According to this, the world-famous creator of post-documentary documentaries found a new proof of existence of deity and His/Her attention to political affairs in US of A:

During an appearance Friday on MSNBC, Moore noted the coincidental timing of Gustav, which threatened the Gulf Coast on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina as the Republican Party planned to hold its convention in St. Paul, Minn.

“I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven,” the Oscar-winning director of “Fahrenheit 911″ said. “To just have it planned at the same time, that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for Day One of the Republican convention, up in the Twin Cities, at the top of the Mississippi River.”

I was just thinking after reading the above that:

1. This mug is another proof that the deity exists and that He/She has been unusually cruel toward the mug’s parents. On the other hand, the parents might have sinned mightily - who knows?
2. Michael Moore must have been paid by Republicans to sabotage the Democrats’ cause.
3. Krispy Kreme donuts definitely cause brain damage in the long run, especially if a person who is a walking cemetery of these donuts wasn’t a genius to start with.
4. Being an ugly, fat and lying jerk is not an excuse for moral debauchery. Or for idiocy.
5. Who is hating America more - Osama or Michael Moore?
6. Re item 1: Since we have established the existence of the deity, there is a five words message the deity should have passed to the parents (probably mislaid it due to extreme busyness): “Contraception, contraception, contraception!”.
7. More miscellaneous items that could not be published.

As you might have noticed, the items are not arranged in a particular order. Just thinking, you know…

More on the slobbo here.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Qantas airlines had a pretty incredible save the other day The NYT reports:

The jumbo jet, which carried 346 passengers and 19 crew members, landed safely on Friday and those on board left without injury. As a piece of fuselage the size of a sedan ripped from the plane, the jet, Qantas Flight 30, had been forced to descend steeply to 10,000 feet from 29,000 feet.

Passengers described hearing a loud bang and seeing debris fly into the cabin. As the plane depressurized, oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling and cabin crew members shouted to passengers to put them on.

Here’s the part that’s particularly incredible:

He said passengers were not in danger from the depressurization because aircraft that fly above 10,000 feet are generally required to carry oxygen systems. The atmosphere is thin above that altitude, and people can function for only a few minutes without oxygen before becoming groggy and losing consciousness.

Pilots are trained to bring a plane down swiftly to 10,000 feet, where passengers and crew can breathe without assistance. Given that the Qantas jet was at 29,000 feet, the plane dropped roughly a mile a minute, “not the kind of descent you would normally subject passengers to,” Mr. Mann said.

The Times also lists other Qantas close calls and a similar incident from 20 years ago.

Qantas has also had some close calls. In 1999, a Qantas jet ran off a runway in Bangkok while landing in heavy rain. There were no reports of serious injuries.

More recently, a Qantas-operated Boeing 717 was damaged in February when it sustained a hard landing at Darwin, Australia. The landing gear, tires and fuselage of the plane, flown by QantasLink, the airline’s regional carrier, were damaged.

In 1988, a gash opened in a Boeing 737 belonging to Aloha Airlines at 24,000 feet on a flight from Hilo to Honolulu, Hawaii. A chunk of the plane’s roof and the cockpit door were blown out. One flight attendant was killed when she was swept out of the plane, and 65 passengers and crew members were hurt.

Federal investigators said the accident was caused by metal fatigue, exacerbated by corrosion caused by salt water.

The Times mentions the famous Qantas claim and the scene in Rain Man that popularized it.

The Times points out that in its early years before it was incorporated as Qantas it did lose some jets. USA Today’s airline blog has more on how the airline has protected that claim.

The Guardian notes Qantas “paid a reported $100 million to repair it, way above the value of the Boeing 747-400, apparently so it could preserve its ‘never lost a jet’ status.” The airline has had several other incidents during the past decade, but — so far — none have resulted in the loss of a jet.

The cynical tone doesn’t seem right. Even if Qantas has to declare a plane a loss, it’s still a pretty incredible safety record. Last week’s heroic piloting should be a reason to emphasize the record, not question it.

(h/t Mrs. Soccer Dad)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Oil is down another $4 per barrel.

And may we all say: Amen.

Fluffy kitty posts to come later today.

The news just reeks, otherwise.

I’ve learned many important things from Barry Rubin. Last week’s column taught me something new: Celine Dion covered Eric Carnen’s “All by myself.” Dr. Rubin used the lyrics to illustrate the shifting sands of politics of the Middle East.

For more than a half-century, the region’s politics revolved around Arab nationalism. Individual states sought to have influence, leadership, or just to survive. The Arab-Israeli conflict was an important issue in this framework, though not the sole or even the most significant one.

Now, as Celine Dion sings, “Those days are gone.” Today, the centerpiece is a struggle between two blocs, one well-organized, the other weak and facing internal conflict. The former is the Tehran-led alliance of the HISH (Hamas-Iran-Syria-Hizballah); the latter is just about everyone else, call it the coalition of the unwilling.

So how do the moderate Arab states deal with this?

Still, their behavior is understandable. They want to use the radical appeal of Arab nationalism, Islamism, anti-Americanism, and xenophobia to divert attention from their own failings while mobilizing support for themselves as the true defenders against all those big and little satans out there. At the same time, they are happy to appease their foes if possible.

