Monday, April 20, 2020
I am Jewish, as if anyone could doubt it. While I go to Jewish services regularly and observe many of the holiday rituals, I rarely spend time thinking about Judaism, the whys and wherefores of Jewish life. This morning, however, I listened to a conversation with Sarah Hurwitz, a former speechwriter for the Obamas, who has spent the last several years studying and reflecting on Judaism, resulting in her book Here All Along, with the unforgivably long subtitle of Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life -- In Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There). That mouthful aside and one other proclivity that I will mention below, Hurwitz gave the best "sermon" about Judaism that I could ever recall. Secondly, she cited the importance of Amalek, founder of the Amalekites, the archetypical enemy of the Jewish people. (Amalek's name was often used as shorthand for his nation and later applied to other villains.) When the Israelites were crossing the desert after fleeing Egypt, they were attacked by other tribes that they encountered. Amalek, unlike other enemies, attacked the rear of the wandering horde, where the old, the weak, the infirm, the mothers and young children tended to gravitate, easy prey for a hostile force. This earned Amalek the everlasting detestation of the Jewish people and urges us to be mindful of the needs particularly of that portion of society. That's a great "instruction."
My only quibble with Hurwitz is the credit that she gives in shaping her thinking to Or Halev - Center for Jewish Spirituality and Meditation (https://www.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
I will not comment on the surge of protests against reasonable measures to save lives in this time of plague. If today's supposed conservatives had a conscience, this would be the greatest challenge to their peace of mind for generations. They don't, so it won't.
I did notice a demonstrator in Pennsylvania photographed with a sign reading "My body my choice." Did Planned Parenthood put them up to it?
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The Republican governor of Georgia announced the lifting of some of the social restrictions meant to curb the coronavirus scourge, including the reopening of non-essential businesses, such as hair salons, movie theaters and bowling alleys. https://www.ajc.com/
Unfortunately, I am not geographically disposed to take advantage of the governor's generosity, which would have also allowed me access to tattoo parlors. Instead, I have found something to occupy a bit of the time that I would have spent enjoying these amenities. The Corona Study Team, a group of German social scientists, is gathering data during this period of, what is widely recognized as, the Trump-Had-Nothing-To-Do-With-
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Last night, the Republican lieutenant governor of Texas went on Fox News to announce that "[t]here are more important things than living." I hasten to agree with him and here is my initial list:
- Sex after death.
- Chinese food after death.
- Not listening to Republican politicians after death.
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An obituary today of a prominent opponent of affirmative action quotes her from 1998: “We do say that [affirmative action programs] haven’t made as much difference as is widely attributed to them, and that they carry with them a very high cost. When it comes to race, the test of any public policy is, Will it bring us together or divide us? Preferences flunk that test." What she ignores, as is the case of other seemingly benign critics of affirmative action, is the history of racial preferences in America.
From colonial days onward, racial preferences were central to many domestic policies, consistently White preferred over Black, typically White mandated over Black. Again, I recommend When Affirmative Action Was White (Katznelson, 2005) and The Color of Law (Rothstein, 2017). Brown v. Board of Education (1954) is only a recent attempt at a course correction in our history of discrimination. There was cause for indignation at least 200 years earlier, but the quest for racial justice only arose for many when shoes and feet got exchanged.
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Besides reading obituaries and filling out surveys, I have managed to find time on my schedule to attend lectures, discussions and religious services by telecommuting, usually on Zoom, which claims to have gone from 10 million daily users in December to 200 million in late March including me. Tonight, I watched and listened to "Administering an Election During a Pandemic," a discussion by Nate Persily, professor of constitutional law and American politics at Stanford University. Responding to the enthusiasm for improving our electoral system and the mechanics of voting, the professor explained the vast problems that confront a near-term attempt to introduce widespread vote-by-mail regimens, proposed by many as a simple matter.
Instead, he identified major issues of law, resources and procedure. For instance, in parallel to our current health crisis, where ventilators and personal protective equipment are in painfully short supply in so many places, voting by mail would require an explosive demand for machinery (to read the ballots) and materials (the paper stock) that are nowhere in stock. Even more elusive might be the production of reliable lists of eligible voters with their correct addresses.
While I don’t doubt that Professor Persily, along with so many of us, yearns for a more efficient, more equitable, more reliable voting methodology, his delineation and analysis of the challenges to a speedy transition to vote-by-mail are formidable.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Mitch McConnell, Republican senator from Kentucky, the U.S. Senate’s majority leader, is threatening to strangle the flow of pandemic relief funds to Blue states, where California and New York head the list. Let us note that Kentucky is the 5th neediest state in the union, taking far more federal funds than it contributes. Https://wallethub.com/edu/
If we may be allowed to anthropomorphize for a moment, Kentucky might warrant the label of “Welfare Queen," as Ronald Reagan so unempathetically put it.
Is there anything left to say about Mitch McConnell other than that Amy McGrath, an Air Force veteran, is running against him in November? https://amymcgrath.com
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I "attended" a discussion of How I Constructed That NY Times Crossword Puzzle by Robyn Weintraub, an experienced cruciverber this afternoon. She said that the New York Times receives 125 puzzles a week for the 7 available slots, which seems to be a better acceptance rate than admission to Harvard or Stuyvesant High School. All submissions come unsolicited from independent contractors; among all periodical puzzle publishers, only The New Yorker employs staff constructors.
I never had the urge to try and construct a puzzle, although I regularly labor hours solving one. Naively, I believed that you sat down with a sheet of graph paper, a sharp pencil and a thick eraser to create a crossword puzzle, a prospect that held no joy for me. It turns out that, in common with so much in modern life, computers have assumed a large role in the process. Major league software can fill out a grid of your design from a master word list that you create or borrow/buy and edit. The experienced constructor massages the result and still has to draft clues, easy for a Monday, tortuous for a Saturday. The human touch continues to play a large role.
Alert: On Sunday, May 3rd, the New York Times will publish a special Puzzle Mania section as a temporary diversion from the nutsiness and craziness of our times.
Friday, April 24, 2020
Zoom reported today that its user base has grown to 300 million in the last three weeks.
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Here’s a delightful map, showing the most popular last names by state.
https://media.voltron.voanews.
Sadly, Gotthelf trails Smith, Johnson and Williams all across the country. Isn't that a little boring?
Always a fascinating read.
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