bLain gRitch

Extended hibernation

2009-08-27T01:01:00.001-04:00

This blog is in a state of extended hibernation. Feel free to look me up on Facebook or flickr instead.

Comments on Feldstein & Taylor's WSJ column

2008-09-03T21:44:00.003-04:00

[Here's an e-mail I was provoked into writing on the topic. Sorry for the formatting.]

First things first, read the preply by Obama's advisors Furman & Goolsbee that came out a few weeks ago:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121867201724238901.html

Second, the best independent analysis of the candidates' tax plans is from the Tax Policy Center:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/411741_updated_candidates.pdf
If you take the time to read it you'll find some excellent criticism of both sets of proposals, and comparison of their comparative effects. For those with less time, check out the following (or at least the ones I've starred):
*Table 1 (p.6)
Table R3 (p.26)
Figure 1 (p.38)
Figure 2 (p.39)
*Tables R4 & R5 (p.42-43)
*Figure 3 (p.46)
(I should note that I disagree agree with TPC's gloss on the aims of the candidates' proposals ["growth" vs "progressivity"].)

Here are links to a few commentaries I read on the column:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2008/09/maconomics.cfm
http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2008/09/obama-vs-mccain-on-taxes-feldstein-and.html

The following are also helpful:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/opinion/27weds2.html
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/07/short-primer-on-mccainomics-versus.html

I'll try to stitch together some of this into a coherent response to the column.

As the TPC analysis makes clear, McCain's tax plan would barely increase after-tax incomes for most Americans while massively increasing after-tax incomes for those at the top of the income scale, both in absolute and percentage-of-income terms. Those in the bottom three quintiles would see their after-tax incomes rise by 1% (give or take) or on average a few hundred dollars; those in the top quintile would see their after-tax rise by almost 6% or an average of over $12k. For those in the top 1%, with an average income of over $600k, McCain's plan would increase their after-tax income by an average of 8.2% or over $100k. He is offering the Bush model of tax cuts, only more so.

These tax cuts will result in a massive decrease in government revenues. Over ten years, the TPC estimates this decrease at almost $7 trillion. The figure for Obama is around $2.5 trillion. Now McCain has claimed that, despite his tax cuts and increases in spending on the military and health care etc., he will balance the budget by the end of his first term. This simply will not happen, no matter who controls congress. Balancing the budget would require cuts equivalent to slashing Social Security and Medicare by 60%, returning government spending as a percentage of GDP to what it was under *Eisenhower*. Even with realistic spending cuts, McCain's plan will result in large increases in deficit spending, far more so than under Obama's plan -- it is Obama who is the fiscal conservative in this race. McCain is offering the Bush model of deficit spending, only more so. Remember, deficit spending is just paying for current spending by borrowing from future taxpayers, e.g. us and our children.

The question, then, is whether McCain's tax cuts (primarily directed at the highest earners) will foster sufficient economic growth to justify such massive deficit spending. There are good reasons to think it will not.

First, a similar strategy, the Bush tax cuts, did not produce broad-based economic growth; despite seeing strong GDP growth, the average income of working (i.e. not retired) households has actually fallen since 2000. Growth did not trickle down. Under the Bush tax cuts, the people who received the least benefit from economic growth will be responsible for paying back a larger share (as percentage of income) of the accrued debt than those who benefitted most.

Second, while lower marginal tax rates do incentivize additional earning and growth, empirical studies have shown that the effect is less than economic theory would predict. There are surely many reasons for this. Among them is the fact that salaried employees, and hourly employees who are already working as much as they can, are not able to earn more by working more (without switching jobs), so additional gain from more work is largely irrelevant to them. (It is relevant to those working less than they can, e.g. part-timers or people able to take another job, etc.) Most working Americans are substantially insulated from the incentivizing effects of lower marginal tax rates.

Third, while lowering average tax rates does increase spending and investment, everyone does not spend or invest in ways which benefit the economy equally. Lower income earners spend a higher percentage of their incomes on domestic goods and services, and invest more at home, i.e. in their homes, educations, etc. Higher income earners spend a higher percentage of their income abroad (on foreign made luxury goods, travel, etc.) and invest more abroad as well (in foreign stockmarkets, vacation homes, etc.). McCain's tax cuts thus return money to those who are least likely to spend and invest that money in the domestic economy.

Fourth, increasing the debt raises the risk of impeding economic growth in the future when taxes have to be increased to finance repayment.

Taking these four factors together, McCain's plan is unlikely to increase lasting, broad-based economic growth and, even if it does, it will not be the most efficient way to encourage that growth. We would get more bang for our buck (more growth per dollar of tax cuts) by cutting taxes on those who are most likely to save and invest in the domestic economy which, not coincidentally, is what Obama has proposed.

It's worth noting that something closer to McCain's strategy might be better in other circumstances, for example when tax rates were much higher. The top marginal rate was over 90% for many years from 1944 to 1963, peaking at 94%! Reagan cut the top rate from 69% to 50% in 1982, and again to 38.5% in 1987. The disincentive of such extremely high marginal rates undoubtedly impeded growth significantly -- overall, those were good tax cuts. But the top marginal rate today is 35%. Cutting or raising marginal tax rates from their current level would not affect incentives or economic growth nearly so much.

Finally there are broader macroeconomic forces to consider. There has been a lively debate among economist about the causes of rapidly rising income inequality since the early '80s, now equalling income inequality in the late 1920s. One prevalent explanation is that globalization has created a labor glut keeping wages of lower skilled workers from rising, while higher skill workers who do not face substantial competition from low wage countries have seen their incomes rise as their skills are in greater demand. This plausible explanation means that global economic forces are already bolstering the better off. By favoring the well off, Bush's and McCain's economic policies help those who are already experiencing heightened economic advantage. In contrast, those who globalization puts an an economic disadvantage see little help. This has fostered a constituency of lower skilled workers who oppose trade and globalization. For strong supporters of trade and globalization (like Bush and McCain; myself included) this is counterproductive. McCain's proposals only compound this problem. As Obama recognizes, for continued globalization and trade to be politically viable, some way must be found to assist those who experience the most extreme dislocations, like job loss, so everyone can continue to share that the broader benefits of globalization (cheaper goods, effective higher disposable incomes, higher growth rates, etc.). Obama's proposed tax increases on the highest earners are not a punishment for their success; rather, they eliminate the extra boost they received relative to other earners in the Bush tax cuts. Under Obama's proposals, the highest earners would still be far better off than they were in 2000, because larger economic forces, not just tax cuts, produced their rising incomes.

Now for some detailed criticism of the Feldstein/Taylor column.

While they are correct that the US corporate tax rate is the second highest in the OECD, they neglect to mention that the US has the fourth lowest amount of combined corporate income tax revenue relative to GDP. In other words, the US raises less from corporate tax (as a percentage of GDP) than most OECD countries and, on average, corporations pay less here (as a percentage of revenue) than in almost every other OECD country. There are probably many reasons for this, but among them is the fact that the US corporate tax base is narrower than elsewhere. Consequently, although the headline corporate tax rate is higher, it is unlikely that this puts the US at any disadvantage to other industrialized countries. The complexity of the tax code, which both McCain and Obama seek to improve by closing loopholes (i.e. raising taxes), is likely a larger factor.

Regarding "doubling the personal exemption to $7,000 from $3,500", this is misleading. According to the Tax Policy Center, “although this provision is sometimes described as a doubling of the personal exemption, that is true only in the first year, and then only for lower-income married couples,” leaving everyone else out. Every other family’s exemption is not fully phased in until 2016, and “because it is not refundable, it is worth nothing to poor families and little to many in the working-class.” (From http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/09/02/wsj-all-americans/)

As for cutting taxes, the TPC analysis confirms assertions by Obama and his advisors that he offers tax cuts to 95% of taxpayers, and a net tax cut overall (give or take some trickiness to do with baselines). These are not one time rebates, as described by Feldstein/Taylor, but new refundable tax credits. Obama would raise the top marginal rates of income, dividend and capital gains tax, but only for families making over $250k ($160k for individuals? I forget). Nonetheless, Obama's proposed rates are still lower than the rates which prevailed under Clinton, and for most years under Reagan (depending on the tax in question).

Regarding health care, their claims are even more suspect. McCain does offer a $5k health care tax credit for families, $2.5k for individuals. This is largely paid for by taxing as income the cost of employer provided health care. This tax increase offsets, to some extent, the gain from the tax credit. Now, Feldstein & Taylor are correct that, if everyone's coverage stays the same, everyone will come out ahead with this tax credit. But everyone's coverage won't stay the same. McCain's plan creates an incentive for employers to drop health coverage, because health coverage will no longer be a tax efficient way of providing compensation. So many employers are likely to drop coverage. Even if they increase worker salaries by the same amount as health care had cost (keeping employer costs the same), employees will see a tax increase as they are now taxed on that additional income. And the employee will now have to buy coverage individually, potentially in the more expensive non-group market. What's the bottom line? In the best case scenario (wages increase in the amount of the employer contribution to coverage, and no increase in premium), the net subsidy is about half of McCain's tax credit. Everyone else, likely most people, will fare worse, and many will see their cost of insurance (after taxes and transfers) go up; in the worst case, the increase in costs would be in the thousands. (FYI, the average cost of a family health plan is $12k; $4.5k for an individual.) And it only gets worse from there, because McCain's credits aren't indexed to anything -- not inflation, not health care cost (higher than inflation), nothing -- so the value of McCain's credits will decrease over time. (See here for more info: http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2008/04/mccains-health-care-plan.html)

Furthermore, there's the bang-for-buck issue again. According to the TPC's preliminary analysis, Obama's plan would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years, with McCain's plan not far behind at $1.3 trillion. But Obama's plan would reduce the number of uninsured by 34 million in 2018, while McCain's would only reduce the number of uninsured by 5 million at peak in 2013 (before the declining value of his credits causes the number to go up). McCain spends almost an much but manages to cover almost 30 million fewer people -- why? Well, a huge reason is that the value of his subsidy (after taxes and transfers) isn't all that large. Beyond that, though, he creates a high-risk pool to provide government subsidized insurance for those who cannot obtain insurance in the private market -- that is, the government is the exclusive payer for the most expensive people to insure. So instead of having the cost of their care distributed widely across an insurance pool in the private market, they will be expensively insured by the government free of all market forces. Moreover, this structure creates an incentive for private insurers to refuse to cover people, forcing them into the government's high-risk pool and further increasing costs on the taxpayer.

Obama's health plan, though not perfect, avoids these pitfalls. Insurers are prohibited from refusing coverage, but the added cost of covering high-risk people is largely balanced by covering many currently uninsured low-risk people. The government offers a health plan, but private companies compete against the government in providing coverage through the insurance exchange. This approach is similar to the MA scheme -- Adam helpfully linked to the editorial describing the broadly positive results of MA's experiment.

That's enough for now. As far as I'm concerned (and as you have probably guessed), when it comes to economic and fiscal policy, there is only one serious candidate in this race.

Have we been lying about Kant on lying?

2008-06-30T11:04:00.003-04:00

I thought this was too important not to post. From an NDPR review of Allen Wood's Kantian Ethics by Noell Birondo:

An officer comes to the door inquiring of a servant whether the master of the house is at home. In Kant's view, if the servant intentionally answers untruthfully, allowing the master to slip away and commit a crime, then the servant is guilty of being an accomplice to the crime. In a context such as this, Kant's view is that the officer can rightfully demand that the servant answer truthfully, in the sense that the servant, and not the officer, will bear responsibility for the actions that result from the officer's believing what is said.

Kant refers to the type of answer required in this sort of quasi-legal context as, in Wood's translation, a "declaration" (Aussage, Deklaration) (p. 241). According to Wood's specification of this Kantian notion, "a declaration occurs in a context where others are warranted or authorized (befugt) in relying on the truthfulness of what is said," and a declaration can "make the speaker liable by right, and thus typically subject to criminal penalties or civil damages, if what is said is knowingly false" (p. 241 my emphasis). But, according to Wood, Kant's technical conception of a lie (Lüge, mendacium) is the conception of "an intentionally untruthful statement that is contrary to duty, especially contrary to a duty of right" (p. 240). Hence any false 'declaration' is a lie, since it will be contrary to a duty of right; and the following traditionally incendiary Kantian claim is merely an analytic proposition: All lies are contrary to duty.

By contrast, an untruthful statement that does not amount to a 'declaration,' is merely a falsiloquium -- merely a "falsification" (p. 240). While many of the details of Wood's discussion of lying remain (regarding especially what a proper Kantian response should be to the different case of a murderer at the door) it should certainly be enough here just to include a passage from Kant's ethical lectures that I, at least, had never seen (nor seen anyone mention) before I read this book. (The citation is Ak 27:447.) Regarding the general topic of committing a falsiloquium, of saying something intentionally untrue when there is no 'declaration' in play, Kant says that:
I can also commit a falsiloquium when my intent is to hide my intentions from the other, and he can also presume that I shall do so, since his own purpose is to make a wrongful use of the truth. If an enemy, for example, takes me by the throat and demands to know where my money is kept, I can hide the information here, since he means to misuse the truth. That is still no mendacium.
What this means is that if someone shows up at the door with murderous intent, and if, in addition to that, she is not in a position to demand a 'declaration' from me, then I can indeed, on Kant's view, tell her something intentionally untruthful. As Kant understands this technical notion, that is still no lie.

Hawaii Trip Photos

2008-06-17T02:18:00.001-04:00

Hawaii

"How to cure America’s health system"

2008-05-18T16:07:00.005-04:00

From the FT:

In US public policy, all roads lead to healthcare. Remorseless pressure on public spending? Blame Medicare. Economic insecurity? Fear of losing health benefits is a chief cause. Stagnant wages and worsening inequality? Look to the cost of employer-provided insurance. This failing system is a national scandal not just in its own right, but because of its proliferating fiscal, economic and political implications.

For many workers without employer-provided insurance, the cost of cover is now prohibitive. The average cost for a family is $12,000 (€7,700, £6,100) a year (roughly a quarter of median household income before tax) and rising handsomely in real terms. If you have cover provided by your employer, losing your job means losing your insurance. The unluckiest – especially those with a dreaded “pre-existing condition” – may then face ruin. This vastly amplifies the anxieties colouring the election and driving the US towards an increasingly strident anti-business, anti-trade outlook.

Even those with employer-provided insurance and no fear of losing it are unhappy, because the cost is eating up their wages. It is so high and rising so fast that many workers can expect pay rises or continued coverage, but not both. If you add the cost of insurance to wages, the pay of low- and middle-income workers has not in fact been stagnant. Concerns about living standards and widening inequality are linked to health policy.
...
[Ezekiel Emanuel] points to employer-provided insurance as a critical defect in the US system. Inequities, inefficiencies and avoidable insecurity all flow from this model, which itself is a result of the $200bn tax break lavished on employers. In this he agrees with Senator John McCain who wants to give everybody tax relief for health insurance, regardless of who buys it. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama rely on employer-provided insurance and suggest ways of compelling or encouraging it.

Mr Emanuel also wants truly universal coverage. Here he parts with all three presidential candidates. Mr McCain’s plan is feeble: a subsidy to the low-paid (in the form of a refundable tax credit), but no clear solution to the pervasive problem of uninsurable “bad risks”. Mrs Clinton’s subsidies-plus-mandate is better, but would fall short of universal coverage (witness Massachusetts, which has tried a variant of her scheme); Mr Obama’s subsidies-without-mandate has the same defect, only more so.

Mr Emanuel proposes a universal healthcare voucher, entitling every citizen to privately-provided insurance, with standard benefits equal to those enjoyed by members of Congress. Insurers would be forbidden to deny coverage to any citizen, regardless of pre-existing conditions. They would be reimbursed by the government with a risk-adjusted premium for every enrolee – taking account of age, sex, pre-existing conditions and other factors using a formula to be determined by a new National Health Board. The system would start by covering the uninsured and those covered by their employers; in due course it would absorb Medicaid and Medicare.

This is not a single-payer plan: competition among insurers and health plans would be crucial to its success. But competition would revolve not around denying coverage by excluding bad risks, but around providing good results. To that end, companies would have to report detailed information on their performance and quality of service.

This is not a new idea. France’s mostly excellent system has similarities. But the presentation of the case has never been so concise or clear. Why then will it get nowhere? Because Mr Emanuel wants his scheme to be financed through a value added tax of 10 per cent, dedicated exclusively to the purpose. This instantly consigns the idea to the realm of the politically impossible...

This is the first I've heard of this proposal. I find it quite interesting and would like to see informed reactions to it. Emanuel's proposal immediately calls to mind similar proposals for implementing school vouchers while ensuring the universal availability of publicly funded education. One concern that occurs to me is how regulatory capture of the National Health Board—charged with setting reimbursement rates to insurers under the plan—by the insurance industry would be avoided. This proposal has the advantage of clearly indicating how cost savings would be achieved, which remains uncertain under the other plans on offer (including Obama's, which I tend to favor).

The rising price of rice

2008-05-15T16:59:00.001-04:00

The brown indian basmati I buy used to run $9 for 5lbs... now it's $15.

Good news for CUNY Philosophy

2008-05-13T19:20:00.002-04:00

From the Leiter Reports:

Prinz from North Carolina to CUNY Grad Center

Jesse Prinz (philosophy of mind, cognitive science, moral psychology), one of the leading figures working at the intersection of philosophy and cognitive science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has accepted appointment as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he will start in January 2009. With Prinz and David Rosenthal, among others, CUNY will be a major center for philosophy and cognitive science.

In addition, Jeffrey Blustein (bioethics) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine has accepted a senior position at City College, and will also be appointed at the Graduate Center, where he will teach a seminar once every year or so.

It is probably worth pointing out, for the benefit of prospective students, that CUNY has in the last few years seen a dramatic improvement in its financial aid packages for PhD students, such that they are now highly competitive with the best private universities. For a long time, relatively weak financial aid was an obstacle for many students in considering CUNY, but that has now changed. With the recent success in faculty recruitment--besides Prinz, also Noel Carroll and Graham Priest just recently, as well as Alan Berger, Saul Kripke, Stephen Neale, and Catherine Wilson in the last few years--on top of longtime faculty strengths (in areas like logic, philosophy of language and mind, and applied ethics), CUNY is poised to be competitive at the top ranks of U.S. philosophy programs. (The program will surely rank in the top 20 in the fall PGR surveys, and perhaps higher.

I, for one, and looking forward to riding the rising tide of our rankings.

"bitter" voters

2008-04-13T23:21:00.002-04:00

I've been very disappointed by the press coverage of the recent brouhaha surrounding Obama calling certain voters bitter. When Obama's obviously extemporaneous remarks are interpreted in context it is abundantly clear that there is nothing to get worked up about. Here's what he said in San Francisco:

So, it depends on where you are, but I think it's fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people are most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre...they're misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class don't wanna work -- don't wanna vote for the black guy.' That's...there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.

But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What is the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is so we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- to close tax loopholes, uh you know uh roll back the tax cuts for the top 1%, Obama's gonna give tax breaks to uh middle-class folks and we're gonna provide healthcare for every American.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're doing.

Obama subsequently clarified his intent speaking in Indiana:

People don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody is going to help them. So people end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington.

What should be clear from these quotes is that Obama was saying that "working-class white voters" are rational, just not in the way many expected. Obama recognizes that this demographic has often voted on values rather than on economic issues. Rather than explaining their behavior in a way that makes it out to be irrational -- by attributing it to religious persuasion, intellectual deficit, or (in this election) racial bias -- Obama explains their behavior on the basis of a pessimistic induction about politician's campaign promises: "Many times before politicians have made campaign promises to improve our economic situation but have not delivered, so when a politician next makes a campaign promise to improve our economic situation we will not expect them to be upheld and consequently will not vote on the basis of that expectation; rather we will vote on the basis of a candidates values which we have better reason to think will be maintained." Much like behavioral economists, with whose work he is reported to be familiar, Obama is seeking rational explanations for seemingly irrational behavior, and attempting to transform those rational explanations into concrete (electoral) gains.

So there you have it, according to his opponents and many in the media, Obama has "insulted" voters by making them out to be rational!

Double Taxation & the NY "Amazon" Tax

2008-04-13T17:58:00.006-04:00

As has been widely reported, NY state's latest budget includes a provision to extend sales tax to some online retailers, including Amazon.com. Retailers with at least $10,000 in NY sales, and which have sales "affiliates", will be considered businesses with a NY presence and hence required to assess state and local sales taxes on purchases by NY residents. (The current combined sales tax rate for NYC is 8.375%.) This is known as the "Amazon tax" because Amazon is one of the few major web retailers which does not already have a physical presence in NY (this reflects the general trend since the .com bust away from web-only retail strategies).

It is not yet known how Amazon will respond to this move. There are two obvious options: (1) to challenge NY's law in court as a violation of the Supreme Court's 1992 decision Quill vs. North Dakota; (2) to terminate sales affiliate relationships based in NY. The first option may not prove successful as the 1992 decision was based on the premise that complying with myriad local tax obligations across the country would put an undue burden on interstate commerce; today, however, IT has made compliance far easier, certainly for the likes of Amazon. (A more promising route, I believe, would be to challenge the law's $10,000 threshold; but, assuming an alternative test can be found, it is hard to imagine how Amazon would not meet it.) Should Amazon lose or choose not to pursue the first option, the second will be short-term only as other states are likely to quickly follow NY's lead.