A particularly blatant example is Kuwait’s foreign minister who denounced those who want to wage a false jihad at home. He explained that instead of murdering innocent Muslims, young people should kill Israelis instead. Much of the regimes’ “anti-terrorist” rhetoric is merely really aimed at shifting the targets away from themselves.

On one hand, the Saudis host a global interfaith dialogue conference; float a peace initiative toward Israel, fight domestic terrorism, and battle Syria and Hizballah in Lebanon. On the other hand, they aid terrorists and spread extremist forms of Islam. Egypt is horrified by radical Islamism but refuses to go all-out against Hamas. The official media demonize the West and Israel, while the official Islamic religious apparatus endorses terrorism against Israel and in Iraq.

I’d say that this is a somewhat generalized form of what Dr. Rubin writes in “The truth about Syria,” in that the Assads use all means at their disposal to deflect criticisms of themselves and preserve their family’s tenuous hold on power.

So how does the West respond. I once wrote in a letter to the editor that every time Hafez Assad or Yasser Arafat sneezed it was interpreted as a signal of moderation. It appears that I was more or less correct.

By apologizing, conceding, refusing to defend themselves, or by negotiating, exaggerating the potential for moderation, and dropping sanctions, they can strengthen the extremists and undercut the regimes. When that happens, the regimes know they might better cut their own deal. So while there are arguable reasons to bargain with Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, or Syria, such a strategy splits the anti-HISH alliance and starts a race toward appeasement.

In the Dion song, “Love so distant and obscure, Remains the cure.” But this is politics. The best one can hope for is the wisdom to build on coinciding interests and courage to stand up to unrelenting enemies

And strengthening the extremists, no matter how well they keep the trains running on time, does not help.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Honor Guard

An honor guard stand to attention …

These are members of Hamas brandishing (I think) AK-47’s. Wouldn’t the more appropriate term be “armed terrorists?”

Iranian diplomats

picture depicting the four Iranian diplomats who were kidnapped in Lebanon in 1982 …

More likely they were intelligence officers tasked with coordinating Shi’ite militias at the time.

But this does make me wonder: If the Iranians are claiming that they were kidnapped by Christian and transferred to Israel, is this an implicit admission that the Iranians are/were holding Ron Arad. According to some rumors after he bailed out of his plane he was captured and eventually transferred to Iran.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I’m sure you’ve seen those motivational posters around.

(This parody was created by Despair, Inc.’s Parody Motivator Generator.)

I saw this picture and thought it must be the world’s least appropriate motivational poster.

Israelly Cool! thinks it’s part of a subliminal effort to affect people’s perceptions.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Don’t forget to check in with Michelle Malkin at 4 p.m. Eastern today. She’s running a live, streaming video telethon to raise money for From the Frontlines. Or you can go here to sponsor a care package in your price range. If you do send a package, email Michelle. She’s keeping a tally. And tell her I sent you. She’s been a good blog buddy to me. I’d like to repay the favor.

This is a case of my not agreeing with everything she writes, and vice-versa, and yet, we don’t hate each other. Go figure.

Update 11:15 p.m.: They’re closing in on one million dollars. THere’s still time to donate.

Yes, really. (H/T: My brother Eric.)

BERLIN - An American hiker stranded in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after using her sports bra as a signal, police in southern Germany said Monday.

Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp said that he helped lift 24-year-old Jessica Bruinsma of Colorado to safety by helicopter on Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain.

[...] Rasp said the cable was only within reach because the timber transport system was out of service. When a repairman restored the line on Thursday, the cable car started moving up the mountain and Bruinsma’s bra reached the worker at the base. He knew of the missing hiker and immediately called police.

Now that’s one smart cookie. I take my bra off to her.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is a good Bob Herbert column. He gives a shout-out not just to the fact that a black man won the Democratic presidential nomination—a truly historic moment in our nation’s history—but he also acknowledged Hillary’s historic moments as well.

Good for him.

Kennedy had been accused of dreaming when he said in the early 1960s that a black person could get elected president in the next 40 years.

The fact that even a dreamer could imagine nothing shorter than a 40-year timeline gives us a glimpse of the nightmarish depths of racial oppression that people of goodwill have had to fight.

The United States in 1968 (the same year in which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated) was a stunningly different place from the country we know now, so different that most of today’s young people would have trouble imagining it. The notion in ’68 that a black person — or a woman — might have a serious shot at the presidency would have been widely viewed as lunacy.

Don’t forget, until about 1967, miscegenation laws were on the books in 16 states, including the one I now call home.

I have no intention of voting for Obama, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize how great this nation is. Europe talks the talk, but we walk the walk. In forty years, we changed the way we think to the point where a black presidential candidate is not only no longer unthinkable, but the reality.

So let’s see if I get this straight. Europeans shut down the U.S. SWIFT program to sift through European bank data to try to stop terror financing because it broke EU privacy rules. But when researchers at Northwestern University sought permission to track American cell phone users living in Europe, permission was granted.

Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.

The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.

[...] The scientists would not say where the study was done, only describing the location as an industrialized nation.

