Tuesday, March 28, 2006
A Plug: English Hebraica
I thought I'd put in a plug here for English Hebraica, On the Main Line's other blog. It's about pre-19th century Jewish-themed items in English, many of them written by non-Jews. I have no special knowledge of the subject matter (and I am not involved in the blog). What makes it interesting is the (scanned) original material that I don't usually see. It now takes its rightful place on my sidebar (and in my RSS feed).
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Thought-patents
Michael Crichton, of Jurassic Park fame, wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times about an idiotic patent whose case is now going to the Supreme Court. Briefly, the USPTO approved a patent claiming ownership over the correlation between homocysteine levels and vitamin B-12 deficiency. So far, it's been upheld in the lower courts.
Technorati tags: patents
Technorati tags: patents
Anti-spam policy in effect
See the bottom of my sidebar. All the links have the tag rel="nofollow" to prevent search engines from increasing the sites' page ranks based on my links to them.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
The Purim Kiddush, 2006 edition
It's that time of year again: Time to poke fun at our liturgical and textual traditions. And, so, I present to you the 2006 edition of the Purim Kiddush.
You can download it in Open Document format or PDF.
There have been a number of changes since last year:
Comments and corrections welcome (especially on the Aramaic and pointing).
In case you'd like to study the history of this highly important liturgical text: The older editions are here (2005) and here (2004).
(Unlike the rest of my blog, the files are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike2.5 License copyright license. The difference is that derivative works are allowed, under the conditions that the work is attributed and released with the same freedoms as I'm giving you.)
Technorati tags: Purim
You can download it in Open Document format or PDF.
There have been a number of changes since last year:
- It's pointed!
- New Aramaic/English pun
- New Biblical quotes (one removed)
- Better integration of some Biblical quotes into the flow of the text
- Translation Super-Frummified™. All references to "God" replaced with "G-d" and "Lord" replaced with "Hash-m."
Comments and corrections welcome (especially on the Aramaic and pointing).
In case you'd like to study the history of this highly important liturgical text: The older editions are here (2005) and here (2004).
(Unlike the rest of my blog, the files are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike2.5 License copyright license. The difference is that derivative works are allowed, under the conditions that the work is attributed and released with the same freedoms as I'm giving you.)
Technorati tags: Purim
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
From the Boston Globe
From today's article about raising the national debt limit:
oops.
''I know that you share the president's and my commitment to maintaining the full faith and credit of the US government," Snow said in his letter to leaders in the House and Senate. His ''full faith and credit" comment referred to the Fourth Amendment. (emph. added)
oops.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Comcast TOS
From Comcast's new terms of service for online accounts:
Whoa! They designed the system. They certified the system. They keep your data. You're responsible if they screwed up.
Technorati tags: Comcast, security, terms+of+service
You acknowledge that communications or transactions conducted online are not absolutely secure. You further acknowledge that there may be system failures that may limit your ability to use the My Account. You agree to assume all risk and liability arising from your use of Comcast's My Account, including the risk of breach in the security of the communications or transactions you conduct with Comcast online. (Empahasis added.)
Whoa! They designed the system. They certified the system. They keep your data. You're responsible if they screwed up.
Technorati tags: Comcast, security, terms+of+service
