Jewish law

It turns out that roller skating is in accord with Jewish law, but that naming your daughter Danielle is not.

I don't know what this means but I think it's interesting.

Goodbye, summer

Today is October 17. Ever since my house got knocked down in the Loma Prieta earthquake, I know summer is going to be over in the next few days when the anniversary rolls around. That week in 1989 I remember everybody slept outside during the very warm next few days -- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday -- and then on Friday the 20th it got cold, and we all went inside.

The weather report says that today will be the last warm day in Oakland for a while, and I assume, until 2006. After my dental appointment ended early today I decided I had to do something in the warm air while it is here. (I had wanted to go to Angel Island but it was too late in the day.) I went up to Lake Temescal and walked around it. There were some people there but it wasn't very crowded and it was nice to just be in the open, warm air, looking at the lake. Of course, it was especially appropriate since Lake Temescal is in the middle of a rift valley and there are signs all over about the fault that runs through the middle of it.

If I were someone with lots of money and no responsibilities I'd be making plans to go to Australia until April. Oh well. Bye, summer. I will look forward to 2006.

Examining the Daily Show set

I submitted this to the Comedy Central feedback page:

I just wanted to thank you for putting a copy of the New York City subway map on the set behind Jon while he does the show. I used to have to go find the New York City Transit Authority website, dig out my MTA map, or read the wallpaper at the local Subway restaurant whenever I needed to figure out the route of the F train, but now I know I can just navigate to the Daily Show on my Tivo and if I fast-forward to the right place (usually as the guest comes in) I know I can get the information I need. Thanks for helping us all get around New York.

Passivity

A few years ago, they were talking about remodeling our offices. Of course, allowing us to open the windows to get some fresh air was out of the question, so I suggested that instead we ask for "Passive Air Ventilation Systems" and fill our request with technobabble that ultimately meant we would be allowed to open the windows to get some fresh air.

Today I rented a car. On the side of the car it says "Warning: car is protected by a passive security system."

I think this means it has a lock.

I don't know whether to be amused or frightened.

Reactions to Misconceiving Canada

This was originally a series of posts the Canada forum of Café Utne. It was written in June of 1998.

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I don't suppose anybody here has read Misconceiving Canada: The Struggle for National Unity by Kenneth McRoberts?

The basic thesis is that "the Trudeau vision" of a Canada, bilingual irrespective of territoriality, never met the needs of Quebec society and was pushed not by the bulk of Quebeckers (and thus should not be perceived as "doing what Quebec wanted" even though English Canadians often see it this way) but by minority francophones in other provinces and Trudeau and his followers.

English Canada's failure to acknowledge this, failure to acknowledge that language *is* territorial and that Quebec is different from the other provinces because it is the only French one, is the problem. Without an asymmetrical federalism of some sort or other, says McRoberts, the country will not survive.

One idea presented is that language rights are meaningless when applied to individuals -- that since language is about communication, only in groups does it have any meaning to promote a language. People will lose a language if they do not have a society to speak it in, and governments don't make any difference on that score.

I think this is all very interesting and somewhat disturbing.

(The question was asked: what kind of asymmetrical federalism?)

He is deliberately unspecific about the form asymmetrical federalism could take, anywhere from opting-out of federal programs (the offer of which could be extended to all provinces, but probably only Quebec would bother) to a more formal asymmetrical federalism, with an English-Canadian formal structure of some kind. That's not crucial for him -- the point I think he's making is that Canada should clearly break away from the idea that all provinces are equal and that Quebec has no special place. He believes that the Quebec government, and not the federal government, can reasonably represent the French society in North America.

Again I am not taking the position of the book, but I thought it clearly stated its assumptions and from there was very well-reasoned if one accepts those assumptions.

I come at this with a clearly outside perspective -- my take on language issues is Californian, my take on nationalism is as someone who regards the jingoist excesses of his home country as repugnant. This probably strikes everybody in Canada irrelevant at best and more likely nosy and meddling. So, this can be taken as a disclaimer -- don't take *my* view too seriously. I don't have to live with the result of all this.