Researchers used cell phone towers to track individuals’ locations whenever they made or received phone calls and text messages over six months. In a second set of records, researchers took another 206 cell phones that had tracking devices in them and got records for their locations every two hours over a week’s time period.

The study was based on cell phone records from a private company, whose name also was not disclosed.

[...] That type of nonconsensual tracking would be illegal in the United States, according to Rob Kenny, a spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission.

I’d like to know which cell phone company was so easy with its data. Because I will be sure to never patronize that company, ever.

Privacy? What’s that?

The really sad thing is that the EU notion of privacy—or the lack thereof—is slowly but surely becoming part of the American notion of privacy as well. And it’s pretty much unavoidable. If you want to take advantage of discounted items at your local supermarket, you have to swipe a membership card, which then transfers information on every item you buy into a database. The benefit to you, supposedly, is to offer you coupons for the items you buy regularly. And yet, the majority of coupons I receive are for rival brands to the ones I buy. Funny how that works. Every time I’m told that my privacy will be protected, I discover that it isn’t.

It’s such a topsy-turvy world that I pay for privacy. There’s a monthly fee to keep my telephone number unlisted. The phone companies like to tell you that it costs them money to remove your information from the data that gets printed. That’s a load of bull. I know programming. Writing that code is a one-time programming effort. The information is in a database, and the code to say whether or not my data is retrieved is written once, and executed every time after that. It doesn’t have to be rewritten every single month. It only needs to be rewritten if I change the parameters on them and tell them I want my number published. I’m paying a fee for work that was done, what, 25 years ago? Even if you count the three times I’ve moved since then, the Y2K code rewrite, and switching to a new provider, I’m still being ripped off. My new phone provider charges two dollars less per month than Verizon. But they still charge that monthly fee.

But I digress. The authors of the study had some sleepless nights worrying about the privacy issues.

Barabasi said he spent nearly half his time on the study worrying about privacy issues. Researchers didn’t know which phone numbers were involved. They were not able to say precisely where people were, just which nearby cell phone tower was relaying the calls, which could be a matter of blocks or miles. They started with 6 million phone numbers and chose the 100,000 at random to provide “an extra layer” of anonymity for the research subjects, he said.

Barabasi said he did not check with any ethics panel. Hidalgo said they were not required to do so because the experiment involved physics, not biology.

That’s a nice little loophole to get around, but the ethics violations are still there. However, the authors of the study feel perfectly right to have invaded the privacy of 100,000 individuals—because they did it to make the world a better place.

Study co-author Hidalgo said there is a difference between being a statistic - such as how many people buy a certain brand of computer - and a specific example. The people tracked in the study are more statistics than examples.

“In the wrong hands the data could be misused,” Hidalgo said. “But in scientists’ hands you’re trying to look at broad patterns…. We’re not trying to do evil things. We’re trying to make the world a little better.”

Knowing people’s travel patterns can help design better transportation systems and give doctors guidance in fighting the spread of contagious diseases, he said.

You see? It’s for the children. So the fact that they invaded your privacy is secondary to the good that will come out of this. The end justifies the means.

I’m pretty sure someone is going to find out which cell phone company gave out that data. Will the backlash make a difference?

Here’s hoping.

It’s been driving me crazy all week. What is June 6th? What am I supposed to be doing on June 6th? Do I have an appointment? What the hell is happening on June sixth? What?

Oh. This.

Sixty-four years ago today, Allied forces swept onto the beaches of Normandy to liberate France and put an end to Nazi domination of Europe. The D-Day assault comprised American, Canadian, and British forces, but the Americans led, and for the most part the Americans bled, especially on Omaha.

There were 2,500 American deaths the first day. Kind of puts the AP daily Iraq military death count into a different light, doesn’t it?

I’ve been trying to figure out how not to drive to the Kennedy Center tonight. I was planning on, say, driving to Fredericksburg, leaving my car in the Park & Ride, and taking the train into DC and the Metro to the Kennedy Center. Well, that would be all well and good if I wanted to get to Sorena’s concert at 6 and leave about fifteen minutes later, because the last trains south out of Fredericksburg are at the wee hours of 8 p.m.

This is unbelievable. Not a single southbound or outbound train line gets me anywhere but to the outskirts of DC.

The New York City train and bus lines ALL have last trains out ranging from 11:30 to 1 a.m. to the surrounding states. And it’s not like Richmonders don’t work in DC, nor haven’t for years.

So instead of saving the gas (and carbon footprints) by not driving into the DC area, I’ll be heading to work for a 1:30 meeting after all, and taking the Metro from a northern VA suburb of DC.

If anyone has a better suggestion, I need to be at the Kennedy Center by 6 p.m. tonight, and I’d like to get back home afterwards. I don’t want to drive into metro DC. Did that a month or two ago, and it sucks.

In his column today, William Kristol writes in Remember to Remember:

One retired general I know urges civilians to go out of their way to say thank you to servicemen and women they happen to encounter. At first I thought such a gesture might be intrusive, or awkward, or unwelcome. I was wrong. When civilians walk over to express appreciation to men and women in uniform, in airports or restaurants or the like, the recipients seem a little embarrassed — but grateful. So perhaps we all should be less shy about thanking our troops for their service.The men and women in the military know their fellow citizens are grateful to them. Many of them say, though, that they’re not confident their countrymen are aware of what they’re accomplishing.

