ALA Boston 2005

Here's a link to Yale Travel. Only use for business trips. In Boston 2005, staying at John Hancock Hotel. Amtrak tickets reserved through Yale Travel. Check ALA Conference Services site for local information, e.g., location of Hynes Convention Center. Try using ALA's Meeting Planner. Also check meetings on ALCTS home page. Here my list of interoperability projects stilling needing a lot more content.

Foreign Language tools

2004-12-30
Always good to have Babel Fish handy.

2004-04-26
The Arabic Alphabet

2004-11-24
Latin Grammar

Books (Solomon Maimon)

[2004-12-30]
Disgusted by the apparent ignorance of his fellow 18th century Poles--Jews and gentiles alike--he eventually makes his way to Enlightenment-era Berlin, and the acquaintance of such luminaries as Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant.

Begins with a discussion of his grandfather, arrested for murder when a young boy's corpse was planted in his house. He was tortured but refused to confess, and was eventually vindicated after the real murderer was captured.

Maimon's father kept a library of Hebrew books, some on secular topics. One book in particular, David Ganz's "Zemah David", opened his eyes for the first time to modern science. Rabbi Ganz studied astronomy with Tycho Brahe in Copenhagen. Also on the father's bookshelf was a garbled Hebrew translation of Josephus. The astronomy was what most appealed to the 7-year old Solomon.

Despite his general dislike for the Talmud, Maimon reports having excelled at it. This made him (within the traditional Jewish community, at least) by the time he reached age 12, an exceedingly eligible bachelor. At one point he was betrothed to two women at the same time. Around this time he taught himself Latin and German alphabets by studying the printer's marks on the signitures of Hebrew books. He also discovered the Zohar, the principal work of Kabalah, and studied it intensely. He identified with a description of 1st century Rabi Meir (who studied with the heretic Elisha ben Abuya?): "He found a pomegranate, and he ate the fruit but cast the rind away." He found Jewish mysticism fascinating, but confessed some of the imagery hard to take. God's Beard, for example, "in which the hairs are divided into numerous classes with something peculiar to each, and every hair is a separate channel of divine grace. With all my efforts," he writes, "I could find no rational meaning in these representations." At one point, he experimented with "Kabalah maasit," or Practical Kabbalah, invoking the "roeh ve-eno nireh" (seeing but not being seen) technique, and attempted to box a friend on the ears, but, not really being invisible, the friend immediately turned around and hit him back.

Eventually Maimon made his way to Berlin, where he befriended (and later estranged) Moses Mendelssohn and other maskilim, and, after a period of extreme poverty, began a study of Kant's critical philosophy, won the philosopher's praise, and composed a philosophical work of his own entitled "Transcendental Philosophy".

In ch. 16, he describes an encounter with new "secret society", the "New Hasidim", who, unlike their traditional namesakes, eschewed self-mortification, and tried, to paraphrase Woody Allen, to confuse the evil inclination by giving in to it without a fight. He seemed to admire the group at first, since they moderated and celebrated human appetites, rather than trying to destroy them, but found them ultimately unsympathetic since they based their actions on expectation of reward in the afterlife, rather than practicing virtue for its own sake. Also, he notes, their behavior was guided "by obsure feelings rather than distinct knowledge" which led them into various extravagances, and "are vain enough to consider themselves organs fo the Godhead, which of course they are, but to an extent lmited by the degree of perfection they attain. The result is that at the charges of the Godheard they perpretrate the greatest excesses; every extraordiary suggestion is to htem a divine inspiration, and very lively impulse a divine call." (p. 51).






The Master, by Colm Toibin, a fictional biography of Henry James, reviewed in NYTBR June 20, 2004.

Weblogs in the [ILS] News

Blogs in the news. Check Ten Thousand Year Blog. Also check Blogwise, discussed in this week's RLG DigiNews.

Gift Ideas from New York Times

Not the most comprehensive selection, but you can buy Broadway Tickets Online via the New York Times theater site. See also selection of historic photographs.

Etgar (Yafo: 2000)

Etgar : Magazin Politi Tarbuti

James Watt and the Second Coming

Bill Moyers cites October 27 2004 Grist article approvingly, where author Glenn Scherer remembers James Watt telling Congress environmentalism was unnecessary, as Jesus Christ would come back to save us before anything really bad happened. "'God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back,' Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired." Read more in Schere's article, "The Godly Must be Crazy: Christian-right views are swaying politicians and threatening the environment".

Super-Size Me, Tokyo Style

Super-Size Me, Tokyo Style: "With its mega-portions and big-box mentality, Costco is changing the way the Japanese shop and eat." Article points out that U.S. pressured Japan into revising its "Large Scale Retail Store Law" in 1990. Threatening long-term viability of small-scale shops and farms.

Eonology

Recent enjoyable inexpensive wine, Monte Antico Toscano 2001, A Wine Spector "best value". "Sangiovese varietal" grape aged in oak barrels.

Might be worth consulting Wine Lovers Dictionary. And Wine Lover's Guide, which includes annual list of best QPR(Quality Price Ratio) wines. Wine Specialist gives ratings for wide variety of wine and beer.


D.O.C.G. (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) on label is supposed to guarantee wine is what it claims to be.

