OK, week three, Parshah Lech L’cha, Genesis 12:1 � 17:27. First of all, Lech L’cha, translated get thee out, is described by no less a sage than Tevye the Dairyman as the fundamental story of the Jews throughout history. Don’t…
While away this past weekend, Your Humble Blogger went to the Lincoln Memorial. It’s an impressive thing, made only somewhat obnoxious by the strange idea that people had a hundred years ago that to make a thing impressive, you should…
One of the most talked about articles of the day is the Suskind article in the Times Magazine. Almost every political blogger has had a say on it; I’m going to just choose one idea and riff from that, and…
Ezra over at Pandagon directed me to Bradford Plumer’s blog, where I read an interesting post on the ten commandments which appears to have been initially set off by an article in Slate. Mr. Plumer points out that whatever the…
Your Humble Blogger will be traveling this weekend, so there will probably not be any new notes. I’m caught up with books, anyway. Oh, and I said to my Best Reader after the joint press appearance last night that I…
Well, and t’other day, Your Humble Blogger happened to be listening To the Best of Our Knowledge (a fine show distributed by PRI), and the theme this show was presidential humor and, well, I missed most of it, as usual,…
Hey, how come nobody told me that the Miyazaki animated version of Howl’s Moving Castle was completed? I know there’s zero chance that I will see it for years and years, but dang! I am so psyched to see this…
Well, and Your Humble Blogger finally finished The Tidewater Tales. I’m a fan of John Barth, in part because of a lot of the things he does in this book that would annoy anybody who doesn’t like them. In other…
This week’s Parshah is Noach, so named after its first character. It covers Genesis 6:9-11:32. There’s a fair amount in here: the flood, the rainbow, the vineyard, drunken Noah, nasty Ham, subservient but triumphant Shem and Japheth, Nimrod the mighty…
Just a quick note, Gentle Readers, to point you to a very impressive Op-Ed piece by Sean Flynn in this morning’s New York Times about the ‘training’ currently given to Iraqi ‘police’. As Atrios would say, oy. …