A chart that comapres the two ways to turn to the “dark side.”
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Archive for April, 2006
Tomorrow, April 25, 2006, marks to different important events, depending on who you are. One is Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, when kids get a free cone of ice cream after waiting on an outrageously long line. The other is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day (literally “Day of the Holocaust”). Obviously, these events are polar opposites. While one represents fun, being carefree, and American consumerism, the other represents death, destruction, and mourning. What I find appalling is that B & J actually scheduled their famous “holiday” on Yom HaShoah. Of course Ben and Jerry are probably not observant Jews, and Yom HaShoah is not an official U.S. holiday, but it still shocks me that they put such a pointless, joyful day on a holiday that marks one of the world’s greatest tragedies. There is no doubt that in a company as large as B & J had a relatively high-ranking person who knew about Yom HaShoah. I’m not trying to accuse B & J of anti-semitism, but I just thought that it was interesting that Free Cone Day and Yom HaShoah coincide. So, when you’re enjoying your free ice cream cone tomorrow, try not to forget the six million Jews, plus three million homosexuals, gypsies, and those physically and mentally handicapped, who were murdered only 61 years ago.
Technorati Tags: ben & jerry’s, free cone day, holiday, judaism, holocaust, yom hashoah
Apparently Gawker, the immensely popular Internet gossip blog, has a lot of Jewish flavor to it. According to this article of the Forward 50, Gawker has a lot of Jewish flavor and humor to it, which seems to make sense being that it’s run by Jews Jessica Coen and Jesse Oxfeld. Some of the Jewish flavor found in Gawker can be found in the short Foreword paragraph about its to main editors:
Currently run by co-editors Jessica Coen, 25, and Jesse Oxfeld, 29, the site courses with Jewish flavor, ridiculing old canards about Jews and the media even as it relishes them. “Next week’s New York [magazine] wonders whether, as a recent scientific study purported to prove, Jews really are smarter,” an entry right after Yom Kippur stated. “All we’ll say: We had a day off yesterday, and we ate pounds of excellent lox for dinner. You goyim did not. QED.” Another time, the editors said “yisgadal v’yiskadash” over a Conde Nast employee’s firing.
Of course, despite Gawker’s Jewish flavor, it’s not exactly my favorite type of blog. I think that I’ll stick with reading Engadget and the rest of the tech blogs.
P.S. Right below Coen and Oxfeld’s paragraph is a paragraph about Carolyn Hessel, who is a very, very powerful woman in the Jewish book world who my dad knows personally and who I have met on several occasions. She can be summed up briefly as “very small, but very powerful.”
Technorati Tags: blog, gawker, jesse oxfeld, jessica coen, judaism, carolyn hessel, the foreword
After seeing my friend write many movie reviews on his blog, I have now decided to do the same. But I will review not just movies, I will also do books and theater, amongst other things. Also, i will always give an explicit warning if I give away important plot details in the review, which I hope not to do that often. So here it is, my first review, The Light in the Piazza:
Plot:
The Light in the Piazza takes place in Florence, and briefly Rome, during 1953. It shows Margaret Johnson (Victoria Clark) taking her daughter, Clara (Katie Clarke) to Florence. There, Clara falls in love with young Florentine Fabrizio Naccarelli (Aaron Lazar). A love affair between the two ensures, but Margaret is always trying to stop them, due to Clara’s “problem.” Eventually, Margaret soon realizes that Clara can take control of her own destiny, and lets go of her control. In the beginning of the play, Clara appears as the protagonist and Margaret as the antagonist, but by the end of the performance you see that Margaret is really the protagonist, and the only antagonist was her own over-protection of Clara. The plot reminds me of Tennessee Willaims’ The Glass Menagerie, except with the twist that the overbearing mother learns to except her daughter as who she is. I’m not sure if this was added in on purpose, or was simply coincidental when the playwright adapted the musical from the original novella which appeared in The New Yorker. The plot moves nicely, and follows a good storyline, with twists and turns throughout.
