Click image to enlarge; if you need an explanation of the punchline, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images.
And now, suitably inspired, GO YE FORTH AND VOTE. (This charade has gone on long enough.)
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those text-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pen. He is unafraid of adverbs, loves astronomy and gastronomy with equally unabashed passion, and lives with/in an eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
You Too Can Be a Citizen Scientist!
IT’S CALLED ZOONIVERSE — AND IT’S revolutionizing science as we know it. Modern scientists (like the rest of us) live in an age of Big Data: zillions and zillions of units of information, too many for one person to effectively…
One Person’s Pastry is Another Person’s Ladder
CUPCAKES RULE. THE SOFT, FITS-IN-THE-HAND-SIZED treat, sometimes filled with flavored cream (and always with cream on top), is my favorite dessert. Shabbat dinner wouldn’t be Shabbat dinner without one (or maybe two). But cupcakes as societal re-entry mechanism? Better still.…
Words to Bring Back: “Ambit”
– Definition: n. A space surrounding a house, castle, town, etc. A precinct. – Used in a sentence: It is my ambition to diligently guard my ambit against encroachment. – Why: Where I live in semi-rural Northern California, such things…
Why I Love: Torah Study
IT’S THE ENDLESS INTELLECTUAL PUZZLE. It’s that Hebrew writing closely resembles Klingonese (well, it does; come to think of it, so does some of the sentiment). It’s belonging to the 3,000-year-old Permanent Floating Book Club. It’s the spectra, vagaries and…
5 Thoughts: Grocery Shopping
1. IT USED TO BE CALLED “doing the marketing.” And it is one of my life’s favorite small pleasures. 2. This simple joy can probably be traced back to my dad and I doing it together every Saturday or Sunday…
PS:
So: We’re at CVS just now, about an hour after I wrote “And On, And On,”, waiting our turn at the pharmacy, when this woman sits down next to me and says, “I’m very sorry about what happened in Pittsburgh.”…
And On, And On
I NEVER MET THEM. BUT I know them. The eleven Jews murdered yesterday as they worshiped at the Tree of Life Congregation near Pittsburgh could be found in any synagogue, including my own: the former congregational president, the lay leader,…
365 Names of God: King
KING A translation of the Hebrew word “melech” (מלך), this Name has fallen out of favor in Liberal Judaism circles due to two factors: 1) It’s male-gendered, and thus anthro/patriomorphic (and conceptually inaccurate); and 2) as people who live in…
First Graf: An Everlasting Meal
THIS IS THE BOOK THAT inspired me to cook for myself. It demystified for me the cooking process, shored up my nascent resolve, and gave me the mental tools I needed to commit the revolutionary act of not settling for…
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
― Isaac Asimov
Sailing the Sea of Talmud (And Related Waters)
IF YOU STUDY ANYTHING, AS the salesman sang in the opening scene of “The Music Man,” “You’ve got to know the territory.” Case in point: Every Wednesday morning for the past few years, I have conducted an hour-long living-room learning…