Another blow to democracy at BSBI . . .

Congregation BSBI voted at its March meeting to shut down another of its cherished democratic processes.

It is no longer constitutional to amend a resolution from the floor at regular meetings of the congregation. This plugs another seditious hole in that veritable tome of due process known to most decent organizations as "Robert's Rules of Order".

Whoop dee doo, fellows. Way to go, folks. Roll up for the Magical Mastery Tour!

Need any more pointers about where things might change?

You don't need a Ph D in political science to know that autocratic regimes typically get more draconian as they get weaker.

So it goes . . .

that's just the way it is . . .

friday evening at services, the fellow sitting next to me leans over and says, "this is a strange minyan." I pause, a little puzzled. sometimes I miss things, and I reflect a moment before deciding to ask him, "what do you mean?"

"everyone likes each other!"

"when you have hungered for something for a long time, that's how it is . . . "

and he nodded in agreement

and I found the words from "Sim Shalom" singing in my head - "Chain v'chessed . . . "

I thought about this again at the morning services. the kiddush was set up early, and it was rich and colorful. with time, the services filled.

what makes this so different from other places I have been is that this seems so effortless, for everyone . . .

Play it again, Al . . .

If you want to pick on Al, at least you should also make the effort to keep us amused!

We are NOT amused!

How are your Hoop hopefuls doing?



I am in the hunt with 48 points after round 2, with Kansas, UCLA and Memphis through the 3rd. Stay tuned.

By the way, I said it: Basketball is for the birds - and the fans agree. Why else do they spend their game-time screaming "Fowl!" at the officials?

Back in the US . . .

Photo by Peter Rosenthal - Charleston SC 2006 "Sunset Lake"

Adapt or Die: Notes from the road - Part 3.

Although I have been right about quite a lot in my time, I have frequently not been very good about predicting the future. At the age of 13 (i.e. 1967), I begged my parents for a tape recorder, to record the hit parade, and radio shows like “No place to hide!” (a science fiction thriller serial starring Mark Saxon and his trusty sidekick, Sergei Gromulko – SA did not get TV till 1975! talk about needing to adapt, yong!). My dad, who was in the electrical business, gave me a catalogue. I looked through it, and picked what looked like the coolest, surest thing: a real reel-to-reel machine with auto-reverse – to turn the tape around there was a switch that ran the tape in the opposite direction. Internally, there was a dual record/replay head, one head used for each tape direction. When a friend of mine showed me his tape recorder, with this frail-looking platic “cassette” thing containing miniature tape that you could flip in a second, I thought “that would never last.” Ya, well, no fine! And the rest is history. (How was I to know that dual recording heads are better used for stereophonic sound – the radio wasn’t in stereo!)

My next big technological miscalculation, as I recall, was the plausibility of using Ultrasound to diagnose the dreaded leg vein clot (better know as a DVT – deep vein thrombosis). Initial ultrasound machines were clunky things with mechanical arms. Then the transducer probes got more compact and could be used with a free-hand action and angled in any direction. Still, my bet was ultrasound would never be as accurate as sticking a needle in a vein of a patient’s foot, and injecting x-ray dye with the patient propped-up on a clunky x-ray table with tourniquets on the leg, with the radiologist racing to take pictures of the veins before the dye disappeared – you know, with the training and reflexes of . . . like . . . a sports photographer. I never dreamed that ultrasound would improve to such an extent that one would simply move a transducer up and down the leg, squeezing the veins to see if they collapsed – when the veins did not collapse, the diagnosis of clot was made. (The impact of this on medical practice is one of the most enlightening stories in the evolution of modern medicine.) Venography, needless-to-say, has gone the way of the reversible reel-to-reel.

Yes, and I didn’t believe auto-focus cameras would work well either! (Actually, while you sit there, chuckling. Just look how often the background of the picture is in focus and Aunt Emma and your cousin Louise are once again smiling fuzzily at you, with red eyes from that built-in flash!)

So, after the fall of apartheid, I thought Pieter Dirk Uys (now pronounced “Pita Drek Aish”) was done for, and Evita Bezuidenhout would go the way of JF Kennedy imitators.

Well, I just caught his latest show, and it ain’t so! Pieter is a little slower physically, but his mouth is as fast as ever. He is thankful to any and all South African politicians for providing him with such varied and rich material – as he puts it, he “doesn’t pay taxes, but royalties!”