As a consumer, though, my primary complaint with the new law is double taxation. Like most states, NY requires residents to pay a "use tax" on purchases made outside the state. NY includes a line on its standard tax forms for this tax and requires it be filled in. While doubtless many do not pay this tax, failing to do so puts the (non-)taxpayer at significant risk should she be audited. For those that do pay the tax, there are two methods: either to tediously calculate the actual tax owed on each and every out of state purchase, or to pay an estimated amount based on income, which is obviously the popular option. Here is where the double taxation concern comes in: under the new law the "use tax" has not been repealed -- nor, so far as I know, have the amounts used for the estimation method been adjusted -- so the honest taxpayer will continue to pay the "use tax", but her income (on the basis of which the amount of tax is estimated) is not diminished by those out of state purchases on which she did pay tax. Effectively she will be taxed twice on the same purchases. (This was already the case previously when purchasing from out of state retailers that do charge tax on items shipped to NY.)

The estimation method of paying the "use tax" also creates a perverse incentive: honest taxpayers reduce their marginal rate of taxation (for a given income) on out of state purchases by making more such purchases! For anyone who, like most NY residents, makes a substantial number of out of state purchases and uses the estimation method, the "use tax" regime actually encourages increased out of state purchasing, rather than establishing a level playing field for NY retailers. This effect is reduced as sales tax is levied by more out of state retailers, however the double taxation is then magnified.

Given these considerations, NY should either keep the "use tax" (at least for purchases over a suitably high threshold) and not require retailers to levy sales tax on purchases by NY residents, or the reverse. What the legislature should not do is, of course, exactly what they have done, maintain the "use tax" in full while extending the levy of sales tax by out of state retailers.

FOLLOWUP -- A nice article on related developments: Tax-free Internet shopping days could be numbered - CNET News.com

More on typography and design

2008-04-03T16:23:00.003-04:00

First, thanks to Zev for pointing out another post on typography in the political campaigns, which points out how design and type choices reflect on the campaigns themselves:

I think the real story here is less about typography than it is about discipline. Political campaigns are the Brigadoon of branding. There’s a compressed amount of time to tell a candidate’s story before the race is over and the campaign vanishes. During that window, the campaign must make sure that everything it produces — everything it touches — delivers the candidate’s message in a meaningful way. No opportunity to amplify that story should be missed. The Obama people have used design to take that discipline to a whole new level.

On another note, the H&FJ blog points out the stunning new designs for British coinage:

Be sure to read their sad but humorous comparison with the new US five dollar notes.

Cheerio & Omaba's Economics Speech @ Cooper Union

2008-03-27T23:09:00.002-04:00

Obama's speach is well worth listening too, and provides welcome clarification on his thinking about economic policy after the populist overtones of the Ohio campaign.

On a more humorous note, from the Economist's Democracy in America blog:

WE'VE gone on a bit about the distinction between different kinds of mistakes a politician can make speaking. This is probably worth a bit of elaboration in the wake of Hillary Clinton's campaign announcing that she "misspoke" about her harrowing landing under sniper fire in Bosnia, an event that appears to have been, in videotaped fact, as phsyically dangerous as a taping of Prairie Home Companion. Footage showed that Mrs Clinton calmly listened to a poem being read by an eight-year-old girl on that terrifying Bosnian tarmac....
But it appears now we need a new category beyond typos and thinkos, since Mrs Clinton has gone so far as to invent a new kind of speech stumble. So what would we call a misstatement that involves embellishing your record with wholly invented stories of personal bravery, all the while being so foolish as not to remember that camera crews taped the incident you described, and then repeating and further embellishing the story; and then when confronted with video evidence, insulting voters' basic intelligence by insisting you produced a mere "typo" or perhaps a very mild "thinko", when really you've just plain lied to their faces? Readers are invited to name this new kind of linguistic slip-up.

Here's the excellent suggestion made by reader rb220:

Cheerio. n. A complete lie that forms part of your downfall. Cheerio is derived from the term cheerio, meaning goodbye. However, it can also mean either the public or personal realisation that your wilful optimism is unfounded. Example: George's Bush's thought of Iraqis greeting US troops with flowers - cheery. George Bush's realisation that thousands would die - oh! Thus, cheery-oh can be contracted to cheerioh, or just cheerio. Often, this cheerio leads to the primary form of cheerio, and is especially apposite. Ms. Clinton's travails would be another case in point.

More on graphic design and typography in the campaigns

2008-02-29T13:55:00.002-05:00

Eames stamps

2008-02-28T15:46:00.002-05:00

I'm a big fan the the designers Charles and Ray Eames, and the grateful owner of one of their Aluminum Series Lounge Chairs, so I was very happy to see on the H&FJ blog that the USPS will be issuing an Eames stamp come the summer.

Vote for better typography! Vote Obama!

2008-02-28T14:32:00.003-05:00

He makes the best use of design and typography of all the candidates. His campaign materials and website look sharp; and to top it off, his typeface of choice is Gotham by my favorite type designers, Hoefler & Frere-Jones. You can read about the history of Gotham here.

I had been noticing Obama's typography for a while now and suspected Gotham; when I finally got around to Googling for the answer I found it on the Helvetica Blog: A Font We Can Believe In, which includes video of an interview with Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

For those who aren't familiar Helvetica is a documentary about the world's most famous typeface. If you have any interest in typography, it is fascinating and definitely worth watching. (You can stream it online from Netflix.)

Hoefler & Frere-Jones also discuss the candidates' typography on their blog: Fontogenic and ...and Non-Fontogenic...

UPDATE:
More Hoefler & Frere-Jones fonts at work for Obama, in this case Knockout No. 48 (along with Gotham):

From CR Blog » Obey Obama and Ask H&FJ | Politics Without Gotham

Mandates

2008-02-24T14:13:00.004-05:00

From Economists for Obama:

Would a Health Care Mandate Mean Universal Coverage?

Jonathan Gruber of MIT has a new NBER working paper on health insurance coverage, based largely on a simulation model. Krugman cites the paper as evidence that making coverage mandatory makes a big difference for the number actually covered.

However, if you read the whole paper (unfortunately only available to subscribers), you find that Gruber sidesteps the crucial question of how a mandate will be enforced and just assumes a mandate will work. He writes:
The second option is ... by adding an individual mandate, a requirement that all individuals obtain insurance coverage, to the universal access option. This is similar to what is required for auto insurance in many states, and was a centerpiece of the recent Massachusetts reform plan. We have no experience to date with such a mandate, so it is hard to predict the success of enforcement. But, if penalties are strong (as they are in Massachusetts, where individuals are liable for half of insurance premiums even if uninsured), the mandate is likely to be close to universal. For simplicity here I assume that the mandate provides close to universal coverage, although in practice some individuals are likely to "slip through the cracks".

With all the attention being paid to mandates as the big policy difference between Obama and Clinton, I can't emphasize enough how important this is. (I've commented on their plans previously: Posted Elsewhere 2.) There is little point in arguing that full coverage cannot be acheived without a mandate, if one cannot argue that full coverage will be achieved with a mandate. Of course a sufficiently draconian mandate will likely assure nearly full coverage, but this is irrelevant if that mandate is to harsh to be politically viable, i.e. shooting free riders on sight, or if the costs of enforcing that mandate exceed the costs of paying for free riders directly. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence that government mandates do no secure full compliance, e.g. health care in MA or auto insurance. All of this is well argued in the Economists for Obama post.

Obama & Substance: links

2008-02-24T13:56:00.003-05:00

Posted Elsewhere 2

2008-02-24T13:52:00.003-05:00

Comments on this Facebook posted item:

As a supporter of Obama, I've thought about this issue some myself. Having read the article, I think Krugman is being somewhat disingenuous in the way he presents the issues, and has cited economics research selectively.

First, he neglects to address the critical difference in the way affordability is achieved between the plans. Obama's plan aims at reducing up front costs: the premiums paid by plan subscribers. Clinton, in contrast, provides after the fact refundable tax credits, meaning that the poor will have to bear the full cost of insurance up front regardless of whether they can actually afford to lay out that amount. Moreover, since there is a mandate, someone unable to afford the up front cost will get penalized later. I think Obama is entirely right to oppose a mandate in this circumstance, i.e. as it functions in Clinton's plan.

Second, Krugman is right that many people fail to enroll in existing programs, but he neglects to mention that research in behavioral economics has consistently shown that the up front costs of a product or service unduly sway purchasing decisions. Consequently, so long as the up front costs remain high, as they might under Clinton's plan, many people may be dissuaded from purchasing insurance. Of course, Clinton has a mandate to force them to buy insurance, but it is enforced through the tax code and so is not an up front cost, and its true effect on initial decision making will have to be discounted accordingly. Again, I think Obama is right to focus on up front affordability.

Third, Krugman has it backwards when he says "it’s hard to see how the hole in the Obama plan can be repaired". While it might be politically challenging for Obama introduce a mandate, his plan is perfectly compatible with adding one. Clinton's plan, however, cannot be repaired to address the complaints above--they go to the very heart of her proposal. For anyone who takes these complaints seriously, as I do, Clinton's plan is a non-starter.

Fourth, the last thing the tax code needs is any more complication, which itself imposes costs (time, tax preparers, etc.) on citizens. The tax code is generally an indirect and inefficient tool for implementing social policy. Furthermore, the complexity of the tax system already means that many people do not take advantage of the credits, etc. for which they are eligible, so the same might well be the case with Clinton's credits. American politicians in general are addicted to manipulating the tax code, but the Clinton's have been particularly bad about it. One of reasons I like Obama is that he appears to want to avoid this approach when possible.

Having said all that, I would likely support Obama's plan additions to promote universal coverage. Changing health insurance from an opt-in to an opt-out system would likely help, but (as with the opt-out retirement savings plans promoted by both Clinton and Obama) it is not clear how this would work for the unemployed. Similarly, it isn't clear how a mandate might be enforced if not through the tax code. Nonetheless, if it should turn out that Obama's plan isn't successful without one, I would be willing to swallow that pill.

I might as well add that Obama's plan may be seen as less threatening by swing voters. His success in more conservative midwestern states on Super Tuesday might be some indication of this.

Another thought: Krugman suggests that the possibility of free riders is a serious problem for Obama's plan. As someone who has had to choose whether to purchase crappy but expensive, high-deductible student insurance, I have had to consider whether it is worth it and it isn't obvious that it is. High-deductible plans provide very little tangible benefit to someone who doesn't get rather sick: they don't make it affordable to go see a doctor for minor illness or preventative care since that falls under the deductible. So you're basically buying insurance against the relatively unlikely possibility (for a young healthy person) of serious illness, for which you could get emergency care anyway. So there is some rationality is not getting that sort of policy. But being a free rider wouldn't be nearly so rational if the policy in question did provide tangible benefits as both Clinton's and Obama's public policies would do.

Posted Elsewhere 1

2008-02-24T13:46:00.000-05:00

While there are a lot of reasons to oppose superblocks, livable streets advocates should be wary of unthinkingly reinforcing Manhattan's grid system. That system is in many ways a contributor to today's congestion problems. See here for a discussion:
http://www.thevillager.com/villager_222/talkingpoint.html

Coming from Chicago, I am acutely aware of the difference in grid systems makes to their respective cities. In Chicago street density rises with development density: blocks in the CBD are somewhat less than 400' x 400' as more space is devoted to streets, resulting in enhanced walkability; in residential areas of the city blocks are generally a bit under 660' X 330' as more space is devoted to non-transport uses. Just as importantly, almost all of Chicago is serviced by alleys, moving congestion causing deliveries off the thoroughfares. [To keep the city easily navigable, all streets and addresses are numbered on a uniform grid of 800 units/mile; technically a Chicago "block" is 100 units regardless of how many streets it contains.]

In New York, by contrast, the dense spacing of EW streets means that a great deal of space is devoted to inefficient use. Many EW steets in midtown are glorified alleys: narrow and dark, primarily used for deliveries and trash collection, and unpleasant for pedestrians. All the while, since they are streets not alleys, they draw traffic and require full signalization at intersections. The avenues, on the other hand, are widely spaced to the detriment of both walkability and the overall transport capacity of the grid.

[It's worth noting how much dirtier NY is because of the grid: much trash is put out in bags on the EW streets because there is limited curbside access for bins/dumpsters. Bags are often not sealed or get ripped open allowing trash to escape. No wonder alternate side parking has been instituted to keep the streets clean! In Chicago, alleys allow for the mandatory use of bins/dumpsters and the streets require cleaning much less often.]

Obviously, NYC is largely stuck with its grid. But where large-scale developments are being planned, there exists an opportunity to improve upon it: add additional NS thoroughfares for enhanced walkability; shrink some EW streets and dedicate them to deliveries, while expanding other EW streets to give more space to enhanced street life.

Paris Photos

2007-12-09T22:03:00.000-05:00

Paris Trip

Taken on our trip to Paris over Thanksgiving weekend 2007.

Butterflies

2007-09-05T19:25:00.000-04:00

Butterflies

Taken on the 28 hour jaunt Cheryl and I recent took to Boston, while visiting the Museum of Science.

In Memoriam: Norton Ginsburg, 1921-2007

2007-08-07T11:58:00.000-04:00

U of C Press Release
Chicago Tribune Obit

Eulogy:

Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel
Rodfei Zedek, Chicago

Norton was born in 1921 on the North Side of Chicago, in the “Uptown” neighborhood. He always remembered the address of his home, 6100 North Winthrop Avenue. His father, Maurice, was born in Russia and came to the United States in his teens with a younger brother. His mother, Sarah, was born in Liverpool, England, and emigrated in her twenties. His parents attended the Agudath Achim Synagogue.
Norton was proud that his dad was a talented mechanic, a tool and dye maker who also did design work for the same company, Helmco, for many years. Norton was a devoted son who looked after his mother and spoke to her at least weekly. He was also a devoted brother to his elder sister Ethel and to their youngest sibling by several years, his brother, Gilbert. He was delighted to welcome Julius and Faith into the family, and kept up, with interest, with all his nieces and nephews and with their children. When Ethel passed away, he took over as the Chicago caregiver for his mother.
Norton had fond memories of student days at Pope School and Senn High School. Ever since he was a child, he showed an unusual interest in maps and in geography. He loved reading maps. From the time his sister Ethel went off to the University of Chicago, Norton dreamed of going there. He told me that it never occurred to him to go anywhere else. He was accepted there, with a scholarship, and entered at age sixteen. His interest in maps led him to study with Chauncey Harris and Robert Platt. In less than a dozen years, including a few years of military service, he acquired three degrees from the University of Chicago: his B.A., M.A., and PhD degrees. His creativity and charm were such that he was asked to assist professors in teaching, and then to join the distinguished faculty in the Department of Geography.
As a teacher, Norton made geography interesting to his students, constantly reminding them that the understanding and development of cities and of nations, and of their citizens, depends on appreciation of geographical features. He earned his doctorate by studying Asia, which, he said, was of prime importance because of its significant territory. He learned Chinese in order to discover the effect of topography on culture and economics.
Norton summarized for me his field of study by observing that it was his task to understand where cities are, why they are where they are, and what functions they perform. He observed that issues of urbanization—water supply, transportation—overlap, and that carefully studying one city can help the observer to understand other cities.
During World War Two he responded to the call to serve his country. He enlisted in the Navy and was assigned to the Marine Corps. He was further assigned to Japanese language school at the University of Colorado in order to prepare for counterintelligence work. Norton told me that at one time he knew Japanese quite well. He went to China with the Sixth Marine Division which, during the war, was occupying the city of Chin Gow in North China. Not surprisingly he specialized in map intelligence.
American troops had been assigned to a number of places in China which had been under Japanese domination. Norton was thus able to use both his Chinese and his Japanese. He used his language skills to good advantage, both in his counterintelligence work (trying to discover “why things were going on and where they were going on,” as he put it) and in more fun ways, too. He told me that Chin Gow had been a German colonial city with a thriving brewery before the Japanese took it over. Norton and his colleagues found Chinese citizens who had once worked in the brewery and reopened it and enjoyed the beer. Whenever Norton bought beer in subsequent years he would look for that label.
Norton returned from service to finish his doctorate and to begin his teaching career at Chicago. Early on, he taught at the University at New Delhi, India, and came to know Indian geography well. It was there that he met his good friend, George Heinz, who continued to visit Norton, religiously, through Norton’s last years of physical frailty. In those early years of his brilliant career, Norton also taught at the University of Hong Kong, where his knowledge of Japanese and Chinese came in handy in his research and impressed the community as a whole. He understood and admired the cultures of Asian countries, and was a keen observer of those nations, penning many essays about these lands and their people. He was an expert on the Chinese railroad.
At the University he assumed many roles with effectiveness and grace, whether as department head, dean, or editor, and the same was true in various professional and academic organizations. When renowned University of Chicago President Hutchins established a think tank in Santa Barbara, California, The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Norton, an able scholar, teacher and administrator, was one of the first he thought of not only to offer insights and learning, but to serve as Dean of Senior Fellows. Norton was honored by his colleagues in many ways, including being elected to the presidency of the American Association of Geographers.
Norton was in his late Forties when he assumed the post in Santa Barbara while on hiatus from the University of Chicago. That move led him to the greatest blessing in his life. Another member of the think tank was Elizabeth Mann Borgese, who was, for several years, to edit, with Norton, the Ocean Yearbook, which literally catalogued everything to do with oceans. Diana, who had begun her career in early education, was staying for a while with Elizabeth Borgese, and was enjoying the sun on the beach in front of Elizabeth’s home. Norton walked by while visiting Leon Sager, the father of his friend Esther Altschul, and his wife Margaret, who were supporters of the Santa Barbara Center. He was, as they say, smitten by Diana’s beauty and intelligence, and they married a couple of years later, in 1973, returning to Chicago in 1974. Norton was most welcoming when Diana’s mother and her father visited. His relationship was cordial with each of them, as with Diana’s siblings, Sandy and Bob, and Malcolm and Ellen, and their families.
When his sons, Jeremy and Alexander came along, Norton rejoiced in their character and achievements. He was thrilled to become a father in his early Fifties. He was grateful for his sons and for Diana. I recall his joy and pride at the b’nai mitzvah ceremonies, and his bounce and smiles at the receptions that followed. Whenever I visited him at Montgomery Place, he filled me in with great detail about his sons’ activities and plans, often pointing to new, updated photographs. He was delighted to welcome Cheryl into the family, and regretted that his physical frailty did not allow him to be at the wedding. Yet he rejoiced nonetheless. He was looking forward to Alexander’s being in Chicago this summer.
Through the years, the University of Chicago proudly loaned Norton to other institutions of learning—the Hebrew University, the Environment and Policy Institute of the East-West Center, which Norton gladly directed for a few years, and the University of Hawaii, among others. He served on editorial boards of journals dealing with economic development, geography and environment. He compiled atlases, published papers that influenced foreign policy, and offered significant observations on urbanization and national development for large and small, rich and poor nations alike. He wrote the article on “Area” for the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. (How many of us would think of that as an encyclopedia topic?) He was also a gifted moderator, who knew how to pose the seminal questions on tough issues. Most memorable was a radio program on the growing crisis in Vietnam that he moderated for the University and for NBC radio in July, 1954. One of the panelists whom he questioned was a young senator, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Norton regarded himself as a fact-finder, an interpreter of “patterns of occupants.” Yet he also acted for social justice. He served on the National Commission of UNESCO, and also on the Southeast Asia Development Advisory Committee. He took seriously his role as a geographer and as a professor to make the world a better place. The closest Hebrew phrase to this goal is tikkun olam, which means literally to “repair the world.” Norton truly believed that better academic conditions in all countries, better libraries for research, better education, would go a long way toward improving life. At the conclusion of a talk on “The Mission of a Scholarly Society,” published in 1972, he said: “[W]e are not here to mirror the chaos of the world, but to attempt to straighten it out.”
On the home front, Norton was an organized and gracious baal ha-bayit, home-owner and host. His home reflected his appreciation of architecture and fine art. He was a cat-lover and enjoyed his feline companions.
Family and friends admire, and are grateful for, Diana’s unwavering and attentive devotion to Norton, and the wise and effective decisions that she made to see that he received proper care, and every dignity and respect, literally adding several good years to his life, and enabling him to make new friends and to remember as much as possible his accomplishments and associations throughout the years of his illustrious career. Norton appreciated this, and commented to me—and, most important, to Diana—several times about her skills at organizing things in a gracious and graceful way, and he was one who recognized and valued fine organization.
As it happens, this week’s Torah reading, Ekev, contains a passage familiar to us as the second paragraph of the Shema, “V’haya im shamoa—If you will hearken unto My commandments,” which speaks of the effect of the moral life of society on the topography, the natural resources, on the earth and on the rains and on the heavens, literally. Also, as it happens, the haftarah, the reading from the Prophet Isaiah of the Returning Exiles, is where we get the name of our Congregation: “Shim’u elai Rodfei Zedek, Hearken to Me, ye who pursue righteousness,” ye who want to know what is right and to do it. Norton’s teachings and writings related righteous, just actions, to geographical challenges.
We at Congregation Rodfei Zedek are proud and honored to have had Norton—and Diana—as loyal members. We enjoyed seeing Norton at services and other events, most recently a few months back, whenever Diana could wheel him over on a Friday night. When we celebrated the fiftieth birthday of the State of Israel, we, of course, invited Norton to speak on the topic, “Does Israel Have Natural Boundaries?”
May he rest in peace. May his memory be a blessing, even as we affirm in our faith a life beyond this earthly life, in God’s Presence. Amen.

Long delayed update (if anyone is still paying attention)

2007-06-13T18:17:00.000-04:00

The nine months (!) since I last posted have been eventful, which may or may not be an excuse for my silence. From planning the wedding, to setting up an apartment, the big day itself, subsequent “adjustments”, and adjunct teaching at Brooklyn College — all while busily neglecting my own work — it has been, well,... a lot. And all this has turned out surprising well, married life especially, even if the getting there was a little rough. Over the summer, I will be trying to finally get back to that work of mine, while also doing a summer gemara program at YCT. Cheryl and I also hope to take a belated honeymoon — it looks as if to Costa Rica — and to get to back to Chicago for a bit.

