view_entry.php?id=290&date=20090530

A special thanks to my reader “Nobi” for letting me know about this.

Saturday May 30, 2009 is the 100th birthday of the great clarinetist Benny Goodman.

On that day Gene Dinovi will present the Benny Goodman Centennial Orchestra playing selections from “The Sound of Music”and Goodman favourites, including Let’s Dance, Memories of You, Don’t be that Way, Stompin’ at the Savoy, Sunny side of the Street, Rose Room, Moon Glow, One O’clock Jump, Sing Sing, Sing and more!

Pianist and composer DiNovi, who is one of the great icons of Canadian and American jazz, together with Order of Canada-winning musicians Campbell (clarinet) and Young (Bass), will be performing with and passing on a legacy to the next generation of premier jazz musicians who make up the rest of the Benny Goodman Centennial Orchestra This top talent includes: Bryden Baird (trumpet), Graham Campbell (guitar), Ernesto Cervini (drums and clarinet), Tara Davidson (alto saxophone and flute), David French (tenor saxophone), and RJ Satchithananthan (trombone).

Exactly 50 years ago pianist Gene Dinovi recorded the music from “The Sound of Music” with Benny Goodman at a famous New York club called “Basin Street East”. The band was a stellar “Tentet” featuring Benny Goodman (clarinet), Jack Sheldon (trumpet) ,Gerry Dodeion (alto sax), Flip Phillips (tenor sax), Bill Harris (trombone), Red Norvo; (vibes), John Markham (drums), Red Wooten (bass), Jimmy Wyble (guitar), and Gene DiNovi (piano).

DiNovi, Campbell and Producer Ted Ono all agreed that this was an opportunity to make a legacy of this music for the younger generations of jazz players. The first half of the concert will highlight the music from the perennially popular “Sound of Music”

These were (and remain) fresh and modern arrangements by a very talented young man in 1959 named Fred Karlin. Gene DiNovi served as an emissary between Benny and Fred at that time. Benny thought Fred a little young for the job at hand but Gene convinced Benny to go with the young guy. Sounds perenally familiar. In any case the Yale University library was very kind in the arrangements to DiNovi who enlisted the talented young musicians who fill out the exciting group.

Date & Time: Saturday, May 30, 2008, 7:30PM
Location: The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre
6 Garamond Court, Toronto, Ontario, M3C 1Z5 (Don Mills and Eglinton)
Tickets: $35 for General Public, $30 for members of the JCCC. To purchase, call 416-441-2345 x222.

The Past:

In the web 1.0 world, we were happy just to be able to surf the web and have access to thousands of new and wonderful services.  However, shortly thereafter, our hard drives became bloated with installed components, some of which were seldom used, slowing our operating systems to a crawl.  Around the same time, surfing the web became a game of ‘memory’ where we had to guess which user names and passwords we had created to get at all these great services.  If we had the misfortune of guessing incorrectly more than 3 times, we often ran into a situation where accounts became locked, requiring emails to virtually nonexistent customer service departments.  In web 1.0 our surfing was limited by our ability to remember passwords and our OS’s ability to support multiple plug ins and installed software components.

Web 2.0 — The Present:

With the advent of Web 2.0 we’re witnessing a new movement, that of the no cost,  no install, and no log in software.  Tired of installing software and creating user accounts, sites have popped up which offer much of the functionality we’re used to with less of the hassle.

Photo Sharing:

Yes Flickr is great.  But what if you want to simply post a fast picture without having to log in and create a sign on?  I just want to quickly share a picture.  I’ve tried these two sites:

Share4Pic -> http://share4pic.com/en/
Image Ox -> http://www.imageox.com/

For example, using Share4Pic to share the image associated with this post:  I need only simply visit the site and perform a quick upload.  After that I’m immediately given a url (link) which I can use in a chat or in an email or what have you.

http://share4pic.com/images/5/8/1/5811518.jpg

Screenshot Sharing

You can adapt this idea to allow for screen shot sharing.  Suppose you are helping someone having some problems using a program.  You’d like to send them a picture of the screen in front of you with some comments.  No problem, just press ALT+PRINT SCREEN.  Now, on Windows, under accessories, open “Paint”.  Using the “Edit” menu click on “Paste” and your screen shot will now appear.  Use the text tool to enter comments as necessary.  Save the file as type “JPG” (jpeg) and save it with a name you’ll remember in a location you’ll remember.  Now, just upload this file to a photo sharing site like share4pic or imageox and send the link to your suffering friend.  He or she will now be able to view your screenshot and benefit from the advice you’ve added.  An example is here:

http://share4pic.com/en/6541394/How_to_share_images/

Screenshot Kwouting (Quoting)

Another great util for sharing screenshots or part of a screen is www.kwout.com .  Have you ever just wanted to show someone where to click or what to look for on a web page?  The best way to do so is to simply show them a picture of what you’re talking about.  They’ve provided a handy widget such that web designers can embed their functionality into their own site.  If you click on this button:

you can ‘kwout’ an excerpt from this blog entry!  As an example from www.simple2chat.com, if I wanted to show someone how to start a new conversation, I could tell them to click on the new conversation button in the tool bar  .  As they say “a picture is worth a thousand words”.  Hopefully this utility will save you several thousand words.  Again, no login, and no install required.  (There is also a handy Firefox plugin which isn’t necessary but is very helpful to have.)

Online Office:

Microsoft Office is great.  It’s been great since 1995 after which I can’t understand the justification for any upgrades.  The problem with Microsoft Office is 1) its cost and 2) it takes up space and resources on your machine.  Web 2.0 has seen the introduction of online office suites.  Three come to mind right of the top of my head:
Think Free: http://member.thinkfree.com/
Zoho: http://www.zoho.com/
Google Docs:  http://docs.google.com

Now, admittedly all these sites require a log in, but they don’t require any installation.  The log in is required to keep track of your documents.  These online suites are, in my opinion, better than Microsoft office as they allow for collaboration across many platforms and sites.  You can build a slide show with your colleagues across the world while working on the final numbers on a spreadsheet type application.