8/10
Technorati Tags: aaron lazar, broadway, katie clarke, lincoln center, musical, new york, play, new york city, review, the light in the piazza, theater, vitoria clark
With my podcast and MacUser blogging, my life has become pretty busy, which is why I decided that I needed a calendar. So, I had two options. One was to go with Apple’s included iCal software, which works pretty well and is a good choice. But the other one was even better. Google Calendar had just been unveiled, and a lot of people are choosing it over iCal. So, I decided to pick gCal. gCal is GREAT. It has a Quick Add button so that you can schedule dates as if you were talking to a normal person, for example, saying “Dinner with Mom at 7pm Sunday” would create a date titled “Dinner with Mom” that would occur at 7:00 PM, April 22, 2006. And, it can even do date ranges, so I can say “half hour Dinner with Mom 7pm Sunday” and it would make an event titled “Dinner with Mom” that would occur from 7:00 PM to 7:30 PM, April 22, 2006. Another awesome feature of gCal is that gCal has a huge calendar database. For example, I have a movie release date calendar, a Jewish Calendar, Candle Lighting times, and the weekly parsha (Torah portion). There is some room for improvement with gCal though. For one thing, Google needs to make a mobile version of it like it has for GMail and the Personalized Google Homepage. Also, you can sync Google Calendar with other programs that support the iCal standard, but you can only write to your calendar on one of the programs, while the other is read-only (for example, I can either make my dates on gCal and read them in iCal, or make the dates in iCal, but read it in gCal). Still, Google Calendar is a great program and really worth using.
Technorati Tags: calendar, google, google calendar
In January, Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization, became the leading party of Palestine. Obviously, this horrified most people in the Western world, though it did have some advantages. One is that most nations said that they would stop supporting Palestine is Hamas tried to do any more suicide bombings, being that legitimate governments don’t endorce suicide bombings. Well, today Hamas did a big no-no. A suicide bomb exploded in Tel Aviv today killing at least 8 (according to The New York Times). Obviously, this is a terrible, terrible thing, but, if you can believe it, things got worse. Hamas defended the atack, claiming that it could be justified. Because of this, the European Union has caught off relations with Hamas, and the U.S. has condemned the bombing and warned Hamas that there would be grave consequences for their actions. Abbas, who is Prime Minister of Palestine from the opposing Fatah Party has also condemned the bombing, but he is basically powerless in the Palestinian government.The bombing was the most deadly in over a year, and is a harsh psychological blow to Israel. The only thing I can’t understand, though, is why there were so many Israelis at a falafel place during Passover?
Technorati Tags: hamas, israel, suicide bombing, tel aviv
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This is very, very funny. Who knew that Walt Disney was racist, anti-semitic, and blacklisted his own employees? Just re-enforces my point that Disney (the company, not the person) is evil, or at least trying to brainwash the minds of young children. Maybe that was a little too harsh. Maybe.
Technorati Tags: disney, disney vault, youtube, saturday night live, snl, video, walyt disney
Right now, most Americans are either afraid or angry at Iraqis, especially the Sunnis. But there was a time not so long ago when relations with Iraq and Iraqis weren’t as heated as they are now. Back in that time, I myself was friendly with an Iraqi boy. Little did I know exactly who that boy was, or what his family did. Now that I have come to realize the significance of our friendship, I hope to share it with you. Here’s the story:
It all started back when I was in 2nd grade in 1999. I was new to my school, which I had come to after moving from the New Jersey suburbs into New York City. Obviously, I was a little nervous about a new school with new people. But soon a met a boy, who for security reasons I will solely identify as T, who shared my love of Pokémon. We started to talk and hang out, and got to know each other quite well. T seemed like your average 7 year old boy, he liked to run around and play, he liked Pokémon cards (which were popular at the time), and enjoyed Lunchables, putrid child pre-made meals made out of everything you don’t want to know about. Though, there was one strange thing about T, he drove to school and home every day in a limousine. My parents just assumed that his father owned a car service. Boy, were they in for a shock.
Technorati Tags: friend, friendship, iraq, iraqi, 9/11, war on terror
What’s a great thing to do when you’re bored? Spend 10+ years making an ASCII version of Star Wars! It’s still not done yet, but is still very fun to watch. Just open the Command Line in Windows or the Terminal in Macs, type in telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl, and enjoy.
[via MacUser]
Ever wanted to see what term is more popular on Google than the other? Check out Google Fight. Basically, it finds which of two keywords is more popular on Google in cool Flash animation. Nice.
Technorati Tags: google, google fight, keywords
Aaron Freedman is a 16 year old who's very passionate and knowledgeable about technology and journalism. He enjoys working on his two main projects, 
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