Wednesday, July 20, 2022

Kosher phone dispute grips ultra-Orthodox Tel Aviv suburb

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/19/kosher-phone-dispute-grips-ultra-orthodox-tel-aviv-suburb

Tel Aviv’s booming science and technology industry, bolstered by graduates of elite state intelligence units, has earned Israel the nickname “start-up nation”.

Yet in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox suburb just a few miles east of Tel Aviv’s skyscrapers, a vicious fight is unfolding over whether smartphones are compatible with traditional Jewish law - and who should have the power to decide on internet access.

Three weeks are period of danger from demons

 Eichah Rabbah (01:29). Within the days of distress from the seventeenth of Tammuz to the ninth of Ab, during which Keteb meriri is prevalent The demon Keteb stalks through the greater part of the midday period, from the beginning of the sixth hour until the end of the ninth. R. Levi said: It spoils the course of the day from the end of the fourth hour until the beginning of the ninth; and it does not walk in the sun or shade but in the shadow near the sun. R. Johanan said: It is all over full of eyes, scales, and hair. R. Simeon b. Lakish said: It has one eye set over its heart and whoever looks at it falls down dead. Once a pious man looked at it and fell dead upon his face, and some say that it was R. Judah b. Rabbi. Samuel saw it but did not fall; for he said, ‘It is the snake of the house.’

Pesachim (111b) Seeing a Keteb Meriri approaching him on the left, he transferred R. Papa to his left and R. Huna son of R. Joshua to his right. Said R. Papa to him: ‘Wherein am I different that you were not afraid on my behalf?’ ‘The time is in your favour,’ replied he.   From, the first of Tammuz until the sixteenth they are certainly to be found; henceforth it is doubtful whether they are about or not, and they are found in the shadow of hazabe which have not grown a cubit, and in the morning and evening shadows when these are less than a cubit [in length], but mainly in the shadow of a privy.

Pesachim (111b) Keteb Meriri: there are two Ketebs, one before noon and one after noon; the one before noon is called Ketheb Meriri, and looks like a ladle turning in the jug of kamka. That of the afternoon is called Keteb Yashud Zaharaim [Destruction that wasteth at noonday]; it looks like a goat's horn, and wings compass it about. 

  Vayikra Rabbah (12:3) Our Rabbis explain that ‘keteb’ is a demon. And why was he called keteb’?’ R. Abba son of Kahana said: Because he breaks into the daily studies from the beginning of four hours of the day to the end of nine. R. Levi said: Because he robs pupils of their noonday lessons from the end of four hours to the beginning of nine hours. He holds sway neither in the shade nor in the sun but between the shade and the sun. His head is like that of a calf and a horn grows out from the centre of his forehead, and he rolls like a pitcher. R. Huna, in the name of R. Joseph, said: ‘Keteb meriri’ is in form covered with scales, hairy all over, and full of eyes. And, said R. Simeon b. Lakish, he has one eye set in his heart, and anyone who sees him can never survive, whether it be man or beast. Anyone who sees him drops down dead. ‘Meriri’ holds sway during the period between the seventeenth of Tammuz and the ninth of Ab. Hezekiah saw him and dropped down on his face and died. R. Phinehas the priest said: It is related that one saw him and was stricken with epilepsy They reported that Judah b. R. Samuel saw him and did not drop down. Nevertheless, it is reported that he died.

Bamidbar Rabbah (12:03) Our Rabbis explain that ‘keteb’ is a demon. And why was he called keteb’?’ R. Abba son of Kahana said: Because he breaks into the daily studies from the beginning of four hours of the day to the end of nine. Levi said: Because he robs pupils of their noonday lessons from the end of four hours to the beginning of nine hours. He holds sway neither in the shade nor in the sun but between the shade and the sun. His head is like that of a calf and a horn grows out from the center of his forehead, and he rolls like a pitcher. R. Huna, in the name of R. Joseph, said: ‘Keteb meriri’ is in form covered with scales, hairy all over, and full of eyes. And, said R. Simeon b. Lakish, he has one eye set in his heart, and anyone who sees him can never survive, whether it be man or beast. Anyone who sees him drops down dead. 

The Secret Service's actions on text messages don't pass the smell test

 https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/19/opinions/secret-service-texts-raise-questions-wierson/index.html

    Whatever happened does not pass the smell test. To paraphrase Marcellus from Shakespeare's "Hamlet," something appears rotten in the Secret Service.

    Tuesday, July 19, 2022

    Why Democrats are begging Trump to start 2024 right now

     https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/15/dems-dreaming-of-trump-pre-midterm-announcement-00045969

    Democrats aren’t just eager for Donald Trump to cannonball into the 2024 presidential race before the fall midterms. Across the country, they are actively plotting ways to immediately capitalize on a pre-November announcement.

    Interior Ministry: US rabbi convicted of sexual assault won’t receive citizenship

     https://www.timesofisrael.com/interior-ministry-us-rabbi-convicted-of-sexual-assault-wont-receive-citizenship/

    The Interior Ministry has denied the immigration request of an American Orthodox rabbi convicted of sexually assaulting his pupils, the ministry said Tuesday.

    However, the disgraced rabbi, Baruch Lanner, will be able to remain in Israel for nearly a full year with the temporary residency status he was granted a few weeks ago, a spokesperson for the ministry’s Immigration and Population Authority told The Times of Israel.