There is another suite here worth mentioning and that’s Open Office.  It doesn’t require a log in, but does require an install.  Just the same, it’s a full featured office suite that is free of charge and is very robust in the features offered.

Music:

The recording industry and the internet community have been playing a game of cat and mouse over the past decade.  There are so many file sharing programs that have been made available and then prosectued that I’ve almost lost track.  To name a few, Kazaa, Bear Share, EMule, Limewire, and all the torrent sites no less.  All are/were great ways to get plenty of mp3′s illegally.  Then came along ITunes and several other pay sites which had a terrific library which you could access by proprietary installed software.

What if you could listen to all the music you wanted without the legal entanglements?  Sounds too good to be true?  Well, not in the world of Web 2.0.  I came across this gem in my internet travels:
http://songza.com/

It’s 100% legal (all artists are payed) and it’s provided to you with no log in and at no cost.  I was amazed with the coverage their library offered.  I tested the depth of coverage with a few rare or rarer favorites of mine from various eras such as:

Saint Saens “Danse Macabre”: http://songza.com/z/gg09tj
T-Bone Walker  “Stormy Monday” : http://songza.com/z/yg36z3
Herbert Gorecki  “Symphony No 3″: http://songza.com/z/af287q
Billie Holiday  ”I Wished On The Moon”: http://songza.com/z/qh8i8y
Pink Floyd “Corporal Clegg”: http://songza.com/z/umf8nj
John Foxx “Underpass”: http://songza.com/z/yo3705
Lenny Kravitz “The Resurrection”: http://songza.com/z/yyv2w6

Music Sharing

If you are an artist yourself and wish to share your music there is a site I recommend which does require a login, but no installation:  www.odeo.com On it, you can create channels of your own works and share them with your friends and colleagues.  Here is a channel created by yours truly:
http://odeo.com/channel/120616/view

Chat:

Internet chat is at once the greatest productivity booster and impedement of the modern era.  I have four different chat clients running on my machine (msn,yahoo,googletalk, and skype).  There are programs such as Trillian which seek to consolidate these services under one umbrella.  First off, it requires an installation and second, I find it doesn’t do a great job at completeness (eg file sharing and video often disabled).

Web 2.0 has a few partial solutions to the chat client overpopulation problem.  The first is www.meebo.com.  This is a site, which like Trillian, puts all your chat accounts under one umbrella.  It has a Firefox plugin which will allow you to use it as though it has been installed on your computer.  It won’t support video or several other advanced features of any given chat program, but at least you don’t need to install anything.

If you’d simply like to have a chat conversation with a few people without having to have them all on the same chat protocol, you can use www.simple2chat.com which is provided by yours truly.  This isn’t intended to be a replacement for chat, but is instead a no login, no install, simple, and fast chat site to allow people to converse or conference quickly and easily.

File Sharing / File BackUp:

With web 2.0, we won’t be installing as much software as we used to.  However, what do we do with all the files we have?  A good example that comes to mind is my mp3 collection.  When I’m at work, how do I have access to my mp3 collection?  I could take a USB memory key, but wouldn’t it be great if there was a web accessible service which could store reams of data?  Well there is.  www.adrive.com offers 50GB (!!) of storage.  You can share the files you’ve stored and upload and download files from any computer with internet access.  You have to provide a login, but that’s no big deal given the advantages.

If you’d like a quick file sharing utility, try www.drop.io .  This utility allows you to share files plus a whole host of other great features.

Summary:

Web 2.0 is a brave new world wide web.  There is no longer the need to install software for hours on end.  Your data, songs, pictures, work documents, and chat clients can now follow you wherever you go.

Websites Mentioned:

Photo Sharing
http://share4pic.com/en/

http://www.imageox.com/

Screenshot Quoting
www.kwout.com
Online Office
http://member.thinkfree.com/
http://www.zoho.com/
http://docs.google.com
Free Downloadable Office Suite
Open Office
Music (Listening)
http://songza.com/
Music (Sharing)
www.odeo.com
Chat – Download – All In One
Trillian
Chat – Online – No Install – All In One
www.meebo.com
Chat Online Instant Chat / Conference – No Install, No Login
www.simple2chat.com
File Sharing
www.adrive.com
www.drop.io

Digg This Story!

In 1979 Jimmy Carter delivered a televised speech bemoaning the increasing US dependence on foreign oil.  In it he outlines his Energy Policy for the coming decades.

“[Foreign Oil is] a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation. The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation.”

– Jimmy Carter  (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_crisis.html)

Today the US relies on 60% foreign oil (http://www.fueleconomy.gov/FEG/oildep.shtml) in strong defiance of president Carter’s prescient warning.

As far as the US dependence on foreign oil, nothing has changed since the Carter’s clarion call aside from the problem getting far worse.  However, president Carter didn’t live in a world threatened by Global Warming (at least it wasn’t commonly known).   President Carter also didn’t live in a world with two superpopulations, India and China weighing in at a billion people each who are poised to ramp up their consumption.

Clearly oil will no longer do as a source of energy.  Luckily science has provided an alternative: The Hydrogen – Aluminum Cycle.  To be clear, I’m not speaking of hydrogen power alone.  Hydrogen power alone is a red herring of alternative energies.  The catch is that hydrogen is hugely expensive to make and today largely comes from the demethylization of hydrocarbons; ie oil.  No, the Hydrogen – Aluminum cycle is something different entirely.

When we think of hydrogen, some horrible images from the past might emerge.

Here we see the Hindenburg which was filled with hydrogen bursting into flames.  Many see the risks of hydrogen in cars and decry ‘oh the humanity!’.  Well there are no such worries with the hydrogen – aluminum power cycle because the hydrogen is produced in micro amounts and only as needed.  Hydrogen need not be stored in a cryogenic canister with motorists barrelling down the highways with a bomb on board.  This in situ or just in time production solves the danger of using hydrogen in a car.

