Although the results of the US elections are not final yet, the direction seems clear. I allow myself to raise a toast for the Democratic party, and for the hope that the next 4 years will be better for this country.
This is not just a virtual toast. I am at home now, watching CNN and actually drinking a cup on wine (Pinot Grigio, in case you were wondering).
→ No CommentsCategories: politics
Tagged: CNN, Democrats, wine
Like many others, I have been following the US presidential race in the news. Since I am living in the US now, I find it even more interesting than before. In NYC it is quite obvious that the overwhelming majority of people are Democrats, so as far I am concerned, I am in good company. Not that it matters much - I can’t vote in these elections.
However, on a national level things are obviously different. In the past few weeks the race has been heating up, and a lot of filth, mud, false accusations and plain lies have been thrown into the air. While I am sure that the Democrats are not innocent of those acts, it appears to me, to put it mildly and in a polite way, that the Republicans are much more inclined to use those ugly tactics.
Perhaps politically it makes sense because polls are predicting a Republican demise, so they are backed into a corner and are shooting at all directions. However, I wonder how far down can these dirty politics drag our society. I feel that in the battle to win all moral guards are being ignored. “Our society”, in this case, means the American society, but unfortunately I see many parallels to Israeli politics, and it worries me because Israel is also facing elections in a few months.
What moral guards am I referring to? Obviously, the last 8 years with Bush were mediocre at best, and the trivial conclusion one should reach is that voting has very real-life consequences, as Bob Herbert explains in his column. Therefore, I think it is important for every voter to make a well-informed decision, or rather to have a well-informed opinion.
The democratic strategy today, I think, essentially asks voters to do just that. To have an informed opinion. The republicans, however, seem to want the opposite. They really want voters to make their decisions based on misinformation. Unfortunately, they are succeeding. For example, as Nicholas Kristof discusses in his column, almost one third of voters think that Obama is a Mulsim, a fact that is false but has been repeated over and over again by the Republicans - long enough until people believe it.
And this is just one example, there are many more. The primary problem is not that Republicans are lying to voters for the short-term gain. What scares me the most is that this problem is compounded by the Republicans’ belief (as represented politically today by the Bush-doctrine) that once power is granted to them, they can do whatever they please. They don’t believe in checks-and-balances.
In other word, they are trying to cheat their way into the white house. While this is not news, it seems to me that this kind of behavior always appears in its most aggressive, malignant, poisonous and destructing way on the right side of the political map, both in the US and in Israel.
I read today in this article that Ann Coulter, when referring to Obama’s alleged connections to the P.L.O, dared to compare Obama to Hilter. She said that Americans who will vote for Obama will later shake their heads in disbelief at their own choices just as Germans who voted for Hitler did after he hijacked the German democracy.
Not only that I find her words appalling, I find it ironic and sad that the opposite is actually true. If McCain does win, voters who will have voted for him will later shake their heads in disbelief when they find out that Obama is not really a muslim (or other false facts that they were scared into believing), but by then it will be too late. They will swear not to repeat the same mistake again … but we have heard all this four years ago, haven’t we? 
As for Ann Coulter, what can I say? I think she is an exemplar of a person that actively contributes an overall negative value to society. Unfortunately she makes a good deal of money from that, so she’ll continue to spread her poisonous venom around. Maybe if Obama wins she will be quiet for a while. I hope that she gets sued for libel or something like that.
→ 1 CommentCategories: politics
Tagged: Ann Coulter, Obama
Today is Halloween. My nephews will go trick-or-treating tonight. I am somewhat too old for that, so instead Tally and I went to two Halloween parties last night - one was at the NYU Law School, and the other was a city-wide party at the Mansion for law students from all across the city.
I dressed up as the devil, and Tally as an angel. The costumes themselves were very low badget, as you can see. We bought them in Toronto, where we also carved pumpkins for Halloween. This is the first time I ever carved a pumpkin, and it was a lot of fun (Thanks Yoav and Denise!). Tally wrote about it as well, and also posted pictures.
