How 'bout them Sox?

Well, then. I can't really say anything else, can I?

Win it for...

If this doesn't choke you up a bit, then you have no soul.

(Thanks to Bill Simmons for pointing it out)

Interesting article

My roommate pointed out an article by Professor Barry Levy, one of my teachers. It is about the question of Jews and Historical thinking, which I wrote about here. I may have more to say about the article later, when I have time, but for now, here it is.

Back to Red Sox fever

I apologize to anybody who doesn't care about sports, but, well, I do and that's why I'm writing about them. Bill Simmons has a remarkable column up about this year's Red Sox team. The money quote:

However this turns out, the month of November will feel remarkably ordinary. No
more Schilling limping out of the phone booth with the Superman cape. No more
Ortiz at-bats with guys on base, the ones where Papi goes into that mini-crouch,
looking like a cobra ready to strike. No more Foulke jogging in from the bullpen
as Danzig blasts over the speakers. No more sparkling plays from Cabrera at
short, the guy who turned the season around in August. No more random Varitek
at-bats where he looks like the black sheep Molina brother for seven innings,
then inexplicably cranks a 450-foot homer when it counts. No more goofy Manny
moments, when he careens around the outfield like a drunk guy running away from police, then crushes a line drive five minutes later.

I'm going to miss these guys come next month, no matter whether they win or lose. When yo

Competence

I'm going to take some time off from Red Sox fever to discuss Bill Belichick, the Patriot's coach. His accomplishments are obvious, 2 Super Bowls in three years, 21 straight victories, 18 straight regular season victories. Both of those streaks are records, and they aren't over yet. These are not the reasons I admire Belichick, they are just symtoms of something else which is much more important. Last Sunday, during his post game press conference, Belichick was asked "You tied a 70-year old record today for regular season wins. I mean that has got to something to you. Come on, say it does." His response was: "Yes. I'm respectful of what history says and what the situation is, but it is more important we beat Seattle and try to keep pace with the Jets. That is what our challenge is this week and then next week when the Jets come in here. So we are fighting, it is not about what happened last year, we are fighting right now for our lives in this division." This response, I think, is indicitive of his attitude. Nothing is more important than winning football games, with the ultimate goal being the Super Bowl. When I mentioned this exchange to my friend Mike, he pointed out something that I'd never noticed before. Belichick looks happier beating the Dolphins or the Jets than he does after winning a Super Bowl. Why? A division win brings him much closer to the playoffs. After he wins a Super Bowl, it just means he has to start over again. After his Patriots won the 2001 title, he was asked what he would do next. He said that he was 5 weeks behind every other team, so he had to start working. There are very few things that I find more admirable than this kind of attitude. One of the biggest compliments I can give somebody is that he gets things done. Obviously, football is just a game, but I think trying to transfer Coach Belichicks attitude to other things in life is something to aspire to.

I have my best ideas on the john too.

Speaking as a person with an interest in the history of the Reformation, I found this facinating.

(Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan)

UPDATE: Apparently, Luthor did not come up with his idea on the crapper. This is a disappointment to me, though I'm not sure why.

I don't know much about Canadian Health care, but this is pretty damning

My favorite curmudgeonly ex-pat anglophone Quebecer takes on Canadian health care. I don't know if what he is saying is true, but it's a pretty frightening thought if it is. The money quote:

One thousand Americans are killed in 18 months in Iraq, and it's a quagmire. One
thousand Quebecers are killed by insufficient hand-washing in their filthy,
decrepit health care system, and kindly progressive Americans can't wait to
bring it south of the border. If one has to die for a cause, bringing liberty to
the Middle East is a nobler venture and a better bet than government health
care.

Read the whole thing.

How 'bout them Sox?

I am exceedingly hungover and yet exceedingly satisfied. 3 more to go.

Aversion to risk

What is wrong with me? I've written about this before, but I still can't shake it. The Red Sox just engineered two incredibly improbable wins on two consecutive nights. I was actually at Fenway for one of them. In the moment I was thrilled, but about 10 minutes after a strange sort meloncholy struck me both last night and tonight. What am I worried about? Not that they'll lose soon, I'm confident that they will. But how close to winning will they get first? I'm terrified to believe in this team because if I do I'll just get hurt. Talk about aversion to risk. And this is just in sports. Walking home tonight, I started having visions of a Red Sox World Series, and that really scared me. Why can't I just celebrate the moment?