Next, we must solve the problem of where to find our hydrogen.  Clearly deriving it from oil simply won’t do.  The other current method for obtaining hydrogen is through a process called hydrolysis which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen.  Regrettably, this process is too inefficient to be used on a wide scale.

Enter into the picture aluminum.  Aluminum has a high affinity for oxygen.  Whenever you hold a piece of aluminum it has a skin of oxidation.  This skin, once formed, prevents any further oxidation which is why you never have to worry about rust in components built of aluminum.  Aluminum likewise reacts with water;  A jealous lover of oxygen, it bonds strongly with it, ousting the hydrogen.  While a jealous lover aluminum may be, it is quickly satiated and forms a skin failing to react any further.

Jerry Woodall, a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Purdue, discovered in the 60′s that when aluminum, gallium and water were mixed, the aluminum oxidized fully, liberating massive amounts of hydrogen.  It would seem that the gallium acts as a mediator in the reaction and prevents the formation of the oxidation skin on aluminum.  The end results of this reaction are hydrogen gas, aluminum oxide (aka alumina) and gallium.  The gallium is not consumed, and thus can be recycled.  The alumina can be electrically converted back into aluminum and thus recycled.  Burning hydrogen produces only water.

The idea of using hydrogen to power a vehicle is certainly not a new one.  While Woodall was experimenting with gallium in the 60′s, GM was trying to prototype a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle: The Electrovan.  It is recognized as the first hydrogen fuel cell prototype.  The prototype was scrapped due to the high cost of the rare (precious) metals used in its fuel cells and the complexity of storing hydrogen.

The aluminum-gallium-hydrogen cycle may allow us to succeed where the Electrovan failed.  So now, let’s put the pieces together: How does this get you to work in the morning?  Your new, non-polluting car has two fuel tanks, one containing water, the other containing aluminum and gallium flakes.  As hydrogen is needed the water and the flakes are mixed.  The hydrogen is harvested and runs the engine.  Also the heat produces by the chemical reaction may be harvested for energy by a Stirling Engine which is a type of engine which can run off of temperature differentials.

When it comes time to fuel your vehicle, the new filling station attaches three hoses to your car.  One removes the slurry of used alumina to be recycled.  The other two replenish your supply of water and aluminum-gallium flakes.  When it comes time to pay for your aluminum flakes, will it be competitive with gasoline?

“Since standard industrial technology could be used to recycle our nearly pure alumina back to aluminum at 20 cents per pound, this technology would be competitive with gasoline,” Woodall said. “Using aluminum, it would cost $70 at wholesale prices to take a 350-mile trip with a mid-size car equipped with a standard internal combustion engine. That compares with $66 for gasoline at $3.30 per gallon. If we used a 50 percent efficient fuel cell, taking the same trip using aluminum would cost $28.”

–  (http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/x/2007b/070827WoodallNanotech.html)

Next, some may wonder where the aluminum will come from.

Enough aluminum exists in the United States to produce 100 trillion kilowatt hours of energy. That’s enough energy to meet all the U.S. electric needs for 35 years.  If impure gallium can be made for less than $10 a pound and used in an onboard system, there are enough known gallium reserves to run 1 billion cars.”

–  (http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/x/2007b/070827WoodallNanotech.html)

Recall that alumina (aluminum oxide, the waste product) can be recycled electrically back into aluminum.  So it’s not like oil where, once burnt, we can’t reclaim it.  We can electrically reclaim the waste alumina back into aluminum.

Ecologically this is a dream come true.  When thinking ecologically it’s important to think in terms of cycles.  Everythings output must be something’s input cycling back to the original source.  Here we have aluminum going to aluminum oxide (alumina) going back to aluminum.  The alumina to aluminum step can be powered by non polluting nuclear or renewable sources such as solar or wind etc.  The water turns to hydrogen which combines back with oxygen to produce water.  Gallium is never consumed and is recycled continuously.

So there you have it: president Carter’s dream some thirty years later, but not too late.  With the skyrocketing prices of oil the need for this change has never been more clear.  The only missing ingredient in this equation is the political motivation to fund and accelerate the conversion process.  This may prove to be the trickiest part of the equation to balance.

Further reading:

Please don’t take my word on this matter, feel free to do your own research:

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=aluminum+gallium&spell=1

http://youtube.com/results?search_query=aluminum+gallium&search_type=

There is also a similar approach using boron

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=boron+hydrogen+car&meta=

I recently attended the second in a series of lectures given by Jordan Klapman on the Jewish contribution to Tin Pan Alley. I regret missing the first in the series and hope to make it for the 3rd. Some notable points from this lecture:

1) It is easy to detect clear Klezmer influences in the music of the period. For example, Klapman played a recording of the Eddie Cantor classic “Lena From Palestina” which has clear origins in the Klezmer standard “Noch a Bisl” (A Little More). Other examples are “And the Angels Sing” recorded by Benny Goodman which owes its origins to “Der Shtiler Bulgar” (A Quiet Bulgar).

2) Prior to 1920 and the advent of records and radio, songs were sold as sheet music. People would purchase the songs and learn to perform them themselves. With the advent of records, sheet music sales declined markedly, and with the advent of radio, even more so.

3) Radio originally refused to pay artists for airing their works. They claimed they were transmitting ‘ether’ (an antiquated term for radio waves). It took ASCAP 7 years of legal proceedings to force radio to pay royalties to ASCAP members. This has strong parallels to file sharing technologies which claim innocence by the defence “we’re transmitting bits.”

4) With the decimation of the sheet music market, music was reduced to a pulp industry. The emphasis was on quantity over quality in the hopes that one song would meet with fame. The advent of radio further exacerbated this problem in that now audiences could tire of music much more rapidly than before. Thus composers were forced to produce more in order to keep themselves in the public eye.