In any case, some pictures from the wedding are now available:

Wedding

As for the future of this outlet, I have decided not to make any commitments for the moment. This blog was never what I wanted wanted it to be, and I’m not sure it ever will be. Most likely, I will post sporadically and infrequently, and less about philosophy than I would like.

Wedding Site

2006-08-31T14:32:00.000-04:00

Here, with the critical details.

Engagement photos

2006-08-14T03:06:00.000-04:00

Engagement

Rumor has it...

2006-08-10T18:47:00.000-04:00

...that, apparently, I’m engaged. How about that.

Manipulated reporting

2006-08-08T21:42:00.000-04:00

I’m posting this belatedly...

The Jerusalem post ran an article a few days ago which relays the public admission by reporters that Hizbullah is actively manipulating reporting from Lebanon. That this sort of thing is occurring shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is highly unusual for reporters to admit it. This too should be unsurprising, since the original reporting was not qualified to reflect the manipulation, and a subsequent admission of manipulation could open the reporter to accusations of violating journalistic ethics. Consequently, it is especially pleasing to hear journalists stepping forward on this.

CNN "senior international correspondent" Nic Robertson admitted that his anti-Israel report from Beirut on July 18 about civilian casualties in Lebanon, was stage-managed from start to finish by Hizbullah. He revealed that his story was heavily influenced by Hizbullah's "press officer" and that Hizbullah has "very, very sophisticated and slick media operations."

When pressed a few days later about his reporting on the CNN program "Reliable Sources," Robertson acknowledged that Hizbullah militants had instructed the CNN camera team where and what to film. Hizbullah "had control of the situation," Robertson said. "They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath."

Robertson added that Hizbullah has "very, very good control over its areas in the south of Beirut. They deny journalists access into those areas. You don't get in there without their permission. We didn't have enough time to see if perhaps there was somebody there who was, you know, a taxi driver by day, and a Hizbullah fighter by night."

Yet "Reliable Sources," presented by Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, is broadcast only on the American version of CNN. So CNN International viewers around the world will not have had the opportunity to learn from CNN's correspondent that the pictures they saw from Beirut were carefully selected for them by Hizbullah.

Another journalist let the cat out of the bag last week. Writing on his blog while reporting from southern Lebanon, Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton, casually mentioned in the middle of a posting: "To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hizbullah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one."

Robertson is not the only foreign journalist to have shown viewers Hizbullah-selected footage from Beirut. NBC's Richard Engel, CBS's Elizabeth Palmer, and a host of European and other networks, were also taken around the damaged areas by Hizbullah minders. Palmer commented on her report that "Hizbullah is also determined that outsiders will only see what it wants them to see."

Actual information regarding the Landis case?

2006-08-06T03:41:00.000-04:00

For a change, maybe yes. While most of the press seems intent on convicting Landis of doping before he has had a chance to argue his case, the Houston Chronicle looks to have done the service of actually reporting some new information. If it’s true, the anti-Landis press is being grossly irresponsible and those of us who would rather believe Landis wasn’t doping have some cause for hope yet. Here are the two critical excerpts:

Landis reportedly tested negative eight times during the course of the three-week race, including the day he reclaimed the yellow jersey on L'Alpe-d'Huez. That was 48 hours before his four-hour attack over five Alpine climbs that won him the 17th stage, after which he tested positive for the only time. He also tested negative two days later, when he reclaimed the yellow jersey after a time trial.

It's not believed possible that a significant infusion of artificial testosterone could have cleared out of Landis' endocrine system in just two days. Also, a majority of doctors who study testosterone tend to either seriously question its effectiveness as a performance booster or contend it must be administered in regulated doses over a period of time to have meaningful impact on an athlete's prowess.

"Most of us (experts) have a hard time fully understanding that sudden and dramatic effect (Landis seemingly experienced on July 20)," Wadler said, noting that he was speaking only for himself and not on behalf of WADA. "I can't quite put it all together."

Chao conceded he had no medical theories to offer as to why Landis' testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio could have suddenly gotten so badly out of whack. Landis' came in at 11-to-1, whereas normal is 1-to-1 and up to 4-to-1 is considered acceptable under the anti-doping statutes. In Landis' case, his testosterone measurement wasn't outrageously high, but his epitestosterone had dropped precipitously, accounting for the abnormal numbers.

Landis doping?

2006-07-28T00:35:00.001-04:00

Yehoshua says what there is to say. I find it hard to believe and so, it would seem, do a lot of other people. Let’s hope this gets cleared up in Landis’s favor soon.

Landis doping?

2006-07-28T00:35:00.000-04:00

Yehoshua says what there is to say. I find it hard to believe and so, it would seem, do a lot of other people. Let’s hope this gets cleared up in Landis’s favor soon.

Making the last eruv post available again

2006-07-23T05:08:00.000-04:00

UPDATE [Monday, 24 July 2006 01:48]: A new version of the anti-eruv website has now appeared at http://washington-heights-eruv-zeitgeist.blogspot.com/. Suffice it to say that the author has not made a better case for himself in his latest post than in previous versions (quite the opposite, if anything). Also, see the comments to this post where I have something to say about why I am exposing these rants here.

So it appears that http://maalot-eruv-psychosis.blogspot.com/ is no longer around. I shed no tears. But as I have already responded (in part) to the article which had been posted there, my readers are now unable to see the text in question. Luckily, I suspected such a thing might happen and saved an archive of the site last Wednesday night (19 July). Here is the text of the article as of that time [formatting removed for legibility]:

"There is an eruv around Bennett Avenue" and it's bringing on a psychosis of confusion.
" In Washington Heights there is an eruv around Bennett Avenue in Manhattan".
That sentence contains a lot of presumptions, and one of those presumptions is that you and I can use the Bennett Avenue eruv in Washington Heights to carry on Shabbat.

But can we? That is the subject of this article, and the PERMISSIBILITY of using it will be explored. The purpose of this article is not to explain the halachos of eruvin, but rather our Mesorah's unanimously held of procedure for employing rabbinic authority to our lives in a relatively narrow type of situation which will be described below-- and with this "procedure" we can determine how it is we are to determine whether or not we can use the eruv here on Bennett.

First a summary of the conclusions of the article, then we'll provide some background, then we'll elucidate the main point of the article further:

It should be obvious, after careful consideration of the facts mentioned in the rest of this article, predicated upon the hope that the reader is somewhat educated and aware of normative Torah practice, that a special situation exists with regard to this eruv on Bennett that would require special psak halacha to be allowed to use it. It starts like this.: We all agree that in general we learn halacha from sforim and our rebbeim, many of them perhaps, as well as from many rabbis who give shiurim and lectures, and we listen to Torah tapes, CDs, and special webcasts. Normally intelligent and educated frum Jews can often, and do often, and should often, go in accordance with what they learn through these mediums [ given that they have adequate intuitive knowledge as to when their moreh Horaah would have no objections to their reliance on the rabbis responsible for these mediums in question.] Also, it stands to reason that they were given a sort of “pep” talk from their moreh Horaah on how to go about making day to day decisions, as not all shailos are brought by an individual to the table of their own moreh Horaah.

Additionally, and most fundamentally, we all take it for granted that all agree that a non-gadol hador can pasken shailos. Indeed, that is the structure of psak. There are local poskim who do render their own decisions. Of course, we trust them since we expect them to apply the principles and precedents of the Greatest Torah Authorities in the world in the arena of rendering psakim –

But the main point of this article is that if the [ vast (?) majority of ] the greatest authorities in the world were to one day contradict what we took to be a "pedestrian psak", [ a psak from a bone fide rav who poskins for his talmidim or congregants who however is not one of the Greatest Torah Authorities of the generation], or some other normative practice in thought or action, then we would have to give it up and shift into a mode that is normative Torah practice for three thousand years, which is to ideally ….

[1] go ask for a psak on the matter from our moreh horaah [ e.g. rebbe muvhok ] – the one we tend to ask most of our shailos to, who is either one of the “Greatest” of the generation [ rare indeed ], or who will surely seek out the psak of their own moreh horaah that he himself goes to for shailos of this type, who in turn goes to one of the gedolei hador [ if he is not one himself- and so on and so forth ( i.e. again, to be clear, the the type of shailah discussed is one that has arisen because of a new reality of the majority of the greatest ones maintaining a position- as described above- that by default requires one of the “Greatest” of the generation to answer. ) The Bennett Avenue Eruv is an excellent example of such a case. The reason this is such a good example is that it has in it all of the criteria for which such a shailah needs to go to the “best and the brightest” ( the gedloei hador ) ( this will be explored more below).
[ see Rosh Hashana 25, “chiyuva hu” , for an uncontested Gemara espousing this principle.]

The alternative to [1] is
[2] we default to the majority of the greatest Torah authorities of the generation who paskined on the matter at hand. [ e.g. examples of when we would find ourselves defaulting to the majority may be in the event that {a} we happened not to have a moreh horaah, or {b} we didn't have access to him for this shailah, or {c} he indicates he cannot render a decision on this shailah and doesn't know whom to direct you to for the shailah, or {d} he is ill, or {e} we just haven’t solidified our avodas Hashem [ e.g. Torah Practice ] to the point where we have “ found ourselves yet” and consequently, we haven’t found a moreh horaah who is a legitimate decisor of Jewish laws and values and norms.]

[ side note: of course we sometimes have different rebbeim for different types of questions: sometimes we have a poseik we ask most of our shailos to, and sometimes we go to another for advice in certain inyonim of our lives, etc… this article is covering the basic black and white shailah. For instance, this article is not discussing a {A} shaas hadchak or {B} emergency situation , or {C} a case of a troup of wanna be baalei teshuva , etc….where there isn’t a “moment to turn “ and a decision is required immediately. ]

So the following two grossly simplistic examples of what we can’t do are described just to form the outline of the intuitive argument to make the proof for the srgument easier to understand- these examples are given to make the cases vivid.

An example of what we aren’t allowed to do is pick a gadol we don’t go to for psakim in general but for this case we decide to rely on him – a minority opinion, because we want a leniency, or because in this instance we are fond of his position, or because we “just like to go around and try out knew poskim” for kicks” [ e.g. an example that doesn’t fall within this example is that we have an emergency of some sort and don’t have the time to reach our moreh horaah or to determine what the majority holds, or we aren’t sure if our particular urgent situation is the same as the pronouncement of the majority, etc….]

Another example of what we aren’t allowed to do is put put 15 names of gedolim that asur something into a hat and then put the names of 7 gedolim that matired the same thing into the hat, and then pick a psak from the hat. [ this case is given just for the sake of pointing out simple and vivid cases to make the intuitive argument ]

Question- How do we know – outside of the intuitive factor- that this is in fact the halachic policy and procedure klal yisroel must follow for the specific category of shailah discussed above?
Answer- Because the answer is empirically determined—this procedure is the unanimously held halachic policy position of all of the universally held of Greatest Torah Authorities in the world, the contemporary chachmei hamesorah, the chachamim basrai, the ones to whom “Hashem showed Adam and Moshe, “dor dor vedorshav… manhigav”- these are the names on that list. Our Mesorah tells us throughout that their siyatta diShmaya in knowing what is good for Klal Yisrael is unimaginably greater than ours. [ see again Rosh Hashana 25 -" chiyuvah hu" as a comment- not as the lomdus behind the proof]

Again, The fact is that the halacha can be ascertained by asking them- it’s empirical. You can know this firsthand yourself…. simply ask them [ but you’ve gotta ask the precise question under discussion]. They will all tell you the same thing, you don’t just go around and choose a leniency, and you don’t just go around and pick a psak of a gadol since you think that in this case the psak of Gadol A makes sense, and in that case the psak of Gadol B makes sense…especially when the {vast majority of } gedolim of the generation say “asur.”
[ Not to mention that so many ehrlich yidden misapply a past psak to a case they think is exactly the same but in fact is not. ]

Of course there is no implication here that an individual should get all depressed if they can’t bring themselves to abide by this principal. Living up to the Torah’s Truth is life’s challenge. It is a goal those of us unable to live up to should make as one of their lifelong goals. Certainly don’t get down or despondent, but at the same time don’t make up for the feelings you have that prod you to justify inappropriate behavior by creating or believing in a newfangled theology that you have either made up or have come to believe in from irresponsible [ even very smart] people who aren’t in the category of authorities --- Remember….“Hashem showed Adam and Moshe, “dor dor vedorshav… manhigav”- the names on the list are the ones to whom we look toward for our path to strive for truth.”

(The precise lomdus behind why this is 3,300 years of Halachic practice is not dealt with in this article. Also, the lomdus of each authority may not be identical to another one’s lomdus. This article is simply reporting the reality- that all of he universally recognized greatest authorities (would) tell us – in the specific generic case described above, that we need to go with the shailah to our ( legitimate) moreh horaah [ rebbe muvhok ] the one we ask most of shailos to…or, as stated above, defer by default to the majority in a scenario like this one.

That is the thrust of this article.

Now we will simply make some comments:

Background regarding the Torah Greats positions regarding an eruv covering a street in Manahttan: The majority of the Greatest Torah Authorities of this generation who have poskined on Manhattan Eruvs have said that its prohibited to use this type of Manahttan eruv [ all things considered].
Amongst these top authorities who prohibited its use are ....

Rav Moshe Bick
Rav Moshe Feinstein
Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky
Rav Ahron Kotler
Rav Ahron Soloveitchik
Rav Yosef D Soloveitchik
Rav Gedaliah Schorr

This is a Shailah of an isur skilah { Torah Prohibition } according to the above [ though the precise lomdus behind the psakim of these individuals may [ and do] differ, and, according to a minority position, ( not the ones listed above ), it's a shailah of an isur malkos { Rabbinic Prohibition, on account of the construction }.

From an adam chashuv who is a rav currently living in NY comes this report as to what a number of talmidim of Rov YD Soloveitchik reported: ‘A group of Manhattan rabbis came to meet with the Rov in the 1960's in his apartment in Washington Heights - on the YU campus. These rabbis came armed with a list of arguments formulated by Rabbi M. Kasher to demonstrate that Manhattan was not a reshus ha-rabbim d'Oraysa. Before the rabbis were able to finish their presentation to the Rov, the Rov stopped them and indicated that he could not accede to their point, commenting that it seemed like the rabbis felt that the eruv issue was of the same level as a question of one forgetting to recite Ya'aleh V'yavo on Rosh Chodesh. The Rov's intent was to indicate his surprise that these rabbis were willing to advocate leniency in a question of an issur chamur me'od - a very grave prohibition (Chillul Shabbos) - whereas in other matters of far less gravity, everyone is extremely careful. The Rov felt that this was inconsistent and very wrong. And so as one person summed it up, RYDS basically communicated that this is not a shailah of forgetting Ya'aleh V'yavo on Rosh Chodesh. This is a sofek s'kilah, and we cannot be maikil on it.’

This very day, Rav Hershel Schachter, Rav Willig, Rav Bleich, Rav Genack, Rav Meyer Twersky, Rav Dovid Feinstein Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky, and Rav Yisroel Belsky ( just to mention a number of prominent names ) do not poskin " go ahead and use the Bennett Avenue Eruv if you want to- some of them actually asur its use. This last sentence means that this shailah is very serious.

We're being painstakingly explicit in saying that some do not " allow " its use; we're not saying they have all paskined that it is 'asur' to use the Bennett eruv. Some will not poskin on the issue. The vast majority of the greatest, in America at least, asur an eruv on a manhattan street. They do so for a VARIETY of lomdishe reasons not all of which are precisely Reb Moshe's complete reasoning found in his teshuvas. [ for instance, we know that RAK and RMF differed on points in hilchos eruvin, but they both asured them in Manhattan. ] The status quo of the great ones all currently niftar mentioned above has been maintained by the contemporary ones [ for one lomdus or another].

So far this is all just background information. [ of course there are Top authorities who teach their talmidim that there are positions in the sources that may permit such an eruv- but we go according to the chachamim basrai- our contemporaries, almost all of whom will not allow an eruv in Mahattan.

At this point let's mention that a few weeks after the use of the eruv began and some people started carrying on Bennett on Shabbat ( not because most [ did even 10? ] of them asked their [ legitimate] moreh horaah [ the one they go to for most of their shailos] ) one of the shul's in the community, the Mt. Sinai Shul, inserted this text in their FAQs section of their web site, which reads:
"...everyone is encouraged to decide whether to use any eruv based on a discussion with his or her personal posek....''

This statement is a communication by the inserter of this line of the web site that the permissibility or prohibition of using this eruv is not decided by the de facto construction of it by a rav hamachshir; but rather it's decided by one's poseik ( actually the wording on the web site could be read in a way that is misleading, though I am sure the writer didn't intend as such: Really, the halachic permissibility of using the eruv is not "based on a discussion with his or her personal posek..." but rather, based upon receipt of permission to use it BY one's poseik].

We found it quite astounding that while most people we speak to take the "above" as something totally obvious and known to all, there are nonetheless a number of people - quite a number of people- who do not. To some we have communicated with, this is the first time they have ever heard of [ sic] anything like this, or they "kinda" heard something like this, but never knew how it really went. No one has ever presented a single gadol hador [ universally recognized ] who disagrees with what has been reported above about the policy and procedure of klal Yisroel in the specific type of scenario described above. Most people in klal yisroel who were brought up frum with a traditional chinuch who read this are just rolling their eyes because this article is just all too obvious.

Where did this mantra come from that we're hearing from many people in the Heights and elsewhere that you and I can just use this eruv? Answer: The people spreading the idea do so on account of the fact that the Rav of a shul instructed a Rav Hamachshir, who makes many eruvim, to make an eruv surrounding Bennett Avenue- and it's inferred from this that the very fact allows any individual to use it. That is some people's self- justification for using it.

So is that assumption at all valid? No. Of course it isn't. It isn't valid because the vast majority of the Generation's Greatest Torah Authorities who HAVE poskined on the matter have asured it's use.

So the fact that a rav hamachshir made an eruv doesn't give us the authorization to use it. Rather, what would allow us to use it could only be the employment of the procedure described above. [ *** this of course doesn't imply that the rav hamachshir himself can't use the eruv, or that the rav who allowed the rav hamachshir to make the eruv can't use it- no such suggestion is being made. The opposite of course is taken for granted....that the rav hamachshir of an eruv and the rav of the shul of an eruv who permit its use does so because they themselves employed the 3,300 year old process reported above. This article will not deal with the minority of ruffian laity of the shul that forced this eruv on someone who didn't want to break the consensus of the community and had not done so for decades.
All we will comment upon is that the word, "Baryonim", comes to mind. Hameivin Yavin]

[ Final Note:
Some irresponsible people are clamoring to others regarding rabbis in the community that don't permit the eruv, saying that ' the eruv issue on Bennett is all politics and has nothing to do with halacha and I therefore don't have to concern myself with these rabbis politics and I decided [ sic ] that they really permit its use [ meikur hadin ], and/or the above listed Great Torah Authorities who prohibited it are not relevant' . Also it's been passed around regarding some of these rabbis " They are lenient with some halachic positions on eruvin and not others and haven't explained themselves to us as to why they poskin differently in cases that appear to us [ naively] to be similar, and so they are fraudulently communicating that this issue is a shailah of being machallel shabbes bifarhesiah , etc....[ hameivin yavin]"

The statements above infer that there are Rabbis who are poskining improperly on this issue because their positions are not based on halacha but because of something that doesn't fall into halacha. [ implying that values or halachos outside of isur/chiyuv, tamei tahor questions are not halachic and are thereby invalidated as matters of Torah by calling them "politics" ] - or that these rabbis are making mistakes or being hypocritical by saying the questions are questions of isurim when they really are not. A warning: to say such a thing, to impute ulterior motives to qualified rabbis when they make a particular halachic announcement, charging that the rav isn't being honest with the psak, doesn't truly hold by the psak, but is only using it as an excuse for other non Torah motives is an isur of Mach'chish Maggideha'. To cite Rav Hershel Schachter:

http://www.torahweb.org/torah/2003/parsha/rsch_mishpatim.html

Did the Rabbi Distort the Psak? [excerpted] by Rav Hershel Schachter

"Rav Soloveitchik zt"l pointed out on various occasions that when the Rambam speaks of the various heretics, he puts together the "one who denies the (Divine origin of the) Torah shebaal peh, and the one who contradicts its teachers ['Ma'ch'chish Maggideha'-blogger's note ]." One who imputes ulterior motives to the psakim (halachic decisions) of an honest bona-fide rabbi, and says that Rabbi X was a convert, so that's why he always favors converts, and Rabbi Y didn't like women, so that's why in his decisions he will always put down women, and Rabbi Z is a Zionist, so that's why he will always pasken lehokel in matters regarding Eretz Yisroel, is in violation of this Ikar (principle) of faith. We not only believe that there existed at one time a Torah shebaal peh which was Divinely ordained; but rather we believe that Hashem continues to assist the G-d fearing qualified rabbis so that they should pasken properly. Emmunas chachomim is the foundation of all Orthodox Tradition!"

another piece of Rav Hershel Schachter:

THOSE FEW QUALIFIED INDIVIDUALS.....
Rav Hershel Schachter on the Reliability of the Ba'alei HaMesorah http://www.torahweb.org/torah/2004/moadim/rsch_shavuos.htmlexcerpted from "Why Was the Torah Forced Upon Us?" by Rav Hershel Schachter.

