tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34491182024-03-13T21:26:02.244+02:00Al Ha VeDa על הא ודאWhatever I feel likeSimonnoreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1102940203006482902004-12-13T14:15:00.000+02:002004-12-13T14:16:43.006+02:00Out of hereOK, the move is complete. This blog will continue at http://smontagu.org/blog/. You should be redirected there in 15 seconds.Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1102929393620238462004-12-13T11:12:00.000+02:002004-12-13T11:16:33.620+02:00RSS Changes IIIHoly crap, it is just as I feared. The RSS feed has changed its name yet again to http://mountainsmog.blogspot.com/rss/mountainsmog.xml. So anyone reading me by RSS will never know when the blog moves (which will be extremely soon — I'm fed up with this). Goodbye, dear readers, it was nice knowing you.Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1102887216242964162004-12-12T23:20:00.000+02:002004-12-12T23:33:57.983+02:00Kubanga okusaasira kwe kwa lubereraThat's כִּי לְעוֹלָם חַסְדּוֹ, the refrain of Psalm 136 in Luganda, as sung by the Abayudaya community of Uganda. (Thanks to Danya (Jerusalem Syndrome) posting at JewSchool, via Rachel (Velveteen Rabbi)). I have to get this disc!
Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1102886047848708962004-12-12T23:10:00.000+02:002004-12-12T23:14:07.846+02:00Almost doneI finished the first draft of the book proposal I'm translating today. I'm glad it's being translated, because it's something I'd love to read, and I would never fight my way all through it in Hebrew.
This blog will be moving soon, since Dreamhost has started offering WordPress as part of the service.Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1100041607724962242004-11-10T01:50:00.000+02:002004-11-15T02:22:15.663+02:00Some news storiesJuly 15th, 2003:
America Online on Tuesday said it has laid off 50 employees involved in Web browser development at its Netscape Communications subsidiary amid a reorganization of its Mozilla open-source browser team …
The layoffs come as the loose Mozilla.org group, which had overseen the open-source development efforts of the Mozilla browser, transforms itself into a nonprofit Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1099870189631111002004-11-08T01:54:00.000+02:002004-11-08T01:29:49.630+02:00Water from the wells of salvationI wasn't going to blog about the US election, but this was just too interesting to pass by.
First of all, correlating county-by-county election returns with geographical data from the Tiger database is just so superbly geeky. Secondly, it struck me that there's a very strong correlation between voting Democrat and living near large bodies of water. Look how the blue clusters along the Pacific Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1099352418696977172004-11-02T01:55:00.000+02:002004-11-02T01:40:18.696+02:00Making myself usefulIt's good that the remnants of a classical education that I carry around with me sometimes come in useful for me and other people.
My ever loving wife is winding up her M.A. thesis on Eve and Mary in Irenæus of Lyons, and it's my privilege to help her as computer and language dogsbody, looking up references on the internet, translating parts of the Latin text (the only complete version Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1098576394192888572004-10-24T01:48:00.000+02:002004-10-24T02:06:34.193+02:00Stopgap PostI haven't been getting to the blog lately. I'm gainfully employed again (contracting for the Hebrew Competence Group at IBM until the end of the year, with hopes for renewal of the contract for a longer period) and when I get home and finish checking email, reading other people's blogs, and hacking here and there on Mozilla, I don't seem to have time and energy left to write, not to mention work Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1097702557840163662004-10-13T23:18:00.000+02:002004-11-15T02:34:31.850+02:00I can't believe I did thisWell, it should at least increase my geek credibility
Simonnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1096784962771563272004-10-03T08:26:00.000+02:002004-10-03T08:29:22.770+02:00Two RebbetzinsWelcome Renegade Rebbetzin, a rising star in the blogosphere, and talking of rebbetzins, check out an article in Ha'aretz about an old friend of mine, Amichai Lau-Lavi.Simonnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1096572514989930372004-09-30T21:15:00.000+02:002004-09-30T21:29:19.396+02:00RSS Changes III emailed Blogger support and they changed the RSS feed URI manually back to http://mountainsmog.blogspot.com/rss/MountainSmog.xml. The problem is that my <link> element, which uses a <$BlogSiteFeedURL$> tag (following their instructions) still points to http://mountainsmog.blogspot.com/rss/mountainsmog.xml, and I strongly suspect, without daring to make the experiment, that if I makeSimonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1096405007834833722004-09-28T22:52:00.000+02:002004-09-28T22:56:47.836+02:00Quid "ille" significatThanks to Talmida for the pointer to Speculative Grammarian, which I think is the best online linguistics magazine ever. My favourite article so far: "The Original Language of Winnie-the-Pooh".Simonnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1096322406485750592004-09-27T23:48:00.000+02:002004-09-28T00:05:11.466+02:00Hebrew HaikusI couldn't resist this challenge on a mailing list I subscribe to. As someone pointed out there, a haiku should be about nature or seasons, otherwise it's a senryu.