I’m currently reading: “Did God Have a Wife?” by William Dever. In it he mentions the literacy rate of the ancient Israelites.
From page 28:
“… Writing does not become widespread before the 8th century B.C., and then the coprus indicates only what I would call “functional literacy.” That is, a number of people could write their names, numbers and the names of a few commodities. But that is a far cry from being truly literate, able to read literary material such as we have in the books of the Hebrew Bible. It has been estimated that even in the Roman period, no more than 5 percent of the population was literate by the above definition. In ancient Israel the figure was certainly lower. That has important implications for the question I have raised here concerning how early the Hebrew Bible could in fact have been written, and whether ordinary people could have read it if they had had it.”

My hope is that I’ll be able to post several eulogies, videos and pictures here.  Please send me anything you’d like posted.

Pictures:

Video:
VIDEO: Grandma Glass, Passover 2001
VIDEO (alternate format): Grandma Glass, Passover 2001

Obituary:

Original link here:

http://classifieds.hamiltonspectator.com/HOLCSApp/do/attribute_view_ad?adID=5360066&categoryName=ANNOUNCEMENTS&classId=3080

GLASS, Ida A beautiful woman passed away on April 23, 2009, just shy of her 97th birthday. Her name was Ida A. Glass and she will be reunited with her husband Walter P. Glass. Wishing you guys a good time up there. Ida Glass (nee Marcus) was an incredible daughter, wife, mother of Bernard and Reesa, grandmother and great-grandmother, sister and friend. Everyone who was lucky enough to have known her will remember her as a treasure. Funeral: Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 2 p.m. United Hebrew Memorial Chapel, 28 Ewen Rd. Donations to Shalom Village, Hamilton.

Eulogies:

Eulogy: Martin C. Winer (Grandson)  Ida A. Glass (1912 – 2009)

Grandma Glass brimmed with a bright and glowing personality which rose to fill a room much like her cakes and pastries.  Grandma was known to others as:  Ida Adele Glass.  Grandma herself added Adele to her moniker as though two names could not contain her character.  She was right.  Grandma was always on the go with one project or hobby or what have you.  Grandma attended bridge games, outing clubs, wrote book reviews for the local library, did knitting and needle point, collected antiques and of course there was the constant cooking and baking.

When Grandma arrived in Toronto for a holiday celebration, a ten minute procession of circular cookie tins lined with wax paper ensued.  One by one bearers would ferry in stacks of tins laden with banana muffins topped with walnuts, hand made strawberry jam strudel, coconut macaroons, mandel broit, and my favourite, blueberry cake.  Only after some time had passed and the procession had ended did Grandma and Grandpa make it to the door where they provided my brother and I with an eagerly anticipated Hot Wheel car or Lego set.  Visits from Grandma were a cornucopia of sweet delicacies and toys.  “Could anyone be cooler than this?” thought the 8 year old boy I was at the time.

Trips in the opposite direction, Toronto to Hamilton, were equally ‘cool’.  Grandma’s apartment was one of the first apartments we knew of to have a pool.  When we arrived we were greeted by the usual cakes and pastries and Tuna casserole.  Now Grandma new I was a fussy eater, not given to eating fish, and always had a supply of applesauce and Jello on hand.  Cakes, cookies, jello, a pool and toys.  My parents had told me that Hamilton was a city famous for making steel.  Well I didn’t see any steel here, I saw heaven.

Grandma’s apartment was adorned with antiques and the walls plastered with her needle point work.  The knick knacks were ever changing.  As a child I imagined that Grandma had a warehouse of knick knacks which she constantly exchanged to keep the place looking fresh.  It didn’t take me too many more visits to realize that Grandma actually gave away all her knick knacks only to create more to replace them.  The cost of owning anything in Grandma’s house was mentioning you liked it.  Visitors to Grandma’s place always left laden with baked goods, Grandma’s craft items and antiques.

Grandma lit up when her grandchildren were in the room.  She relished stories of what we had done and what we were interested in doing.  Her faith in us inspired greatness – not wanting to disappoint such an avid fan.  Grandma bought me my first doctor’s play kit from the IGA we were visiting to foster my interest in medicine.  Later on she, along with my Grandfather and Uncle, got me my first Merck Manual – a doctor’s handbook.  My interest in Science eventually led me to Computer Science rather than Medical Science, but I’m sure she’d be equally supportive of my choice.

Towards the latter years, with her health starting to fail, we saw a distillation of Grandma’s character with the key components still shining through.  In one of her early stays in the hospital I remember noting that Grandma had gone to the trouble of putting on a broach and was still well put together.  Grandma was always prim and proper.  In the convalescent home, her love for reading persisted to the very end, even beyond her ability to speak.  One small event sticks with me in that it perfectly captures Grandma’s love for all of us.

In one of the last Passovers she attended in Toronto, at the end of the usual procession of cookie tins, Grandma needed to sit down; she wasn’t feeling well.  She asked me repeatedly to fetch some icing sugar to ice the cake with.  I remember wondering: “what difference did it make, it was only family anyways?”  But there was no such distinction for Grandma.  Her family was royalty.  So when I realized the importance to her, I sprinkled the cake with icing sugar and she looked relieved.  I remember thinking that love can be uniquely expressed by a bunt cake.  It was her display of caring and affection to all that shared in it.  It was a culinary work of art made lovingly just for us from the kitchen of Ida Adele Glass.

————————————————————————————————-

Ida Adele Glass
Chayyalah bat Ya’acov v’Rivkah
April 26, 2009
Rabbi Jordan Cohen

There is some controversy around the Ayshet Hayyil nowadays, the passage from Proverb 31 which describes a woman of valour. In a post-feminist age, measuring the worth of a woman by how she satisfies the needs of her husband and children seems to be little anachronistic and ignores the essential essence of who a woman is as an individual. But for woman of a certain generation, these qualities of trustworthiness and integrity, of service to family and community, of dignity, kindness and strength, represent not only the most essential values of life, but ideals to be striven towards each and every day without exception. Ida Glass was, indeed, a woman of that generation, and, indeed, she represented all that our tradition revered in the Ayshet Hayyil .

