I need this blog like a...   

I’m sitting here and, like the antisocial geek I may once have been, am speaking to my computer. No, I haven’t totally lost it…at least not yet. I am playing with my new Plantronics DSP-400 headset and the Microsoft Speech Recognition Engine. So far, it’s kind of sucky. Hopefully it will improve as it learns my voice patterns. In any case, it allows me to do less typing, which should mean less pain in my arms and less nagging from of my wife. So let the blogging continue!

They say that the India Institute of Technology is the best in the world. In fact, those unfortunate souls who aren’t accepted to it wind up attending their safety schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. But this story makes you wonder. Apparently, some of the researchers there have developed a device that can recharge your cell phone using wind power. How can you use this?

"The device will help mobile phone users charge their phones while travelling in a bus, a car or a train. All they need to do is -- place the turbine against the wind flow. It will use wind energy to move the turbine thereby generating energy."

So who wants to volunteer to stick their arm of the window of the Long Island Rail Road to see if this thing works?

Gil comments today about the dangers of disregarding scienctific theory that seems incompatible with Torah due to the constantly fluctuating nature of science. He makes a good point, one which I've been saying for a long time. But the other side of the coin is equally true. Therefore, I present the 2 cardinal rules of Torah and science: 1) Don't completely reject a scientific theory that seems incompatible with Torah because if it turns out to be true, you look foolish. 2) Don't completely accept a scientific theory that seems compatible with Torah because if it turns out to be false, you look foolish. I think it is fine that people like Slifkin, Schroeder, and Aviezer attemtp to reconcile Torah and science and their works make me confident that science is moving in a positive direction, as it becomes closer to realizing the truth of Torah. But it is important to do so with a caveat...that this is only hypothesis and that the truth of Torah is orthogenal to the truth of the science being discussed. If we can shove a few cliches together: if you count your chickens before they hatch, you may paint yourself in a corner and wind up with egg on your face.

Check out Google's new mapping site. The Google way seems to be "let's take an idea that lots of people have already implemented and do it 100 times better." And they do! Update: If you're interested in how Google does it, here is a nice description of the client side. As usual, lot's of fancy DHTML, Javascript and the like. It's the kind if thing I scream at people for doing on my projects...but hey, my guys aren't always the Google guys.

I Just saw these and thought they were funny. I'm still rooting for the Pats, though.

Watch out Young Israelites! Your kiddush club is about to be eliminated, if the OU can help it. Not that I disagree, but are we really focusing our efforts properly here? If the issue is decorum in a mikdash m'at, then perhaps we should first fix the decorum in shul before moving on to what's going on out in the hallway. If the issue is teen drinking, will this really make a difference? Every little bit helps, I suppose.

Interestingly, Artuz Sheva is reporting that the Shinui party is proposing jail time for anyone who issues or participates in a cheirem. This has nothing to do with Rabbi Slifkin and I doubt they've even heard of him. It has more to do with Israeli politics. Doesn't Shinui believe something about separation of church and state? I thought I heard that somewhere ;)

The NYTimes is reporting that Al Sharpton is joining with PETA to boycott KFC for not treating its animals humanely before slaughter. It's difficult to determine who is more disingenuous here. Is it... a) PETA, who claims to care about treating animals humanely before slaughter, but really doesn't want them killed at all and thinks we meat eaters are all murderers and Nazis. or b) Sharpton, who couldn't care less about animals (or black people, but that's a different story) The question is, why is Sharpton doing this? Most likely, he's shaking KFC down for money by threatening to take away their black consumers (apparently he believes the stereotype that all black people love fried chicken). But why not just go with the standard "you don't employ enough black people" argument? To answer that, let's look at some recent history... Back in September of 2000, Sharpton tried this with Burger King. What happened? He met oppostion from Jesse Jackson of all people. It seems that Jackson had already shook Burger King down for half a million dollars. As part of Jackson's deal, of course, he would protect them in the future from these types of allegations. Well, guess what? Jackson also shook down KFC in 2001! So rather then spar with Jackson again (who is much better at this), he decided to go for a new angle...protecting the poor helpless chickens. Perhaps if any of these people would actually try to do something to help black people rather than fill their pockets, this country would be much better off. Of course then there would be no need for people like them.

K'neinaharah, poo poo poo!