Supreme Court gossip

Eric at Red State says Rehnquist goes next week and Luttig is the favorite with Roberts as the alternate. O'Connor goes by Labor Day and Garza is the man unless women are not cool with Bush, in which case Edith Clements is the man.

Deep questions

Upon the instigation of Rachel, I have now created my own blog. (Blatant plug, though not quite as blatant as the one Mike gave me below). Of course, now that I have a blog of my own devoted to my own rants, the question has become what is there left to post on this one. I could just post nothing and leave you all to refer to my personal blog but that seems against the family spirit. Rachel solved the problem by devoting her second blog to pure economics and keeping personal stuff out of it, but I have no such interest or expertise. My general decision is to devote my other blog to things that have nothing to do with my life and this one to more familial matters, but if someone has a suggestion for a different division of responsibilities, I'd be glad to hear.
(Btw, I was glad to see that my link knocked off the baseball reference one. Mwaaaah-hah-hah!)

My Life

Well, this is the general story, oh ever-noisy sister of mine. When we gleefully discovered that we now had e-mail access in our home, we did not know that the only computer with this access was in Mike's room and that using it entailed begging Mike to stop playing computer games long enough to check your e-mail, and then writing everything with Mike jumping about behind you trying to make you get off and singing 'There's a little bit of frog in all of us'. But I digress.
The real point of this all so rare post is to tell the world (i.e. family) about my summer plans. I actually am going to be doing this program in Boston- actually Somerville, where Mom and Dad once lived- from July 5 to August (I think) 13, after which I will be attempting to get some temp job and earn a wee bit of money.
That's about all that's new with me, other than the fact that I watched the new Star Wars with Mike and was unbelievably, unmitigatedly apalled. (I had to stick that in because Mike, who has been hovering over me as I type asked for words to describe the new Star Wars, so I had to sabotage his attempted post. Mwaaa-hah-hah-hah-hah. (Is that a good enough gloating laugh, Shmuli?))

What would Mom say?

This woman had chosen Faith as the second name for her then unborn daughter (after the child's grandmother Faige) until she read Freakonomics, which listed Faith as a name chosen by relatively uneducated parents. Instead she chose Robin. Either she doesn't understand the difference between corelation and causation or she is concerned only with her personal status. In any case I'd bet that in 25 years Faige is more associated with education than Robin.

Joe, please come for Shabbos

I know we are at fault for missing the last Joe Shabbos. Rachel is "allergic" to Skokie and all and prefers to come only rarely, but between Mom and me we got her to agree to come this Shabbos. I personally feel the need to apologize in person for assuming you were a troll. I'm sure Rachel and Tobie feel the same way.

Ignoring Chaim

It's nice to know that even if I ignore my children they will still develop useful skills. Chaim is currently climbing to the top of our bookcase with books in hand and throwing them face down into a small box below.

Ice Cream

I think Rachel failed to account for the cost of parental consumption of Ice Cream. At first I wasn't eating any, but it seems now I take whenever I dole out ice cream to the boys. I'm probably catching up to Rachel in total ice cream consumption, which is no mean feat because I also eat real food.

Should listening to bad music be grounds for divorce?

Rachel lays the foundation for a future wife-beating charge. All I can say is that it was Chaim, not me, who wanted to listen to Uncle Moishe

Michael Jackson

Shavu'ot has been over for all of half an hour at the moment and already the news has reached us here in Israel that Michael Jackson has been acquitted. Of all charges. The overwhelming reaction was a curious one, although I myself shared it- one of disappointment and a sort of... disgusted thwarted-ness. (yes, I know I invented that word). As if what happened to Jackson had any effect on our own lives. And it wasn't just moral outrage, which would be somewhat logical, but instead as if it were some sort of personal vendetta. Now, I happen to hate and despise Jackson, but why? Why don't I just feel a distant sort of negative moral disapproval? Nor do I think that it's just his alleged crime, because other people have been accused of similar things without my feeling personal loathing. But somehow, there's something about just the sight of that man's terrifying, perverse face that makes me wish he had not only been convicted but also sentenced to death. So much for my high faluting (sp?) notions of justice.

"What about the dark places?" "You must never go there, Simba."

Today, about two hours before Shavu'ot, our school's fridge blew a fuse or something, which would normally be quite a problem. But apparently, no, it is not a problem because deep in the misty, shady recesses of our building is a giant walk-in industrial fully operating refridgerator. Now, the funny thing about this whole story is that for the last ten months, we have been continually complaining about the fact that the refridgerator in our lunchroom does not actually work, that our milk is continually spoiled, that we don't have enough room for all of our personal food, etc ad infinitum. And the school continually shrugged and told us that there was nothing that they could do. And now, two days before the end of the year, we discover that actually there was something they could have done, had they cared. Distinctly fishy.
Well, once we entered this crazy and secret realm behind a little door marked No Entrance, we decided that we had to explore (see if there was anything else exciting that the school was hiding from us) Among other things, we discovered: A secret, locked door to a giant room, unoccupied that none of us had ever seen; a ice-cream freezer, unfortunately empty; several staircases and winding passages leading to locked doors; and, finally, a roof. A huge, gorgeous (well, covered with chimneys, wires, and a dusty satellite dish) roof, with a waist-high wall going around all of it, at the top of a flight of stairs that had constantly been there behind a door on our very own floor that we were told never to enter. Now the funny thing about that is that earlier in the year, we loved to hang out on the roof just outside of our common room window, reading, sun-bathing, etc. Then one day, out of the blue we were informed that we were not permitted on the roof due to its lack of any fence, etc. (Some of us suspected that this was actually due to the fact that we were visible from the street) Be that as it may, nobody thought to inform us that up just one flight of stairs, was a completely secure, well-fenced, invisible from the street, giant roof. Again, distinctly fishy.
I'm not quite sure what the point of the whole rant is, but I enjoyed venting, and that's worth something, too. It is just possible that the school never knew about the roof, although you have to wonder why we were forbidden from using the stairs. And I suppose that the administration could not have known about the fridge, either, but then how did they suddenly discover it today?
The saddest part about the whole thing is that these crazy discoveries came at this point of the year. The roof, especially, looks like it would have been a very fun place to hang out and learn or read. It's a shame that I won't really get a chance to do so, assuming that I would have been daring enough to ignore the school's injunctions. The silver lining is that Miri also discovered all these things, giving her the chance to be the Shana Bet girl who secretly knows everything next year.