→ 2 CommentsCategories: general
Tagged: Canada, Halloween
So now that I’ve been living in New York for almost 2 months, it’s time to get back on track and try to put up some updates. Manhattan offers lots to do and see. Last week was quite eventul - I went to see Mama Mia (courtesy of NYU, where Tally is doing her post-doc now) and to a Knicks game with a friend.
In the first month here I didn’t have an established routine and it felt strange - I didn’t have both feet on the ground, so to speak. I didn’t always know where to go, what to do and where to get stuff. I run across many bloopers, starting with getting lost in the subway to walking all across 5th and 6th avenue trying to find a wifi spot, to paying for over-priced food, clothes and various household items, to eating at crappy restaurants and attending lousy comedy shows.
The lesson from it all is that you need to be well informed about the choices of various vendors and activities (Dining out being the most obvious). I suppose that is true everywhere, but I feel it in a more profound way in Manhattan, where there is an overload of information and an abundance of choices.
I also had to get used to working remotely. The challenges are both technical and psychological. On the technical side, it is remote debugging that proved to be the most difficult. Thanks to skype, communicating with co-workers and with my manager is a breeze. On the psychological side, I have to cope with working from home. It requires decipline, and it is an on-going process.
We also try to get out of the city. Since our arrival, we have traveled to Boston three times to visit the Agams and the Levanons, and went for a hike at Bear Mountain. Next week we are travelling to Toronto.
Here are a couple pictures from Charles River in Boston (click the pictures for larger view).
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Tagged: New York
Today I helped Ben & Shiri move to a new place at Ramat Poleg. Their new apartment is nice and spacious, and has a great balcony with a fantastic view of the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, we ran into another “great” example of Israeli forward thinking at its best - the elevators in their new building were too small to fit a 3-persons sofa and a large futon base.
Yes, that’s right. There was no way to get standard furniture like a sofa into their apartment except for carrying it 9 floors up the stairs. We weren’t that desperate so we ended up shlepping it back to Shiri’s mom’s place. We did, however, carry the futon base up the stairs.
What I find astonishing about this is that the building is fairly new - it was built 9 years ago, so it should be pretty modern. I’d like to find the stupid architect who designed the building, merely 2 years before the millennium celebrations, and did not consider it important to facilitate the actual moving of stuff into the building. So if you know who is the architect of 22 Mordechai Gur, Ramat Poleg (I think that was the address), please let me know 
What I’d like even more is to find the moron at Netanya’s city council that approved the building plans and kick his ass, or at least make him carry the sofa.
→ No CommentsCategories: general
Tagged: israel, lame, moving, Netanya
I think everybody should watch this great educational video over at http://www.storyofstuff.com/. It reminds me that I need to finish up on my writing of the Nature’s Capital series.
→ No CommentsCategories: general
Last week we went to the Zoological Gardens in Jerusalem (literally named “The Biblical Zoo” in Hebrew).
Here are a few photos. They link to their full-size versions on flickr.
→ No CommentsCategories: off topic
Tagged: animals, giraffe, Jerusalem, zebra, zoo
I haven’t posted anything for quite a while. Lots of things accumulated on my to-write list, but meanwhile, I want to post a few pictures of my desktop. I recently upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbons), and it comes with compiz working right out of the box.
Youtube hosts quite a few videos demonstrating the Desktop cube, wobbly windows and other 3D effects. I don’t have such a video, and now that I finally figured out how to take screenshots while rotating the cube, here they are. Clicking on the small photos will open the full-size photos from flickr in a new window (or you can just middle-click on them to open in a new tab if you are using firefox or ie7).
Here is the first picture, showing the desktop rotated between two workspaces.
This picture demonstrates the cube’s transparency feature, and the famous gears inside. Notice that you can see the youtube video inverted from behind (it continues to play during rotation).
Just for fun, I replaced the cube cap with one of Yuval’s painting instead of the compiz default one.
This one here shows that compiz can easily handle a dual-monitor configuration, which I use at work.