Ida Marcus was born here in Hamilton in June 1912 to Jacob and Rebecca Marcus. She was the youngest of four daughters, all of whom pre-deceased her: Eva, Esther, and Millie, who passed away only recently. Throughout her life Ida maintained the qualities that would describe her right to the end of her days: she was a vibrant woman, endlessly optimistic and positive. She was elegant, with fine taste. She was an exceptional hostess, knowing all about protocol, and eager to mentor younger women to be hostesses as well. She was fiercely loyal to her family, beginning with her parents and sisters and continuing all the way to her great-grandchildren. Family was family, and that was all that mattered. She was regarded as a highly gifted woman. Although her education extended only to the end of high school, she always seemed to have solutions to problems that evaded even professionals. Many came to her for her wise counsel. This probably extended from her incredible passion for reading. She was always reading books, bringing home new books from the library and even start to write book reports, which she would share with her family, which were then published in the local library newsletter.

Ida worked for many years, in clothing and linens, and those she worked for quickly came to rely on her for natural talents at business and organization. But work and family were never enough, and Ida maintained a whirlwind of volunteer activity, taking leadership roles with the Temple Anshe Sholom and the Temple’s Devora Sisterhood, the National Council of Jewish Women and Hadassah. And, as if this was not enough, there were the social activities: bridge games, outing clubs, the Saturday nighters, knitting and needle point, collecting antiques and the seemingly never-ending time in the kitchen cooking and baking.

Ida was in her early 20s when she met her beloved Walter and the married when she was 23, in 1935. Soon Bernard and Reesa came along, and Ida had her own family, which she longed for. Bernard remembers their childhood as being ideal, which their mother always there for them, constantly caring and providing guidance and wisdom. Reesa recalls their home having what seemed like a revolving door. The house was always full of people, the coffee pot always on and the delicious homemade goodies that were always available to go with the coffee. No matter how busy, Ida always had time for family and friends. Always available, always the consummate hostess, always willing to help. She was always doing something, hardly ever resting, and when she did lie down, she would do so for exactly 15 minutes and then resume her activities, totally refreshed.

The last couple of years were difficult for Ida and her family, and, beginning around the time of Walter’s passing in 2000, her health began to decline. She eventually moved into Shalom Village, becoming known there as the “Queen of Shalom” for her hospitable, caring and loving nature. She was a real lady, a true Ayshet Huyyal right to the very end.

————————————————————————————————-

Eulogy: Ida Glass by Reesa Winer (Daughter)

My mother’s house had a revolving front door.  Her home and kitchen were always full of people, the coffee pot was always on and delicious homemade goodies went with the coffee.  She was a extremely sociable woman who always had time for her friends.

She was actively involved in the community taking leadership roles.  Temple Anshe Shalom, The National Council of Jewish Women and Hadassah.

She assisted several family members in their businesses, acting as a sales person.  She was always doing something, hardly ever resting and when she did she would lie down for exactly 15 mins. and then resume her duties, totally refreshed.

She loved nature, always commenting on the beauty of trees, flowers and the world around her. ————————————————————————————————-

Eulogy:  Ida Glass by Jeremy Glass (Grandson)

There are so many gifts of heritage and identity that a grandmother imparts  to her family along the way.  If there are core family values passed down through many generations, Grandma and Grandpa you instilled in us and others  integrity, honesty, pride, industriousness, grit and determination.  I will always remember you as so very well put together, so strong on your own two feet, smart as a tack, so giving to us on our visits; one must mention how stylish and polished you and grandpa were as a couple, and of course you were the best baker on this side of the continent.  The pride and loyalty you showed towards our father and Auntie Reesa have modeled to us what we should expect from our elders and what the young people around us should expect from us.

The Glass family has lost its beauteous matriarch.  Grandma Glass, I send you our love, and I send my sympathy to the rest of our family as we celebrate the heritage and pride you have modeled and instilled in us.

There has been a spate of activity in the nanotech realm lately. Over the past few months I’ve tracked several new developments. Here they are in no particular order: spine, ram, solar cell, ca

1) Solar Power: The problem with solar technology is the high cost of the solar cells. The current level of technology in solar is in silicon wafer solar cells. They have low relative effeciency and a high relative cost. This makes them unfeasible as a replacement. Many companies, amont them Nanosolar of California, have developed a technology using nanoparticles which can absorb light more efficiently, but more importantly, more economically. Nanosolar is targetting a rate of $1/watt which would make solar power a viable alternative over nuclear or fossil fuels.

More amazing is the fact that the solar films can be mass produced and printed on to any building or surface. More details can be found here: http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10989479
http://www.nanosolar.com/

2) Cancer Treatments:This story warms my heart on so many levels. John Kanzius was himself diagnosed with Leukemia. He underwent several bouts of painful chemotherapy. Not a physician but instead a retired radio and television engineer, he had a brainwave one night while sleeping. He came up with the idea of using radio waves to selectively target cancer cells while leaving the remaining healthy cells unscathed. Chemotherapy is based on the differential survivability of cancerous cells versus healthy cells. That is to say the chemicals used are toxic to both healthy and cancer cells, and the hope is that the cancer cells die out faster than the healthy ones: not a promising prospect.

Kanzius’ idea is remarkably different. He plans to send nanoparticles of gold into the tumor. He plans to use a targeting molecule attached to the gold nanoparticle to saturate the tumor with particles. Then he directs a highly concentrated radio beam towards the tumor. The gold heats up under influence of this beam and essentially the tumor is cooked.