אֲסַפֵּר לִבְנִיעַל יְצִיאַת מִצְרָיִםבְּחוֹדֶשׁ אָבִיב
פָּך שֶׁמֶן אֶחָדנָתַן אוֹרוֹ בְּחוֹרֶףלִשְׁמוֹנָה יָמִים
שֶׁבַע הֲקָפוֹתעֲרָבוֹת בְּעוֹז חוֹבְטִיםגֶּשֶׁם לִבְרָכָה
Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1095977108252655562004-09-23T23:29:00.000+02:002004-09-24T00:05:08.253+02:00Nearly Yom KippurIf I was capable, I would translate this into English. I've tried many times to translate Agnon, but I just can't capture it.
השמים היו טהורים והארץ היתה שקטה וכל הרחובות היו נקיים, ורוח חדשה היתה מפרפרת בחללו של
עולם. ואני תינוק כבן ארבע הייתי ומלובש הייתי בגדי מועד, ואיש אחד מקרובי הוליכני אצל אבי
ואצל זקני לבית התפילה, ובית התפילה היה מלא עטופי טליתות ועטרות כסף בראשיהם ובגדיהם בגדי
Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1095588850365076172004-09-19T11:47:00.000+03:002004-09-19T13:14:10.366+03:00Ideas for teaching liturgyI realized during Rosh Hashana services last week that Aviad doesn't know half as much as I had assumed that he did about the structure of the Mahzor. The middle of the silent Amida wasn't a very helpful time to realize this, but I gave him a whispered overview of Malchuyot Zichronot and Shofarot before the repetition while resolving to do the job properly in the time remaining before his Bar Simonnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1095528596721698632004-09-18T20:23:00.000+03:002004-09-18T20:29:56.720+03:00RSS changesFor those using the RSS feed, I have been fiddling with the settings, and the most notable result seems to be that the URI has changed from http://mountainsmog.blogspot.com/rss/MountainSmog.xml to http://mountainsmog.blogspot.com/rss/mountainsmog.xml. Apologies if this has inconvenienced anybody.Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1095498823736886732004-09-18T11:54:00.000+03:002004-09-18T17:12:58.610+03:00For calendar geeksHat-tip to Avraham Bronstein for the link to “How is this year different from all other years?” Sample quotation:
This year 5765 is the only year in all of history whose “keviut” (year-type determination) involves dechiyyat BeTU-TaKPaT at the end of the year, and whose Pesach falls on April 24.
The "exercise for the reader" in section M.7 has been bothering me: "There is one other situation [Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1095199100341294642004-09-14T22:49:00.000+03:002004-09-15T00:58:20.340+03:00EyeopenerIn the Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashana, Hagar and Ishmael have been sent off into the desert and have run out of water. Hagar sits crying, out of sight of her son so as not to see him die. She has given up hope.
At this point, just as in the story of the Akeda in the reading for the next day (why does nobody ever seem to make anything of the parallels between the two stories? A Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1094056143054707062004-09-01T19:28:00.000+03:002004-09-08T13:14:04.736+03:00Google takes a stand on gender politicsSimonnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1093989990435726322004-09-01T00:47:00.000+03:002004-09-01T01:06:30.436+03:00How many deaths will it take?Every terrorist attack brings its own horrid variations on the same old tragedy.
On the news tonight we heard someone describe how he had been sitting next to the suicide bomber for part of the bus journey until he had given up his seat to a woman and moved to the back of the bus. With his voice shaking, he described how he had seen the same woman lying dead in the bus, and how hard it was to Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1093906747340794142004-08-30T23:36:00.000+03:002004-09-08T21:20:09.373+03:00I am my beloved's and my beloved is mineAs far as I know (and I would love to be corrected) Ellul is the only Hebrew month which has Midrash on its name. The one that everybody remembers is the notarikon
אני לדודי ודודי לי
from Song of Songs 6, 3, but there are several more. That one itself is part of a set of three verses with an acrostic &Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1093510599283963312004-08-26T10:53:00.000+03:002004-08-26T11:56:39.283+03:00Aramaic WatchWelcome Naomi Chana to my sidebar. Baraita is the first blog I've come across apart from this one with an Aramaic title, and it's totally compulsive reading.Simonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1093468252157206042004-08-26T00:02:00.000+03:002004-08-26T00:10:52.156+03:00Firefox 1.0Reading some of the controversy surrounding recent feature-set decisions by the Firefox team, I can't help wondering whether they are falling into the 80/20 fallacy.Simonnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1092641415870392092004-08-16T10:11:00.000+03:002004-08-30T09:42:41.573+03:00Some like it hotUpdate: some more details of the preparation added.
We aren't an all-the-year-round Hamin eating family, but the period during the summer when we don't eat Hamin (otherwise known as cholent) gets shorter every year, and this year it seems to be over already.
Like everybody else, I, and I alone, know the One True Way to prepare Hamin, and it's like this:
500g shoulder meat cut into chunks.
Simonnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449118.post-1091594129253981892004-08-04T07:34:00.000+03:002004-08-04T07:35:29.253+03:00Overheard in the streetTeen girl to teen boy: "I can't stay later than 12: my parents told me to be home by 10."Simonnoreply@blogger.com0