Airports?

How about this?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I think it’s time for some different news items.

You’ll never get me to talk, Copper: A lost parrot wouldn’t talk to the cops, but he talked to a vet.

Police rescued the African grey parrot two weeks ago from a neighbor’s roof in the city of Nagareyama, near Tokyo. After spending a night at the station, he was transferred to a nearby veterinary hospital while police searched for clues, local policeman Shinjiro Uemura said.

He kept mum with the cops, but began chatting after a few days with the vet.

“I’m Mr. Yosuke Nakamura,” the bird told the veterinarian, according to Uemura. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs.

Get your ass out of jail: In America, we jail Mexicans. In Mexico, they jail donkeys.

A Mexican donkey has been freed from jail after doing time for assault and battery. The Televisa network on Wednesday showed “Blacky” gobbling food from a bucket after spending three days in a jail that normally holds people for public drunkenness and other disturbances.

Blacky was jailed for biting and kicking two men near a ranch outside Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas state.

Officials freed the donkey after its owner paid a fine of $36 and the $115 hospital bill of the men, who suffered bites to the chest and a broken ankle. Authorities say he also must pay $480 to each man for missed work days.

Zimbabwe economics: How to get a million the wrong-way. Ready for this? Inflation in Zimbabwe is now at one million percent. How do you even manage to set prices when inflation is that high? Can you imagine being the price-setter in a grocery store? Talk about your nightmare job!

Now there’s a headline you don’t see every day: Kasparov silenced by unidentified flying penis.

Yes, really.

While making a public plea for unity against nemesis Vladimir Putin, a mysterious dangling object from the ceiling distracted the room: an airborne penis with a helicopter attached to its testicles [video via sharenator].

Pictures at the link.

Yes, really.

Penis museum gets new members: Hey, don’t blame me. They wrote the headline. Apparently, you can find a lot by putting the word “penis” into the search box at Google News. Hell, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a penis museum. Pictures at the link.

Yes, really.

In recent days, there have been some really awesome, NASA pictures of the day.

A Place in the Universe

This montage of planetary images was taken by spacecraft managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Included are (from top to bottom) images of Mercury, Venus, Earth (and moon), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The spacecraft responsible for these images are as follows:

1. The Mercury image was taken by Mariner 10,
2. The Venus image by Magellan,
3. T the Earth image by Galileo,
4. The Mars image by Viking, and
5. The Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were taken images by Voyager.

Pluto is not shown as no spacecraft has yet visited it.

The inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, moon and Mars) are roughly to scale to each other; the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) are roughly to scale to each other.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

In Ultraviolet Light

One of a series, this image of Saturn was taken when the planet’s rings were at their maximum tilt of 27 degrees toward Earth. Saturn experiences seasonal tilts away from and toward the sun, much the same way Earth does. This happens over the course of its 29.5-year orbit. Every 30 years, Earth observers can catch their best glimpse of Saturn’s South Pole and the southern side of the planet’s rings. Between March and April 2003, researchers took full advantage to study the gas giant at maximum tilt, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to capture detailed images of Saturn’s Southern Hemisphere and the southern face of its rings.

Image Credit: NASA and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)

Additionally NASA recently featured a really nice photo essay: Cities at night: the view from Space that started off with the following shot and had several other views of the Earth from space.

Really amazing stuff.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Yes, this is a real headline:

Poop Predicament Has Los Angeles Horse Owners Raising a Stink

And it goes with an exclusive article on Bloomberg News:

April 25 (Bloomberg) — The poop hit the fan when the last manure mulcher in Los Angeles closed shop.

The price of poop disposal is breaking the budgets of Los Angeles horse owners, as stable owners pass along the expense of taking horse droppings to landfills.

“The cost to get rid of this stuff has just skyrocketed,” said Royan Herman, 65, who runs the Peacock Hill and J-Bar Ranch stables in the San Fernando Valley with her husband, Mark. “A lot of young families aren’t able to afford a horse anymore.”

You’ll simply have to click the link to find the fascinating details about the Los Angeles horse manure problem. Me, I’m just glad that my little pooper weighs in at two pounds (so far), and deposits his waste products in a litterbox.

A brief note: I hate, hate, hate alligators and crocodiles. It is probably because when I was a child, my father thought it was funny to pretend to knock me into the alligator pit at the Staten Island Zoo while I stood on the wall, holding tightly to the brass rail, and stared down at dozens of enormous crocodiles in the cement pool below. Yes, coming up behind your daughter and grabbing her by the back and pretending you’re going to shove her over the rail—wow, that’s utterly hilarious. I also think that contributed to my fear of heights. That, and taking me on the Cyclone in Coney Island when I was about five.

But I digress. I feel bad for this poor woman:

US authorities say a 69-year-old Florida woman found a 2.5 metre long alligator prowling in her kitchen on Monday night.

Sandra Frosti says the gator must have pushed through the back porch screen door and then went inside through an open sliding glass door at her home in Oldsmar, just north of Tampa.

It then apparently waddled through the living room, down a hall and into the kitchen.

