Essential exercise for busy people

The British physiotherapy guide to lazy exercising has some beautiful ideas to improve your health without any time commitment.

Carter

Apparently, president Carter is refusing Brandeis' university's condition of debating Dershowitz when talking about his latest comic book. Some professors in the university have since petitioned to raise the necessary funds to covering transportation and security costs to bypass the university. One of the professors wants to make the book, equating Israeli policy with apartheid, to be made mandatory reading for incoming freshmen. At this rate, "The protocols of the Elders of Zion will be a graduate course at Brendeis.

Israel's talented diplomats

When asked about a new settlement being planned in the occupied territories, the first in ten years, an Israeli official, quoted in the NYT, said the deal "sort of went through and now it’s done and would be very hard to undo." The person goes on to say that the settlement is lip service to Jewish settlers, and that the settlement is "not new, exactly".

Thank goodness our batch of obtuse diplomats were not around 40 years ago, when Israel depended on stronger shoulders, like Abba Even's.

The Divestment Project

America is a true democracy. During municipal elections, any individual or group can propose to include a vote on "matters of interest", usually confirmed by a signature list, to appear on a city-wide ballot. Recent ballots topics in Cambridge ranged from decreasing the speed limit in school zone, to promoting the sale of wine in supermarkets. The city of Somerville, an evolving suburb adjacent to Cambridge (it has but one stop on the subway) boasts a lively mix of students and restaurants, Portuguese and Caribbean immigrants. Mostly comprised of depressing, narrow streets lined with unattractive wooden houses, it is hardly on the Boston tourist map, although Somerville does provide an organized yearly tour of people's Christmas lights. Enter the Somerville Divestment Project -- the first organization in the USA to attempt to divest from Israel by way of municipal vote. The organization is not different or unique from other anti-Israeli initiatives in America; but there are two interesting points to make with respect to its presence in Somerville, adjacent to the Chomsky-Dershowitz front, and still a million miles away at the same time. First, that a developing suburb could divest from Israel. Would it threaten to stop the hoards of Portuguese tourists from overflowing on Hamei Tverya, or Boycott the sole Falafel stand in Davis Square ? Second, the alarming indifference by which this attempt was greeted by the public. If it weren't for a few tsadikim in Harvard Hillel, that urged students to demonstrate in the streets of Somerville and to distribute literature, Somerville may have removed its ambassador from Tel Aviv.

Crazy French

Here I was cutting my salad today, when this story came up about the crazy French. They really lost their minds, over there in Paris, establishing new forms of transit throughout the city, relinquishing traffic lanes for the narrow trams, using the remaining space to plant trees and flowers around the routes. Thank goodness for Israel, where we have rational politicians that ADD traffic lanes to meet our transportation needs, not remove them. Stupid Frenchies.

Slurs

Demeaning statements against gays and Jews are making a comeback.

word attachments

Richard Stalman says - receiving Word documents is bad for you because they can carry viruses. Sending Word documents is bad for you, because a Word document
normally includes hidden information about the author, enabling those
in the know to pry into the author's activities (maybe yours). Text
that you think you deleted may still be embarrassingly present (see
here)

But above all, sending people Word documents puts pressure on them to
use Microsoft software and helps to deny them any other choice. In
effect, you become a buttress of the Microsoft monopoly. This
pressure is a major obstacle to the broader adoption of free software.
Would you please reconsider the use of Word format for communication
with other people?

See here for more about this issue.

and you think you've had a bad day ?

At least you didn't pass out and get eaten up by a crocodile after taking off your clothes snorting crack.