Many of his classic Apartheid-era characters have indeed adapted - Evita is running for president, nogal. (President Mbeki favors a woman, and Evita feels this is an appropriate extension of AA - affirmative action). And The Kugel, who returned to SA pre 1994 from failed emigration to Toronto because she would “rather be killed in her bed than have to get up and make it!” – she now lives in Cape Town. Her children visit her every year from Perth with at least one new grandchild per visit, and a Vietnamese nanny in tow. Still, she says, “If the road to the Cape Town airport was safe, she would emigrate already”.

For me, the best moment, among many side-splitters (eg Evita ran 4 red lights to get to the performance) was the character who derides the smug ex-pats who come back for visits from “Canada” to spend what’s “left in Nedbank”. Having fled SA, a greater danger awaits them – in reference to the SARS outbreak there a year-or-so back, the bitter local character says, “the bird flu will staat in Kennada. Dja. Kentucky Fried Chicken sal snies, en djulle sal vrek!”

I missed the next 5 minutes of material, wiping tears from my eyes, and trying not to spoil the show for the rest of the audience by stifling my shrieks . . .
“Long live Evita!”
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Eknowledgement: Foto above traced on google images to the following website

http://www.evita.co.za/photo_gallery.htm View at your own risk!

Notes from the road . . . Parts 1 and 2

Part 1:

Enjoying a trip back home, but the locals are
“Kvetching about the weather!”
__________________________


I have been visiting Johannesburg, South Africa, since Thursday of last week. It is late summer here, and the season has been fairly dry. Not that you can tell from the color of the trees that line Johannesburg’s avenues and roads. In light of that, it seems a bit odd that just about everyone I have encountered has complained about the weather.

“The heat has been unbearable etc etc”

“Man! It was 34 today!”

You know, I am so used to the temperature being quoted in Fahrenheit, 34 Centigrade does not mean too much to me any more. I have not found the weather all that hot, and so I am not up to complaining. Yes, if you step out into the noon-day sun (like mad dogs and Englishmen) and stay there, you will feel the heat. But, really, what are they kvetching about? I am barely breaking a sweat! And there is a reason almost no-one has A/C in their homes – you don’t need it. Johannesburg is 6,000ft above sea level, with NO humidity.

I remember once traveling in Spain in midsummer, and at 10 pm, as the sun went down over our campsite, just outside Seville, the temperature was 40! Now, thaaat was hot! You know, hot like Charleston. It didn't drop to 39 till around midnight - talk about a schvitz! We had to have water fights to stay comfortable, never mind sane.

Anyway, back to the present. After chuckling at all my friends and family for complaining about the heat, I thought I’d google a conversion table.

Well, here it is, with the conversion for 34 degrees Centigrade shown ( I'll add the link to this automated table later, y'all . . )

– turns out "34" means it’s in the low-to-mid 90’s.

Hmmmm. Guess it is hot. I can’t argue that 90 isn’t hot now, can I. As Schalk Lourens used to say, "when it’s 90 in the shade, you can break an egg on a flat rock in the sun and it will fry there right in front of your eyes!" (The way the locals are complaining, maybe that should be "Skulk" Lourens. Come to think of it, maybe it always was. Better yet, make that Moner van Heerden! ) Anyway, frying the egg I haven’t tried.

But I have been outside here, and I can tell you, 34 centigrade on the Highveld, if that's what it was, is simply not hot – it may be hot "For" the Highveld, but it is not hot. Not for a resident of Charleston, SC. There, we have 90’s and more, but with HUMIDITY!!!!!! So, we know! about hot.

So, in all humil(d)ity - Quit whining already! The sky is blue, the air clear and the colors of the summer are splendid. Enjoy already! When it comes to weather, you Jo’burgers don’t know how good this is.
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Part 2:
It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world:

You may have seen the above composite derived from the US museum of Natural History website. Well, to understand the world in greater detail, and with more immediate effect, visit this "worldmapper" web site developed by the University of Sheffield in England. Remember to click on images to see them more fully, and check out the categories for topical issues that interest you.

PS: 3-26-07 The point about CO2 emissions is this - opponents of measures to curb emissions, including opponents of Kyoto, like to say that the US can't do it alone. While that is true, the maps illustrate how much the US can do because of the large proportion of emissions it is responsible for. Europe, which is a significant contributor as well, is ahead of the US on this, (although many city and state governments in the US have got on board). But if you combine the US, Europe and Japan, and there is a significant potential for reductions in emissions. The question is whether the US sees any value in leading by example.

For the Sheffield map on greenhouse gases, click here.

Purim Sameach

Wishing all a Happy Purim.