How Israel can get away with bombing Iran

They should send two waves of aircraft, 1st wave of aircraft are bombers that destroy most of the facilities (obviously will not be clean) -- 2nd wave of Jumbo Jets carrying Israel's much-lauded rescue and recovery teams.

Step 1: bomb reactors
Step 2: parachute in selfless recovery teams

all news focuses on the selfless recovery. Brilliant.

Aviagail in a Spica Cast - Lessons Learned

It has been a while since I last posted but I thought I would use the blog to offer some free advice for parents who will go through a similar experience that Esther and I have had over the last 3 weeks since our 3 year old daughter Avigail broke her femur and was placed in a Spica Body Cast from her foot to her chest for at least 6 weeks:

Things for parents to remember:
1- The pain of the actual break will go away after a couple of days -- it will be very hard and emotionally trying to you to see your child in such discomfort but remember that once s/he gets through the first couple of days the pain subsides

2- Crawling: The cast is strong so do not be afraid of picking her up, letting her crawl, letting her sit -- what ever s/he is comfortable doing with the cast -- let her -- see video of my daughter:



3- Getting Around with Your Child: It is crucial that you find a comfortable way for you to get her outside and moving around. I think that Spica casts are not all positioned the same way so there is no universally good solution for this -- to our luck our daughter's cast allowed her to fit perfectly in a Mountain Buggy Stroller -- this has made a tremendous difference for us

4- Going to the Bathroom and keeping the cast clean: this has been a real challenge for us. While our daughter is toilet trained there is no way real practical way for her to go to the bathroom with her cast so we have had to go back to pampers. What you do is take a smaller then usual size pamper and pull-off the side tabs and simply stuff it into the gap in the cast. Then there are many different approaches to what else to put -- some place adult pads around the sides of the gap to ensure no leakage and others place a large diaper over the cast to keep everything in place and to be a 'back-stop' (though at that point you are too late for keeping the cast dry)

In any event, we have found that - despite our best efforts - invariably the cast will get wet. This seems just part of the deal. There are ways to try and deal with it (some say toothbrush and some toothpaste to absorb the smell -- others suggest equal parts water and viniger on a cloth over the stain) we have tried both and neither seemed to help much. My advice is to live with it and focus on keeping your daughter as comfortable as possible rather than trying all sorts of innovative ways of getting rid of the smell.

Another Only in Israel Experience

1AM – picked up by a local taxi to take me to a (very) early morning flight to Johannesburg. As is customary in Israel I elect to ride ‘shutgun’ in the front passenger seat rather than sit in the back –(I think this has a lot to do with a the constant under-current of uncomfortableness with the idea of having another Israeli Jew do menial work for you -- rather than then a relation to Israel’s socialist roots.

In any event, back to the story…about 10 seconds after sitting down and saying hello, my eyes are closed and I am falling fast asleep – only to be awoken by the driver asking me if I wanted to watch some TV. A bit bewildered, I look over as the driver points to the central console of his Mercedes and turns on Israel’s channel 2 – before I get the chance to explain that I am a bit too tired to watch, he asks me if I would rather watch his wedding video at which point he proceeds to switch the screen to DVD and all of the sudden we are taken back 20 years to a wedding hall in Jerusalem where my driver – in a tux and a full head of hair – is dancing with his wife-to-be surrounded by friends and family (mostly of Moroccan decent).

As we begin our decent from Jerusalem on Highway One, we pass the massive Jerusalem cemetery of Har Menuchot, the driver begins to point to all of the people in the video that have died. “this life is like dust” he tells me in a broken voice – he points to the screen to an attractive woman dancing with the bride “you see her, that’s my sister she died 4 years ago, left a husband and 3 children” he pauses a second as the screen moves to him dancing with another man of similar build to his own “there, that’s my brother, he just died 2 months ago”. He continues to point to all of the people who had died – estimating in a clearly exaggerated fashion that 50% of the people that I see on the screen hugging and kissing he and his wife are now dead. He begins to tear.

And here I am struck by this singularly Israeli moment, consoling my cab driver over his loss, talking with him about the fickle nature of life and hoping to God that he keeps his eyes on the road.

Introduction to Engineering

At the age of 30 and with a BA in 'soft sciences' and an MBA with a focus on management I have become increasingly hungry to get some actual real science and math into my liberal arts flooded mind.

So, before leaving my job and dedicating my body and soul to science, I thought it prudent to learn more about the fundamentals of engineering a field in which I have often been impressed by its practitioners.

I went on Amazon last night and purchased the following intro to engineering books:

1- "Introduction to Engineering" Paul H. Wright
2- "Introduction To Engineering Design and Problem Solving" Arvid R. Eide
3- "Engineering Fundamentals : An Introduction to Engineering" Saeed Moaveni


Anyone have any thoughts on the quality of these books/authors?

The Risk of Marrying While Still in Yeshiva

As the distance, in both time and ideology, grows ever farther from my years as a post-highschooler studying in a religious zionist yeshiva in Israel it has become clear to me the unfortunate cost on people within Yeshivas of dating and marrying while still in the grips of the intense, and dogmatic, Yeshiva experience.

