=jr050510 JOURNAL STARTING 10 MAY '05 ================================================================= Just past Moderno street, as you walk from downtown past the synagouge, is a used book shop with 3 Internet terminals, with A_druve (1.4 Mb) and I think CD and maybe DVD access. Picked up a copy of 7th Annual Edition of the year's best S-F, editted by JUDITH MERRIL . 75 cents from DELL, when it was published in 1963. The year in question in 1961. From what I've read so far, she has excellent taste -- the stories are cleanly written and life-affirming, both increasingly rare virtues in science-fiction. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 11 May '05, 12 May '05, reporting fatal demonstrations in Afghanistan in response to reported (Newsweek, current issue) desecration of Koran by U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo In Jewish tradition, as in Islam, it is forbidden to take sacred books into a privy. Jewish tradition also requires that unusable sacred books be disposed of only in designated locations. The reported attempted desecration of the Koran by U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo -- the sort of intentional insult to religious sensibillities not since the Nazi's burned almost all the sacred books of the Jewish communities of Europe -- must be immediaely and unambiguously disowned by the U.S. government. A useful first step would be to immediately arrest everyone in the chain of command who may have been responsible, up to Rumsfeld -- who must either be responsible or incompetent -- and quite possibly our disingenuous President. There is apparently a U.S. policy encouraging interrogators to violate the religious sensibilities of Islamic prisoners. That is a violation of the univeral human right to freedom of religious practice. It also rests on a simplistic view of religious obligation. In Jewish tradition, a prisoner -- or for that matter a military conscript -- is released from religious obligations which he is not free to fulfill; the shame of desecration then falls upon the jailers, not the prisoner. And Jewish tradition, like Islam, and in a more complex way Christianity, states unequivocally that there is but one Supreme Being. So a desecration of Islam is a desecration of all monotheistic religions, and presupposes a sort of Manichean polytheism -- the xenophobic notion that Muslim prayers are directed, not to the Supreme Being, but to some sort of imaginary wrathful deity. ---------------------------------------------------------------- It is appropriate that the nomination of John Bolton, that campus clown, for Ambassador or HatchetMan to the UN be sent to the Senate floor, where the Republican majority can show if they have any integrity left. Committees should advise the Congress, not dominate it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT I DID ON MY COFFEE BREAK: Having debarqued in Gandria I walked into the Locanda and sat on the Terrace overlooking the lake to take a coffee and my torte was one that'd overstayed its welcome in the frigidaire and there picked up a soupcon of freon the which to pay to eat one uughtn't, but mine Hostess seeming unconvinced insisted, But it's fresh -- and so I thought, perhaps I'm wrong and glad to please I ate the rest; the freon stayed in my mouth as aftertaste all afaternoon. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT Friday the 13th of May edition quoting HaAretz 12 May HaAretz is quite right; giving half of the land of Israel, including most the biblical Jewish state, to the Palestinian warlords may lead to lasting peace. On the other hand it may lead to a quick vicious war that would result at best in the destruction of the state of Israel, and at worst in the dstruction of its people. Let those who wish to gamble for such stakes go to Jericho. HaAretz advocates 're-partition', and that's a fine idea, if not done half-way -- rather than the parittion of 1947, let us return to that of 1924. Israel can take over the original British mandate (England having proved itself incapable of managing even its own mad cows), and the USA, already nicely stuck in Babylon, can take the rest and do its best. HaAretz opposes 'stinginess' and 'pettiness' albeit not with its readers' land and homes, only with those of the 'religious' subculture, whom if it could it would, it seems, gladly sell surreptitiously to the slave-traders of north Africa. --------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 13 May '05 (editorial, 'Highways paved with Pork' Hazrat Inayat Khan once met and expressed great admiration for Henry Ford, which shows that even an enlightened master and saint can have no knack to prophecy the future. The first step toward saving whatever's left of this planet is to ban practically all private automobile traffic. As for the pending U.S. Highway bill, no doubt questions of domestic politics require its enactment, and "so be it" as our saanists say, but let the requisite concrete be poured vertically over capital hill, after an initial dab on that squirt in the White House. --------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 11 May (Goodman) If, as she claims, Ellen Goodman really is 64 years old, she has only herself to blame. ------------------------------------------------------------- Letter_to_the_Editor 's as abstract art, like the pseudo-comic panels of pop art, that need not say anything. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Sent IHT 12 May '05, re: IHT 11 May '05 It seems cleaer enough that Lyndie England was no sadist, just an easily_manipulated simple_minded patsy with a loose libido. It it not she but Rumsfeld who should be on trial. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 13 May '05 I like intellectual property theft. Between intifadas it was the economic base if any of the autonomous Palestinian areas, supplying average Israelis with designer-look clothing, software, and more recently movie DVDs at otherwise unaffordable prices. Now one an only hope that the heathen Chinese fill the Gap, as it were. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 'Conceptual art' ain't necessarily art and rarely is; it's the use of an artistic context to make a conceputal point, usually trivial, with minimally artistic techniques. Eg the Berlin Shoah Memorial, while appropriate to its urban landscape, has no more aesthetic nor cultural value than a large tidy junkyard. ---------------------------------------------------------------- North Korea is playing the bad boy of international politics in a very dangerous way. It should not be allowed to go too far. The USA debacle in Iraq notwithstanding, this is one dictatorship that might well be replaced. But only if China agrees. General MacArthur tried it once, without including them in the loop, while Harry Truman wasn't looking, and dragged the USA into the first of its three post-WWII quagmires. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 13 May '05 (Melikian) I see they just sold for $14 million an Edward Hopper picture ("Chair Car")that would not be slumming in a store catalog. I can get more aesthetic value for less by picking a well-bred tulip on the Lugano lakeshore, even if the cops nip me. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 13 May '05 -- Janet Maslin reviewing Peter Kramer's "Against Depession" In characterising as potentially pathologic the sort of depressed episodes that cultures have hitherto taken as part of the human condition, Peter Kramer, Prozac pusher, risks opting for a sort of feel_good__facism exemplified by MacDonald's overpriced dogmeat on airbread with plastic dressing served under the USA slogan "Have a good day". ---------------------------------------------------------------- There is someting uniquely unpleasant about the IHT comic 'Dilbert', which has virutally nothing to do with the business world it purports to depict. --------------------------------------------------------------- EXPENSE NOTES, CONT., ARCHIVING: To mail 2 DVD's to the USA costs SF 15, plus SF 6 to send it Registered Mail. A 250 Gb Harddisc, which I now need, is SF 300 at InterDiscount. The internal 160 GB, which gives about 136 GB free space formatted, filled after about 40 tapes plus odds and ends and some repetition. To Save 1 tape in all 4 Audacity formats is about 1.1 Gb . Ogg is about 50 Mb per tape, Audacity is about 500 Mb per tape. Ogg can be reloaded into Audacity, but of course oen can't recover the compression loss. --------------------------------------------------------------- Honest George is back with his dead horse on a plate draped in white pasta graced with green string beans for May speciality of the week for only 16 pieces of silver this being nigh Pentecost -- Jeus and Judas united -- but nobody stops to eat it. A grey day. (Campra, Friday 13 May '05) ------------------------------------------------------------------ On the Terrazo above Lago Lugano the tall flt-chested waitress with low decollte dressed in white with black eye-liner has a complaint which, platinively, she discusses at length. I do not know the language but her pain floats out and settles over my cafe latte. (Gandria, 12 May) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Pentecost is the 50th day after the Resurrction which is Easter. The last supper is the Seder. Shavuot is the 50th day after the start of the counting of the Omer. The counting of the Omer begins on the day after the (first, of course) Seder. (So ruled the Pharises, The Sadduces would have had it begin the day after Shabat -- the Shabat within Pesach, I assume, although maybe the Bible could have meant, Shabat HaGadol, the Shabat immediately preceeding Pesach. For we have no other convincing explanation for why it should have been called, Shabat HaGadol. And if so, I would guess that the days between Shabat HaGadol and the Seder would have had the status of Hol haMoedim, semi- holidays.) In short, Pentecost is an emulation of Shavuot, with a Christian overlay. A bit contrived, one might add -- for if the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples, as one would assume it would if they had been truly devoted to Jesus, one would expect it to do so immediately upon his resurrection. By