Media Bias and Polls

It is my completely unresearched impression that the GOP generally polls better during election season than other times. I wonder whether this is because media bias has a much greater effect away from elections, when the politicians have much less reason to invest effort to counteract the establishment media and voters have much less willingness to seek out alternative news sources. This would suggest that when using current polls to predict election results, one should give the GOP a little bump. It also suggests that media bias really doesn't help the Democrats much.

Ongoing feelings of Unreality

This is a bit of a random (one of the top five seminary girl words, btw) post, in that it doesn't really discuss anything economic, political, family-related, or any other content that anyone else might care about. But here I am, with a computer and a bit of free-time, so I'm going to write it anyway. Today we have a party for the end of the year (referred to by everyone, including the principal, as the Last Supper), after which finals are over and we have only Shavu'ot together before being sent home. I don't know about the rest of my school, but it still hasn't hit me at all. I mean, I am fully capable of comprehending the fact that the year is over and we are all leaving, but it feels as if it going to be happening it at least three months. In fact, the party this afternoon also feels as if it will not occur for quite some time now. This happened to me at the end of high school as well, but certainly not to this extreme. This may be because seminary itself, as a one-year thing, has a very ephemeral, artificial feel to the whole thing. I'm expecting that it will hit me about two weeks after I have gotten home, so look out for me sitting up suddenly in the middle of the night and shouting 'What? Seminary's over!?'

(Ok, that was a bit of an odd post, but frankly, no one has posted almost anything for days and days now and someone needed to get the show back on the road.)

Trolls

I suppose I am partly to blame. After all, I not only let my own friends in, but I also encouraged Mike to do the same. There is a difference, of course, between 15 yrs old and 25 yrs old (My relevant freinds are younger than me). Think of these posts and comments as part of a conversation. Spouting "Yankees suck!!!"or similar stupidities at random intervals is not appropriate in conversation and is not appropriate here. I would prefer to keep comments open to all, but if this continues we may decide to end that.

My summer plans

Well, taking Talia's noble example, I'm going to use this blog as a forum for all the news that may or may not have been transferred over the Mom Radio. Basically, I find myself without a summer job, having been turned down by IDT for coming back home too late (at least that's the reason that I've been told). This means that, sadly enough, I am forced to find a real true job without the conveniences of nepotism and find myself at something of a loss. Tragic, but true. So I've been considering options, but am pretty busy now with finals and also it's a bit tricky to find a job in Chicago from Israel. I'd google it or something, but have no idea what I'm looking for. I was thinking maybe something like a temp agency that Rachel did once (do you have any information about this at all anymore?) or maybe I can waitress at one of the various Chicago restaurants, but this whole job insecurity thing is making me very very nervous. Never before have I known the fear of being one of our city's legions of unemployed.

Bench Economics

Over the weekend, I invented for my self a new outlook on social bargaining or something like that (yes, Rachel, I know you must think it cute the way I pretend that I can use fancy-shmancy technical terms). We davened at a place that had long benches in front of tables. The way the tables were, you could either be close enough to rest your siddur on the table OR close enough to stand up for the necessary parts. Over the davening, there was subtle shifting in and out, everyone being just a little bit selfish but also interested in evening up the bench and occassionally helping their friends who were trying to avoid having to push the bench back. In the end, the bench ended up just far enough to stand a bit tightly and just close enough to lean the siddur on the table a bit uncomfortably having to lean forward a bit. This solution was the worst possible for every individual person, but possibly the best for the group as a whole (we were behind in davening, so we won't all standing or sitting as one, meaning that it could never to good for all of us). I don't quite know what the whole thing meant, other than that social bargaining works, but it felt like it was illustrating something, and that's a lot of fun too.

Why Are Jews Smarter?

The New York Times reports about a study that links intelligence to genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs unique to Ashkenazi Jews. This study predicts that carriers will be more intelligent than average. If so, the child of two carriers has a much greater shot of being super smart to balance his/her much greater chance of being dead.

Do soldiers come from large families?

This article in the New York Times suggests that parents are one of the principal obstacles to military recruiting. I suppose this makes sense. Young men are less risk averse than any other adult group. I wonder, though, what the effect is on a parent's attitude of the number of children he or she has. I imagine that parents with only one or two children would be less willing to have a child in the military than a parent with four or five children.Now, of course, people from larger families are probably more likely to enter the military for reasons independent of family size. Nevertheless, I wonder how much family size, if you could control for the other factors, predicts likelihood of military service.

What's a Feminist Anyway?

Over on Apt3W I manage to get the family enmeshed in a discussion about feminists while ostensibly discussing why people go into academia. My definition of "feminist woman", as I mention in the comments there, is a woman who has a strong identity with women as a victimized group. What does the word mean to you? Do you think it should mean something different then its general use? I'm especially interested in hearing from the females among you.