I think my own conflict comes from my admiration for the goal of "the Trudeau vision" to eliminate cultural/ethnic nationalism, which is at the root of the vision of Quebec nationalism -- with the recognition that in the Canadian context, the attempt at getting francophone Quebeckers to identify with the civic nationalism of Canada has failed utterly. The book basically dismisses the idealism of the civic nationalists (using the term "Trudeau vision" for it, which it seems to me implies that the many who share this view are merely Trudeau- maniacs, in the '68 sense).

And yet I find this idea of patriotism -- a reasoned (the book's term) commitment to civic rights and values, symbolized by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, unifying all Canadians -- much, much more attractive than the mythologized, traditional ethnic nationalism that Quebec shares with European countries, or the ignorant mythological patriotism, essentially the same as sports fanaticism, that is common in so much of the United States.

I see nationalism in all its forms as fundamentally, deeply divisive, a profoundly evil thing -- even in its best "we don't want to hurt anybody else, we just want our day in the sun" form, it's based on exclusion of others. For every case where unification, secession or irridentism (transfer of land from one state to another) was peaceful, there are a dozen counterexamples -- Catalonia, the Basques, Kurdistan, Ireland, the whole Balkans including Bosnia, Rwanda, Biafra, Algeria, Germany after 1871, India/Pakistan in 1947 and Kashmir up until the present day... the list is endless. Nationalism kills.

What hope have we as a world? I'm not an expert on multiethnic states. Africa's multiethnic states are not, as a rule, good examples, although perhaps there are one or two that have been peaceful. The European Union is still a collection of nation-states, and ethnicities within the nation-states have no reason to take comfort, as they are still primarily in a Spanish or British or whatever state (although, the EU has given minorities in places like Scotland a counterargument to the "it would hurt too much economically" argument, much as NAFTA has done for Quebec, although even more strongly). Most of the other multiethnic states are more or less explicitly partnerships between particular ethnicities -- in Belgium you can be Flemish *or* Walloon, in Switzerland German, Italian, French *or* Rumansch. And in the United States, a person of any nationality (at least in theory) is free to lose all of their national characteristics, except cuisine, and assimilate. (It just hit me that cuisine is, for the most part, the most easily commodified of national characteristics. I wonder if that's why it's the one attribute that's allowed to remain.)

This book advocates the return to the "two founding peoples" view of Canada, or at least its formal recognition, with perhaps some ancillary recognition of the First Nations as "founding" as well.

This essentially puts Canada in the same situation as Switzerland or Belgium. This is just nationalism tempered with pragmatism, a recognition of the small size or power of the French-Canadian and First Nations. Changing perceptions of the power or size of the French-Canadian nation have changed this calculation. (If Creeland could be a state, would it not wish to be?)

And yet, if Canada goes this direction, what happens to the vision of civic patriotism instead of ethnic nationalism? The world *needs* a vision of a multiethnic, multinational state, because the continued strength of the idea of the uniethnic state is killing us. I don't think "the Trudeau vision" was perfect but it was a huge step forward toward the day when we can look back at nationalism as another discarded idea of the past, like feudalism.

And yet .. and yet I write all this hundreds of miles from the nearest Canadian territory. To some extent it's all an academic exercise for me. (We have language problems in California, but they have no real parallel to the French-English problem in Canada. By the end of the 19th century there was no unassimilated remnant left of the original Californios.) Does Canada have the responsibility to be an example for the world, or should it solve its own, very real, problems first?

The Champagne of Teas

Stephen Fry talks about my very favorite beverage. I like mine iced. I buy lots and lots of it -- I have over 100 tea bags right now in my apartment. Great stuff. I used to drink lots of soda also, but Darjeeling tea is light enough that it tastes great without sugar and I'm happy to have it instead of soda. Mostly to prove I could give it up, I drank my last can of soda in 1997.

Of course, I've been buying this brand since high school and I didn't know till now that the company's name is pronounced "twine-ings" -- I always assumed it was "twin-ings". Oh well.