More on the eruv: another e-mail and a letter

2006-07-19T02:17:00.000-04:00

In comments to one of my previous posts about the Washington Heights eruv, it has been pointed out that the second of the anonymous mass e-mails regarding the eruv has been revised and is now available on a handy-dandy blog: http://maalot-eruv-psychosis.blogspot.com/. The blogger has given it an inviting subtitle/description, as follows:

A MUCH NEEDED REPORT ABOUT A VERY MISUNDERSTOOD PART OF NORMATIVE TORAH PRACTICE THAT IS BEING IGNORED IS REARING ITS HEAD IN WASHINGTON HEIGHTS WITH REGARD TO AN ERUV. HASHEM YIRACHEM. THANKFULLY THIS UNFORTUNATE INCIDENT WAS BROUGHT ABOUT BY A MINORITY OF LAITY WHO KNEW NO BETTER DUE TO THEIR UPBRINGING. THEREFORE SINCE THAT'S THE CASE THEY WILL NOT CH"V BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CHILLUL HASHEM CREATED BY HOW THEY BROUGHT IT ABOUT ( HAMEIVIN YAVIN).

[The all caps are part of the blog style-sheet; in fairness to the author, he isn’t screaming. The grammatical mistakes, however, are his.]

I hope to have more to say about the revised version soon, but for now I’ll just make a few comments:

I think it is counterproductive to include “psychosis” in the name of this new blog, regardless of who created it. As the blog represents itself as being by the author of the e-mails, this is all the more true: if you are genuinely trying to educate and persuade those you believe to be ignorant of “normative torah practice”, how does attributing to them a “psychosis” make them more receptive to your efforts? On the other hand, if you are trying to needlessly sow hatred and mistrust within the Washington Heights jewish community, your language is well-chosen. The same goes for the blog’s subtitle/description.

The article has been seen some significant revisions, some of which appear to by responses to my criticisms. Others, however, might be responses to my criticisms, but I can’t be certain as the author has not returned the courtesy of a direct response. While his language seems to indicate he is attempting to reply to me, he does not directly address my argument. I challenged the basic picture of the halachic system as a determinate, unified hierarchy of authority present in the previous version of the e-mail; this picture is still wholly present in the revised version. Moreover, the author has neither supported nor argued for his previous claims, but merely asserted them again using more prejudicial language. If he intended to reply to my criticisms, in failing to do so (while introducing indecorous language in the process) he has only increased the burden he must discharge if he wishes to be taken seriously.

I have previously commented on what appears to me to be a disrespectful attitude by the author to Rav Schnaidman. In the revised version, the author includes the following remark:
this of course doesn’t imply that the rav hamachshir himself can’t use the eruv, or that the rav who allowed the rav hamachshir to make the eruv can’t use it- no such suggestion is being made. The opposite of course is taken for granted….that the rav hamachshir of an eruv and the rav of the shul of an eruv who permit its use does so because they themselves employed the 3,300 year old process reported above. This article will not deal with the minority of ruffian laity of the shul that forced this eruv on someone who didn’t want to break the consensus of the community and had not done so for decades.
All we will comment upon is that the word, “Baryonim”, comes to mind. Hameivin Yavin
The italics are mine; in the original the italicized portion is in hard-to-read dark grey (why?). The author may say he takes for granted that Rav HaMachshir and the Rav of Mt. Sinai (Rav Schnaidman) may use the eruv, but his final remark betrays his disrespect towards Rav Schnaidman, for he insinuates that Rav Schnaidman’s decision to seek the building of the eruv was not done honestly and l’shem shamayim but was forced upon him by a “ruffian laity”. The implication is that he was pressured to betray his judgment and the established halachic process. Were that true, of course, he would certainly not be permitted to use the eruv. As someone who gives the following lecture, the author should be ashamed of himself:
to impute ulterior motives to qualified rabbis when they make a particular halachic announcement, charging that the rav isn’t being honest with the psak, doesn’t truly hold by the psak, but is only using it as an excuse for other non Torah motives is an isur of Mach’chish Maggideha’.

The comment just made leads nicely to the letter Rav Schnaidman has sent out the the Mt. Sinai membership, which I received yesterday. In it he clearly endorses in his own words the building of the eruv: “The recently completed Washington Heights Eruv represents the realization of a dream in our synagogue and community going back many years.” Later, he makes the following gracious remarks of which the author of the e-mails should take note:

In undertaking the Eruv project, we know that there would be congregations that would not accept it. We were well aware that there are Halachic authorities who are opposed to an Eruv in Manhattan, and others who would invalidate an Eruv in any metropolitan setting. However, we also know that a majority of Halachic decisors among the Acharonim would approve of our Eruv.***
We respect the right of those congregations that will not utilize the Eruv. But, we believe that in constructing the Eruv we have raised the levels of oneg, which is a crucial element of the Shabbat experience, and diminished the desecration of Shabbat through prohibited carrying, which may even involve some members of other congregations who have a need for carrying medications on Shabbat.
We would hope that just as we respect the pathway of those who choose not to use the Eruv, they, in turn, will respect our acceptance. We would suggest that if a person should direct derogatory remarks upon seeing use of the Eruv, then the wisest reaction is to say something like: “I respect your view; please note that there is a valid Halachic basis for mine.”

It is particularly unfortunate that Rav Schnaidman feels the need to give advice on responding to derogatory remarks, but such incidents have in fact occurred.

*** Rav Ovadia Yosef — who you might know as The Gadol HaDor — (in the responsa I have cited previously) judges that the majority of Achronim countenance metropolitan eruvin. Rav Ovadia himself has relied upon this judgment to permit the use of a large eruv in Brooklyn. Whether he, or the majority of Achronim, would permit the use of the Washington Heights Eruv is an open question, however, Rav Schnaidman certainly has good grounds for making his claim.

"Jew Jersey"?

2006-07-12T00:12:00.000-04:00

So says the NYT!

(I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a typo, but it’s funny nonetheless. The article with the mistaken description can be read here.)

A few comments on the Washington Heights eruv e-mails

2006-06-22T04:02:00.000-04:00

NB: This has been a bit late in coming, but I figured I’d wrap it up and post it anyway. So, belatedly...

Posted previously: first e-mail; second e-mail

First a note: I don’t use the eruv, not because of any particular controversy regarding this eruv, but because Rav Ovadia Yosef (whose rulings I endeavor to follow) does not favor relying upon the יש אמרים against the סתם ruling of מרן הש’’ע:

איזה היא רשות הרבים, רחובות הרחבים ט’’ז אמה, ואינם מקורים, ויש אמרים שכל שאין ששים רבוא עברים בו בכל יום אינו רשות הרבים. (חאו’’ם סי’ שמא ס’ ז)

And it is a general principle that בכל מקוֹם שיש סתם ויש אמרים בש’’ע הלכה כסתם.
The issue is much more complicated than this and I won’t go further into it (nor will I pretend to be competent to do so), but since Rav Ovadia’s position on eruvin has changed relatively recently, I will quote the summary of the ruling in which he announces this change (יביע אומר ח’ ט סי’ לג):

האריך הרחיב בדין רשות הרבים בזמן הזה לדעת הפוסקים הראשונים ולדעת מרן הש’’ע, ודין הוצאה לכתחלה לרה’’ר על סמך העירוב של צורת הפתח כפי שנוהגים פה עה’’ק ירושלים, והעלה שנוהגים היתר בדבר יש להם על מה שיסמיכו, ולפי דעת אחרונים רבים אף לדעת מרן יש להקל, וכן כתבו גאוני ירושלים שאין לנו דין הרבים בזמן הזה. ולפי זה העירוב של צורת הפתח מועיל לטלטל לכתחלה ברשות הרבים בזמן הזה, אלא החרדים לדבר ה’ ונמנעים מלטלטל ברה’’ר תבוא עליהם ברכה, אולם רשאים הם למסור למי שמטלטל מתפחת או טלית וסידור. ואפילו הוא בר מצוה, וגנח להם לישראל אם אינם נבינים בני נבינים הם.

One obviously needs to read the ruling itself in order to understand Rav Ovadia’s reasoning for this change in position. For myself, however, since in my present situation I find I have no pressing need to carry on Shabbat, I have decided not to begin relying on this new, more lenient ruling. Accordingly, I have not done any investigation of whether the eruv in Washington Heights would be of a sufficiently high standard that I could rely on it under to this ruling. Should a time come when I feel I must carry, e.g. when I have children and my wife (quite rightly) is not overjoyed at the prospect of being housebound one day a week for an extended period of time, I will revisit the matter.

Turning to the e-mails...
        The author of the e-mails relies throughout on a certain picture of how the halachic system functions which I believe is, if not actually erroneous, at least seriously questionable. According to this picture, there is a more or less determinate hierarchy of halachic authority, at the apex of which stand the “Greatest Torah Authorities”. While this picture was largely true some time ago, when the Sanhedrin and halachic court system were in existence, it does not obviously obtain today. Shortly after the Sanhedrin ceased to exist, there emerged divisions within those broadly committed to the halachic system over authority within it. In other words, halachically committed jews (both laymen and poskim) took divergent views over who were the preeminent halachic authorities and which were its authoritative traditions. This is old news, and I think it is safe to say that this trend has generally strengthened through to the present. One need only look to the dramatically different halachic traditions, methodologies and authorities embraced by ashkenazim, sephardim, and temanim — not to mention the countless divisions within these groups! — to see that there is not at present, and has not been for a very long time, a unified determinate hierarchy of halachic authority, nor is there any general rule by which one can determine which of these various hierarchies of halachic authority are legitimate or which is “right” — the basis for such a rule is part of what is in dispute.
        That being said, there are still various hierarchies and more serious questions are rightly escalated up one or another of those hierarchies. But this is still too simple a picture. A given rabbi or posek may lie below more than one hierachy: either because he has been educated by members of multiple hierarchies, or because those hierarchies are specialized around different areas of halacha. Leaving aside the former case as it is not particularly relevant here, the latter case is very common. Faced with a question about safrut or monetary matters or eruvin, for example, a rabbi is quite likely to escalate that question to a different rabbi than he would escalate a question about shabbat or kashrut. This sort of pattern is very common and rightly so: it reflects the differing degrees of expertise and competence had by various hierarchies of halachic authority.
        Given this, the picture assumed by the author of the e-mails appears to be simply false: it is not even roughly a determinate matter who are the “Greatest Torah Authorities” who are relevant to deciding any particular halachic question. Which authorities are relevant will depend on who is asking and what is the question. Consequently, citing some chosen list of “Greatest Torah Authorities” cannot support a general claim about whether one should or may hold by the Washington Heights eruv (though it would support a such a claim for someone who held by the rulings of one of those authorities).
        Now, were it the case that virtually all those who stand at the apex of the many hierarchies of halachic authority were to rule that the eruv is posul then one could make a general claim that eruv cannot be relied upon. But this is demonstrably not the case. Very few poskim have issued any ruling regarding the Washington Heights eruv. Wisely, the author of the e-mails limits himself to the claim that “the vast majority of the Very Greatest of the Generation's Torah Authorities have poskined ‘asur’” (italics mine). But even among the “Greatest Torah Authorities” cited by the author, most are either dead, and a fortiori have not ruled on the eruv, or have yet to issue any ruling. (While the reasoning and precedent of the rulings of dead poskim demand central consideration by today’s poskim, the very existence of their past rulings does [not] answer any present halachic question, nor does it inherently bind current poskim in their rulings: authority in halachic decision making is vested in current poskim (see R.H. 25b).) Rav Yosef D Soloveitchik, Rav Ahron Soloveitchik, Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky, Rav Ahron Kotler, and Rav Gedaliah Schorr are all dead. (The author also lists Rav Chaim Bick, but I couldn’t find any information about him; perhaps he meant to list Rav Moshe Bick, but he too is dead.) The author also names (as an aside) “Rav Gelly, Rav Schachter, Rav Posen [ Poseik of KAJ ], Rav Kohn [ Dayan of B'D of KAJ], Rav Levy [ Rosh Kollel and Dayan of KAJ B'D], Rav Block [ Rav of W.H. Cong ], Rav Maybruck [ a Rav of Mount Sinai Shul ] , Rav Hoffman [ Rav of Shaarei Tikvah], Rav Reider and Rav Balsim [ Ravs of Reider Shul ], and Rav Goldberg [Rav of the Agudah Shul]”, but I submit that the only candidate on this list for being among the “Very Greatest Torah Authorities” is Rav Schachter and only he is quoted by the author as having prohibited use of the eruv. Perhaps others have prohibited it as well, but even the author admits that “we are not saying that each of these rabbis asur it- we're only saying that they are not permitting [ as a psak ] the Bennett avenue eruv”. The author’s central claim that “the vast majority of the Very Greatest of the Generation's Torah Authorities have poskined ‘asur’” is without support.
        Perhaps, however, the author was speaking loosely when (more than once) he made this claim; he does, after all, make a weaker claim as well:

...the vast majority of the Generation's Greatest Torah Authorities who HAVE poskined on the matter have asured it's use and nearly all, or all of the rest, of the Greatest living authorities are not issuing psakim for their talmidim or congregants that one may use this Bennett Avenue eruv...

But this claim, even if true, is irrelevant. Certainly, when very few current poskim have ruled on some question, nothing follows halachically from the fact that other poskim have not got around to doing their jobs and issuing a psak, except that anyone holding by the rulings of any of these poskim is left hanging without a psak — that is a problem for these poskim and those who hold by their rulings, not for anyone else. Were many poskim to rule one way or the other, then the weight of their precedent would weigh upon any posek considering ruling otherwise, and even then he could still use his judgment and argumentation to rule otherwise. Of course, that is not the case here: few poskim have ruled, so the weight of precedent is very light. The mere fact — if it is a fact — that a majority of poskim (who have ruled) have ruled one way, does not have any any halachic bearing beyond that carried by the precedent of their various rulings.
        The author does make one point that is worth repeating: Whether any individual can hold by the eruv depends on how her posek (himself, or via some hierarchy of halachic authority) rules. Setting aside practical problems with carrying this out, the point is essentially correct. What the author neglects to mention, however, is that for many people (to the extent that they ask questions of a posek at all) their posek is simply the rabbi of the synagogue which they attend. For the many members of the ever growing community of young jews in Washington Heights (a community centered on Mt. Sinai), that means their posek is the rabbi of Mt. Sinai, Rabbi Schnaidman. (It strikes me as disrespectful to a long-standing rabbi in Washington Heights that the author of the e-mail did not even so much as mention him.) He is surely entitled as consider the question of an eruv in the area surrounding his community, and to consult a qualified halachic authority expert in eruvin regarding it. Rabbi Benzion Wozner is surely such an authority. Trusting that Rabbi Schnaidman and Rabbi Wozner acted with integrity and in good faith, this looks to be an example of the halachic process at work: a serious question was escalated up the a hierarchy of halachic authority to an expert competent to answer it. For those that are following the psak of Rabbi Schnaidman, as the rabbi of their synagogue, this is all that is required for them to use the eruv.
        There is good reason to think that even those who follow many other poskim will also be able to use the eruv. (They should consult their poskim before acting, of course.) Many people hold by eruvin in the communities in which they grew up, studied, or have lived previously. It is not obvious that the Washington Heights eruv is more problematic than the eruvin in mid-Manhattan or Chicago, for example. Although I am no expert, it seems quite possible that the Washington Heights eruv is built to a higher halachic standard than many of the major metropolitan eruvin already relied upon by many members of the community; if they legitimately rely upon those eruvin, then they should be able to rely on the eruv here as well.
        The bottom line: Based upon my reading of the e-mails, the author’s reasoning is not cogent, and they are not to be taken seriously.

David Kaplan's 2004 Howison Lecture (Berkeley)

2006-06-21T15:51:00.000-04:00

I just came across the video of David Kaplan’s extremely stimulating 2004 Howison Lecture at Berkeley titled “The Meaning of ‘Ouch’ and ‘Oops’” available via Google Video. Kaplan’s primary topic is the semantics of expressive terms, but (as is typical of him) he makes numerous insightful connections to other topics along the way, including the relative priority of intuitions about truth and valid inference in logic, methodology in semantics and the philosophy of logic, why philosophers have not given expressives logical semantic treatment, and that the descriptive–expressive distinction and the cognitive–emotive distinction are orthogonal to one another (ethical emotivists/expressivist take note!). I have yet to digest it (and it make take another viewing to do so), but I foresee this having significant impact on my thinking. I can’t recommend it enough to anyone interested in semantics. (It was also entertaining to see how very Californian Kaplan is in his speech and mannerisms!)

The 2005 Howison Lecture is also available: Judith Jarvis Thomson, “Normativity”. I haven’t viewed it yet.

"Why tolerate religion?"

2006-06-20T03:03:00.000-04:00

I thought some readers here might be interested in Brain Leiter’s recent paper of this title (available here). It’s been available for a few weeks, but I’ve just got around to reading it and found it quite interesting, so I’m belatedly linking to it.

Perhaps I’ll have more to say about this paper in the future, but for now I’ll confine myself to the following:
        Leiter seeks distinguishing characteristics of religion —rightly, given his project of determining whether religion’s distinguishing characteristics might afford a principled basis for any special toleration of religion. He concludes that the distinguishing characteristics of religion do not justify its toleration as such, although its toleration may well be justified on other grounds. Despite some unease, I am inclined to agree with this conclusion.
        I am skeptical, however, as to whether the characteristics Leiter settles upon do distinguish religion from other, non-religious (since no better term comes to mind) world-views consisting in a complex of values, action- and reason-guiding principles, and beliefs. (Leiter is alive to this worry, labeling it ‘over-inclusiveness’.) The two characteristics which do the work in Leiter’s argument are (1) the categoricity of religious commands and (2) religious belief’s insulation from evidence (see the paper for full formulations). My initial reaction to Leiter’s argument is that the religion is less both less categorical and less insulated from evidence than Leiter imagines, and that non-religious world-views do not differ significantly from them in these respects. This is in part because I see religion and non-religious world-views as occupying comparable roles in the lives of their adherents: in structuring belief, prioritizing alternative courses of actions, offering values which motivate and give meaning to actions, etc. Accordingly, it would be surprising if they did turn out to differ significantly in these respects and, consequently, if differences in their toleration were justified. I suspect that any world-view, religious or not, which occupies such central roles in the lives of persons is will exhibit categoricity of commands and insulation from evidence to an extent which is relatively invariant across world-views, and that the same would go for any other characteristic which would provide a principled basis for differential treatment. [Obviously, much more needs to be said here.]
        Just to be clear, my worry is not with Leiter’s argument; rather, it is about the understanding of the facts of religion versus non-religious world-views that he appears to hold. He regards them as differing significantly, though these differences do not justify special toleration of religion, whereas I regard them as broadly similar in the relevant respects and hence no differences in toleration can be justified on their basis.
        Where this disagreement does matter is in the treatment, legal and constitutional, of religion. At the end of his paper, Leiter suggests that “the French conception of laïcité may be the only principled approach.” At least as practiced by the French, laïcité involves the confinement of religion, in particular, to the private sphere, while non-religious world-views are permitted to intrude into the public sphere and are even endorsed and promoted therein by the state. But for this differential treatment to be principled itself, there must be distinguishing differences between religion and non-religious world-views which justify it. In Leiter’s view there are differences which justify differential treatment, only not with respect to toleration. But, if I am right that the relevant sorts of differences required to justify differential treatment do not obtain in general, then either non-religious world-views too must also be confined to the private sphere, or both religion and non-religious world-views must be allowed to intrude into the public sphere to some degree, and the limits on this intrusion must be delineated for both together. As the former course is (I submit) impossible to pursue while maintaining any substantial public sphere at all, the latter — with its abandonment of the French conception of laïcité — remains as the only option. (I’ll add that this approach seems to fall nicely within the liberal tradition in a way that French laïcité does not.)
        Finally, I am open to the possibility that many or most religions as they are practiced have features which make them more likely to bring about harm to well-being than non-religious world-views, and so justify some degree of differential treatment against religion. (Leiter acknowledges this possibility, but leaves it aside as not relevant to his project.) If there are such features, I am committed that they do not have their basis in any defining characteristics of religion alone, including Leiter’s: the categoricity of religious commands or insulation from evidence. Be that as it may, what does seem to often bring about harm to well-being is fanatical belief, whether religious or not; what is needed, then, is an investigation into the characteristics of fanatical belief and the conditions which promote it: if religions engender these conditions to a greater extent than non-religious world-views, then differential treatment of religion may be justified accordingly on that basis.

"Government Asserts It Is Above the Law"

2006-06-17T22:39:00.000-04:00

In court no less. From the EFF.

As disturbing as these sorts of assertions are, perhaps some good may come of it. My impression is that the courts frown upon such extreme assertions of unconstrained power. Hopefully the courts will respond by rejecting the governments claims and further delineating the scope of the state secrets privilege, even if they do not rule against the government with regard to the NSA wiretapping program.

Your next menorah?

2006-06-16T18:10:00.000-04:00

Here. I’m a big fan of the non-menorah menorah myself.

Some IP-related articles

2006-06-14T14:23:00.000-04:00

On the James Joyce estate:
THE INJUSTICE COLLECTOR: Is James Joyce’s grandson suppressing scholarship?

On the WIPO Broadcast Treaty:
Constitutional circumvention
Beware of the Leopard: WIPO pushes Broadcasting Treaty at covert meeting

On S1RA:
S1RA Update: Encouraging Signs from DC

To take action on IP issues visit the EFF Action Center.

Good post on net neutrality

2006-06-13T12:55:00.000-04:00

Net neutrality detractor writes satirical legislation, misses point entirely

This post rightly emphasizes that the market for broadband internet service is not genuinely competative, and that this fact should make it a candidate for regulation even for those who are object to the expansion of government regulation in general. The problematic role of the government in bringing about that non-competitive market is also highlighted.

Green Roses

2006-06-13T00:31:00.000-04:00

I didn’t know such things existed, but I saw them at a shop today and had to pick up a bunch for Cheryl. This variety is called ‘Limbo’. I’m quite taken with them!