Christian tradition, Jesus is crucified on Friday. That may have been, for it is said, if I rccall, that they hastened to take him down from the Cross, as the Holiday was approaching. That would explain why the Roman soldiers finished him off with a spear thrust in his side -- which would have been a lethal blow, not additional torture. What we have as the Christian bible says, if I recall, that it was the day befoe the holiday -- not Shabat. But he would not have been crucified on erev Pesach, for that would desecrate the Pascal sacrifice -- not in halacha, maybe, but surely in spirit. One might almost as well crucify a lamb, or eat Jesus at the Seder (a grotesque notion, yet one that he states explicitly at the last supper -- (a practically Bachiantian notion, though it is later represented in much more peaceful mode by holy communion) -- so it may have been that Jesus knew that he would be crucified by the Romans as the Jews were shcchting the lambs for the Seder -- or one might better say, for their Seders. 3 days from death to resurrection, seems to accord with traditional teachings -- 3 endless days in Purgatory. For a day to the living must be an eternity to the dead. For the time of the dead is measured not in acts but in thoughts. And almost an infinitude of thoughts may fit into the space of a single act. For they who do not merit the deep peace of dreamless sleep, that is. They who go into that unlife not being of tranquil mind. I ride up on the train or the bus from Lugano to Olivone. A teenager is talking to her friend or on her cellphone. Continually. In the same cadence. I doze and wake, doze and wake, and always to the same interminable monologue. A trip that passes as nothing when I am awake, a half or three- quaarter hour, is now a small eternity. The more I think about Christianity, the crazier it seems. Even if Christians are "cute and sweet", at least when they're not up on their high horse off on a Crusade. -------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 14 May '05 (News reports) Four days after the Koran-desecration scandal was reported, the USA has still taken no action noticeable to international media. For starters, the USA should immediately suspend and start court- martial proceedings against the director of the Guantanamo military prison. It is evident that somewhere above him there is an idiot devoid of moral and spiritual sensibility -- most likely Rumsfeld -- who has put into practice the cockeyed idea that Islamic prisoners will co_operate with interrogators if only they can be forced to violate their own religion. Religious wars have started over less. ------------------------------------------------------------------ In short-cutting the canonization process for Pope John Paul II, Acting Pope Ratzinger seems motivated more by bureaucartic opportunism than by spiritual insight. Pope John Paul was a man, and his greatness is little acknowleged by rushing him onto a gilded pedestal. ------------------------------------------------------------------ An ill wind blows back Honest George but that's not no good -- the cat can eat again. (14 May '05) ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Ashkenazi minhag of extinguishing the havdala candle in the glass of wine is double nonsense, for it spoils both the candle and the wine. Not to mention getting wax in the glass. So I used to pour the wine out on the ground, but that's worse, it seems like a Greek wine libation to their pantehon of pagan semi_deities -- for the Greek gods were never pure archetypes, they were always taking sides in the affiars of mankind rather than staying above it all and just seeting a good example, as archetypes should, getting themselves and each other into trouble. And also, this bit about extinguishing a candle is a bit too reminiscent of the Christian ceremony of excommuication, which clearly rings of heresy. Not heresy for us, we could care less -- and anyhow, once a Jew, always a Jew -- but heresy for the Christians. AvrhamHai, following minhag Cochin I assume, which Judy says he says is a relatively pure minhag tgraced back to the 2nd Temple - - or maybe even the lst Temple, I don't reecall -- for it was a long time ago that Jews went to India -- so Hai just pours his wine and lights a candle -- I forget in which order -- and leaves the candle lit, as I recall. Or if he does extinguish it, does so in an ordinary way. And my real point for today is -- the havdala wine is the wine for the 4th meal of Shabat, the feast of King David. So also, then havdala is followed immediately by the 4th meal. I mean, normal folk have to get to sleep and get up to work on Yomm Rishon. And also, nobody is travelling home on motzi Shabat, for it is said, do not start a trip after dark. And said for good reason, obviously.. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The homos would have you believe that are not neurotics of especially unattractive sorts, but some newly discovered speciies, as much entitled to consideration of their particular desires as the koala bear. -----------------------------------------------------------------