That’s eight feet long. There’s a picture at the link.

I may never complain again about ants in my kitchen.

(How many spam comments you figure that headline is going to bring?)

Apparently, new therapies are helping those of us who suffer from those annoying noises. I’m pretty sure my tinnitus is partly genetic, partly from TMJ caused by gum-chewing during my first serious attempt to quit smoking. Although it could, apparently, also be from my whiplash injury that same year.

Although there is no cure, researchers say they have never had a better understanding of the cascade of physiological and psychological mechanisms responsible for tinnitus. As a result, new treatments under investigation — some of them already on the market — show promise in helping patients manage the ringing, pinging and hissing that otherwise drives them to distraction.

The most promising therapies, experts say, are based on discoveries made in the last five years about the brain activity of people with tinnitus. With brain-scanning equipment like functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers in the United States and Europe have independently discovered that the brain areas responsible for interpreting sound and producing fearful emotions are exceptionally active in people who complain of tinnitus.

“We’ve discovered that tinnitus is not so much ringing in the ears as ringing in the brain,” said Thomas J. Brozoski, a tinnitus researcher at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield.

Indeed, tinnitus can be intense in people with hearing loss and even those whose auditory nerves have been completely severed. In the absence of normal auditory stimulation, the brain is like a driver trying to tune in to a radio station that is out of range. It turns up the volume trying but gets only annoying static. Richard Salvi, director of the Center for Hearing and Deafness at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said the static could be “neural noise” — the sound of nerves firing. Or, he said, it could be a leftover sound memory.

Huh. My tinnitus is mostly a roaring noise. I can now hear it during normal daytime noises. I used to only be able to hear it at night. Sometimes I have to turn on the white noise machine so I can get to sleep, which makes little sense unless you suffer from tinnitus. Believe me, the white noise machine is better than the roaring. I think, though, I’ll pass on this thing:

Similar to white noise, the broadband sound, tailored to each patient’s hearing ability, masks the tinnitus. (The music is intended to ease the anxiety that often accompanies the disorder.) Patients wear the $5,000 device, which is usually not covered by health insurance, for a minimum of two hours a day for six months. Since completing the treatment regimen last year, Mr. Edwards said his tinnitus had “become sort of like Muzak at a department store — you hear it if you think about it, but otherwise you don’t really notice.”

Um. I paid, oh, I dunno, maybe fifty bucks for my white noise machine at Brookstone, and that includes an extra cartridge. I notice my tinnitus when it’s quiet, and sometimes not even then. I guess it depends on my stress level, now that I think about it. But I’m luckier than some. Mine’s pretty much under control. It’s just annoying from time to time. (Watch, tonight, since I’m thinking about it, I won’t be able to do anything but hear it.)

An Israeli company has developed a cellphone that’s made it to Guinness book of World records as the smallest and lightest cellphone.Phone magazine describes it like this:

The idea of having a single cellular handset that can serve multiple duties giving wireless data access to a variety of modular devices isn’t new, but modu are hoping to be the first to market with a working implementation of the concept. Their modu unit is a compact cellphone of unknown technical specs (though I’d presume HSDPA or some sort of high-speed wireless in order to make the whole deal worthwhile, together with a fair chunk of memory) that can be slotted into laptops, car stereos and larger phone/tablet devices as appropriate.

Slashgear has more:

The Modu is based on a module interchanged ‘jackets’ concept that turn a tiny cell phone into a fully functional phone or gadget that enabled internet features. The company is expected to launch the modu In Italy, Russia and Israel on October the 1st, then probably in US next year. A Modu with two jackets bundle is estimated to sell around $280.

The company’s website informs us:

modu was established in early 2007 by Dov Moran, founder and CEO of msystems (NSDQ:FLSH), inventors and leaders of the USB flash drive market (DiskOnKey™), FlashDisk (DiskOnChip™) and other ground-breaking products. A seasoned team comprised of executives and managers from msystems, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Qualcomm, Intel, SanDisk, Symbian, Marvell, Orange and other leading companies allows modu to offer a unique blend of experience and unrivaled expertise in the mobile and consumer electronics arenas. modu has already developed key relationships with leading partners and manufacturers and has raised significant initial funding from a distinguished group of financial institutions and strategic investors.

Pretty neat especially as we’re now seeing commercial with a laptop getting pulled out of a manila envelope.

UPDATE: I didn’t have time before to point out that there’s an Israeli connection to the MacBook Air. The ad for it features a song by Yael Naim. (h/t Digital Irony, Rubicon3)

What I’ve also discovered is that modu has released an ad showing the functionality of its new phone.

Plus here’s an interview with modu’s founder Dov Moran.

Maybe in a few years the first thing you see when heading to luggage claim at Ben Gurion Airport will no longer be the big NOKIA name, but homegrown modu instead.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Oldest - Mikve Israel in Curacao

In the Caribbean, Curacao is home to the oldest synagogue - Mikve Israel - in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere; it was founded in 1651.

