Archives for February 2006

On a related note Mark Steyn has an excellent column.

“In five years’ time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents’ apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam’s throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, “I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven.”

Is that an gripping story? You’d think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. You’ve got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.

Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.

This month, there was another murder. Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to the hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan’s screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Quran.

This time around, the French media did carry the story, yet every public official insisted there was no anti-Jewish element. Just one of those things. Coulda happened to anyone. And, if the gang did seem inordinately fixated on, ah, Jews, it was just because, as one police detective put it, ”Jews equal money.” In London, the Observer couldn’t even bring itself to pursue that particular angle. Its report of the murder managed to avoid any mention of the unfortunate Halimi’s, um, Jewishness. Another British paper, the Independent, did dwell on the particular, er, identity groups involved in the incident but only in the context of a protest march by Parisian Jews marred by ”radical young Jewish men” who’d attacked an ”Arab-run grocery.”

At one level, those spokesmonsieurs are right: It could happen to anyone. Even in the most civilized societies, there are depraved monsters who do terrible things. When they do, they rip apart entire families, like the Halimis and Selams. But what inflicts the real lasting damage on society as a whole is the silence and evasions of the state and the media and the broader culture.”

https://www.thejackb.com/2006/02/28/3049/

Supermarkets aren’t all that bad either. I can’t say that I like them as much as Trader Joes and Costco, but any place that feeds me starts out with a couple of bonus points. All that being said there are some real issues that bug me about them.

To begin I want to know why they bother to set up 27 checkout stands as no matter what time/day or how busy they are I can guarantee that only five of them will be manned by a live cashier. That leaves 22 empty stands and several lines.

The problem with a line is that it leaves me with plenty of time to stand around and look for ways to entertain myself which usually translates into get in trouble. One day I’ll have to share the tale of juggling a seven pound watermelon, a small bottle of Vodka and a plum. It is quite entertaining but now is not the time nor the place.

Here is another thing about those freaking empty checkout stands that aggravates me. How many times have you been standing in line and seen this happen. A store employee ambles on over to an empty register. It looks like they are about to open it up for use. The overly optimistic part of me is always pleased to see this as I naturally assume that the store management agrees that it is considered bad form to make customers wait in line for so long that their purchases spoil prior to exiting the store.

More often than not that fantasy is spoiled. Here is the skinny on how that goes down.

Whenever I stand in line I spend a few minutes conducting surveillance. I look for the crazed crackhead who is seconds away from pulling out a sawed-off shotgun and robbing us all so that he can go score some more rocks. In my old age I may be a step slower but I still have a cannon for an arm and big hands. I can guarantee that I can grab a cantaloupe out of the cart, fling it at the crackhead and knock that gun out of his hands before he can harm anyone.

Or alternatively I can grab the gum and mints off of the counter and hurl them at him in a furious frenzy. While he is fending off a swarm of Dentyne I’ll vault over the stand and use the closest magazine to knock him out. In general I prefer People Magazine’s 50 most Beautiful People. It is a little bit heavier and whoever is on the cover is of much more use to me as a bat then eyecandy.

Sometimes I get bored with the crazed crackhead routine and I look for the crazy terrorist. There is a slight variation on the theme and a small change in how I rescue everyone and earn free groceries for a year. In the terrorist scenario I sometimes pull their kaffiyeh over their eyes and box their ears or sometimes I just show them offensive cartoons and make them go crazy.

Once I stopped a near incident by handing the guy lighter fluid and a couple of American/Israeli flags. The poor fella got so caught up in burning those that he didn’t realize I had taken his weapon.

Anyhoo, I seem to have lost my way. Time to get back to reality. And the reality is that while I am conducting surveillance I scan the registers to see if a new one is about to open because everyone knows that there is an artform to getting to that newly opened register. You can’t just walk over there. You’ll cause a stampede.

Heaven forbid that the herd notice the empty register. The trick is to quietly leave the line while muttering something about having forgotten to buy Spaghetti O’s. So you leave the line you are in and quietly mosey on to the newly opened line and then bam! They get you.

You see that newly opened register is not really open. It is a stupid trick that the store management uses to enteratain themselves. They love watching people lose their places in line. It gives them a big hearty laugh. This is also why I like to rearrange the shelves. Waste my time and watch me help you waste yours, you line shifting bastards.