3) RAM-Memory: Hard discs have had a good run. They’ve given us a terabyte of storage at nominal cost and with reasonable access time. The technology of the future however will but much smaller, with no operating parts to wear out. The technology is called ‘Racetrack’ and is being developed in the Almaden Research Center in San Jose California. At the heart of the technology electron spin is used to code information. This information races along a nanowire at blazing speeds with very low power consumption. Future incarnations of this technology promise replace hard discs an allow for near instantaneous start up and uncompromising reliability.

4) Spinal Repair: We all recall fondly the heroic efforts of Christopher Reeve to bring about an awareness of spinal injury and the tragic effects it can have on the sufferers and their families. The problem with spinal injury, indeed most nerve injury, is that the injured site (referred to as a transection) forms a scar at either end of the cut bundle. Nerves do have the ability to regrow however, they lack the ability to bridge this scar. John Kessler, M.D., Davee Professor of Stem Cell Biology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine has come up with a gel of self assembling nanostructures which is injected at the injury site. Once inside, they go to work assembling a scaffolding which allows neural stem cells to bridge the gap. Mice with spinal injuries were injected with the compound and showed significant improvement including the ability to walk again.

News of the latest diatribe against Orthodox Judaism crossed my computer screen recently.  In his first book, R. D. Gold’s “Bondage of the Mind” attempts to lay out solid counter proofs against the supposed moral authority of the Orthodox.  In my 34th year of life this isn’t the first attempt I’ve seen nor is it likely to be my last. 

I haven’t read the book but I have read several reviews.  Some of the main points discussed are:

1. The Torah is a work of man, not the writ word of God.
2. The survival of the Jewish people throughout the millenia is remarkeable but not necessarily a work of God.  Many other peoples have survived in place for centuries
3. The Torah does not describe an ultimate justice citing the punishment of righteous king Josiah for the sins of Manasseh.
4. The problems of modern society are not related to a loosening of religious standards.  Religious standards themselves proscribe certain immoral behaviours.  Gold cites several examples including the Orthdox treatment of women.
5. Gold examines several controversial figures (Rabbi Ovadia Yosef) and several Orthodox scandals.  The subtext to his discussions would appear to be that the presence of controversial characters or scandals places the moral supremacy of the Orthodox under suspicion.

I can’t speak to Gold’s intentions in writing his book but I can speak to it’s anticipated effects.  It will and already has upset some of the Orthodox.  It may prevent some borderline candidates from becoming Orthodox.  It will not move many Orthodox to leave the ranks. 

The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked…
– H. L. Mencken

That may sound as if it was intended as an insult.  Not so.  I, having been orthodox myself, fully understand the joy of belief.  Just the same, being a servant of the truth above all else, I must admit I was deluded during my stint of Orthodoxy.  There are no magic bullets that can be used to, in an instant, disprove Orthodoxy.  It isn’t a problem of logic, it’s a problem of psychology.  The fabric of belief is ripstop nylon which has been reinforced under centuries of attack.  Ripstop nylon in turn is the stuff of hot air balloons, full of hot air yes, yet they offer long peaceful rides just the same.  It’s only upon a paradigmatic shift away from Orthodoxy that one is able to look at the body of knowledge and notice many, not just a few, magic bullets of failed logic.  I have an armory of magic bullets at my disposal, which have come from a lifetime of reflection and re-evaluation.  I’ll share my favourite bullet.  It’s a subtle point but personally I find it undefeatable.

Orthodox Judaism holds two bodies of law to be of divine origin:  the Torah and the Talmud.  The Torah is the written law allegedly passed down to Moses at Mount Sinai and the Talmud is a compilation of the Oral Tradition.  In common law there exists the notion of Statutes and Regulations.  The former allocates the legislative authority and the latter are the laws created based on that authority.  Both reference eachother extensively and one is meaningless without the other. 

Orthodox Judaism likewise claims that the Talmud and Torah are inseperable.

The Gemara (also known as the Talmud or Oral Torah ), an explanation of the Written Torah, was given to Moshe at Sinai. Without the Talmud the Written Torah can’t be understood. There are a lot of critical facts and points that are only hinted at or not even mentioned in the Written Torah that were explained in the Talmud.
– http://www.beverlyhillschabad.com/gemara.htm

I agree that they are inseparable, in that the Torah makes little sense without the Talmud.  However, the Torah doesn’t mention the Talmud, not even once.  Now, not to be stereotypical, but Jews have no shortage of lawyers.  I find it very hard that God, the father of this nation, would write two bodies of law one of which contains no reference to the other.  It just wouldn’t happen.

The Orthodox, of course, disagree and claim that the following verse proves divine origins of both bodies:

And I will give thee the tables of stone, and the law and the commandment, which I have written that thou mayest teach them.
–  Exodus XXIV, 12.

Where is the mention of the Talmud?  It says the laws and commandments which I have WRITTEN.  Where is the mention of the Oral Tradition (Talmud)?  The Talmud itself tries to explain this away:

R. Levi b. Hama says further in the name of R. Simeon b. Lakish: What is the meaning of the verse: And I will give thee the tables of stone, and the law and the commandment, which I have written that thou mayest teach them?  ‘Tables of stone’: these are the ten commandments; ‘the law’: this is the Pentateuch; ‘the commandment’: this is the Mishnah; ‘which I have written’: these are the Prophets and the Hagiographa; ‘that thou mayest teach them’: this is the Gemara.  It teaches [us] that all these things were given to Moses on Sinai.
– Berakoth 5a -> http://www.come-and-hear.com/berakoth/berakoth_5.html

Am I to accept that an interpretation of God’s word is God’s word because a human interpreted God’s word to be God’s word?  If you’re confused by that previous sentence, it was intentional, and pretty much sums up my point.  To rephrase, you can’t claim that the Talmud is the divine word of God by interpreting the Torah in the Talmud to suit your purpose.  The only proof I’d accept is the Torah itself saying: “today I give you the oral laws and the written laws”.  Short of this, I say to the Orthodox when they play Moral Monopoly: “Do not pass Go, Do not collect 200 shekels”. 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

With the recent passing of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn I was reminded of a lecture by psychology professor Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto.  This lecture expounded the virtue of taking personal responsibility in dealing with our fears.  Peterson used a children’s book “There No Such Things As A Dragon” and the moral lessons therein to reveal how we all can be crippled by a metaphoric fear dragons and released only by facing them.