Second oldest (?) (Though not in continuous use) - Synagogue of Bridgetown, Barbados

The first synagogue on the site was built about 1651 by Jews from Recife, Brazil, fleeing Portuguese lands to English territories during the Inquisition. The original building was destroyed in a hurricane in 1831, and rebuilt two years later. (Curacao’s synagogue, built in the 1660’s, is the oldest continually operating synagogue in the hemisphere.) The Bridgetown synagogue, deconsecrated early in the century, was seized by the Barbados Government about five years ago and scheduled for demolition. But through the tenacity of the island’s tiny Jewish community, it is now a Barbados National Trust property and is undergoing a $1 million restoration. The building, a short walk from the main shopping district, is to be rededicated as a synagogue when the restoration is finished by next winter. It will remain a National Trust property.Today, the building’s exterior, with its balustraded roofline, lancet-shaped windows and thick walls with rounded corners, appears much as it did in the 1830’s, the prosperous days of Barbados’s Jewish community, which led the island’s sugar industry.

Third oldest - St. Thomas Synagogue Virgin Islands

The third oldest synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, this gracious building has a sand floor. This signifies the time during the Spanish Inquisition when practicing Judaism was punishable by death. Jews would worship in cellars with sand on the floors to absorb the sound.

Oldest synagogue - non-continuous use: Kahal Zur Israel, Recife Brazil.

Flanked by bustling cafes in downtown Recife on Brazil’s northeastern coast is a little-known treasure of Jewish history in the New World - the oldest synagogue in the Americas.Sephardic Jews built the two-story Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue before 1641 - most likely in 1636 - when they enjoyed religious freedom under the Dutch, who ruled part of the northeast region from 1630 to 1654 to control sugar production.

The Mikve Israel Congregation in Curacao, a Dutch Antilles island in the Carribean, was considered by some to have been the first congregation in the Americas. But it was founded only in 1651, also by Sephardic Jews from Holland.

Oldest synagogue in North America - Touro Synagogue, Newport Rhode Island

For over two centuries, the small synagogue standing on top of a hill on a quiet street in the New England seaport community of Newport, R.I., has occupied a unique place in American history — not only as a part of the American Jewish experience but also as a symbol of religious freedom for all Americans. It is her “that the right of the individual freely and without governmental restraint to follow the dictate of his own conscience in religious worship could be exercised without danger to the state”

UPDATE: Life at full volume visited Mikve Israel and has an account as well as a link to a set of photos of the Shul.

Well it turns out that Larry and I visited the oldest, Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, while we were on our honeymoon in Curaçao.We were there in June of 1992 and it was absolutely gorgeous.After a bit of digging I found a roll from our trip and I’ll share a few of the pictures we took of the synagogue and the Jewish Cultural Museum. First up is a picture of the organ and some of the chandeliers inside the sanctuary.

It was beautiful inside the building. My pictures really don’t do it justice, the dark mahogany wood, the bright sunlight streaming in and the white paint conspired to confound my film. But I did get a few good shots and if you click through the picture it will lead you to the picture set. I don’t remember much, other than the building being very cool and airy inside.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

John Tierney writes about Bad Baby Names and the effect they might have on a well adjusted individual by citing that famous psychologist, Johnny Cash.

During his 1969 concert at San Quentin prison, Johnny Cash proposed a paradigm shift in the field of developmental psychology. He used “A Boy Named Sue” to present two hypotheses:1. A child with an awful name might grow up to be a relatively normal adult.

2. The parent who inflicted the name does not deserve to be executed.

I immediately welcomed the Boy Named Sue paradigm, although I realized that I might be biased by my middle name (Marion). Cash and his ambiguously named male collaborator, the lyricist Shel Silverstein, could offer only anecdotal evidence against decades of research suggesting that children with weird names were destined for places like San Quentin.

This problem is probably less of an issue now than it was back in the 60’s, as now Americans who have foreign roots, regularly use traditional names. Orthodox Jews (and sometimes not so Orthodox Jews) are more inclined to use Hebrew names now, too, as a consequence of this greater tolerance.

(For example, using a neat function at the Social Security website, I found out that the name Moshe was the 840th most popular name in 1977 but in 2006 was the 662nd. Moshe did peak in 2003 at 598 and has dropped a bit since then. Another interesting notes is that in 1986, the year that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein died, Moshe surged to 646 - and was 603 in 1987.)

Still it’s not really non-English names that Tierney’s writing about, but unusual names like:

By scouring census records from 1790 to 1930, Mr. Sherrod and Mr. Rayback discovered Garage Empty, Hysteria Johnson, King Arthur, Infinity Hubbard, Please Cope, Major Slaughter, Helen Troy, several Satans and a host of colleagues to the famed Ima Hogg (including Ima Pigg, Ima Muskrat, Ima Nut and Ima Hooker).The authors also interviewed adults today who had survived names like Candy Stohr, Cash Guy, Mary Christmas, River Jordan and Rasp Berry. All of them, even Happy Day, seemed untraumatized.

The impetus for this discussion, Tierney’s middle name, “Marion.” He’s apparently still traumatized :-) by the playground taunts he had to endure:

Not too much ribbing? That surprised me, because I had vivid memories of playground serenades to my middle name: “Marion . . . Madam Librarian!” (My tormentors didn’t care that the “Music Man” librarian spelled her name with an “a.”) But after I looked at experiments in the post-Sue era by revisionists like Kenneth Steele and Wayne Hensley, it seemed names weren’t so important after all.