Act now!

2006-06-12T00:38:00.000-04:00

KEEP MEGABITE KOSHER!!!

Suzanne posted the sad news:

Megabite, located on 38th st, between 5th and 6th aves, and home to many Washington Heights residents at lunchtime is losing its hashgacha next week. I am sad. I wrote a blog about it: http://www.susqhb.blogspot.com and also started a petition for you to sign: http://www.petitiononline.com/megabite/petition.html to keep it kosher!

Megabite was one of the very few kosher pizza places in NYC that I think is worth eating at. If you have any sense of taste, I know you agree, so stop by and let them know how you feel, and sign the petition!

CLARIFICATION: Just to be clear, according to the information passed to me, Megabite is loosing it's hashgacha due to a change in ownership, not due to any violation of kashrut standards. Apparently, The Vaad of Flatbush, which has been giving their hashgacha, only certifies jewish owed establishments, and Megabite has now been sold to a non-Jew. The aim in publicizing Megabite's impending loss of hashgacha is to gather support sufficient to convince the new ownership to acquire a new hashgacha, thus keeping Megabite kosher.

UPDATE: I went to Megabite today to partake in a final slice, and it's looks definite that they won't be kosher after tomorrow. I was told that the place was bought by Koreans (I don't know if that means they're going to switch it over to Korean food too), but if they don't keep it kosher from the outset it will probably be too much of a bother for them to rekasher the place later. Too bad...

Original WH eruv e-mail

2006-06-07T14:42:00.000-04:00

Here is the first of the anonymous mass e-mails about the recently erected Washington Heights eruv. (Thanks to the kind person who passed this along to me.)

Subject: W.H. eiruv news

Avraham Gordimar was told by Rav Hershel Schachter that the eiruv in Washington Heights is posul- this is what's been passed around

"Rav Schachter used the Chazon Ish for the YU eruv, but the other pesul of the wire going over bus shelters and other reshuyos ha-yachid (e.g. mail-boxes) is why he holds the local eruv to be possul."

The full writing he wrote me ....

"One of the basic issues here is the machlokes of the Chazon Ish vs. the other poskim I noted. The Chazon Ish holds that in large cities, where buildings line most streets, the city isnot a reshus ha-rabbim d'Oraysa, as streets that are lined with buildings on three sides intersect the other major streets and halachically create barriers for them on many sides, making the entire area no longer a reshus ha-rabbim d'Oraysa.This approachrelies on a shittah in the Gemara (Rebbi Elazar) and some Rishonim that "La asu rabbim u-mevatlei mechitzta" -a street that is used as a thoroughfare cannot interrupt a barrier. Many Rishonim hold otherwise, per Reb Yochanan in the Gemara, and they therefore say that a halachic barrier that has people going though it (such as an "imaginary" barrier created on all sides by buildings, when it is cut by a main street without three-sidedbarriers, such as Broadway) is a reshusha-rabbim d'Orasya, and as suchcannot be enclosed by poles and wires. I have seen the Chazon Ish's shittah described as a major chiddush, but it is used in many places. Reb Moshe did not accept it, nor did the poskim I noted.[Rav Gelley, Rav Dovid Feinstein, Rav AharonSoloveichik,and I think Rav YD Soloveichikandmany others].

Rav Schachter used the Chazon Ish for the YU eruv, but the other pesul of the wire going over bus shelters and other reshuyos ha-yachid (e.g. mail-boxes) is why he holds the local eruv to be possul."

For those that know Oren and Miriam...

2006-06-06T13:08:00.000-04:00

overheard in buffalo

(My girlfriend’s got an inch on me and found this hysterical.)

Against bifurcation

2006-06-06T02:56:00.000-04:00

As some may be aware, I am of the opinion that bifurcated garments are articles of oppression designed to keep men sweaty and uncomfortable in hot and/or humid weather. There are good reasons indeed why the standard lower garment for men in so many hot and humid climes are not bifurcated. I won’t bother trying to explain why this is so—it should be obvious and, in any case, there is plenty of unbifurcated advocacy around (not all of which I endorse, needless to say). (My title is a statement of position rather than an announcement of argument.)

Since most westerners are not of sufficiently broad mind to recognize these advantages, unbifurcated garments have yet to become a viable option for everyday wear. They are, however, an excellent choice for sleeping and about the house.

My preference in unbifurcated garments are the tube sarongs common throughout southeast asia and Indonesia. (They are blessedly free of the wannabe celtic aspect surrounding much kilt-wearing today.) I was introduced to them by my father, who was a geographer specializing in that part of the world and who picked up the practice while there. While I am partial to the simpler plaid sarongs which are standardly worn by men, there are many more elaborate batik sarongs worn by women and on more formal occasions.

As it happens, I came across an excellent article about these sorts of sarongs in Saudi Aramco World. It’s really quite fascinating and worth a read, whether you are familiar with sarongs or not.

Washington Heights eruv anonymous mass e-mail

2006-06-05T02:16:00.000-04:00

For those who have heard about an anonymous mass e-mail raising questions about the recently erected eruv in Washington Heights, here is (a version of) the e-mail in question as it was passed to me.

For the moment I won’t address its substance, however, I will make two remarks:

I don’t care for anonymous mass e-mails. In order to have open, honest and productive debate within almost any community, it is virtually essential that participants take responsibility for their views, and this is made impossible when participants keep themselves anonymous. Furthermore, anonymity is likely to provoke unsavory speculation, and has in this case, about the identity of the author. Of course, one might say—ok, I’ll say it—that the frum world [I use ‘frum’ pejoratively] is far too filled with inside information, behind backs discussions, “private” conversations that everyone seems to know about, etc., so this is pretty much par for the course. If so, that merely goes to explain why the frum world is in so many ways dysfunctional, and begs the question as to why we should tolerate that dysfunction and behavior that contributes to it. (Consider my posting this e-mail as a small step towards greater openness.) At a more basic level, which I can’t quite explain, anonymity here just strikes me as childish, and makes it very hard for me to take seriously what the author is saying.

The e-mail begins with an “editors note” [sic] complaining of misunderstandings of previous versions of the e-mail, and attributes them to an inability of its recipients to read [I’m paraphasing, of course]. Although I haven’t seen the previous version of the article referred to—do send it along if you’ve got it!—given the dismal quality of writing exhibited by this version, I would suggest that fault lies closer to home: perhaps in the inability of the author to write. Unsurprisingly, I find it hard to take seriously such a poorly written article. (Perhaps the author remained anonymous to avoid the embarrassment?)

Hopefully I’ll have more to say soon.

From: haedah <haedah@gmail.com>
To: haedah@gmail.com
Sent: Fri, 26 May 2006 00:05:03 -0400
Subject: There's a rav hamachshir and an eruv, BUT CAN WE USE IT? revised May 25

From Haedah today .
please delete all previous copies of this article
Editors note: The initial version of this article has been revised since the first one was misunderstood by a number of readers on account of their imputing a desired meaning that wasn't to be found. We hope that this revised article, with its tortuously repetitive and redundant verbiage, will reduce readers' tendencies to mistake the meaning of this article.

"There is an eruv around Bennett Avenue".
That sentence contains a lot of presumptions, and one of those presumptions is that you and I can use it to carry on Shabbat.

But can we? That is the subject of this article, and the PERMISSIBILITY of using it will be explored. The purpose of this article is not to explain the halachos of eruvin, but rather our Mesorah's unanimously held of procedure for employing rabbinic authority to our lives in a relatively narrow situation which will be described below-- an example with which we're faced regarding this Bennett eruv.

First a summary of the conclusion of the article, then we'll provide some background, then we'll elucidate the main point of the article further:

WE STATE what should be obvious after careful consideration of the facts mentioned in the rest of this article as to what special situation exists with regard to this eruv on Bennett that would require special psak halacha to be allowed to use it. We all take it for granted that all agree that a non-gadol hador can pasken shailos. Indeed, that is the structure of psak. There are local poskim who do render their own decisions. Of course, we trust them since we expect them to apply the principles and precedents of the Greatest Torah Authorities in the world in the arena of rendering psakim - But the point of this article is that if the greatest authorities in the world were to contradict what we took to be a "pedestrian psak" [ a psak from a bone fide rav who poskins for his talmidim or congregants who however is not one of the greatest authorities of the generation] then we would have to give it up [ the pedestrian psak ] and either

[1] go ask for a psak on the matter from our rebbe muvhok who , or attached to -through a rebbe- talmid/ talmid - posek relationship- is one of the greatest Torah Authorities of the generation, as per the criteria explained below, OR
[2] we would default to the majority of the greatest Torah authorities of the generation who paskined stringently on the matter at hand [ e.g.for [2] ....in the event that we happened not to have a rebbe muvhok, or we didn't have access to him for this shailah, or he indicates he cannot render a decision on this shailah and doesn't know to whom to direct us to for the shailah, etc....]

That is the thrust of this article. Now for some background regarding an eruv covering a street in Manahttan and Torah Greats' positions on such: The Majority of the Greatest Torah Authorities of this generation who have poskined on Manhattan Eruvs have said that its prohibited to use this type of Manahttan eruv. Amongst these top authorities who prohibited its use are ....

Rav Yosef D Soloveitchik
Rav Ahron Soloveitchik
Rav Moshe Feinstein
Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky
Rav Ahron Kotler
Rav Chaim Bick
Rav Gedaliah Schorr

This is a question of an isur skilah { Torah Prohibition } according to the above [ though the precise lomdus behind the psakim of these individuals may differ ], and, according to others ( not the ones listed above ), it's a shailah of an isur malkos { Rabbinic Prohibition }.

From reliable testimony of a Rav who is an adam chashuv currently living in NY comes this quote: " When rabbonim from Manhattan came to the Rov [ Rov YD Soloveitchik] in the 1960's to ask him to stop advising people not to use Manhattan eiruvin, he refused their request, explaining something like ' This is not a shailah of forgetting Ya'aleh V'yavo on Rosh Chodesh. This is a sofek s'kilah, and we cannot be maikil on it.'

And today neither Rav Hershel Schachter nor Rav Willig, nor Rav Bleich, nor Rav Genack, nor Rav Meyer Twersky, nor Rav Dovid Feinstein nor Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky, nor Rav Yisroel Belsky ( just to mention a number of prominent names ) -- none poskin for their talmidim, " go ahead and use it if you want to"; some of them actually asur its use.
We're being painstakingly explicit in saying that some do not " allow " its use; we're not saying they have all psakined on the Bennett Eruv that they prohibit its use.

We have yet to hear of any universally recognized "Greatest of the Living Torah Authorities" actually poskining that " one may go ahead and use the Bennett Avenue Eruv" - though this is not the main point of this email, so far it is all just background information. [ of course there are Top authorities who teach their talmidim some of the serious considerations to this shailah and present permissive opinions regarding those considerations. But to hear these teachings are not enough to permit us to use the eruv. The question, " Why not? " will be explored instantly.

Incidentally, and also not to the main point of this email, the following rabbis who live in Washington Heights or have communal Rabbinic positions of authority in Washington Heights who have been asked " May I use the eruv? " have not paskined [ presently as of May 25, 2006 ] to anyone [ publicly at least ] " Yes, go and use it if you wish" [ regardless of whether they hold that this is not a reshus harabim and that the construction is perfect]: Rav Gelly, Rav Schachter, Rav Posen [ Poseik of KAJ ], Rav Kohn [ Dayan of B'D of KAJ], Rav Levy [ Rosh Kollel and Dayan of KAJ B'D], Rav Block [ Rav of W.H. Cong ], Rav Maybruck [ a Rav of Mount Sinai Shul ] , Rav Hoffman [ Rav of Shaarei Tikvah], Rav Reider and Rav Balsim [ Ravs of Reider Shul ], and Rav Goldberg [Rav of the Agudah Shul] [ forgive us if we are leaving anyone out].

Again, we are not saying that each of these rabbis asur it- we're only saying that they are not permitting [ as a psak ] the Bennett avenue eruv. Again, this goes completely in line with the overall point of this article which was made above, and will be further explained below:

Once again, due to the invective that some people who don't read closely have heaped upon us in a previous version of this article, we explicitly reiterate: We are not saying that they all asur it, for whatever their reasons, rather, we are only saying that they are not issuing a psak permitting the eruv to their talmidim who ask them, " Would you poskin for me that I may use this eruv of bennett avenue ". [ if private psakim are being given out to others under the condition that they not be made public, well then as far as we're concerned, the psak is not on the table for us to use ].

One more point before we elaborate upon the main point of the article: Rav Herschel Schachter has orally told multiple people that he holds the Bennett Avenue eruv is posul [ as per a shailah of an isur derabbanan- unlike the at least 8 above who asured it on account of a shailah of an isur deorasia [ a shailag of an isur skilah ]. And Rav Schachter refers people to his written sefer B'Ikvei HaTzon in siman 13 for his reasons. That's an actual psak of " asur". [ A false rumor has spread that he permits use of the eruv and only personally holds a chumrah that causes him to not use it, but that he really allows this eruv. This rumor is a grotesque falsehood created by people who feel that they can " Psyche- out " a Poseik's inner position and give the impression on his behalf that permission exists where none exists. Others have actually posted on a web site that 'they' are unaware of the his position on this Bennett Avenue eruv. The fact is however, that Rav Hershel Schachter has not given permission for ANYONE to use this Bennet Avenue eruv and has poskined it is actually posul. Finished. It would be pure fantasy to assume that he is privately issuing psakim to individuals to use the eruv [ we're not of course talking about whether rabbis are giving heterim to carry on Bennett in life threatening or situations involving 'serious illnesses, though we haven't heard of any such positions. Rav Schachter's non allowance of use of this eruv can be easily verified: call him up if you are one of his talmidei muvhok.

As we've said in the beginning, the vast majority of the Greatest Living Torah Authorities who have paskened on this matter [ not theoretically but rather limaaesh ] and who could probably be the rebbe muvhok [ up the chain of " Rebbe muvhok to talmid relationship "] of a resident of the Heights continue to not paskin " Go ahead and use it if you want to". It may be that every one of the Greatest Living Torah Authorities who have paskened on this matter do not permit its use. We don't know of one who has publicly done so.

This is the background .

Where did this mantra come from that we're hearing from many people in the Heights and elsewhere that you and I can use this eruv? Answer: The people spreading the idea do so on account of the fact that the Rav of a shul instructed a Rav Hamachshir, who makes many eruvim, to make an eruv surrounding Bennett Avenue- and it's inferred from this that the very fact of this allows us to use it. That is some people's assumed Torah justification for permitting us to use it.

So is that assumption at all valid? No. Of course it isn't. It isn't valid because the vast majority of the Generation's Greatest Torah Authorities who HAVE poskined on the matter have asured it's use [ mentioned above] and nearly all, or all of the rest, of the Greatest living authorities are not issuing psakim for their talmidim or congregants that one may use this Bennett Avenue eruv, for whatever the particular reasons of the rav in question are. So the fact that a Rav Hamachshir made the eruv doesn't give us the authorization to use it [ *** this of course doesn't imply that the Rav hamachshir can't use it, or that the Rabbi that allowed the Rav Hamachshir to make the eruv can't use it- no such suggestion is being made or would even be considered in this article, as we can all understand from the article itself].

There is one possible situation whereby we could theoretically use this eruv, namely, via the employment of a halachic policy and procedure that is unanimously held of by all of the Greatest Torah Authorities alive, which, depending on the outcome, could allow use of this eruv. This policy and procedure was mentioned above briefly, and will be described again below shortly. But first let's mention that a few weeks after the use of the eruv began and some people started carrying on Bennett on Shabbat, one of the shul's in the community, the Mt. Sinai Shul, inserted this text in their FAQs section of their web site, which reads:
"...everyone is encouraged to decide whether to use any eruv based on a discussion with his or her personal posek....''

This statement is a communication by the writer of the web site that the permissibility or prohibition of using this eruv is not decided by the de facto construction of it by a rav hamachshir; rather, it's decided by one's poseik ( actually the wording on the web site could be read in a way that is misleading, though I am sure the writer didn't intend as such: Really, the halachic permissibility of using the eruv is not "based on a discussion with his or her personal posek..." but rather, based upon receipt of permission to use it BY one's poseik].

Now to repeat the main point of this article: There is only one halachic means by which an individual like you or me would be permitted to use the Bennett Avenue Eruv since its the category of shailah where the vast majority of the Very Greatest of the Generation's Torah Authorities have poskined " asur" . [ see Rav Hershel Schachter's " The Qualified Few" brought below]: In brief, as it applies to questions of this nature, like the Bennett Avenue Eruv, the following are the means to permit this eruv :

Requirement # 1- we ask our poseik whether we can use it [ the poseik we ask most of our questions to, our rebbe muvhok] and...

Requirement # 2a - if our poseik is one of the Greatest Authorities of the generation and he permits, then we can use the eruv, OR

2b - if our poseik is not one of the Greatest Torah Authorities of the generation but he himself has a rebbe muvhok who is one of, or attached to -through a rebbe talmid relationship- one of the greatest Torah Authorities of the generation he goes to for the questions he isn't able to answer, and that Rav permits what the majority of the Greatest prohibit, then we can use the eruv.

[ *** if we found ourselves in a situation where the rabbi we use for all our questions actually ignores when the majority of the Greatest Ones take a position of "asur" on an issue, and this Rabbi isn't one of the Greatest Ones himself, and he doesn't have a rebbe muvhok he goes to himself who is one of the Greatest, and nonetheless he simply poskins on his own "mutar" in a shailah in this category, then it seems like times to get ourselves a new rabbi.

If the above Requirements don't extend to you or me, then we are not permitted to use the eruv because of the backdrop of that majority of the Greatest Torah authorities who actually asured its use. There is no entitlement for us to simply choose to use it because we like the halachic rationale behind the eruv as we hear about it from other authorities, even a great one, who is in the minority.

[ Living up to the truth of course is our life's struggle and it's few people's place to render judgement on another person, we all agree.]

Question- Now how do we know that this is the halachic policy and procedure we must follow ?
Answer- Because the answer can be determined empirically- it's the unanimously held halachic policy position of all of the Greatest Torah Authorities in the world--- and this can be verified by asking them.

Now we want to repeat [ ad nauseam ] what should be obvious with careful reading of the above as to what special category of circumstance it is to which these requirements apply, and to which set of general circumstances these comments don't apply: The above requirements takes it for granted that all agree that a NON-gadol hador can pasken shailos. Indeed, that is the structure of psak. There are local poskim who do render their own decisions. Of course, we trust them since we expect them to apply the principles [ sometimes precedents] of the Greatest Torah Authorities in the world in the arena of rendering psakim - But the point of this article is that IF the greatest authorities in the world were to contradict what we took to be a "pedestrian psak" [ a psak from a bone fide rav who however is not one of the greatest authorities of the generation] then we would have to give it up and go with our rebbe muvhok as per the criteria explained above in " Requirement 2a or 2b, or we would default to going with the majority of the greatest authorities of the generation who HAVE poskined stringently on this matter [ e.g. examples of when we would find ourselves in this situation may be in the event that we happened not to have a rebbe muvhok, or we didn't have access to him for this shailah, or he indicates he cannot render a decision on this shailah and doesn't know whom to direct you to for the shailah, or he is ill etc....]

It's quite astounding that while most people we speak to take the "above" as something totally obvious and known to all, there are nonetheless a number of people - quite a number of people- who do not. To some we have communicated with, this is the first time they have ever heard of anything like this, or they "kinda" heard something like this, but never knew how it really went.

Final Note:

Some irresponsible people are clamoring to others regarding rabbis in the community that don't permit the eruv, saying that ' the eruv issue on Bennett is all politics and has nothing to do with halacha and I therefore don't have to concern myself with these rabbis politics and can decide [ sic ] that they really permit its use [ meikur hadin ] and the above listed Great Torah Authorities who prohibited it are not relevant' . Also it's been passed around regarding some of these rabbis " They are lenient with some aspects eruvin and not others and haven't explained themselves to us as to why they poskin the way they poskin, and so they are fraudulently communicating that this issue is a shailah of being machallel shabbes bifarhesiah , etc....[ hameivin yavin]"

The statements above infer that there are Rabbis who are poskining improperly on this issue because their positions are not based on halacha but because of 'politics' [ implying that values or halachos outside of isur/chiyuv, tamei tahor questions are not halachic and are thereby invalidated as matters of Torah by calling them "politics" ] - or that these rabbis are making mistakes or being hypocritical. A warning: to say such a thing, to impute ulterior motives to qualified rabbis when they make a particular halachic announcement, charging that the rav isn't being honest with the psak, doesn't truly hold by the psak, but is only using it as an excuse for other non Torah motives is an isur of Mach'chish Maggideha'. To cite Rav Hershel Schachter:

http://www.torahweb.org/torah/2003/parsha/rsch_mishpatim.html

Did the Rabbi Distort the Psak? [excerpted]
by Rav Hershel Schachter

"Rav Soloveitchik zt"l pointed out on various occasions that when the Rambam speaks of the various heretics, he puts together the "one who denies the (Divine origin of the) Torah shebaal peh, and the one who contradicts its teachers ['Ma'ch'chish Maggideha'-blogger's note ]." One who imputes ulterior motives to the psakim (halachic decisions) of an honest bona-fide rabbi, and says that Rabbi X was a convert, so that's why he always favors converts, and Rabbi Y didn't like women, so that's why in his decisions he will always put down women, and Rabbi Z is a Zionist, so that's why he will always pasken lehokel in matters regarding Eretz Yisroel, is in violation of this Ikar (principle) of faith. We not only believe that there existed at one time a Torah shebaal peh which was Divinely ordained; but rather we believe that Hashem continues to assist the G-d fearing qualified rabbis so that they should pasken properly. Emmunas chachomim is the foundation of all Orthodox Tradition!"

another piece of Rav Hershel Schachter:

THOSE FEW QUALIFIED INDIVIDUALS.....
Rav Hershel Schachter on the Reliability of the Ba'alei HaMesorah

http://www.torahweb.org/torah /2004/moadim/rsch_shavuos.html
excerpted from "Why Was the Torah Forced Upon Us?"
Rav Hershel Schachter
[emphasis added]

[A]ccording to Talmudic tradition (Shabbos 88a), G-d pressured the Jewish people to accept the Torah, and forced it upon them against their wishes. The commentaries on the Talmud all wonder, why it was necessary to force the Torah upon the Jews if they had already enthusiastically expressed their willingness to accept it? The people were prepared to accept both G-d's written Torah, and all the halachos l'Moshe miSinai – transmitted directly from G-d. But the bulk of the Oral Torah is really [ ] halachos which were developed over the centuries with much rabbinic input. This the Jews at Har Sinai were not prepared to accept. This is a human Torah, and all humans can err. Why should they agree to be subservient to the idea of other human beings? And it was this part of the Torah that G-d had to force upon us. Whether we like it or not, G-d expects us to follow the positions set forth by the rabbis in interpreting the Torah. This is the significance of the expression we use (from the Rambam's formulation), that we believe (ani maamin) that the Torah as it is observed today, is an accurate transmission of that Divine Torah which was given to Moshe Rabbeinu. This added phrase, "as it is observed today", implies exactly this idea – to include all of those halachos where there was rabbinic input. We have "emunas chachomim". We believe that throughout all the generations there was an invisible Divine assistance given to the rabbis to develop the halacha in a correct fashion. Of course, the application of those "middos" is a science unto itself, which is only mastered by a small handful of qualified individuals in each generation. And the new additional halachos that read "in between the lines" have to "fit in" with "the spirit" of the rest of the Torah, which again can only be fully sensed by those few qualified individuals who have a proper sense of what "the spirit of the law" is!"

