The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for April 2005

Herd of Buffalo Disrupts Traffic in Md.

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“PIKESVILLE, Md. – A herd of buffalo somehow got loose and wandered around an upscale neighborhood Tuesday, disrupting traffic and alarming homeowners before officers managed to corral them in a tennis court.

More than a dozen police cars and a police helicopter were used to herd the roughly 10 beasts, authorities said.

“Somehow they figured it out; I’ve got to give a lot of credit to the creativity of our officers,” police spokesman Shawn Vinson said.

Authorities have identified the owner of the buffalo but did not release the person’s name immediately.”

Now there is something that you do not see every day.

If You Wanted To Embarrass Yourself

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If You Wanted To Embarrass Yourself you could roll down your car window and sing Roxanne along with The Police being especially careful to hit the high notes with Sting in your best falsetto voice.

You could even act it out and then suddenly notice the woman in the car next to you laughing hysterically.

I don’t know anything about this, I am just saying that you could do this, if you wanted to. Not that you would want to do it, but if you did and it did well then….

Shomer Negiah- Loses to Alcohol and Hormones

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I am not a big proponent of being Shomer Negiah for a whole variety of reasons. I came across this story on YNet and thought that I’d give it a little play here.

“PETACH TIKVA – Regulars at a Tel Aviv-area pub catering to the ultra-Orthodox community say it enables religious youngsters to experiment with a more liberal, wanton lifestyle.
The popular hangout, Meidale, offers revelers a strictly kosher menu, but also serves as a meeting place where ultra-Orthodox males and females can mix freely and discover the joys of sex.

The pub makes ultra-Orthodox youngsters feel at home and gives them an opportunity to mingle with a variety of people, says “Zvi” (not his real name.) None of the pub’s attendees would permit themselves to be identified by their names.

“It’s a place any haredi (ultra-Orthodox) can feel comfortable at,” he says. “We don’t feel alienated here.”

Sex in the bathrooms

One of the pub’s main attractions for Zvi and his friends is the chance to meet women. After all, members of the ultra-Orthodox community are forbidden from approaching females on the street, while couples meet only five times before getting married.

Zvi says he takes advantage of the opportunity to engage in sexual activity at the pub, although he frequents the pub to make friends.

“It’s easier to make out with an ultra-Orthodox girl who’s looking to breach the wall,” he says.
Zvi says he does not look for full-blown sex, but admits some of his friends do just that. He says he recently came to the pub with a friend who ended up having sex in the bathroom with a girl he just met.

“The girls here drink a little and open up,” he says.”

I can’t say that I am surprised to read any of this.

Blogrolling Stuff

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I have written about blogrolling on a number of different occasions, but in the past each time was really because of one other blogger who wrote a number of different emails to let me know that he was going to unblogroll me.

I found the whole exchange to be kind of funny. They were really bent out of shape because I hadn’t reciprocated by blogrolling them. I had more or less forgotten about the situation until this weekend when I received a new email from someone else who said that they were going to unblogroll me for the same reason, I hadn’t reciprocated.

As I mentioned in my reply I hadn’t the foggiest idea that they had blogrolled me so the news that they were intent on pulling me out was the first time I had heard about it.

I also asked them what the purpose of their blogroll was. Is it just a tool to try and gain readers or is it a way to keep track of the bloggers you really like to read.

In my case I use it to follow blogs that I like to read, but it is not the only way that I follow those blogs so if someone is not blogrolled it is not a sign that I do not like their blog. I really do not spend any time considering whether I have or have not blogrolled someone. If you ask me to blogroll you, I may. I have done it on a number of occasions.

I think that the problem with the blogroll is tied into the obsessive need to track the stats. Who is coming to my blog, why are they coming, are new people coming, am I popular etc.

It would be dishonest for me to say that I do not enjoy following my stats, but it is tempered by the reasons why I blog. This place is my little corner for venting, crying, laughing and expressing myself. If no one commented I would still be here doing my thing.

I prefer the interaction. I appreciate the time that people take to read and to remark, but that is not enough to drive me to continue my blogging.

In short, the person that this is really directed to knows who they are and should take this in the sense that it is meant. It is not spiteful, angry or sad, just a simple comment to say that I hadn’t a clue about any of this until you unleashed that silly email. And yes, it was silly. There are better places to concentrate your energy and frustration than upon whether you are blogrolled or not.

British Boycott of Israeli Educators

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The Guardian is reporting that the vote regarding the academic boycott we wrote about last week has been successful. There are a number of different issues at work here that are of concern.

One of them is the attempt by the organizers of the vote to railroad this through by the timing of it so close to the Passover holiday, tied into that is the lack of debate on the topic and the third is the question of free speech.

Here is a short excerpt from the story.

“The Association of University Teachers today voted to boycott two Israeli universities over their failure to speak out against their government.

Delegates at a conference in Eastbourne voted, against the wishes of the executive, for an immediate boycott of Haifa University, which they accuse of restricting the academic freedom of staff members who are critical of the government, and of Bar Ilans University, which has a college in the disputed settlement Ariel.

The boycott, which is now official union policy, will follow a plan prescribed by a group of 60 Palestinian academic and cultural bodies and non-governmental organisations, which calls for British academics to severe links with Israeli institutions but to exempt Israelis who speak out against their government’s policies towards the Palestinians.

The executive had asked delegates to defer the debate until the facts of the cases included in three motions were confirmed. A third boycott, against the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was dropped as delegates queried the evidence of accusations it had evicted Palestinian families to build dormitories.

There were cheers as the motions were passed. Shereen Benjamin, from Birmingham University, one of the authors of the motions, told EducationGuardian: “It is a much better result than we’d dared to hope for. What it does is put the issue on the agenda at a higher profile than it’s ever been.

“As an educator I applaud that people are discussing this … We think the boycott of Haifa will send a clear message about academic freedom in Israel.”

At the end of the vote, delegates angrily demanded to be able to voice their opposition to the new policy and to the cutting short of the debate, due to lack of time, so that no opposition other than from the executive was heard.

Alastair Hunter, a delegate from Glasgow, speaking from the back of the Winter Gardens conference hall, where the debate took place, called the motions “divisive”. He said: “I am disgusted we were not given a chance to debate fully.”