I leave most of my conversations with Yeshiva Bochers today with a feeling of both cynicism and envy for the absolute confidence in their black and white vision of the realities of this complex world. While I see Yeshiva as an incredible opportunity to immerse oneself in torah - these 20 year old kids are just beginning to expose themselves to the world of thoughts and ideas, if these kids decide to continue on to university Yeshiva will become a component of establishing themselves as individuals, yet, while they are immersed in the Yeshiva they are of the belief that this alone can sustain and allow for the full development of their potential.

It is this feeling, the desire to freeze this moment of perceived perfection, that is a motivator for them (promoted greatly by their rabbis) to try to irrevocably fix this moment as the basis for their entire being ---- what better way to do this then to decide to marry a woman who is looking for that type of man.

Once married, it is very difficult to turn back. These kids will get married, have children and, all the while, begin to realize that the world is not as they originally saw it -- but what do you do now? your locked in to the premise with which your wife married you.

I do not see this as some grand rabbinic plot, however, I do believe that there is a subtle understanding that if you want to 'lock' these kids in to a world view that you espouse, what better way then finding him a good shidduch

Why Don't Secular Israelis Jaywalk? Why Do Hareidim ?

Returning from a late night dental floss run to the supermarket - the streets in my neighborhood were nearly empty of car traffic - that being the case, I was struck by the fact that at both lights that I needed to cross to return home there was a group of rowdy teenagers waiting for the sign to turn for the light to change in order to cross at the corner.

Being a native New Yorker, I did not think twice about crossing the street as soon as I saw no cars coming - but it got me wondering why, in this country where no one (especially drivers) exhibit any sign of patience, it seems that most people wait for the little red guy to go away before they will cross the street.

So a quick google search turned up this blog which then brought me to a fascinating study published in New Science Magazine that made a different point all together: the study found that Haredi Jews (known to most as ultra-Orthodox)were 3 times as likely to Jaywalk then the average Israeli.



The researchers hypothesis to explain the results were:

"Rosenbloom thinks that ultra-Orthodox faith might contribute to this cavalier behavior by making people respect religious law more than state-imposed rules. It is also possible that religious people take more risks because they are more fatalistic and have less fear of death"

I think her first point is on to something, large portions of Haredi society do not seem to actively embrace the halachic concept of Dina D'malchuta Dina (the law of the kingdom is the law)

However, I do think that her second point is way off the mark as one need only look at the time, effort and money that many in Hareidi society are willing to invest in ensuring that they and their loved ones receive the best medical attention possible (while all my evidence is anecdotal, it is clear to me that they account for a disproportionate % of those who elect to use 'sharap' or private medical service (which means a lot $$) rather then settle for the health care provided by Israel's universal health coverage plans.

Its Never Too Late for Braces

At the age of 29 I have elected to become a 'metal mouth' - a bit later then most but, in retrospect, I had enough complexes in high school without the braces.

My very capable orthodontist spent the morning wrestling the titanium and steel into place and I have spent the better part of the afternoon trying to wrestle the pasta I ate for lunch out of the newly settled ore -- this promises to be an enjoyable 14 months.

Understanding the Life of My Father-in-Law z'l

A New Yorker article on Malcolm Glazer (controversial owner of Manchester United and the Tampa Bay Bucs) included this following quote that brought to mind my father-in-law and the way he faced every day (New Yorker online has not published the piece):

"If you have a father who dies when you are young, you don't trust the future anymore...you were cheated once, you'll probably get cheated again...Death is right around the corner, waiting to grab anyone in this room. Watch out. Walk fast when you go out of the house here, so he doesn't grab you"

Friedman at his Best:

This Friedman column from Feb 1st (Times select) has a very insightful comment about why fundamentalism seems to consistently emerge as the leading force once the dust settles after the fall of a middle-eastern dictatorship

How so? Let's start with Iron Rule No. 1 of Arab-Muslim political life today: You cannot go from Saddam to Jefferson without going through Khomeini -- without going through a phase of mosque-led politics.

Why? Because once you sweep away the dictator or king at the top of any Middle East state, you go into free fall until you hit the mosque -- as the U.S. discovered in Iraq. There is nothing between the ruling palace and the mosque. The secular autocratic regimes, like those in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iraq, never allowed anything to grow under their feet. They never allowed the emergence of any truly independent judiciary, media, progressive secular parties or civil society groups -- from women's organizations to trade associations.

The mosque became an alternative power center because it was the only place the government's iron fist could not fully penetrate. As such, it became a place where people were able to associate freely, incubate local leaders and generate a shared opposition ideology.

The Hamas Victory: A Leading indicator

“Look at the wives of the generals, he said.“Many of them are wearing traditional head scarves. This was not so ten years ago. And this tells you where we are heading. When the women of EgyptÂ’s pro-Western military elite are dressed like that, you know that the Hamas victory is not about Palestine. It's about the entire Middle East.

This quote is from a short interview in last week's New Yorker by Ari Shavit. While the count today is 'only' Iran and Palestine the spread of Ifundamentalistntalist regimes seems to only be gaining power throughout the region - Mullah Omar will soon have many places welcoming him with open arms.