    The Civics Project: A constitutional ban on bullets would be a difficult target

     https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/05/02/civics-project-constitutional-ban-bullets-would-difficult-target/4886037001/

    While bullets are not specifically mentioned in the Second Amendment, it is likely that the Court would find that a prohibition on bullets would prevent the exercise of the individual right that was recognized in the Amendment. If requiring trigger-locks was too far for the Court, I suspect the prohibition of bullets would be as well. While a state could make bullets more expensive through taxation, even that would probably face Constitutional challenge if the tax made the cost of purchasing bullets prohibitive.

    "Thanks to failed Dem policies, beer is 9.1% more expensive."

     https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jul/18/ron-johnson/yes-beer-prices-are-no-s-not-only-because-democrat/

    • Like many other products, the price of beer has steeply increased since 2020, rising just under 10% since April 2020. 

    • Experts say there are a host of reasons that prices have risen, including the Russia invasion of Ukraine, supply chain issues and the resonating impacts of the pandemic. 

    • In other words, it can’t be solely attributed to the policies and spending under Democrats, such as the American Rescue Plan.

    Monday, July 18, 2022

    The Tyranny of Time

     http://www.ced.org.in/docs/ced/publications/DD/DD3/The-Tyranny-of-Time.pdf

    But Historian Stephen Kern, a professor at Northern Illinois University whose book The Culture of Time and Space chronicled the soaring velocity of life between 1880 and World War I, pointed out that "new speeds have always brought out alarmists." In the 1830s, he noted, it was feared that train passengers would suffer crushed bones from travelling at speeds as high as 35 miles an hour. Kern considers the current concern about the effects of our speeded-up lives a similar form of hysteria. "Technologies that promote speed are essentially good," he said, adding that, "the historical record is that humans have never opted for slowness."

    How to escape the tyranny of the clock

     https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200306-how-to-live-without-time

    Holly Andersen, who studies the philosophy of science and metaphysics at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, also warns about what losing our sense of time could do to our sense of self. She believes it’s not possible to have conscious experience without time and the passage of time. Think about how your personal identity is built over time, filed away as memories.

    Countering the tyranny of the clock

     https://www.economist.com/business/2020/10/17/countering-the-tyranny-of-the-clock

    Two hundred years ago, a device began to dominate the world of work. No, not the steam engine—the gadget was the clock. With the arrival of the factory, people were paid on the basis of how many hours they worked, rather than their material output.

    The tyranny of time

     It is interesting to note as we have a strong movement against smartphones and internet - because they are supposedly taking over our existence. There was a similar reaction to the introduction into the world of clocks and time

    https://www.noemamag.com/the-tyranny-of-time/#:~:text=The%20clock%20is%20a%20useful,and%20the%20world%20around%20us.&text=Joe%20Zadeh%20is%20a%20writer%20based%20in%20Newcastle

    The more we synchronize ourselves with the time in clocks, the more we fall out of sync with our own bodies and the world around us. Borrowing a term from the environmentalist Bill McKibben, Michelle Bastian, a senior lecturer at Edinburgh University and editor of the academic journal Time & Society, has argued that clocks have made us “fatally confused” about the nature of time. In the natural world, the movement of “hours” or “weeks” do not matter. Thus the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the sudden extinction of species that have lived on Earth for millions of years, the rapid spread of viruses, the pollution of our soil and water — the true impact of all of this is beyond our realm of understanding because of our devotion to a scale of time and activity relevant to nothing except humans.

    IS THE UNITED STATES A DEMOCRACY OR A REPUBLIC?

     https://act.represent.us/sign/democracy-republic


    We often hear a question debated in person and online by Americans who care deeply about making sure our government works for the people: is the United States a democracy or a republic?

    Here’s the answer: The United States is both a democracy and a republic.

    We promise we’re not dodging the question. It would be much easier if one word was absolutely correct and the other was not, but the terms are not mutually exclusive. The United States can be accurately defined as both a democracy and a republic.

    If Trump looks like a fascist and acts like a fascist, then maybe he is one

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/16/if-trump-looks-like-a-fascist-and-acts-like-a-fascist-then-maybe-he-is-one 

    I can see three objections to calling a large section of the Republican party pre-fascist. The first can be dismissed with a flick of the fingers as it comes from a self-interested right that has to pretend it is not in the grip of a deep sickness – and not only in the United States. The second is the old soothing “it can’t happen here” exceptionalism of the Anglo-Saxon west, which has yet to learn that the US and UK are exceptional in the 21st century for all the wrong reasons. The third sounds intelligent but is the dumbest of all. You should not call Trump or any other leader a pre- or neo-fascist or any kind of fascist until he has gone the whole hog and transformed his society into a totalitarian war machine.

    Sunday, July 17, 2022

    Trump says murders are up in Democrat-run cities. They’re up in Republican-run cities, too.

     https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21493428/presidential-debate-trump-biden-violent-crime-murder-democrats-republicans

    All of that is to say that whatever is causing murders to spike this year, political party isn’t it.

    So what’s going on? Criminologists and other experts caution that they don’t really know yet. But they’ve offered several potential explanations: The Covid-19 pandemic, and all the chaos that it’s wrought, could have led to more homicides — by hurting social support programs that can prevent escalating violence, damaging the economy, and overwhelming hospitals that treat violent crime victims, among other possibilities. The protests around police brutality and systemic racism may have led cops to back off proactive policing, or caused the general public to trust the police less and subsequently work with the cops less often, both of which could have led to more unchecked violence. A surge in gun purchases this year could have fueled more gun violence.