.......................

from a shiur from RHS at this link called eilu v'eilu [ notes taken by Saul Mashbaum

http://www.aishdas.org/articles/rhsEilu.pdf

"There is another aspect to eilu v'eilu – one may accept minority opinions of one's rebbe muvhak, and a community may continue its traditions and follow its rov even if other opinions reject their minhag or his psak."

In line with the above mentioned approach, the writer of this article assumes that the statement above of Rav Schachter agrees that if a sudden call from the vast majority of the Greatest Living Authorities of the Generation took a position of "isur" on a shailah, then the rov [ were he not one of the Greatest of the Generation ] would need to have to go to the authority he went to for shailos he couldn't answer [ e.g. his own rebbe muvhok who was from the Greatesat of the Generation- entitled to an opinion on such matters given such a situation ] and ask him if they could maintain the present practice of the shul or would they need to change their position and go with the majority.

Finally, one more interesting quote from the RHS shiur:

" Rav Soloveitchik said several times, and wrote this as well, that it is not true that halacha
and hashkafa are to separate domains. Hashkafa is the halacha of the mind.
Just as there are things it is forbidden to do, so there are things it is forbidden to believe.
Eilu v'eilu applies to hashkafa as well, but there are boundaries, just as there are in
halacha."

___________________________________________________________________

Appendix:

Scenario # 1: If Yankel's rebbe muvhok , Rabbi "X", was one of the Greatest Torah Authorities of the generation and did not consider Bennett a reshus harabim, and did not have any problem with the construction of the eruv, but had another problem, whatever it might be, let's say for example, the fact that one shul out of many decided to go along with constructing an eruv without the agreement of the others in town, and that issue caused Rabbi "X" to refuse to permit use of the eruv, then Yankel is not permitted to HALACHICALLY use the eruv.

Scenario # 2 The fact that one may look to the Rav Hamachshir as an expert on eruvim doesn't help us with the permissibility of OUR using the eruv since he isn't our sole poseik / rebbe muvhok, nor is he of perhaps any of the residents of Washington Heights. We therefore don't even need to go further into discussing his role in this eruv.

Scenario # 3 Someone suggested to me that Rav Ovadiah Yosef - surely one of the Greatest living Poskim of our generation- would allow this Bennett Ave. Eruv. First off, we have no idea if ROY would, bottom line, allow this eruv in every respect . But let's say he did! We still couldn't use it! Why? For the same reasons as stated above, namely, none of us has a rebbe muvhok who is connected by a "chain" , rebbe muvhok to rebbe muvhok back to ROY.[ I assume ]

Scenario # 4 And let's say Rabbi "X" is Yankel's rebbe muvhok, and is one of the Greatest Torah Authorities of the generation, and says privately that the eruv is probably mutar to use, but that he will not actually permit its use for reasons X, Y, and Z, one of them being that politically he doesn't want to cause further erosion of the status quo or some other reason, --- then Yankel can't HALACHICALLY use the eruv because he didn't get a psak to do so! Yankel can't choose which aspects of a psak he will accept and which aspects of a psak he will reject. It's kind of like saying that our rebbe would permit a certain kind of woman's tefillah group in terms of 17 siffim in the Shulchan Aruch, and only refuses to allow it on account of one remaining sif, so we are going to take part in a woman's tefillah group since we're not so keen on our rebbe's interpretation of that last remaining sif. That's not acceptable. That way of keeping mitzvos isn't part of our Mesorah according to any of the Great Torah Authorities in the world, and is simply a clever idea created by those who are not entitled to an opinion on the matter. [ see R H Schachter's article above]

[ What if a psak was privately given over with the condition that the name of the authority not be divulged. Well this would really put the public user of the eruv in a quagmire if asked, upon whose psak do you rely to use the eruv and he says " My rebbe wants me to keep it quiet " - after all, this is a public action. ]

Democracy in America?

2006-06-05T01:07:00.000-04:00

I’ve harbored doubts for some time, even before the 2000 and 2004 elections, but this does nothing to help:
“Was the 2004 Election Stolen?”
(I picked this up from the Leiter Reports, where a Left2Right post, “explaining the exit polls?”, is also linked.)
Read the whole thing. I found it extremely disturbing. Even if the title’s question is ultimately answered in the negative, it seems utterly clear that the 2004 election was neither free nor fair. What is most disturbing of all is that neglect from the mainstream media has left Rolling Stone to report this critical fact.

NSA data mining

2006-06-05T00:45:00.000-04:00

The EFF points to an exceptionally clear explanation of why the NSA’s program is ill conceived (beyond its questionable legality, of course):
“We're giving up privacy and getting little in return”
In short, the reason is one familiar to epistemologists: base rate fallacy (see here and here for brief explanations).

Not just any hole in the ground

2006-05-31T10:17:00.000-04:00

This seems to be the most detailed article to appear on this so far:
Scientists discover prehistoric cave with eight new species in Ramle

Good times for classical music?

2006-05-30T15:43:00.000-04:00

The NYT thinks so: Check the Numbers: Rumors of Classical Music's Demise Are Dead Wrong

As a fan of classical music, this is news I am happy to hear. The article, though it cites national statistics, is understandably New York centric: not only is the Times published here, but New York is undoubtedly the center for classical music in North America. I would have appreciated greater attention to how classical music has fared elsewhere in comparison to New York.

In addition, the encouraging numbers cited in the article make one wonder how many of the business decisions against classical music that have been made were based on little more than ill-founded rumors of its demise.

Walking to Riverdale / Spuyten Duyvil from the Heights

2006-05-30T03:05:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note for those who might be interested in making the walk: Most are probably aware that one can walk up Broadway, over the Broadway Bridge to the mainland, and past the Marble Hill section of Manhattan (yes, that’s still Manhattan), before hanging a left to head up the hill and into Riverdale. While this route will get you there, it’s not terribly direct as it sends you well east, requiring you to swing back west to get to Riverdale.

Luckily there’s a better way! Here’s the route:
1. Get yourself to the intersection of Broadway and Dyckman (either by walking along Broadway, or by your favorite path through Ft. Tryon Park).
2. Hang a left on Dyckman, and walk until you’ve passed under the Henry Hudson Parkway and the Amtrak rail tracks. The Dyckman Marina will be in front of you.
3. Turn right into Dyckman Fields, walking past the ball fields and picnic areas until you come to a footbridge over the rail tracks.
4. Cross the bridge in Inwood Hill Park, and follow the path.
5. Take the second unmarked right you come to. The path forks with one fork going to the left, downhill and looping under the Henry Hudson Bridge, while the right fork heads up to the bridge. (The first unmarked right leads immediately to a somewhat shady tunnel under the Henry Hudson Parkway and up into the park.)
6. Follow the path up until it meets the Henry Hudson Parkway.
7. Follow the roadside path across the Henry Hudson Bridge and over Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the Harlem River Ship Canal. Enjoy the view of the Spuyten Duyvil Swing Bridge.
8. The path ends just north of Kappock St (roughly where 226th St. would be, were it to exist here).

This route takes me 45 minutes or so at a leisurely pace. It is perhaps another 10 minutes walk to main synagogues (RJC and HIR), if that’s where you’re headed. I think that beats the Broadway route handily. The return is just these steps in reverse.

The reason I mention this route now is that the path through Inwood Hill Park has been dramatically improved since I last walked it. Then it was at best partially paved (and even then cracked and broken) and overgrown — not a route I would have recommended to someone looking to walk to Riverdale on Shabbat and be presentable upon arrival. Now the path is beautifully repaved and widened, and is a pleasure to walk. It remains quite isolated, however, so some (particularly women) might not want to venture it alone.

Free Culture

2006-05-24T13:48:00.000-04:00

After sitting in my stuff-to-read folder on my hard drive for over a year, I finally got around to reading Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, which is available for free download under a Creative Commons license (as is this blog, though I’m sure that’s less exciting to most of you... or should be!). Well, ‘read’ isn’t exactly the right term, since I listened to the free audiobook on my iPod thanks to these folks. The chapters were recorded by different people, and were of varying quality, but were certainly good enough that I didn’t have to revert to the PDF version. The book (and the audiobook version) get my recommendation.

I found many aspects of Free Culture enlightening. I had expected to find many of the historical example of how intellectual property law developed and responded (through legislation and the courts) to technological and social change, and I was not disappointed. I hadn’t expected to learn that the emphasis placed on fair use by advocates of against DRM, etc., is misplaced:

In real space, then, the possible uses of a book are divided into three sorts:(1) unregulated uses, (2) regulated uses, and (3) regulated uses that are nonetheless deemed “fair” regardless of the copyright owner’s views.
        Enter the Internet—a distributed, digital network where every use of a copyrighted work produces a copy. And because of this single, arbitrary feature of the design of a digital network, the scope of category 1 changes dramatically. Uses that before were presumptively unregulated are now presumptively regulated. No longer is there a set of presumptively unregulated uses that define a freedom associated with a copyrighted work. Instead, each use is now subject to the copyright, because each use also makes a copy—category 1 gets sucked into category 2. And those who would defend the unregulated uses of copyrighted work must look exclusively to category 3, fair uses, to bear the burden of this shift.
        So let’s be very specific to make this general point clear. Before the Internet, if you purchased a book and read it ten times, there would be no plausible copyright-related argument that the copyright owner could make to control that use of her book. Copyright law would have nothing to say about whether you read the book once, ten times, or every night before you went to bed. None of those instances of use—reading—could be regulated by copyright law because none of those uses produced a copy.
        But the same book as an e-book is effectively governed by a different set of rules. Now if the copyright owner says you may read the book only once or only once a month, then copyright law would aid the copyright owner in exercising this degree of control, because of the accidental feature of copyright law that triggers its application upon there being a copy. Now if you read the book ten times and the license says you may read it only five times, then whenever you read the book (or any portion of it) beyond the fifth time, you are making a copy of the book contrary to the copyright owner’s wish.
        There are some people who think this makes perfect sense. My aim just now is not to argue about whether it makes sense or not. My aim is only to make clear the change. Once you see this point, a few other points also become clear:
        First, making category 1 disappear is not anything any policy maker ever intended. Congress did not think through the collapse of the presumptively unregulated uses of copyrighted works. There is no evidence at all that policy makers had this idea in mind when they allowed our policy here to shift. Unregulated uses were an important part of free culture before the Internet.
        Second, this shift is especially troubling in the context of transformative uses of creative content. Again, we can all understand the wrong in commercial piracy. But the law now purports to regulate anytransformation you make of creative work using a machine. “Copy and paste” and “cut and paste”become crimes. Tinkering with a story and releasing it to others exposes the tinkerer to at least a requirement of justification. However troubling the expansion with respect to copying a particular work, it is extraordinarily troubling with respect to transformative uses of creative work.
        Third, this shift from category 1 to category 2 puts an extraordinary burden on category 3 (“fair use”) that fair use never before had to bear. If a copyright owner now tried to control how many times I could read a book on-line, the natural response would be to argue that this is a violation of my fair use rights. But there has never been any litigation about whether I have a fair use right to read, because before the Internet, reading did not trigger the application of copyright law and hence the need for a fair use defense. The right to read was effectively protected before because reading was not regulated.
        This point about fair use is totally ignored, even by advocates for free culture. We have been cornered into arguing that our rights depend upon fair use—never even addressing the earlier question about the expansion in effective regulation. A thin protection grounded in fair use makes sense when the vast majority of uses are unregulated. But when everything becomes presumptively regulated, then the protections of fair use are not enough. (p.143–45)

Lessig is also pleasingly upfront about the limitations of the law, and hence the limited value of fair use as a legal exception within an otherwise regulated domain:

[F]air use in America simply means the right to hire a lawyer to defend your right to create. And as lawyers love to forget, our system for defending rights such as fair use is astonishingly bad—in practically every context, but especially here. It costs too much, it delivers too slowly,and what it delivers often has little connection to the justice underlying the claim. The legal system may be tolerable for the very rich. For everyone else, it is an embarrassment to a tradition that prides itself on the rule of law.
        Judges and lawyers can tell themselves that fair use provides adequate “breathing room” between regulation by the law and the access the law should allow. But it is a measure of how out of touch our legal system has become that anyone actually believes this. The rules that publishers impose upon writers,the rules that film distributors impose upon filmmakers,the rules that newspapers impose upon journalists—these are the real laws governing creativity. And these rules have little relationship to the “law”with which judges comfort themselves.
        For in a world that threatens $150,000 for a single willful infringement of a copyright,and which demands tens of thousands of dollars to even defend against a copyright infringement claim,and which would never return to the wrongfully accused defendant anything of the costs she suffered to defend her right to speak—in that world,the astonishingly broad regulations that pass under the name “copyright” silence speech and creativity. And in that world,it takes a studied blindness for people to continue to believe they live in a culture that is free. (p.187)

The building of a permission culture, rather than a free culture, is the first important way in which the changes I have described will burden innovation. A permission culture means a lawyer’s culture—a culture in which the ability to create requires a call to your lawyer. Again, I am not antilawyer, at least when they’re kept in their proper place. I am certainly not antilaw. But our profession has lost the sense of its limits. And leaders in our profession have lost an appreciation of the high costs that our profession imposes upon others. The inefficiency of the law is an embarrassment to our tradition. And while I believe our profession should therefore do everything it can to make the law more efficient, it should at least do everything it can to limit the reach of the law where the law is not doing any good. The transaction costs buried within a permission culture are enough to bury a wide range of creativity. Someone needs to do a lot of justifying to justify that result. (p.192–93)

[T]he legal system doesn’t work. Or more accurately, it doesn’t work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don’t think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done.
        These costs distort free culture in many ways. A lawyer’s time is billed at the largest firms at more than $400 per hour. How much time should such a lawyer spend reading cases carefully, or researching obscure strands of authority? The answer is the increasing reality: very little. The law depended upon the careful articulation and development of doctrine, but the careful articulation and development of legal doctrine depends upon careful work. Yet that careful work costs too much, except in the most high-profile and costly cases.
        The costliness and clumsiness and randomness of this system mock our tradition. And lawyers, as well as academics, should consider it their duty to change the way the law works—or better, to change the law so that it works. It is wrong that the system works well only for the top 1 percent of the clients. It could be made radically more efficient, and inexpensive,and hence radically more just.
        But until that reform is complete, we as a society should keep the law away from areas that we know it will only harm. And that is precisely what the law will too often do if too much of our culture is left to its review. (p.305)

Lessig’s point about the limitations of the legal system is well taken. I think that the failings of the legal system in this country raise serious questions about the ability of the judiciary to function as an effective remedy for citizens against acts of the other branches of government. While the judiciary may be no less powerful as a check against the other branches formally, it may still be a much less powerful check in practice. Lessig’s point about changing technology having an impact on the protections afforded by the law would seem to apply as well to increasing costs, declining care by practitioners of the law, and the ever increasing scope of government regulation: they alter the protections afforded by the law. In the latter case, these protections would seem to have waned.

No, no: sometimes violence is the answer

2006-05-21T13:14:00.000-04:00

New Iranian law to require Jews to wear yellow band

Unfortunately, I’m beginning to think there won’t be another way...

UPDATE:
Or perhaps not: Iran denies drafting Jewish dress code
Having looked over some of the other coverage as well, it's somewhat unclear exactly what is going on here.

FURTHER UPDATE:
Here's how Haaretz assesses what went on with this story:
Canada's National Post retracts report that Iranian Jews will be forced to wear yellow patches

My, how sane!

2006-05-19T17:00:00.000-04:00

Fair use strengthened in court decision

I’m really quite shocked as to how reasonable this ruling is. So many egregious attacks on fair use have lowered my expectations, I guess.

NB: It's worth reading the summary linked by Ars. Hint: make sure you read to the end.

Cheating

2006-05-19T00:10:00.000-04:00

The New York Times ran an article today discussing the growing problem of cheating among college students, particularly through the use of various electronic devices:
Colleges Chase as Cheats Shift to Higher Tech
One portion of the article jumped out at me:

In a survey of nearly 62,000 undergraduates on 96 campuses over the past four years, two-thirds of the students admitted to cheating. The survey was conducted by Don McCabe, a Rutgers professor who has studied academic misconduct and helped found the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke.
David Callahan, author of "The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead" (Harcourt, 2004), suggested that students today feel more pressure to do well in order to get into graduate or professional school and secure a job.
"The rational incentives to cheat for college students have grown dramatically, even as the strength of character needed to resist those temptations has weakened somewhat," Mr. Callahan said.

Now, I don’t want to justify cheating, but I think the increasing “rational incentives to cheat” Callahan points to, while real, mask a much more serious problem of which they are (largely) a symptom, namely that the selection mechanisms which determine who gets into graduate or professional schools or secures desirable jobs operate to a significant extent on the basis of known poor predictors for future achievement in those activities. Moreover, I have the impression that as applicant pools rise this problem is growing: schools must extend offers to only a small number of students out of (the much larger) 1/5 or 1/4 of the applicant pool they would be happy to have; employers publicly advertise fewer positions, recruit from fewer schools, etc. While I doubt most students recognize these developments as such, I believe they are experiencing increasing frustration at a perceived disconnect between the amount of effort they invest in their education and the payoffs from that effort. If I am correct that this is more than a mere perception of the part of students, then it is not merely that (as the article suggests) the advantages of apparent educational achievement have increased, but that the value of putting in the effort for actual educational achievement has decreased relative to the advantages to be gained by (and the risks incurred by) cheating. To put it briefly, if graduate or professional schools and employers select on the basis of poor predictors for future achievement (and hence being admitted or hired is to that degree arbitrary), then students have every incentive to subvert those poor predictors (to that degree) by cheating. This isn’t so when selection occurs on the basis of strong predictors, for then a student who cheats will not actually have the knowledge or skills which lead to future achievement, and thus will be less likely to actually achieve. But where poor predictors are used, a cheater’s deficit in knowledge or skill is unlikely to undo his achievement in this way.

To the extent that the use of poor predictors in some area is unavoidable (or only avoidable at impractically high cost), it should come as little surprise that cheating occurs. This analysis predicts that, for a given activity (occupation, profession or discipline) rates of cheating should be positively correlated with the use of poor predictors for selection. It would be interesting to know if this is the case. Even if it is not, it would be interesting to know if rates of cheating were positively correlated with the belief that selection is based upon poor predictors (or at least the belief that success in that activity is to a significant degree arbitrary).

If anyone is aware of any research on these topics, I would be interested to know.

Just what I've been looking for?

2006-05-14T15:33:00.000-04:00

For a while I’ve been thinking how nice it would be to commute to school by bicycle. I wouldn’t dare subject my Bianchi to that in NYC, so I would need to buy something suitable, either new or used, but the time investment and expense involved has put me off of doing anything much more than daydream about it. Today, however, I happened across a bike which is almost exactly what I had imagined would be most suitable:
The Redline 9•2•5.
The price is very reasonable (though I wonder whether I’ll be able to find it priced so well in my area), if not exactly pocket change. My only concern is trying to manage the hills here in Washington Heights on a singlespeed, but perhaps between lowering the gearing slightly and getting into shape I can handle it.

Philosophy of Language Comp...

2006-05-11T20:22:00.000-04:00

...passed.

Now, only incompletes stand between me and starting work on a dissertation.

Updates

2006-05-09T13:40:00.000-04:00

1. I gave my Graduate Student Colloquium talk, which didn’t go very well nor even badly in the ways I expected. My talk was titled “Belief and Practical Interests” and I began by trying to recap some recent developments in the epistemology literature, including the encroachment of practical interests into the analysis of core epistemic notions like knowledge and justification. In the encroachment literature, the intuitive clarity of the distinction between epistemic facts and practical facts (or a variant thereof) is taken almost for granted. I myself didn’t find anything mysterious about it. My audience, on the other hand, balked. This seriously derailed the remainder (i.e. the bulk) of my presentation. No doubt I am to blame for some of their difficulties, but I don’t think I am entirely at fault. I was quite disappointing.
        Nonetheless, I did gain something from working on the presentation, namely that I need to reconsider the approach I wanted to take in my paper. My plan was simply too ambitious to accomplish with any degree of rigor. Accordingly, I decided to work from Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath’s paper (which relates practical interests to justification) rather than Jason Stanley’s book (which relates practical interests to knowledge). This should make the connection to belief much more direct, and I will explore what consequences allowing encroachment has on the transparency of belief and the norm of full belief.