Here is the one-big-cube display for dual-monitor, instead of multiple cubes.
Next there is the issue of the applications switcher (the one that kicks-in when you press Alt+Tab). Compiz can do much better than the mundane list of applications titles. Here is the ring switcher.
Here is the shift switcher. It is very similar to what Windows Vista offers (one of its highlights, as far as I know). I am not sure which one came first - perhaps they both copied the design from Apple.
There are lots of other effects to show, but I think it is much better to try on your own. So next time that you want some cool graphics, forget about Vista. Get Ubuntu live CD and try it out.
By the way, the background picture behind the cube - called the skydome - is of Avalanche Peak, New Zealand. It’s a wonderful place, I high recommend that you visit it if you happen to travel in NZ south island
→ No CommentsCategories: technology
Tagged: compiz, screenshots, ubuntu
Via digg (originally from here).
Auto companies have creates a few websites which encourage the public to contact their representatives and oppose a fuel standard reform - a reform that, I believe, will not only help the environment, but ultimately it will also help the American economy by reducing dependency on foreign oil.
Here are links to a couple of the websites:
As usual in corporate land, these companies didn’t create the sites by themselves. Instead, they let some front organizations do the work for them. A whois query reveals that DriveCongress in owned by Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. As for the first site, the query doesn’t return any useful information - it just lists 1&1 as the owner. 1&1 is an internet registrar, thus it does not really own the site, it just lists itself as the owner to protect the identity of the real owner.
(A side note: 1&1 is a really crappy registrar. I once made the mistake of using their services, and I strongly recommend against it.)
I think that for grassroot look-a-like sites, they are doing a pretty good job, as long as the reader is an average joe that understands nothing about environmentalism, and is not an internet savvy user. The Contact Us page on the first site lists an address with just a postal code - no name, no street address; a sure hint that they are hiding from visitors. That alone is a sign not to mistake this site for a representative of an authentic grassroot movement (that is true even if you happen to agree with the opinion expressed in that site).
A few more things to note:
→ 1 CommentCategories: bullshit · consumerism
This number has been all over the place recently:
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 56 C5 63 88 C0
Why? because this number is used in an encryption algorithm that encrypts new DVDs, so consumers can’t copy the movies. In the last couple of weeks, the RIAA has frantically tried to prevent this number from being published, but their effort back-fired and now it is all over the place (around 1,700,000 hits on google). Digg users revolted against censorship and forced digg to keep the number published. People have done all sort of things to get the number out there, like printing it on t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.
(Remember that the RIAA recently received the “honor” of being America’s most hated corporation)
Ed Felten, from freedom-to-tinker, wrote a very interesting series of posts about the topic. In his last post he even offers a nice parody on the way that RIAA claims to own numbers.
The only problem is, RIAA doesn’t claim to own this number, and this stories is not about copyrights. According to the EFF, the RIAA is indeed using the DMCA as part of their battle, but they are not claiming that the integer in question belongs to them. What they are claiming (or will claim in court when the day comes) is that the integer in question is used in a technology that illegally circumvents encryption (i.e., the integer is a “part” or a “component” of a malicious technology). Further more, the number has no other practical purpose, and therefore whoever publishes this number is engaged in “trafficking”.
(You can read a much better explanation directly at the EFF site)
Nowadays, the term ‘copyrights’ sneaks into every story that somehow intersects between technology and public policy, be it about privacy, file-sharing, espionage, law suits, medicine, theft of personal information and what not. Many times this term used in the wrong way, where the real issue is perhaps related to trademarks, trade-secrets, trespassing, civil rights and a whole lot of other things.
I don’t mind that bloggers over-use this term so they can feel like freedom fighter, like this blogger did. I do, however, find it disappointing that Ed Felten, who is such a prominent blogger and a policy-expert second to none, doesn’t see the difference.
Oh well, at least I got a chance to publish the number myself. I wonder if anyone at the RIAA would ever read this page.
→ No CommentsCategories: riaa