Of course the other approach he could have taken would have been to point out that no one messed with Marion Robert Morrison.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The ViewThis view out the aft windows on Endeavour’s flight deck was one of a series of images recorded by the STS-123 crew during the first full day in space. The end of the Canadian-built remote manipulator system’s robot arm (right edge) along with the shuttle’s vertical stabilizer and its two orbital maneuvering system (OMS) pods are visible. A heavily cloud-covered area of Earth fills the top half of the frame.

Image Credit: NASA

LGF has the video of the launch.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

This is an amazing essay from the pilot of an SR-71 (the Blackbird familiar even to X-Men comics fans).

In April 1986, following an attack on American soldiers in a Berlin disco, President Reagan ordered the bombing of Muammar Qaddafi’s terrorist camps in Libya. My duty was to fly over Libya and take photos recording the damage our F-111’s had inflicted. Qaddafi had established a ‘line of death,’ a territorial marking across the Gulf of Sidra, swearing to shoot down any intruder that crossed the boundary. On the morning of April 15, I rocketed past the line at 2,125 mph.

I was piloting the SR-71 spy plane, the world’s fastest jet, accompanied by Maj Walter Watson, the aircraft’s reconnaissance systems officer (RSO). We had crossed into Libya and were approaching our final turn over the bleak desert landscape when Walter informed me that he was receiving missile launch signals. I quickly increased our speed, calculating the time it would take for the weapons-most likely SA-2 and SA-4 surface-to-air missiles capable of Mach 5 - to reach our altitude. I estimated that we could beat the rocket-powered missiles to the turn and stayed our course, betting our lives on the plane’s performance.

Read the rest.

The New York Times reports, U.S. Universities Join Saudis in Partnerships:

Three prominent American universities — the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University — are starting five-year partnerships, worth $25 million or more, with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a graduate-level research university being built in Saudi Arabia.Under the agreements, the mechanical engineering department at Berkeley, the computer-science department and Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford, and the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas will help pick the faculty and develop the curriculum for the new university, known by the acronym Kaust, which is scheduled to open next year with a $10 billion endowment.

Over the five years, each university will receive a $10 million gift, $10 million for research on their home campus and $5 million for research at Kaust, as well as administrative costs.

Unsurprisingly, there are some possible pitfalls.

Although men and women will be able to mingle freely at the new university, faculty members at the American institutions said they were concerned about the possible pitfalls of working in a society where women cannot drive, gay rights do not exist and Israelis are not welcome.The agreements do contain an exit clause. “We have a 30-day cancellation provision, allowing us to leave the agreement with no penalty if at any time we are dissatisfied,” Dr. Pisano said.

University officials said they had addressed the issues of academic and personal freedom head-on.

“We are working with a university that has guaranteed nondiscrimination on the basis of race, religion or gender,” said Peter Glynn, director of the Stanford institute. “We recognize that this university operates in Saudi Arabia. Having said that, this university recognizes that if it wants to be world-class, it has to be able to freely attract the best students and faculty from around the world.”

Around the world? Do you really expect Jews to be accepted there unconditionally? Just because someone may be free in certain ways on campus, there’s still the surrounding country. The Saudis can make things uncomfortable outside the campus in ways that could affect the situation on campus.

And do these institutions expect that the Saudi influence will be limited to this joint venture? Or will they be expected to provide added value to the investment in other disciplines?

He acknowledged that the issue could be sticky. “We have several Israeli faculty involved with this, but to be honest, there’s very little of what Stanford will be doing that will involve travel to Saudi Arabia,” he said. He added that Stanford’s main role would be devising the curriculum and recruiting initial faculty members, from around the world. “We believe this university can have a major impact in Saudi Arabia and in the region, and that’s why we’re doing this.”

In other words, even now, they’re keeping the participation of Israeli (though I suspect the proper word should be “Jewish”) faculty members quiet. If they don’t want to upset the Saudis now, will they stand up to them later?

Frankly, I think that the “major impact” the universities seek is the cash.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Michelle Malkin has an item today about demands from the Gulf to pass laws forbidding the insulting of Islam.

Combined with the recent re-publication of the Danish Mo cartoons, these unacceptable acts of free speech have Muslim “scholars” demanding that heads roll.

About two years ago I saw a similar idea proposed by: A Jewish professor at an American university (under Jewish auspices)! Robert O. Freedman of the Baltimore Hebrew University recommended an International Religious Court of enforce civility among religions. LGF quoted from the article and wrote

It takes a lot to make my jaw drop these days, but here’s an op-ed in Baltimore’s Jewish Times that achieved this near-impossible feat.

The Volokh Conspiracy also quoted from the article, but was more clinical.

As you might gather, my reaction to this is much the same as my reaction to the “Defamation of Religions” argument I criticized below. Interestingly, unlike Prof. Ali Khan’s work, Dr. Friedman’s argument doesn’t even mention the possibility that the nation in which he lives might be constitutionally barred from going along with the orders of any such court.