2. Before I get to that, however, I’m working on a paper for David Rosenthal’s Quine / Sellars course on Quine’s treatment of opacity and propositional attitudes. I’ll have more to say on that soon, I hope. The course has also given rise to a substantial interest in Sellars on my part, which I’m only just beginning to explore.

3. Jessica Wilson was the colloquium speaker at the Graduate Center last week. She spoke on "Is Hume's Dictum Obvious?" I was impressed by her presentation, and even more so by her philosophical honestly during the question period. Her talk gives me new appreciation for aspects of metaphysics I had hitherto regarded with all the distain of, well, metaphysics in general. Specifically, I now better understand the relations between and motivations for Hume’s dictum and arguments over physicalism, the nature of necessity and properties, and between broadly Humean versus broadly Aristotelian conceptions of nature.
        I also had the privilege of going out to dinner with the speaker after the talk, which was quite pleasant and is something I rarely get to do. Thanks to Barbara Montero for accommodating me by selecting one of the kosher veggie Indian restaurants as our venue.

4. Kripke’s last class was perhaps the best I’ve seen him give. I’m sorry Alan Berger, who usually attends, had to miss this one. Kripke discussed Strawson’s “On Referring” and particularly his mention of the uses of descriptions in anaphoric contexts. But he also gave his views on a variety of central issues in the philosophy of language: He gave a criterion for synonymy of expressions, and followed this up with his take on the semantics–pragmatics distinction, stating what he believes semantic should offer an account of and what remains to pragmatics. He then repeated in detail what he calls the “pragmatic fallacy”. Throughout, he related these general topics to proper accounts of the natural-language use of ‘and’ and ‘but’. His discussion of Strawson also verified something that Frank Pupa pointed out to me, that Kripke’s favoring of Russell over Strawson seems in large part to be based upon a view of the dialectic in which Russell gave an account first and so the burden of proof is on subsequent figures to refute him, rather than seeing later figures (including Strawson) as providing alternative, positive proposals which should be judged on their merits, regardless of whether they can be said to “refute” Russell. All in all, it was a most helpful class. I can only hope his teaching continues at such a high level this week.
        Kripke also attended Jessica Wilson’s talk, and made a comment which helped to clarify his notion of metaphysical necessity and its relation to physical necessity. He confessed that he has no definite view on whether alien worlds are metaphysically possible, or on whether water could exist in possible worlds in which the physical laws are substantially different than our own. This corroborated my reading of his discussion of essential properties in Naming and Necessity.

5. Yesterday, I finished skimming Mendelsohn and Fitting’s First Order Modal Logic, which I thought was really very accessible and was nicely attuned to philosophical issues (unsurprisingly, given the authors). Their discussion of the problems of existence and non-existence was particularly helpful, especially as it gave me some understanding of what motivated Meinong’s views. I had not known that Meinong was a student of Brentano, nor that Meinong’s doctrine unreal objects was a extension of his teacher’s notion of an intentional object. This is of some interest to me as I have harbored a suspicion for some time that much talk of abstract objects, e.g. propositions, is better recast as talk about intentional objects. Hopefully I’ll find some time to work through this.

6. My summer plans are firming up somewhat. It looks as if I’ll be spending the summer in NY devoting myself to philosophy and my girlfriend. I haven’t settled on whether I will try to work part-time or not, but I’m leaning against. Given the amount I’d like to accomplish philosophically, working would make actually accomplishing it quite challenging; and, if I actually do accomplish (at least much of) what I’d like to, I won’t really care about the dent this will put in my savings. It also looks as if there will be quite a few people sticking around over the summer, looking to meet up and to do philosophy.

7. Yesterday, I attended Bana Bashour’s Graduate Student Colloquium Series (GSCS) talk "Personal Issues: A Return to Locke's Old Problem", based on work she’s doing for her thesis, and which I thoroughly enjoyed. It prompted, I think, the best discussion of any of the GSC talks I attended. This was probably due, in part, to the presence of Michael Levin and Ellen Fridland in the audience who are both familiar with Bana’s work. I made a couple of pretty sharp comments myself — it’s always a nice feeling to have a smart day. Regardless, her talk gave my new hope that something worthwhile and well motivated can be said about personal identity.

8. Finally, I spoke with David Pereplyotchik who ran the GSCS this year, and I’ll be taking over the job from him for next year. I’m looking forward to it. Since, do to shabbat, I’m not able to really participate in running the Graduate Student Conference, I’m happy to have an opportunity to do some similar work with the GSCS. One idea I’ve had, is to try to organize a “mini-series” of talks on related themes in the fall, with papers distributed ahead of time and with designated commentators; the spring series would stay pretty much as is. We’ll see what comes of it.

Metaphysics comp

2006-04-23T18:42:00.000-04:00

...passed.

I had been worried about the result (to the point of having a few bad dreams about it) so this is a welcome relief. Since the results were posted over CUNY's spring break and I have been visiting family home in Chicago, I had been anxiously awaiting my return to New York on Monday to find out how I did, but Rosie was kind enough to interrupt my visit to the Chicago Botanical Garden with a call to let me know -- many thanks to her for making my day.

Post-comps report

2006-04-18T03:32:00.000-04:00

Here I am, making an appearance after much delay. Preparing for my comprehensive exams kept me busy until about 10 days ago, and Pesach has occupied me since. I’m finally taking a moment to post something before I head to Chicago for the last days of Pesach and a quick visit with my family. Here are a few updates:

Comps: I took my two required written comps this semester, electing to sit for metaphysics at the beginning of March and philosophy of language a month later. I’d like to report my success, but as of today results have yet to be posted for either exam. While quite a large group sat for metaphysics and that surely accounts for some of the delay in receiving results, six weeks feels like an awfully long time to wait, especially since I’m not so confident about my performance on it. I’m convinced that everyone in our study group for the exam, myself included, deserves to pass; but actually showing that to the readers is a different matter entirely. I feel better about the language exam, which is appropriate since that is much more my area. Where preparing for the metaphysics was often annoying (and not just because I have an almost visceral dislike for almost all of metaphysics: some of the assigned readings were just terribly bad arguments), preparing for the language exam was very much worthwhile and even pleasurable: being forced to read so many related articles in close proximity, and to think carefully about the relations between them, was very helpful for my thinking. The material on attitude ascriptions, in particular, has left me seized of the topic since, although the attitude ascriptions question on the exam unfortunately pertained exclusively to Kripke’s “A Puzzle About Belief” so I didn’t have the opportunity to speak to the other readings. Be that as it may, much of the pleasure of studying for the language comp is surely do to the excellent Ludlow anthology put out by MIT Press; it is worlds better then the Martinich for language, and more helpful and better produced than the various Blackwell anthologies (whoever thought double-columned settings made for legibility in books of that size?). In general, preparing for the comps has led me to see the value in working carefully through articles and writing up summaries of them, which I had not appreciated so much previously. I don’t much relish the idea of taking them again in the fall though, so I do hope I pass...

Courses: Just one course this semester, Quine & Sellars taught by David Rosenthal, which will be the last of 20 (!) courses I’ll take for credit as a graduate student. As is apparently the norm for Rosenthal’s courses, the syllabus has proved rather optimistic as we got bogged down in Quine; we are skipping ahead into Sellars when we return from spring break.
        So far I have found the course interesting and it has given me a deeper appreciation for Quine, even as I find myself frustrated that no-one has produced a thoroughgoing critical response to Quine’s philosophy as a whole. My experience in reading Quine for various courses since I was an undergrad has been that Quine’s arguments are pushed very hard at one point in the course, and then we move on to talking about other things (e.g. Kripke), which aren’t compatible with Quine’s arguments, without ever going back in a serious way to explain why Quine was wrong. I get the feeling the philosophers just got tired of dealing with him and decided they’d rather talk about more enjoyable things. This is extremely unhelpful educationally, to say the least. I’m aware that many responses exist to various parts of Quine’s philosophy, but part of what made his philosophy so compelling for so long is the way it hangs together as a whole. Someone needs to write a book which takes on his philosophy across the board and puts him finally to rest. Perhaps it should be called: “Quine: A Philosophical Eulogy”. Michael Levin told me it would make a wonderful thesis, which would be of great value to the philosophical community, but it won’t be mine — I have no desire to spend the next three years working on that or to go on the market with a thesis that is so stuck in the past.
        Quine aside, I’m also sitting in on a few courses: Kripke’s course on Russell and Richard Mendelsohn’s course on Frege (based on his recent book), which together have proved very stimulating and helpful in my comp preparations. (Mendelsohn has a very interesting argument that a consequence of Russell’s scope distinction is that simple propositions (e.g. of the form Fa) must be ambiguous, much as are simple modal propositions like □Fa; he argues that given this ambiguity, Donnellan’s distinction actually supports Russell’s account of definite descriptions by giving an account of the ambiguity. (If that is confused, I apologize: his argument is really very elegant once you see it, even if it is hard for me to sum it up neatly.) He is scheduled to speak at the CUNY Seminar in Logic and Games on 12 May; no title has been announced, but I suspect he will be presenting this argument.) I am also sitting in, though somewhat sporadically, on Iakovos Vasiliou’s course on Plato’s Republic in an effort to remedy my shocking ignorance of ancient philosophy.

Current project: I’m now working on a paper that I owe Jonathan Adler for the course he taught on belief last spring. I’ll be presenting a draft of this paper at the CUNY Graduate Colloquium series on 1 May. As it stands the thought behind the paper is that certain problems in belief are most easily handled when belief formation is understood as the evidence based selection of one out of a contrasting set of possible beliefs; I shall argue that practical interests govern which are the appropriate sets of possible beliefs from which evidence selects actual beliefs. This role for practical interests in belief links belief closely to knowledge where I am convinced practical interests are also critical.
        My interest in contrastive accounts and practical interests in epistemology dates back a few years, though I did not pursue it, and it was only during Adler’s course that I became aware of Jonathan Schaffer’s advocacy for “contrastivism” and only more recently that I discovered the recent attention that has been given (by Jason Stanley, John Hawthorne, and others) to the connections between practical interests and knowledge. I have yet to work through this literature, but I’m glad to see that practical interests are the focus of so much philosophical attention. I’m now reading Stanley’s recent book, Knowledge and Practical Interests, which (so far at least) strikes me as just the sort of book I should like to have written: it bridges a number of areas of philosophy while making a strong case in philosophical methodology, which is perhaps my most cherished interest of all — I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

The future: I’m pondering plans of late, for the summer and beyond. I had thought I would take the summer off to travel or go to Israel to learn (or get married...) and I would still like to do so, but I’m concerned that my coursework has not yet produced papers that are suitable to take to conferences or move toward publication. That has let me to consider whether I would be better off spending at least part of my summer here in NY working on developing my papers in order to have material for the fall conference season. Staying here has its costs (literally), making it very desirable to find part-time work, which is an extremely unappealing prospect. But, if I split my summer between Israel and philosophy, which I perhaps the most appealing option, I’ll sink any real chance at finding work and will have to foot the bill for the whole summer out of savings. I’m quite unsure what to do, though there are other considerations which may sway my decision.
        Beyond the summer, I’ve been thinking about possible dissertation topics, and I think I’ve made some progress on that front. Perhaps I’ll post again with my thoughts on various options.

Worth reading: Jason Stanley’s “Philosophy of Language in the Twentieth Century” This was linked to on the Leiter Reports, but I thought I’d mention it again as I found it to be a very informative and helpful read.

To all those celebrating Pesach: חג כשר וסמח!

I’m off to pack...

Interesting indeed

2006-02-12T12:58:00.000-05:00

“Inequality is making Americans poorer - it's time to soak the rich (says the Financial Times!)”, as linked to here.

As a devotee of both the Economist and the FT, I find their assessments interesting indeed.

NYT article on Kripke

2006-01-28T18:51:00.000-05:00

I don’t much care for the writing, but some of the anecdotes are entertaining…
Philosopher, 65, Lectures Not About 'What Am I?' but 'What Is I?'

Rebuilding the American dream machine

2006-01-24T13:41:00.000-05:00

This week’s Economist features an uplifting article about CUNY.

What a family!

2006-01-12T20:01:00.000-05:00

(My very sporadic posting continues…)

And here I thought the other one (Israel’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger) was going to be the source of trouble. From The Jerusalem Post:

The daughter of Israel's Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who was at the center of an embarrassing family scandal that ended with her wayward brother being jailed, has married another man.

Her brother, Meir, kidnapped and assaulted her previous suitor.

The Wednesday night wedding of Ayala Amar, 19, and Barak Ben-Nissan, 24, at Jerusalem's Great Synagogue culminated with even more fireworks after a racially-motivated brawl broke out between Jewish guests and Arab waiters during the wedding dinner.

The wedding, which was conducted by Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and attended by an array of VIPs including President Moshe Katsav, ended with police being summoned to the scene. A Jewish participant broke a bottle on the head of an Arab waiter, reportedly without provocation. Another Arab waiter was beaten after banging his tray into the shoulder of a guest, setting off a melee, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.

After police separated the two sides, two of the Jewish guests were arrested on the scene.

Northfork

2005-12-11T00:48:00.000-05:00

I decided I wanted to see Northfork a couple of years ago when it was in theaters, and have just got around to finally doing it. My assessment: visually striking, fantastic, and, yes, weird, but you won’t care by the end.

Omer reminders in iCal

2005-11-30T13:05:00.001-05:00

UPDATE: Setting up omer reminders this year I noticed that hebcal now includes alarms in the iCal calenders it creates, so the instructions are no longer necessary, although I could find no mention of this improvement on the hebcal site. The settings used by hebcal are almost identical to mine except that the alarm sound is Basso instead of Glass. One piece of advice, however: when I initially subscribed to the hebcal calendar iCal's "Remove Alarms" checkbox was ticked, and even though I unticked it before hitting 'OK' I needed to refresh the calendar before the alarms showed up.

I realize this is a bit premature, but anyway...

There are a number of Omer reminder programs available for the Mac, but perhaps you’d rather not bother with another program and would prefer to use iCal’s built in reminder feature, which will sync with your Palm, etc. And let’s say you want to be reminded which day to count for. Well, it’s not so straightforward to generate 50 separate iCal events, one for each day, each of which has an alarm.

Enter Hebcal. Hebcal generates monthly or yearly calendars with jewish events, which can be downloaded and added to various calendar apps, including iCal. When you generate a calendar including with the ‘Days of the Omer’ option, you’ll get a separate event for each day of the Omer, e.g. “7th day of the Omer”, etc. So go ahead and generate a calendar with the events you want, scroll down to the bottom of the page and download for iCal. (iCal may offer to import your calendar when you’ve downloaded it; if so, select ‘Cancel’ not to import.)

Here’s how to take the Hebcal generated calendar and add notifications. Open up the downloaded calendar .ics file in a text editor (TextWrangler is a good, free choice). Find the entries in the file for the Omer; you’ll see entries like:

BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20051130T163705Z
CATEGORIES:Holidays
CLASS:PUBLIC
SUMMARY:7th day of the Omer
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20060420
DURATION:P1D
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
UID:hebcal-20060420-7th-day-of-the-omer
END:VEVENT

In order to add an alarm to the event, create a new calendar in iCal (this isn’t required, but makes things easier) and create an event with the alarm setup you’d like to use for the Omer. Export that calendar, and open the calendar file in your text editor. Find the the event you created and look for the ‘VALARM’ portion of the event entry; it should look something like this:

BEGIN:VALARM
ACTION:AUDIO
TRIGGER:-PT3H
X-WR-ALARMUID:635E952A-1348-4D32-958B-70A6157EAE53
ATTACH;VALUE=URI:Glass
END:VALARM

This code specifies an audio alarm, using the ‘Glass’ sound, at 9pm the day before the event, i.e. at a time suitable for counting the Omer. Yours will differ according to the settings you’ve selected, of course. Remove the ‘ X-WR-ALARMUID’ line. Copy the rest use it to do a find/replace in your Hebcal calendar, replacing:

-omer
END:VEVENT

with

-omer
BEGIN:VALARM
ACTION:AUDIO
TRIGGER:-PT3H
ATTACH;VALUE=URI:Glass
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT

or the equivalent for your settings. Replace all. Save and close the file, and open it to import it into iCal. You might want to import it into a new calendar so you can check to make sure everything turned out OK. Don’t forget to close the calendar you used to create your sample alarmed event in you text editor — there’s no need to save — and to delete the calendar from iCal.

It works for me.

I'm so glad I live here

2005-11-27T18:48:00.000-05:00

yay bedbugs!

Walk the Line

2005-11-23T00:03:00.000-05:00

Well worth seeing.

One oddity of the experience: It’s an unusually quiet film—when music isn’t being performed during the film, there’s almost no additional music in the soundtrack—so, for the first time in quite a while, I got to enjoy running commentary from other theater patrons through most of the film.

Misleadingly Seductive?

2005-11-18T02:12:00.000-05:00

...or was it “seductively misleading”?

At the end of a pleasant and helpful conversation, that was what one of my profs described me today—well, really just some of the remarks I make, but never mind that—and this was by way of explanation after comparing me to Hilary Putnam! Had this come from anyone else it would have been one of the greater compliments I’ve ever received, but from the prof in question there is no doubt it was (good natured) criticism—no great fan of Putnam he. Even so I rather like the sound of “misleadingly seductive”—how often do I get called “seductive” of any kind, after all, misleading or otherwise.

So, a fair characterization? (Be nice now.)

Not paranoia this

2005-11-02T02:25:00.000-05:00

MPAA looks to bolster its dominance by plugging the analog hole

Happy toughts directed homeward

2005-10-27T01:27:00.000-04:00

I was far happier about the Red Sox’ win last year than I am about the White Sox this year: for me the Red Sox’ win was a matter of faith borne out, but the White Sox are about place and personal history. While there was something appropriately revengeful about celebrating the Red Sox’ win in New York, this time I feel proper celebration could only be at home. Too much happiness for the win seems incongruous being in New York.

From here then: Congratulations to Chicago and the Sox!

Ask Philosophers

2005-10-10T18:42:00.000-04:00

As noted in the Leiter Reports: http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/

It strikes me as a smashing idea.

Just in case you're as out of touch as I am

2005-10-09T13:35:00.000-04:00

I just heard about this on Friday — where have I been? Oh, that’s right, in New York. Yuck.

From the Chicago Tribune: “Field's no more: Chicago retail icon to become Macy's in '06”

Beyond simply having fond memories of Field’s, especially around the holidays, I think Federated is making a mistake with this name change, at least regarding Field’s flagship State Street location. For a long time now State Street hasn’t been the preferred place for many people in the Chicago area to shop, although it has improved somewhat in the last five or so years; as shoppers live further away from downtown, it is an inconvenience for them to come downtown, pay for parking, etc., in order to shop there. What Federated has missed, I think, is that they did continue to come in large part because of their connection to the Marshall Field’s brand, and the atmosphere of the State Street store in particular. While a name change may go down alright with mall goers, I suspect it will break a connection many others have with the State Street location. I’d be willing to bet that the change to Macy’s will be negative for the flagship location.

Here’s a bit from the article where doubts are also expressed:

Several retail consultants think Federated is being short-sighted by changing the name.

"Chicagoans and folks in the central United States tend to be more brand loyal," said Burt Flickinger, managing director for Strategic Resource Group in New York. "While Field's was a broken business, it was not unfixable. Federated has taken a broken business and made it a much more broken business."

Another retail consultant said Field's could be fashioned into an upscale brand.

"Retailing has been skewed to the low end and the high end. Marshall Field's would be a powerful high-end brand. Why would you bring it down to the mushy middle?" asked Al Ries, author of the "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding."

"This is particularly bad," he said. "I'd rather have a name that no one has heard of with potential rather than a name like Macy's that everyone has heard of but has no potential. People know about it, but it will never be perceived as a high-end brand."

Spotlight for the web

2005-10-08T23:17:00.000-04:00

http://www.inquisitorx.com/beta/

More great work from Dave Watanabe. Check it out.

Pardes Podcasts

2005-09-28T13:37:00.000-04:00

I haven’t had a change to listen to any of these yet, but there are a lot of good teachers at Pardes, so I think it’s worth mentioning anyway:
http://www.podcasts.pardesusa.org/
They even have handouts available to go with the lectures.

In Israel too...

2005-09-26T00:17:00.000-04:00

...how sad: Graves damaged, Torah scroll torched in Eilat cemetery

Religious Arbitration in Ontario?

2005-09-21T13:58:00.000-04:00

I hadn’t seen this reported much, so I thought I’d post some links here.

Apparently, the Ontario Premier has decided that, rather than recognize Islamic courts under the existing Arbitration Act which recognizes Jewish and Catholic courts, he will ban all religious arbitration in Ontario even for groups that have previously enjoyed it.

Not knowing much about the system of religious arbitration in Ontario, I can’t say what the impact of this on the Jewish community will be. I take it, however, that what is at issue are two matters: (1) substitutability of religious courts for secular courts in the arbitration in various areas of civil and family law, i.e. disputant can elect to take a matter to religious courts that would otherwise be taken to secular courts, and (2) enforceability of religious court decisions by secular courts. I appears that, like in the US, both of these matters only arise when all parties to the dispute in question agree on use of the religious court as an arbiter. The concern that immediately comes to mind is that religious Jews will no longer be able to settle disputes as halacha demands through a religious court with the confidence that the court’s ruling will be enforceable by secular authorities. Some of the articles indicate that there are also concerns regarding family law, but I’m not familiar enough with the system in Ontario to know what these are, or how they differ from the difficulties that arise in the US system. Perhaps the prenuptial agreements, which are being supported as a partial solution to the problem of agunot, will not be enforceable by secular authorities because they rely on the finding of a religious court acting as arbiter?