I gather Stephen Fry is somewhat overexposed these days in the UK, and of course he's just a pitchman in this radio ad, but I still think of him as the brilliant comedian of "A Bit of Fry and Laurie." (I own just three videos, and the compilation video of this series is one of them.)

You know you're a nerd when...

I am balancing my checkbook, using Quicken and my credit union's online service, while on the side of the screen one window plays a video interview of Andy Hertzfeld by Mark Stephens (as Robert X. Cringely). I stop playback to go refill my glass of iced tea, and notice that my Tivo has changed the channel on the cable box to the Sci-Fi Network so it can record the Battlestar Galactica remake. And without intention, the word "cool..." passes my lips.

And when I realize what I have done, I write about it for my blog.

I gotta get a life.

First piece of comment spam

Somebody left me my first piece of comment spam today! Or at least, I noticed it today. I'm touched. Of course, I deleted all the spam, but I can't tell you what it means to me to know that some automated device out there picked my blog to deface. Thanks to all.

I ♥ eMusic

(That's supposed to be a heart. If it's not, your computer is heartless.)

Everybody knows about iTunes, but eMusic, another online music store, seems to be much less well known. Check it out: 25 cents a song or less, restriction-free MP3 files (play anywhere), tons of independent labels in all genres. There's no major labels but so what? I guess it's my folk-and-jazz bias, but I don't really miss not having whatever the hit of the week is with all this great stuff out there. And this month they added 138 albums from Smithsonian/Folkways, which may not be a major label to anybody else, but in the folk world it is. (Of course I already have a lot of those on CD, but not all by any means.)

And no, eMusic doesn't pay me for this. I just love it. And I want to make sure lots of other people pay them money so it doesn't go away.

Another small enterprise I'd like to support is the small natural food store on Jackson at 15th St. in Oakland, the name of which I can't remember. It just opened this year and I hope it survives, because they have fresh Grace Bakery bread every day and I enjoy having the good fresh sourdough bread within a close walk of my apartment (although I do prefer Semifreddi's bread). It's what a convenience store would look like in a world where all grocery stores were Whole Foods.

I hope they last, although I have my doubts since Jackson St. is not a thoroughfare and it's not really visible from 14th St., which is. And of course the real Whole Foods will open up soon on 27th and Harrison (in a historic building that was originally a cable car barn). That is going to be good for the city (although their labor relations could stand improvement), but I hope the little store on Jackson does enough business to survive.

Caveman Poetry

From the "Men Only" forum on Cafe Utne. Written on the premise that men don't talk, they just grunt.

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Short Works (1998)

urgh rurgha brarcho
argh urgha hurgha unka
brah urgh urgha urgh brah

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Urg urgula ursula rhar,
Grugh untafa arghuma slar.
Urgh trufunta ghror,
Nurf zantuta tror,
Burgh zapurgha arpuga shar.

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Zap urgha murfa zippa gror --
Hrorf urgha grorgha zar --
Oogh oogha argha rhorfa yoz
Grogh trufa oogha dhar --

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OGH: A gurgh mo rargh urgh ugh argh urgh rargh urgh,
     zar urgha nurkh ayargha rharhga sar,
     frarh zurgha nurf.
UNGH:                     Urgh narfa nurfa zorgh?
OGH: Za rhorgula zappa yargha zippo,
     nay argh urfula zar hrorgha lippo.

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Petrargh (2001)

Ab urgh zippa rhorgha argh urgzoohor
Urgunk rurgha brarcho urgh argh ukrugh
Urgha brah urgh hurgha unka akhbugh
Zoopa zurgh akhrunka rhar arhorkor.
Drorhga zippa zongho zip khraorgor
Khrajongo ukloranga rhor ka urghugh
Hrorf oogh ooga arghror ughza ooghugh
Groghdar darkhon arko oorgha zooghor.

Ghoogha urkha zargho dhrargo arka
Zargha urgh agrorgha zark a zimbo
Hrargha oorga zarpoo hhrorka.
Ghrunga oogha oogh uklor oogh dhrorka
Eezar ghoha zar akrhon akh kambo
Yagho zargha zim bakorgha yaka.