Leslie Brenner's Fear of Wine, 1995, is a bit dated for current wine selection, but has useful information on how wine is made. Recommends Simon & Schuster's Beginner's Guide to Understainding Wine for article "Wine tasting techniques", which she says is most comprehensive resource on topic. Some interesting details: all wine comes out "white" if grape skins are removed. Once grapes picked, then crushed and unskinned by machine, "free-run juice" then poured into steel or oak barrels along with yeast. Yeast eating sugar causes fermentation, with alcohol and CO2 as byproducts, the latter bubbles up and out, but alcohol remains. Liquid is now called "must", and continues to ferment as remaining sugar consumed. Yeast cells eventually die (p. 13), settling to bottom as "lees". Some wines are then fermented a second time to convert natural malic acid to less harsh-tasting lactic acid, and lending "buttery flavor and aroma". Red wines, because skins left in, contain tannins (same dessicating substance as found in tea). Seeds also contain tannins, as do planks of oak barrel. Tannins are said to give wine "backbone" (p. 16), and act as preservative while aging. Cheaper red wines remove skins after fermentation. Finer ones leave them in for week or more in process called "maceration." Leaving in the lees adds complexity to flavor (19). Oak planks lend vanilla and toast aromas.

Noble rot ("pourriture noble") caused by mold botrytis cinerea (p. 27) most famous technique for sweeting wine. Used in Sauteries (in French Bordeaux region), where foggy mornings followed by warm afternoons. .As rot progresses, grapes shirnk, sugars concenturate, and when picked, the grapes produce beautiful unusual sweet wine.

Some vintners prefer wild yeast, to commercial variety, naturally found on grapes when harvested. This may affect taste as well.

"Plot Against America" (Book)

Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (Houghton Mifflin, 2004) an exceedingly well-plotted and meticulously researched (if also too predictable and cautiously written) alternative history of the 1940s. Instead of Roosevelt assuming third term as president, as we remember from our history books, Republican candidate Charles Lindbergh is innaugurated January 1941. Burton Wheeler is his vice president, Henry Ford is senior cabinet member.

Roth's narrator is 8 or 9 year old Philip, with insurance salesman father Herman, and mother Bess. Orphaned cousin Alvin, who lives with him, joins Canadian army to help fight Germans, loses lower half of left leg in grenade explosion. Brother Sandy, a gifted portrait artist, cajoled into becoming poster-boy for relocation/absorption program "Just Folks", where jewish youth are sent away to live with 'real' Americans on farms in the heartland.

Lionel Bengelsdorf is celebrity rabbi, eventual husband to Philip's Aunt Evelyn, director of the Office of American Absorption (which sponsors relocation and deracination programs), and eventual (Rasputin-like?) spokeman for first lady, Ann Morrow. Both Lionel and Evelyn are star-struck by Joachim von Ribbentrop, Germany's minister for foreign affairs (and signatory to 1939 non-aggression pact with Molotov of USSR) during reception at White House. Incrementally, civil rights of American Jews are eroded, leading up to relocations and pogroms in 1942. News reporter Walter Winchell, reviled as a muckraker, but respected as cultural whistleblower and political conscience, tries to wake up fellow citizens to encroaching fascism. Another hero of story, Fiorello La Guardia (born to Jewish mother and Italian father), mayor of New York, major opponent to Lindbergh.

True facts described in story, and confirmed in postscript: Regarding Lindbergh: after having flown the Spirit of St. Louis 33 1/2 hours non-stop from Long Island to Paris in 1927, viewed across country and around world as hero. Married Anne Morrow in May 1929. Two-year-old son Charles kidnapped, found dead May 1932. October 1938 Lindbergh receives Service Cross of the German Eagle "by order of the Fuhrer" (as does his friend, owner of Dearborn Independent, and publisher of 91-article series "The International Jew: The World's Problem", Henry Ford). By 1938, viewed by many Jewish families with the same trepidation as his friend Father Charles Coughlin, Catholic priest radio commentator from Detroit, editor of weekly Social Justice.

October 1940, America First Committtee founded at Yale Law School to promote isolationism, with major address by Lindbergh who advocates American recognition of "the new powers in Europe." Also October 1940, Anne Morrow Lindbergh publishes best-selling The Wave of the Future, condemned by Secretary of Interior Harlod Ickes as "the Bible of every American Nazi". September 11, 1941 Lindbergh delivers speech "Who Are the War Agitators" to America First Rally in Des Moines, eliciting applause from 8 thousand attendees when citing "the Jewish race" as major cause for American war involvement. Following December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor, however, America First Committee disbanded.

Tenth of Av (Karaites)

Karaites observe a day of mourning on the tenth, not ninth, of Av, based on the the text of Jeremiah 52:12 Now in the fifth month, in the tenth day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, came Nebuzar-adan, captain of the guard, who served the king of Babylon, into Jerusalem and he burned the house of the LORD, and the king's house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great man's house, burned he with fire. This is JPS translation, one of 26 versions compared line-by-line in the Online Parallel Bible. Cf.: Igeret Tokhehot nehamot ve-Sefer Iyov (2003 or 2004) [10/14/04]

JPEG2000 (image compression standard)

[2004-12-13]
Yale presentation by John French: "Color Processing at the University Art Gallery, and "Introduction to JPEG2000 by Brian Kupiec and Karen Reardon. Check Michael Gormish Notes for background and links.

Judaica Research Tools

These is pretty good, actually. The Jewish Heritage Online Magazine includes "2500 screens devoted to the study of classic and modern Jewish texts, culture and heritage."

Yale HR

2004-12-17

Use current Library Job Openings as models for new postings.

There's a written destinction between Grade-E and Grade-D work responsibilities. More guidance forthcoming after distribution of published contract.

September 11

9-11 flight paths from USA Today: AA11 (North Tower), UA175 (South Tower), AA77 (Pentagon), UA93 (Pennsylvania). Other graphic renderings ... American on Alert (USA Today)