I won’t bother linking to any of the “liberal” commentary I’ve seen on this decision, much of which seems more oriented to bashing religion than dealing with the serious questions these sorts of issues raise about multiculturalism.

If anyone has greater insight into the matter, I’d be interested to know.

Linkage:

CUNY Philosophy Hiring News

2005-09-20T00:48:00.000-04:00

From the Leiter Reports:

Martin Davies (philosophy of mind), formerly Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford before he moved to the Australian National University in 2000, has now accepted the Wilde Professorship of Mental Philosophy at Oxford, to start not later than October 2006. Professor Davies has also declined the offer of the Kornblith Chair from the City University of New York Graduate Center.

(He was a repeat visiting professor at the Graduate Center as well.)

This is not terribly surprising news and, I must say, I'm not disappointed by it personally. Prof. Davies work was not of much interest to me, and I would not derive much benefit from another faculty member working in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. My feeling is that CUNY's needs at the moment are in two areas: someone working in, or at least very familiar with, contemporary metaphysics; someone to help replace the loss of Paul Horwich in philosophy of language. Regardless of field, what I believe CUNY needs most of all is younger hires who are energetic, eager to engage with students and be a presence in the department, and who are seized of current and emerging topics/problems in their fields. CUNY is unusual in that full-time faculty at the Graduate Center are predominantly older—this is not a criticism!—while younger faculty are shared with the various CUNY colleges are so are not a major presence at the Graduate Center. I think students would benefit, and the dynamic at the Graduate Center bettered, if this could be redressed somewhat. I'm not sure who would fit the bill, but I will note that Karen Bennett (presently an Assistant Professor at Princeton) made a very good impression on many of us when she gave a talk last year. At the least, she seems to have some of qualities of the sort I think we should be seeking.

"fiscal conservatives" and post-Katrina rebuilding

2005-09-19T23:54:00.000-04:00

A few days ago the NYT had an article reporting on rising concern among Republican "fiscal conservatives" in Congress about the costs of rebuilding after Katrina. The reason for the shudder quotes is that, judging by Congress's spending of late, I'm seriously doubt there are many genuine fiscal conservatives left. I find it patently offensive that objections are being raised to paying for the recovery costs from Katrina after so much pork has been approved in this Congress, and I have to wonder why concerns are being voiced now about justifiable spending on a recovery when they were not raised (or not so vocally) about the unjustifiable — for a fiscal conservative! — pork. Maybe my pessimism shows through here, but I can't help wonder if it's because the beneficiaries of this money will be, many of them, poor, black and Democrats, in contrast to the members of Congress who benefit most from the pork. If there was an honest concern about spending levels in the wake of Katrina, true fiscal conservatives should be using the spending that the recovery demands as leverage to roll-back pork-barrel spending that's already been passed, not to let the pork slide while withholding money from the recovery efforts.

Ramsey’s “General Propositions and Causality”

2005-09-14T23:29:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the long delay in blogging. I've been both busy and uninspired. Hopefully, I'll get back to it.

Part of what was keeping me busy was working on an long overdue paper on Ramsey's "General Propositions and Causality". I had originally planned to build on the interpretation of this paper offered by Richard Holton and Huw Price in their "Ramsey on Saying and Whistling: A Discordant Note", using Ramsey's treatment of general propositions as a solution to the Frege–Geach problem for expressivists in ethics. Those ideas still need to get turned into a paper, and didn't because every time I set to work on getting Ramsey's position straight I found my thinking kept getting twisted in knots. After many false starts, I realized the problem lay in Holton–Price's interpretation of Ramsey's paper: simply put, they misread the text. The paper I eventually wrote was a critical response to their paper, demonstrating that their interpretation is erroneous and developing a more promising interpretation. It still need to be cleaned up, but it stands up well on its own and gives my a basis on which to write my paper about the Frege–Geach problem. Here's the gist:

ABSTRACT
In his 1929 essay "General Propositions and Causality", Ramsey argues that general propositions of the kind used in natural laws, which he terms "variable hypotheticals", should not be interpreted as propositions; he then considers the metaphysics of natural laws. Richard Holton and Huw Price, in "Ramsey on Saying and Whistling: A Discordant Note", interpret Ramsey as basing his denial that variable hypotheticals are propositions on concerns about the graspability of concepts with infinite extensions; they then argue that these concerns resemble Wittgensteins's rule-following considerations, and that these concerns generalize beyond variable hypotheticals, leaving Ramsey's position unstable. I show that Holton–Price misread Ramsey's paper and place unjustified emphasis on concerns regarding infinity in the process. I argue that they err because they fail to pay sufficient attention to Ramsey's discussion of metaphysics in the latter half of his paper. I offer an interpretation of "General Propositions and Causality" on which Ramsey's denial that variable hypotheticals are propositions is motivated by his metaphysical position that laws of nature are not facts. As Ramsey holds propositions to express facts, he distinguishes our use of variable hypotheticals from our use of propositions, telling against analyzing them as propositions, and develops a positive account of their meaning in terms of habits which better explains their use without entailing they express facts, thus avoiding conflict with his metaphysics.

Beer Can Chicken

2005-08-11T19:50:00.000-04:00

...made easy:

Backbone

2005-08-04T02:18:00.000-04:00

. . . I always wanted more of that.

Now in handy keychain form.

(This is what happens when someone lets the bio-statistician buy the party favors.)

Religious qualms with intelligent design

2005-08-04T01:29:00.000-04:00

In their last issue, The Economist ran a piece on intelligent design in the schools, "Intelligent design rears its head: It's subtler than creationism, and may be coming soon to a classroom near you". This bit touched on what I find so problematic about intelligent design:

With its claims (however spurious) of scientific respectability, intelligent design promises to reconcile mass anti-evolutionism with science. Strict creationism has been long discredited and, since the Supreme Court decision of Edwards v Aguillard (1987), may not be taught in state schools. But intelligent design is a different matter. Its proponents accept that the earth is billions of years old. They agree that gene mutation and natural selection occur within species, though not necessarily between species. They concede that scientific method, not biblical authority, is the arbiter of truth. Proponents do not even demand that intelligent design should replace evolution in the classroom, merely that schools should "teach the controversy" (which they themselves have created). In short, religious Americans who find evolution distasteful are jumping at the chance to teach an alternative that claims to be science.

As a religious person (or whatever), I'm quite comfortable with the idea that God was involved with getting the world to where it is today, and I think there's quite a lot of theological wiggle-room as to how that involvement went and what it amounted to. Obviously, my qualms with intelligent design aren't objections to a divine role. My objections are twofold:

Intelligent design purports to be science — it isn't. This claim has received a lot of attention elsewhere, so I won't add much. Suffice it to say that the theory of intelligent design, even if it is true, isn't a scientific theory and is not the product of scientific methods (whatever exactly they are). This leads to my second, and more important, objection…
Intelligent design itself accepts the notion that science is the way to truth: it justifies it's assertion of respectability by claiming to be better science than the going evolutionary theory. Whether this claim is made honestly or is merely part of a strategy to persuade is besides the point. What matters is that it perpetuates the idea that science offers the exclusive pathway to knowledge of the world, and it is this idea that is incompatible with religious belief (or at least any religion founded on revelation). The most that religion can accept is that science is but one way to truth, and that where the conclusions of science irreconcilably conflict with the tenets of religion, the truth obtained through science is qualified as merely the perspective on ultimate reality by certain methods and tools.

Succinctly put, intelligent design suffers from two faults which are fatal to any doctrine deployed in support of religion:
First, its principle claims are false and misleading and, to many, transparently so. Those people are in large part not religious — it is a shame that more religious people are not among them! — and the association of intelligent design with religion impugns religion in their eyes.
Second, it endorses the priority of science in arriving at truth. To my mind, scientism is a far greater threat to religion than evolution ever was. Evolution, on the other hand, poses its greatest threat to bad theology, which we religious people should be glad to be rid of.

OK, I want one

2005-08-03T00:44:00.000-04:00

The truth is I haven't ever been entirely happy with the Kensington StudioMouse, and have always preferred the weighting and feeling of recent Apple mice. Now that they're buttonful, I don't think I can resist.

Unfortunately, the programmable features only function with Tiger, which is a deal breaker for me since I'm stuck on Panther until the IT people at school get around to releasing a version of the VPN software they use that's Tiger compatible.

UPDATE: Ars has a review.

My Summer

2005-08-02T18:26:00.000-04:00

My life in Ph.D. yet again.

Translating the שלחן ערוך

2005-08-02T00:50:00.000-04:00

OK, so it isn't quite the project I was hoping for, but it's a worthy one nonetheless:
http://wikisource.org/wiki/Shulchan_Aruch
This is more or less the way I envisioned proceeding in translating קש''ע מקור חיים. If anyone is interested in helping me get that translation project off the ground, i.e. finding out what its copyright status is / getting permission for the project, please get in touch.

יהי רצון

2005-08-01T20:40:00.000-04:00

Many of my people (you know whom I mean) add an additional prayer just before stepping back at the conclusion of the amidah. I'm rather fond of it and finally got around to typing it up so I could paste it into my siddurim which don't include it. I thought I'd share:

The original is in Mellel format using the SBL Hebrew font, which I can send to anyone who'd like a copy; alternatively, I'm happy to send a PDF (ready for printing) with the text sized to fit any space you might like.

Hand-held Kitchen Splatterers (a.k.a. Immersion Blenders)

2005-07-31T12:23:00.000-04:00

Summer is the season for gazpacho: make some with a handy immersion blender.

In all seriousness, I just picked that one up and thought I'd share the deal. According to the reviews, the Kitchen Aids are much better than the alternatives at this price, and I've had very good experiences with their stuff in the past.

The gazpacho turned out very well, BTW.

Questions worth asking

2005-07-28T19:45:00.000-04:00

What exactly is 'stud' experience?

Socio-economic stratification, meritocracy & decision bases

2005-07-21T02:03:00.000-04:00

In a section of their recent survey of America titled "Middle of the class", The Economist says the following:

The second reason for pessimism [about the likelihood of decreasing mobility] is that mobility may continue to decline because it is rooted in fundamental changes to the economy. These explain both the big rise in income inequality and the smaller shift in social mobility. Over the past 25 years, globalisation has increased rewards for intellectual skills, pushing up the value of a degree. The income gap between college graduates and those without university degrees doubled between 1979 and 1997.

This has gone hand in hand with changes in the nature of work. It used to be possible to start at the bottom of a big firm and work your way up. But America's corporate giants have got rid of their old hierarchies. Lifetime employment is at an end, and managers hop from job to job. That makes a degree essential. In the 1930s and 1940s, only half of all American chief executives had a college degree. Now almost all of them do, and 70% also have a higher degree, such as an MBA. People with a university degree are now more likely to move up an income bracket than those without. This is a big change since the 1970s, when income rises were distributed equally across all educational levels. America is becoming a stratified society based on education: a meritocracy.

But what if education itself becomes stratified?

The Economist is right to ask this question, and they answer it with data that points to growing stratification in education. What seems obvious to me, having spend most of my life in or around educational institutions, is that the explanation for decreasing mobility may lie as much in "changes in the nature of work" as with increasing stratification in education. While this is a lot speculative, I suggest that the move from a "work your way up" system to a "meritocratic" system has replaced better decision making with worse regarding advancement — or, more precisely, has given those making decisions about the advancement of others a poorer basis for making them.

Under the "work your way up" system, the relatively limited pool of talent available within a company allows managers to have fairly extensive experience with those whom they evaluate, thus giving them a good basis for deciding whom is the better candidate for advancement. Among the fairly small number of candidates, managers generally have good grounds for preferring one candidate to another.

On the "meritocratic" system, on the other hand, information for evaluating candidates is much more limited, and there is most always a surplus of well-qualified candidates for any position. Given this impoverished basis for evaluating candidates, it is no surprise that managers employ various proxies in order to make their decisions, such as where the candidate went to school or for which companies she has previously worked. But, as should be obvious, these are often poor proxies indeed, providing information only weakly correlated with the candidate's potential. Where a candidate went to school says little about her knowledge and skills (how hard is it to get As at Harvard?), but it may say a lot about where she happened to go to high school or who her parents happened to be; similarly, previous work history may reflect the sort of businesses that recruited at the candidate's university or that she had a fortuitous connection.

Now, managers (I suspect) are well aware of the limitations of this selection process. (Graduate school admissions committees certainly are, though they are loathe to admit it.) The system in which they operate doesn't allow for anything better. Contrary to The Economist, however, these limitations would still exist even if education wasn't stratified in the least, so long as the information available to managers deciding whom to hire is insufficient to effectively distinguish between better and worse candidates. You can't have a "meritocratic" system without the ability to distinguish merit.

Raising the Dead

2005-07-21T01:08:00.000-04:00

Read on. It's worth it.

Sexism → Extremeism → Terrorism?

2005-07-18T23:45:00.000-04:00

From the Economist:

Another French "Islamologue", Antoine Sfeir, has identified relations between the sexes as a big factor in the re-Islamisation of second-generation Muslims in Europe. Because young Muslim women often do better than men at adapting to the host society (they tend to do better at school, for example), old patriarchal structures are upset and young men acquire a strong incentive to reassert the old order.

Lucky for us the attitudes of ba'alei teshuva are unflinchingly progressive when it comes to gender roles.

Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘āina i ka pono — The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness

2005-07-17T23:06:00.000-04:00

(The title is Hawaiʻi's state motto, uttered on 31 July 1843 by King Kamehameha III upon his restoration to the throne after the British government repudiated the actions of the captain of a Royal Navy frigate which forced his abdication. It's great, isn't it?)

The NYT reports: Bill Giving Native Hawaiians Sovereignty Is Too Much for Some, Too Little for Others

I don't have any comments to make about the article —beyond saying that I am generally in support of measures to restore Hawaiian sovereignty— but I will take this opportunity to point out that, regardless of the current debate about American "imperialism", the United States has admitted to the illegal overthrow of Hawaiʻi's legitimate monarch by groups consisting of primarily American businessmen with the active assistance of the United States government and its representatives. These interests first infringed upon Hawaiian sovereignty in 1887 with the imposition of the Bayonet Constitution, which disenfranchised the citizens of Hawaiʻi and enfranchised wealthy non-citizens. In 1893, when Queen Lili‘uokalani moved to replace the Bayonet Constitution, stripping power from those American interests, she was overthrown with the help of the US Marines and later arrested. Commendably, President Grover Cleveland rejected these illegal actions and would not be party to annexation, saying:

Upon the facts developed it seemed to me the only honorable course for our Government to pursue was to undo the wrong that had been done by those representing us and to restore as far as practicable the status existing at the time of our forcible intervention.

Others were not so honorable: the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was ultimately annexed by the United States in 1896 under President McKinley.

This grave wrong has yet to receive due acknowledgment or redress, remaining virtually unknown to most Americans. We should all do our part to spread knowledge of these dark episodes. Those who are so exercised about current American conduct in the world would do well to direct some of their energies to righting a longer standing and far less controversial injustice, within (what are now) our own borders.

For more information, Wikipedia's article "The History of Hawaiʻi" details these events, and the various Hawaiian sovereignty movements are summed up here. The involvement of the United States in stripping Hawaiʻi of its sovereignty are succinctly presented in the Apology Resolution.

NO cook, NO egg, NO machine... Ice Cream?

2005-07-13T17:11:00.000-04:00

Yes, indeed, as seen on The Early Show:

Old Fashioned Lemon Ice Cream
Yields: 3 cups of ice cream
In a medium bowl combine: Finely grated rind of 1 large lemon (or two small lemons), 3 Tbl. lemon juice, 1 cup of sugar. Combine all ingredients until well incorporated.
Gradually stir in: 2 cups of light cream and 1/8 tsp. salt
After mixing well, pour into vintage aluminum ice cube tray (without the cube insert) or a shallow rectangular container (with approx 2 1/2 to 3 cup capacity).
Freeze until solid around the outside and mushy in the middle.
Stir well with a wooden spoon, then cover and continue to freeze until firm.
Note: Ice cream will not set completely if the middle process of stirring the mixture isn't performed.

It's very yummy and couldn't be easier.

That's it...

2005-07-13T00:06:00.000-04:00

I don't want to be a fireman anymore:
In Firehouse, Fastest Way Down Is on Its Way Out

Central Park is great...

2005-07-06T00:22:00.000-04:00

...if you live near it. I, on the other hand, live near Fort Washington and Highbridge Parks, both of which get a mention in this article:
Parks Even the Parks Dept. Won't Claim
Thankfully, the New York Restoration Project has taken on the task of doing something about it. The Park Department's attitude, revealed in this article, shows why the intervention of a private foundation is required to change the status quo. In case you were wondering, this sort of thing is not a problem in Chicago.

In fairness, we do have Fort Tryon and Inwood Hill Parks nearby which are in better shape, though the path in the latter which leads up to the Henry Hudson Bridge pedestrian walkway needs a good clearing — it's overgrown but passable in an 'I hope none of this is poison ivy' sort of way (a sign telling you it leads to the bridge would be handy too!).

On an unrelated topic, this is another worthwhile article from the Times. To my intrained eye, it looks like there are a raft of constitutional issues at stake. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

No podcast, no problem

2005-07-05T23:32:00.000-04:00

I'm a big fan of a few radio programs that I don't often get to listen to, in particular Odyssey, This American Life, and Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. They aren't broadcast at convenient times for me and, inexcusably, Piano Jazz doesn't seem to be broadcast in NYC at all! The first two are available in streaming audio off their websites, but I just can't concentrate on whatever I'm trying to do at my computer while listening, so I don't find myself taking advantage of that very often. Plus, I'm always looking for something interesting (read: distracting) enough to listen to while I'm exercising or cooking or cleaning or whatever. So I set out to find a solution to this listening dilemma...

What I found was Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba. It allows you to "hijack" the audio of any application and record it in the format and quality of your choosing. Critically, it allows you to set up timed recording which will wake up your computer (if necessary), launch AHP and the audio app of your choice, direct the app to a source (via a file or URL), record the audio (with the actual output muted if you like — perfect for recording on shabbat!), and add it automatically to iTunes with the ID3 tags your specify when its done. It works like a charm, and now I've got plenty to listen to.

(The competition to AHP is WireTap by Ambrosia Software. Whatever it's merits, it doesn't allow you to capture the audio of just one application, so it's pretty much useless to me.)

If you're wondering when various music programs on public radio are playing, you can use Allegro! to find out. WDUQ out of Pittsburgh has a high quality stereo stream that is probably the best streaming audio I've heard; you'll need VLC to play it on a Mac (iTunes doesn't handle streaming MP4 AACplus yet). VLC makes an excellent player for MP3 streams, so you can use it for recording them while leaving iTunes free to play whatever you like at that moment.

On a only slightly related note: Audible.com currently has a promotion in which you can get three free audiobooks at no cost; just sign up, snag what you want, and cancel. I went with three of David Sedaris's books; he's frequently hysterical and, since he reads the audiobooks himself, I expect they'll be good.

Still tickin'

2005-07-05T23:00:00.000-04:00

In my ongoing efforts to get up at a reasonable hour and to make it to shacharit on shabbat morning, I decided to go out out and get myself an old fashioned mechanical alarm clock. (Since it's mechanical I can adjust it on shabbat, and they're damn loud.)

Initially I picked up a new Westclox Piper Twin-Bell, which turned out to be big mistake: mechanical alarm clocks aren't what they used to be — this one had a movement made of plastic which ceased to run consistently after a couple of weeks, getting stuck periodically until I gave it a whack, and running s l o w when it "worked". In its favor, when it didn't get stuck and so managed to go off on time, it was loud indeed — but what good is an alarm clock that you can't rely on? In addition, it ticked away loudly enough that I found it distracting while trying to get to sleep. Thankfully it was cheap — too cheap, in fact, to be worth sending it in under the warranty.

As a replacement, I picked up an old Westclox Baby Ben Style 6 off eBay:

(It's sitting on a 3x5 index card, which gives an idea of the size.)
These were manufactured from 1949–56, and supposedly have one of the best movements Westclox ever made. I'm pretty sure I remember my Dad having one. Sure it's a little banged up (paint chipped, a little rust), but it runs great (and quietly), has a loud alarm, and is made out of actual metal. It's actually quite an ingenious design: instead of a separate bell, the back cover itself functions as the bell. I'm also rather partial to the style of it. All told, it inspires confidence, which is a desirable quality in an alarm clock. I like trusty old things.

Disgraceful

2005-07-04T14:48:00.000-04:00

From Ha'aretz front page:

The caption: "The prime suspect in the Muasi lynching appearing before a Be'er Sheva court, Mon."

Hiding from the cameras behind a tallit!

Let the battle begin!

2005-07-01T16:10:00.000-04:00

O'Connor, First Woman Supreme Court Justice, Resigns After 24 Years

This is going to be interesting, folks...

Bluegrass podcast

2005-06-30T01:41:00.000-04:00

I rather enjoy bluegrass, but only if it's fairly authentic — electric bluegrass and the like doesn't do it for me — so I'm happy to have just come across the Bluegrass Preservation Society's Radio Show, hosted by Ewell Ferguson and his cat Buster, which is handily available as a podcast. It's a little hokey at points, but not unentertaining, and the music is good. Go on, put that new podcast feature of iTunes to good use!