Peterson first deals with the common fears we all deal with such as fear of dying and losing those we love.  Then Peterson comes to dealing with fears and adversity imposed upon us by social forces such as tyranny and bureaucracy.  This is where he begins to discuss Solzhenitsyn. 

Solzhenitsyn is a survivor of the former Soviet Gulag where according to Solzhenitsyn’s account, approximately 60 million people died between the years of 1919 and 1959.  Solzhenitsyn started out life on the Russian front.  He was captured by the Germans where he was thrown in a special POW camp because Stalin in his neuroticism refused to sign the Geneva convention.  Conditions were so bad in these camps that other POW’s — who were not much better off themselves – threw packages of food over the fences in pity of the Soviet inmates.

With the end of the war, Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia expecting a hero’s welcome.  Much to his surprise, he and his comrades were thrown into the Gulag out of fears that they may have been contaminated by their exposure to Western culture.  Conditions in the gulag were intolerable.  Many of Solzhenitsyn’s fellow inmates ate a type of clay just to have their stomachs feel fuller.  Solzhenitsyn then asked a remarkable question under the circumstances:

“What did I do to get here?”  This is a remarkeable question because many of us would immediately look to the external conditions that brought about Solzhenitsyn’s plight.  There was the war, the Soviet Empire and any other host of external conditions that could be used to explain his current situation.  Solzhenitsyn instead chose to revisit, over the following 10 years, all the things he had done wrong in his life.  In Peterson’s words “he revisited anything that gave his conscience a pang”.

Out of this introspection, he wrote the Gulag Archipelago – a 3 volume 1900 page book – which he committed to memory as there was no pen and paper available to him in the gulag.  This work circulated for years in the underground before it was eventually published in 1975.  The Gulag Archipelago went on to be the greatest literary attack on the Soviet Empire.  Solzhenitsyn, under completely unreasonable circumstances, chooses to take personal responsibility for his plight.  As a result of this soul searching, he wrote a literary attack which in many real ways bested the former Soviet Empire.  Some may immediately be tempted to say: “well the world doesn’t work like that!”  Peterson retorts: “Do we really know the world works?”  Peterson equates injustice large and small to dragons that we must all face on a personal and societal level. 

In a related work, Peterson quotes Solzhenitsyn saying: “one man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny”.  Peterson further commented: ”I don’t think he meant that as a metaphor–or hyperbole.”

Peterson’s lecture can be found at:
http://www.tvo.org/podcasts/bi/audio/BIJordanPeterson031806.mp3
(The section about Solzhenitsyn begins at time index 44:00)

TVO (public television in Ontario) recently aired a lecture by Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and an author discussing his latest book Musicophilia.  I’ve always been interested in the understanding music on a neurological basis.  Music seems so universal that I often wonder what is happening on a neurological basis to make it such?  I’ve jotted down a few key points from the lecture.  The lecture audio can be found here.

Points:

• Upon visual inspection of a brain, one can tell which individuals were musicians and which weren’t.  This isn’t the case for say a mathematician.
• Even with diseases of the cerebral cortex (Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, etc) musical ability is often retained.
• 10% of musicians and 20% of born blind musicians have absolute (perfect) pitch.  Absolute pitch is the ability to recognize a note as say a G-sharp upon hearing.
• It is theorized that in born blind musicians the visual cortex is reallocated to music and tonal perception.
• Absolute pitch appears to be universal in the early years of life and is pruned away during later years.
• Some people can suffer from musical hallucinations which are loud enough to drown out their ability to hear actual conversations.

… The Israeli accent is a great accent to fake at a bar.

(Israeli Accent)

“Hey Baby, I’m going to pre-emptively attack you by asking for your phone number before I even say hello…”

(normal accent)

It always works like a charm! How can any female argue with that?!

(beat)

However, there are a few disadvantages to the accent. The problem is that a few words are mispronounced leading to double entendres. For those of you who took the GED on TV high school equivalency, that’s a ‘double meaning’. A good example of this is the word ‘peace’ – as in ‘peace on earth’. Israelis tend to pronounce it as if they’re saying the bodily function ‘piss’. When I was in Israel, I attended a discussion of the Peace Process given by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, given in English. In this case, the double entendre worked to his advantage – it made sense to me in both meanings. It went something like this:

(Israeli accent)

Good morning and welcome to Israel. I’ve been asked to speak to you today about the Piss Process and the prospects for piss in the Middle East. I think it’s appropriate to first start out with a history of piss in the region.

Back in the days of Golda Meir, we tried to make piss with our neighbours. The Arab culture is a strange one in that they are not willing to make piss with a woman. Personally, when my desire to make piss is strong, I would make piss with any person standing at my side, but I can’t speak to their culture.

Next we come to the Camp David Accords. Back in the 70’s all the Middle East Leaders flew to Camp David in the United States to make piss. It was hoped that the United States could provide the required push needed by all sides. Unfortunately, as many of you know, when a bunch of men get together, sometimes there is an anxiety about making piss. Regrettably, that’s exactly what happened. Even though we were all there standing side by side, the anxiety made it such that no piss came out of those meetings. The morale of the story is that if someone wants to make piss, no one can push them to do it — the push for piss must come from within.

Well, the 80’s were a dry desert in the search for piss in the Middle East. Thus, in the late 80’s, out of frustration, the Palestinians began to throw stones hoping to relieve the blockage in the piss process, and it worked. In 1993 we held a meeting in Oslo out of which piss began to flow. It ended with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat making piss on the White House lawn and the uncomfortable hand shake afterwards.