A bit of meta-blogging goes well with my coffee

I've been thinking a bit (as hard as that may be to believe) about what makes a blog worth reading. This came in response, no surprise, to my stultifying lack of traffic. The blogs I read often, and enjoy, are very diverse. The best ones, to my mind, teach me something about things I don't know, or say something I know in a way I've never thought of before, or just tell good stories. For this reason I miss both USS Clueless and Madpony, two now defunct blogs that I used to read on a regular basis. A quick perusal of their archives will reveal several similarities, despite their extremely different styles and formats. Steve Den Beste, of USS Clueless, is an engineer who wrote mostly about engineering and politics. His gift is the analogy. He was always able to present a point by means of a super clear analogy and he helped me to understand any number of political issues that I hadn't been clear on before, as well as opening up a world of engineering to me. Lauren Madpony, on the other hand, was a pure story teller, a sorority girl from the University of Oklahoma who had a wonderful way of making her life interesting. What do they have in common? Well, they are both articulate, funny, but most of all have something to say. I'm just rambling here, trying to make some sense of what I'm doing with this thing. ::sigh:: Hopefully, it will come together eventually.

So what if I'm an old man?

I like to read the obituaries. I get laughed at for this, or called morbid, but you know what? You learn some interesting stories from the obituaries. For example, this one: "When [Eugene] McCarthy ran for president as an Independent in 1976, he asked Mr. Hansborough [a Washington Barber] to be on the D.C. ballot. ''He worked on Capitol Hill; he was a real Democrat and a friend of mine," McCarthy said. ''There must have been something funny in the law that you needed a vice president to be on the ballot."" Read the whole thing. There are all sorts of interesting people in the world who you never hear about. If I've got a chance to learn about them, I'm going to. I don't think that's so morbid.

Fashion question

Can you wear a bowtie with a double breasted suit?

UPDATE: The answer seems to be yes.

Hmmm....

In the McLennan library, Yehshayahu Leibowitz's essays are right next to a bunch of Emannuael Levinas books on the self. My intellectual life in high school flashes before my eyes....


UPDATE: To be fair, it's still my intellectual life now. In high school though, those were probably the only two thinkers I was really interested in. I've branched out since.

What they won't let you read in England

The guardian refused to print this column by Mark Steyn. To be honest, I'm not sure what I think about it. Decide for yourself.


UPDATE: And just so that article doesn't turn you off Steyn for life, read thistoo. It's in a slightly lighter vein.

It's rediculous.

Really, it's silly. I hate gematria, I hate silly numerology in general. So why do I get such a big kick out of this?


(Thanks to Pej for pointing it out)

I'm in trouble now

This morning, for the first time all season, I began to have visions of a Sox World Series, and the possiblities of victory. I finally let myself get sucked in. Why do I always set myself up for heartbreak this way? Do I like to suffer? ::sigh::

"First there was God, then dinosaurs, then the Egyptians, then us.”

I swear, when Lileks writes about his kid like this, I want to get married right away.

Stringing him along...

Doctor Suarez over at The Protocals of the Yuppies of Zion has a hilarious correspondence that needs to be read to be believed. Start here, then look here and here.

Jewish Ahistory

At Shabbos Shacharit, which I davened at the Cote St. Luc Kollel, I encountered an interesting fellow. He is a professor of Ancient Greek History at Concordia University. When I told him that I am a history student he was surprised and pleased. Apparently he doesn't get very many frum students in his classes, and said that in general he has noticed that Orthodox Jews rarely study history seriously. I asked him what he thinks the reason is. His answer was, "Because until recently Jews haven't thought historically." Now, this is a pet issue of mine. I wrote about it once before, somewhat tangentially. I'd like to approach it more directly here. What my professor acquaintance said isn't entirely true. The fact is, for the most part frum Jews still don't think historically, at least not about Judaism. Pick up, for example, Berel Wein's book on Jews in the modern era, Triumph of Survival. What you'll find is a sequence of events strung together by the theme of God's hand in history. What you won't find is a description of the tremendous change that overcame the religious world in that period. Wein writes about the Reform movement, but he doesn't mention the ideological changes that the observant community made in response to reform, because according to his historiography those changes never took place. This is just a shameful dodge of the facts, which are obvious to anybody who looks at the literature of the time period objectively. This is the author who was recommended to me by my Rebbeim in Yeshiva when I said that I have an interest in Jewish history. Now, there really isn't a problem for Orthodoxy in looking at non-Jewish history with a critical eye. The problem is that studying history seriously trains the student to think historically. Once a student is thinking that way, the cognitive dissonance between his ways of looking at history in general and Jewish history in particular can get very uncomfortable and lead to a rejection of frumkeit. On the other hand, looking at Jewish history historically is viewed almost as heresy in many frum communities, so it would not be an option for many frum students. Thus, we don't see a whole lot of Orthodox history students, and we won't until Orthodoxy is able to come up with an historiography that accepts the fact that Modern Orthodox Judaism is not identical to the religion that was practiced 2000 years ago.

Pulling an AC/DC

Well, I finally got highspeed internet at home, which hopefully means that I will be blogging again. For now, chag sameach, but more to come soon.