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 September 2005

A Gift From Darwin

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I thought that this story was interesting.

Harriet the Tortoise’s Birthday

“Certainly the oldest inhabitant in The Crocodile Hunter’s Australia Zoo on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, and surely the oldest inhabitant on the Australian continent, Harriet is a giant Galapagos land tortoise, collected by Charles Darwin on his famous Voyage of the Beagle. With her date of birth calculated to 1830, she’s well into her 18th decade now, although she has some way to go to surpass Darwin’s gift of a tortoise to the King of Tonga that lived to 189!Steve Irwin (TV’s Crocodile Hunter) and his Zoo staff have cared for Harriet since 1987, prior to which she had been at Fleay’s Fauna Sanctuary for 35 years. Indeed, it was there, in 1960, that it was discovered that she was a Harriet and not a Harry! Originally named after the Brisbane Botanical Gardens curator, Harry Oakman, “Harry” had been resident in the Gardens for nearly 100 years until 1952 (when the Gardens’ zoo closed, Dr David Fleay stepped in to take over).

The giant tortoise had been brought to Australia by John Wickham – a former English naval office who had been with Darwin in South America – and when Wickham left for France in the 1860s, Harriet took up residence in the Brisbane Botanical Gardens.

Charles Darwin had brought Harriet and two of her sub-species back to England, in 1835, when she was five years old and about the size of a dinner plate. Checking against Darwin’s records from 1834, Harriet is a Santiago tortoise (Geochelone nigra darwini). While she still ovulates annually, she hasn’t seen another Galapagos tortoise for over 150 years (or more) – and the zoo hasn’t been able to trace a male of her subs species. But she’s not lonely, as she is a favourite of staff and visitors alike, and simply adores company.

With the hope that she will see in her 200th anniversary at least, why not wish her a happy birthday – if anyone deserves respect for living through a lot, it must be Harriet.”

My Most Popular Posts

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According to one of my stat counters here is a brief list of some of my most popular posts. Here are the first 7 on the list. They are not necessarily my favorites, but I thought that it was interesting.

What The Hell Happened to Courtesy

Pictures of the Disengagement

Revenge of the Sith- Reviews

Love That Takes Your Breath Away

My Penis Died

Do Men Have Emotions?

Star Wars Versus Lord of The Rings- Which has Had the Bigger Impact

Cindy Sheehan- New Orleans is Occupied

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Cindy Sheehan continues to prove that she is a moron with illusions of grandeur. People have filled her head with this idea that she is a moral authority and educated about politics and the world.

Some of the things that she said here make me shake my head.

“One thing that truly troubled me about my visit to Louisiana was the level of the military presence there. I imagined before that if the military had to be used in a CONUS (Continental US) operations that they would be there to help the citizens: Clothe them, feed them, shelter them, and protect them. But what I saw was a city that is occupied.”

Just in case you think that she slipped up she repeats herself here

“George Bush needs to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq, and excuse his self from power.”

What a sad and ignorant statement. She has so much hatred for Duby all she can do is try and find more ways to excoriate him. She is intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt and sadly unaware of how she is being used.

It is just so disappointing.

Unetaneh Tokef- Jack Rambles On

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As I mentioned in the audio post below during this time of year it is common practice for Jews to become more reflective about themselves and their place in the world around them. I think that it is a very important task and one that is necessary if you are going to continue to grow as a person.

There is a prayer called “Unetaneh Tokef” that is said on Rosh Hashanah that always catches me as I am sure that it does many others. There are a couple of different stories that I have heard about its origins. Here are links to two of them. As you can see they are intense.

But I want to focus on a couple of things that we say in the prayer itself that I think are of interest.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written and Yom Kippur it is sealed
How many shall pass on and how many shall come to be;
who shall live and who shall die;
who shall see ripe old age and who shall not;
who shall perish by fire and who by water;
who by sword and who by beast;
who by hunger and who by thirst;

and

Repentance, Prayer, and Charity temper judgment’s severe decree.

Those are some pretty heavy concepts, so I am going to post about the first section and then then comment on the second.

As a young boy whenever we said Unetaneh Tokef I always pictured a very old man at a desk. There was a book a quill and some ink that the man used to write in the book. I remember thinking that it would be very hard for the man to hear me and that his head must really hurt because all these people were trying to speak to him.

I can also remember wondering if he really knew about all the things that I had done. Did he know that I had managed to sneak candy into my room even though my mom had said no. Did he know that sometimes at night when I was supposed to be in bed I would sneak into the hallway and listen to whatever show my parents were watching.

Or was he aware that Teddy Holtz had found a magazine with pictures of nude girls and we were looking at it. As an adult I laugh at that memory. We were about 8 years-old and we thought that the people in the magazine were really stupid. Because who would sit naked on the back of a motorcycle. You would get really cold and if you fell off you’d get really scraped up.

I can remember the superstitions of the older people, the whispers and gestures they made to ward off the evil eye, the hands they clamped over our ears during certain times.

All these memories jumble together because I took Unetaneh Tokef literally, even though I had some doubts about the power of G-d in the end I was afraid that he really did know everything and that something bad could happen. In short, it was a very black and white interpretation.

Now I look at Unetaneh Tokef and I think of it in broader terms and I understand that section to be more comment than literal because the reality is that I cannot make the decision of who will die and who will live for myself or for anyone others. Those decisions are out of my hands and it is important for us as people to be aware that what we do, the choices we make impact others.

This leads into the second part where it says:

Repentance, Prayer, and Charity temper judgment’s severe decree.

Please note that I am using English translations so that more people can read this, I don’t usually translate Tzedakah as Charity. It is usually more like Righteousness but there is a lot more to that discussion than this so for simplicities sake we’ll use charity.

In the past when I have engaged in learning about this line some people have discussed these as three separate concepts and it bothers me to hear Tshuvah, Tefilah and Tzedakah handled as separate units relative to this conversation. The reason being is that Unetaneh Tokef is a personal discussion with G-d in which we praise and tremble. It is a time to consider our own actions and I find it troubling to suggest that one could merit another year of life simply based upon tefilah/prayer.

Because if we are saying that we have done wrong and that we wish to engage in tshuvah, repentance then I think that it must include the act of tshuvah. I find fault with the idea that one could ignore tshuvah and simply daven. There is a lack of responsibility and personal accountability that irks me.

So I don’t see how you can separate prayer from repentance. They are two pieces that work together. Tzedakah is a different story. One can give without repenting or prayer. You could easily make a donation to charity xyz without the other two components.

On a personal note I follow the Rambam’s example of how to give.

That is it for now, perhaps I’ll share more thoughts later.

Sounds from typing could be security risk

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I thought that this was very interesting.

“SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Forget about watching, Big Brother may be listening.

Sounds from typing on computer keyboards are distinctive enough to be decoded, allowing security breaches caused by “acoustic snooping,” University of California, Berkeley researchers said on Wednesday.

The researchers said they were able to feed sound recordings of typing on keyboards into a computer and use an algorithm to recover up to 96 percent of the keyboard characters entered by typists.

“It’s a form of acoustical spying that should raise red flags among computer security and privacy experts,” said Doug Tygar, a Berkeley professor of computer science and information management.”