Everyone had high hopes that the Oslo Accords would quickly spread piss all over the Middle East. Unfortunately piss trickled ever so slowly, causing much frustration and disappointment. It is in this era, that of the late 90’s, that they started talking more about a piss process rather than piss itself. From this we learn that when people start talking about a piss process, they are not serious about piss. We all know that when you want to make piss, you simply make piss -– it’s not complicated. And this leaves us in our current state of long discussions about the process of making piss, with very little piss being produced.

In conclusion, it is my hope that we will soon learn from our mistakes and all parties involved will be sincere in their desire for piss and we shall soon see piss spread all over the Middle East.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/08/21/business/21real.graphic.html

This is a graph of historical housing prices relative to inflation since 1890.  The graph is indexed to inflation so you are seeing the bubble in house prices above and beyond inflation. 

The take home message to this graph is the following.  Take a look at the average home value over the past 100 odd years.  It seems to average somewhere around $112,000.  Now look at the peak which is somewhere around $180,000.  Dividing through we get a ‘bubble-factor’ = 180/112 = 1.6 .  What that means to you is that if you own a house currently valued at $500,000, if the bubble corrects you’ll actually own a $312,500 house (500/1.6 = 312.5).

Will the bubble correct?  Historically bubbles do one of two things:  1) they correct or 2) they flatten and wait for inflation to catch up with them.  What will this bubble do?  I can’t tell you and neither can any of the supposed experts. 

What caused this bubble?  The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to as low as 1%.  This flooded the market with money which people invested in housing, since the internet bubble had burst. 

Who benefits from this bubble?  This bubble benefits 3 groups of people, bankers, the recently dead, and people with in laws.  Bankers make huge profits on the the inflated mortgages people must now take out to put a roof over their head.  Those who have recently died (since we’re at the peak of the bubble) benefit as their estate sells their property at the inflated price with record profit.  Hopefully they have children to benefit from the heavily taxed inheritance.  Regrettably, if they don’t have children to pass the benefit on to, then it’ll be hard to enjoy their windfall, being dead and all. 

If you’re alive you never benefit from this type of bubble.  People typically want to move up, that is move to a better home.  Thus you have to sell your current home and move to a better home.  Thus, you make a profit on the sale, but take a hit on the inflated purchase.  Basically it’s like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and it all ends up even in the wash. 

If you have in laws and can sell at the inflated price and move in with your in laws (avoiding having to buy an inflated property) you may benefit from the bubble by waiting for it to bottom out, if indeed it does.  Living with your in laws may allow you to sell high and buy low, but that assumes the bubble corrects and moreover, living with your parents you may wish you were recently dead.

Who suffers from this bubble?  The most notable group of people to suffer are the first time home buyers.  Entering the market at the peak you’ll be paying 1.6 times what you should hadn’t the bubble occured.  Ultimately all property owners suffer because the bubble leads them to think that they have more money than they actually do.

Film Review of “Babel” — Spoiler Warning (however this movie was written spoiled)

– An alternative view

Biblically, Genesis Chap 11 tells of the story of humans who sought to build the tower of Babel such that they could reach God. God then responds by confounding their speech and understanding of one another and spreading them all over the world. This is the Genesis account for the origin of religions and races.

If the movie “Babel” has anything to do with its biblical namesake, in this case, God makes all the people of the earth extremely stupid. First we start with a couple in marital trouble as a result of the recent death of one of their newborn, likely from SIDS. This brainy couple decides to take a trip to Morroco (without the remaining kids) to solve their problems: stupid.

Compounding this stupidity, a Morrocan father procures a rifle to help rid his flocks of jackals. He gives the rifle to his stupid young children who decide to test the efficacy of the weapon on passing tourist busses. On this bus is? Yup you guessed it, the stupid couple with marital troubles. Who gets shot? You guessed it, the wife from this couple. Now some would look upon this as an artistic study of cause and effect. I look on it more simply: Stupid people shooting at stupid people is simply natural selection at its finest.

But wait, one would think this expose of stupidity would suffice for a two hour and twenty minute film, but there are more stupid entaglements. The rifle was originally given to a local Morrocan by a Japanese hunter. This Japanese man recently had his wife commit suicide and he stupidly leaves his younger (deaf and mute) daughter alone for great spells of time such that she needs to compensate by seeking sex from any and every available male. In the films most unbelievable stroke, she fails on every attempt. I have the fortune of living in a male body and as such am qualified to inform you that this would never occur.

But wait again, there’s still another stupid entaglement. The housekeeper of the stupid maritally challenged couple has a wedding to attend in Mexico. She was originally promised the day off, but upon hearing of the tragic string of events which happened to her stupid employers, she’s informed that she won’t be able to get that day off. What follows is a screenplay that could be accomplished by going to Taco Bell and using 8.5″ x 11″ stock as toilet paper to clean up.

She takes the kids, American citizens, into Mexico with her. The kids experience the cultural diversity of a Mexican wedding, at first seeming to enjoy it. Things go awry when stupid people allow a drunk driver to drive the kids and Nanny back to San Diego. The rest is just too hard to believe; first that it could actually happen and next that the screen writer wrote it. The driver is hassled at the border. He panics and runs the border with the police hot on his tail. He abandons the children and the Nanny in the desert with promises to return. (He was likely fleeing the scene of a crime in screen writing.) The Nanny and children are left to fend for themselves in the desert when he never returns. Eventually they are picked up by the border patrol and the children are returned unharmed, and the Nanny is deported. I am a critic of US Immigration Policy, however, not in this case.

In the end Babel is an example of Oscar seeking formulaic writing. The formula is simple: create an appearance of meaning, when, in fact, there is none. In so doing, you automatically embarass any critics of the film by allowing the argument that they are simply dullards who can’t grasp the great meaning of the film. The truth is far more simple in this case: Stupid people understand stupid people very well and are able to write a painful two hour and twenty minute discertation on the interactions of stupidity.