My own problem with Dr. Freedman’s suggestion was whether this court could be a forum to take action against Muslims who destroyed shrines of other religions or if it was only meant to address Muslim sensitivities. And if it was the latter, would Muslims be able to take action against a country that allowed an apostate to live in its borders?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The Hubble found where Sauron’s hiding.

And I found the picture at NASA to bring to you. The news articles weren’t polite enough to link back, but I am.

The U.S. Navy shot down the dying satellite. And they said it couldn’t be done!

Pentagon officials said they think a Navy missile scored a direct hit on the fuel tank of an errant spy satellite late Wednesday, eliminating a toxic threat to people on Earth.

“We have a high degree of confidence we got the tank,” Marine Gen. James Cartwright said at a Pentagon briefing Thursday morning.

A fireball and a vapor cloud seen after the strike appeared to indicate the toxic hydrazine fuel had been destroyed, he said. The missile that struck the satellite did not carry an explosive warhead.

Cartwright also said the satellite seemed to be reduced to small pieces.

“Thus far, we see nothing larger than a football,” he said.

Here’s the way-cool video.

Not.

And amid all this hype, Winehouse’s representatives said late Friday that she won’t attend tonight’s Grammys in Los Angeles. Although she resolved her visa issues with the U.S. Embassy, she’ll still appear via satellite from London. Winehouse apparently decided not to stray too far from the very place she sang about never entering: rehab.

The New York Times tells the story of
a new principal at a troubled high school. (h/t Shalom USA.)

On his first visit, in October 2004, he found a police officer arresting a student and calling for backup to handle the swelling crowd. Students roamed the hallways with abandon; in one class of 30, only 5 students had bothered to show up.

Who is he?

Junior High School 22, in the South Bronx, had run through six principals in just over two years when Shimon Waronker was named the seventh.. . . “It was chaos,” Mr. Waronker recalled. “I was like, this can’t be real.”

Teachers, parents and students at the school, which is mostly Hispanic and black, were equally taken aback by the sight of their new leader: A member of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism with a beard, a black hat and a velvet yarmulke.

“The talk was, ‘You’re not going to believe who’s running the show,’ ” said Lisa DeBonis, now an assistant principal.

Not surprisingly, not everyone has accepted him, though it seems that most of the critics are no longer with the school, so it might just be that they have an ax to grind.

When an etiquette expert, Lyudmila Bloch, first approached principals about training sessions she runs at a Manhattan restaurant, most declined to send students. Mr. Waronker, who happened to be reading her book, “The Golden Rules of Etiquette at the Plaza,” to his own children (he has six), has since dispatched most of the school for training at a cost of $40 a head.Flipper Bautista, 10, loved the trip, saying, “It’s this place where you go and eat, and they teach you how to be first-class.”

In a school where many children lack basic reading and math skills, though, such programs are not universally applauded. When Mr. Waronker spent $8,000 in school money to give students a copy of “The Code: The 5 Secrets of Teen Success” and to invite the writer to give a motivational speech, it outraged Marietta Synodis, a teacher who has since left.

“My kids could much better benefit from math workbooks,” Ms. Synodis said.

Mr. Waronker counters that key elements of his leadership are dreaming big and offering children a taste of worlds beyond their own. “Those experiences can be life-transforming,” he said.

One of the themes in the report is that Mr. Waronker has a personal touch. For example:

So when Emmanuel Bruntson, 14, a cut-up in whom Mr. Waronker saw potential, started getting into fights, he met with him daily and gave him a copy of Jane Austen’s “Emma.”“I wanted to get him out of his environment so he could see a different world,” Mr. Waronker said.

My guess is that despite the problems, Mr. Waronker is having some success. And it comes from his seeming religious commitment to the school.

Back in Crown Heights, Mr. Waronker says he occasionally finds himself on the other side of a quizzical look, with his Hasidic neighbors wondering why he is devoting himself to a Bronx public school instead of a Brooklyn yeshiva.“We’re all connected,” he responds.

Gesturing in his school at a class full of students, he said, “I feel the hand of the Lord here all the time.”

* Yiddishe Nachas could be translated as “Jewish Pride.” It’s something I get when I read of someone like Shimon Waronker, but not a spoiled, self-destructive pop-singer.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Wow, the people of south Richmond almost rose up en masse and headed for Comcast HQ with tar and feathers.

The cable went out. Internet and TV. About an hour ago.

Lucky for Comcast, it was fixed in about 20 minutes.

Mind you, I’m not watching the game. I stopped caring about sports ages ago. There’s not even a “sports” category on my blog.

I’ve come a long way from the girl who could recite the 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, and 1980 Yankees lineups.

Monopoly - the board game - is looking for a new cities to feature. (The classic game, of course, is based on Atlantic City New Jersey.) If I understand the goal, Hasbro/Parker Brothers is looking for 20 cities to feature in a global Monopoly game. The top 20 cities of 68 pre-selected cities will make it onto the board. Also a later round of voting will net two “wildcard” cities for inclusion. (If you want you may nominate a city to be one of the wildcard cities, but this has no bearing on the 20 main cities.)Right now Jerusalem is ranked at 26, so why not register and vote for Jerusalem? You may vote once a day. (The website is not very easy to navigate.)

I should have realized that Yehuda would have something to say about this. He’s skeptical.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.