All that effort to quietly move lines so that you can gain a better position and what happens. Nothing, other than you have given up your prior place so that you can start over. And just to add insult to injury you look back at the old line to see that the guy who was three places behind you is checking out.

Oh my, why did I ever move.

Did I mention my issues with the people outside the store. Have I told you about my troubles with the Girlscouts and their bleeping cookies, or the 17 clipboard carrying canaries who assault you with petitions that you must sign because if you don’t the environment will fail, children will die of drugs, oil cartels will rule the world and the poor Dodo bird may face extinction.

Perhaps I’ll save that for a different post. I have a lot more that I could write about including shopping carts. There is a shopping cart law that applies to me. It is the one that mandates that I must always pick a cart that has a bad wheel that refuses to turn and that when it does it must emit a squeak that is so loud dogs scream “Crap! that hurts that bleeping ears.!”

That is it for now, until next time.

“Admit it. You’re reading this, but given the opportunity, you’d gladly snooze or slumber. For this is a nation in dire need of a nap.Never before have work and play stolen more hours from the sandman. Between a global economy that demands increased productivity and a technology-fueled entertainment machine that provides non-stop diversions, it’s a wonder people get any rest at all.

An NBC Today show/Zogby International poll indicates nearly half of Americans say they don’t get enough sleep and roughly one-quarter get fewer than six hours a night. Data from the National Center for Health Statistics show a 20-year trend of Americans reporting less sleep. Whatever the roots of a sleep problem, from a harried life to a medical condition, people are desperately seeking ways to get some quality shut-eye. (Some have found solace in sleeping-pill prescriptions, 42 million of which were filled last year, up 60% since 2000, according to research company IMS Health. Others have followed offbeat routes to a rested feeling — from frazzled New Yorkers who zonk out midday in rented napping “pods” to an Internet blogger in Las Vegas who says his energy stems from his ability to sleep in 20-minute bursts every few hours, around the clock.

Having some sort of strategy to get the sleep we need is crucial in a culture that is making increasing demands on our time, says David White, professor of sleep medicine at Harvard University and editor of the journal Sleep.

“This is an interesting juncture. Stress and anxiety levels are at a fever pitch, which limits the ability to sleep well. And there’s also more science than ever showing what a detriment that (unrested) state is to performance and health,” White says. “We all have different sleep needs. Just be sensitive to that and give yourself what you need.”

But the truth is, most of us don’t really know how sleep-deprived we are. Life pins up its daily to-do lists, and we tick off the boxes.

Freelance photographer Elizabeth Coll, 29, often found herself dragging between assignments in Manhattan but was too far from her Brooklyn home to get some z’s. Now she pops into MetroNaps in the Empire State Building.

For her $65-a-month membership, Coll is entitled to one 20-minute nap daily in one of MetroNaps’ eight sleep pods, futuristic beds each with a bubble dome that pumps in soothing New Age music.

“It’s great to be able to do this in a city that barely lets you sit down, let alone nap,” she says. “I always feel full of energy afterward.”

For Coll, the sleep thief is her frantic schedule; for others it’s the body itself.”

To read the whole story click here.

“SAN FRANCISCO – After spending the last decade building its brand around a cartoon character named Jeeves, Ask.com wants everyone to forget the dainty butler and remember its long-overlooked Internet search engine as the next best thing to Google.To make its point, Ask.com is jettisoning Jeeves as its corporate mascot on Monday and unveiling a retooled Web site that’s designed to make it easier to find and use its search technology.

The makeover, which will be supported by an advertising blitz beginning in mid-March, marks the 10-year-old company’s latest attempt to be taken more seriously as it tries to catch up with the Internet’s top four search engines — Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO – news), Microsoft Corp.’s MSN and Time Warner Inc.’s America Online.

Ask.com also is trying to live up to the high expectations of media tycoon Barry Diller, whose e-commerce conglomerate InterActiveCorp bought the Oakland, Calif.-based company for $2.3 billion last summer.”

Ok, the headline is hokey, but I like it.

Why I Blog

How I Became a Blogger

Hell, I don’t know Where This is Going

Freebird

Discussing Divine Punishment With a Child

Moshe Rabbeinu- Who Was His Father?