Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Water Water Everywhere

And not a drop to drink.

Although there are other high ranking problems about the planet right now, it seems like two of the really big ones are:
  • The oceans are rising, which means there is too much water in the oceans.
  • There is too much drought around the world, which means that there's not enough water on the land.
Hmmm.  Too much water in the ocean...not enough water on the land.  It seems if we could figure out an elegant solution to water desalination, we could work our way out of a couple of the major problems facing humanity.

Of course there are brilliant minds working on that very project.  Actually, I think the Romans tried but they finally gave up.  There are methods for desalinization (in Australia and the Middle East for example) already in existence.  The problem is that so far we have only come up with very expensive complicated ways for this to happen.  

It seems to me that with seven billion people, we can probably figure out a better solution.  I have a hunch that there's a better way.  It seems like if you have access to the ocean, you should also have access to potable water.  Think of how it would change the world if we could come up with something that is so elegant that even poor communities could benefit.  

Tomorrow I will give you an example of the kind of thing I'm thinking of, but that probably doesn't really work.  I would be happy to have a guest post with any desalinization ideas.

I just have a hunch that we can do it.  Think about it.  Tell other people to think about it.  

Thanks.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Bait and Switch

This is what my son asked me last week, "Mom, would it be okay if Dov and some guys came by for Torah study on Thursday?"

This is what he told Dov and the guys last week, "Thursday ferbroingin at my house!"

I have no idea how to spell ferbroingin, but it is basically a drinking party/Torah study combined.  It was great.  My son had gone to some at a Yeshiva, but since I'm female, they didn't exactly invite me.  It's a very festive kind of study.

Before we began the meat of our study, the boys sang a wonderful niggun (tune,melody) that had come from Russia.  It was great.  Now if I can just get the study group at my temple to switch from tea to beer....

Sunday, August 19, 2012

21st Century

This whole global connectedness kind of bugs me.  People are constantly talking about how the world is so different now because we are all connected via the internet.  There is a huge problem with this idea that we're all so connected.  Part of that has to do with how we view life on the planet at this time.

Not too long ago my niece Sina and her family made a road trip from sunny Utah to sunny Long Beach.  Here are the things that her kids had on the summer road trip that we didn't have on road trips when I was a kid:

  • Air Conditioning  (this is huge in the summer because to get from Utah to Long Beach you have to drive across a big very hot desert)
  • Dual DVR players in the van so that the kids can watch the movie they want to without fighting about it.
  • Hand held Nintendo games
  • Seat belts
When I was a kid we were hot, tired and fought all across the desert.  My parents must've been crazy to think we should go on long road trips.  Not only that, we camped... in tents... there were no swimming pools or room service.  

So here is the perfect example of how life is better now than it was in the last century. 

Now let's think about the 7,000,000,000 people on the earth today.   I read several months ago that to be in the 1% of the wealthiest people in the world, you only need an income of $30,000 a year.  I think that just about everyone I know is in that group.  I wonder what your income has to be to enable you to be globally connected?  I wonder what percentage of people on the planet right now are even literate.  My guess is that for the majority of people on the planet right now, in the 21st century, life isn't that much better than it was 1,000 years ago.  

Thursday, August 16, 2012

New Study Group

We are starting a new Torah study group tonight.  It might be interesting.  It started out with Momo's friend Dov coming over to study Torah.  Now the subject has changed to a discussion on ritual.  Dov is a Chabadnik, so it's a bit transparent that he's here to raise the Rebbe's cause of Jews doing more mitzvot (commandments) so the Messiah can come.  Fair enough... you invite a Chabadnik and you get a Chabad agenda.  However, now another Chabadnik informed me that he's coming to watch me bust Dov's chops (albeit in a friendly manner).  He might be surprised.  I'm okay with most ritual.  But I'd rather just be studying this weeks portion.  Maybe next week.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Genius and Air Conditioning

We live very near the beach.  It is probably less than a half a mile away from our house.  Because of our proximity, it isn't unusual for houses (and even some businesses) to not have any air conditioning.  We usually have a nice cool breeze off the ocean in the summer.  We were still wearing sweaters into July.  However, in August and September, we sometimes have really hot days.  Every year I put off buying a portable air conditioner until we need it, at which point there are none left.

Here's where my genius comes in.  In June of this year I bought an AC and stashed it in the garage until the time would come when we needed it.  My sister visited in July and on the afternoon she arrived it was kind of hot.  She fussed about it until I mentioned that we actually had an AC in a box in the garage.  She and Momo brought it in the house and unpacked it, by which time the breeze had come back up and we didn't need it, so they quit their installation project.  So it's been sitting in the kitchen for several weeks.

This week we had a heat wave.  Never fear... we have an AC.  So I asked the Ninja to set it up.  He pointed out that we were having a flex alert and weren't supposed to turn on the AC.  I pointed out that you do NOT want to argue with a menopausal woman during a heat wave about air conditioning.  He set it up.  We ran it until it got really hot.  Then this surge protector thing went crazy and we had to shut it down to stop the beeping.  The hotter it got, the fewer things we could use.  I couldn't use my computer.  The toaster set off the alarm.  The microwave set off the alarm.  Apparently we can only use the AC on days when it's not too hot.  Great.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Ya'alili

Click here to see my favorite pick me up music video.  The cashier at the beginning is Rabbi Shmuly Marcus who is in the band 8th Day.  He's a good man and it's a good video/song.  But remember... don't play it on Shabbat.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Bring Out Your Dead

I've been reminded of the Monty Python bit about trying to collect the guy who isn't dead yet during the last few days.  The tumor board didn't really know what to do about dad.  Since his fall, he's too frail for the surgery that we first had in mind.  The tumor is in a place that chemo isn't going to get to, and he's already had radiation so that's off the table.  Since they couldn't figure out what else to do with him, they put him on Hospice.  This is great for me and Hamad since someone else comes in to bathe him now and the nurse comes here instead of us schlepping him around.  The problem  is that all of these nice helpers have it in mind that he's at death's door.  It's true that he's probably dying, however he doesn't think so.  He's actually feeling pretty good thanks.

The nurse has been especially adamant that he'll be gone soon.  She had morphine delivered to the house at 11:30 the other night.  He hasn't used any yet.  Today she panicked because the pharmacy didn't send enough Atavan.  Apparently that's for the agitation that starts when someone is dying.  I asked dad if he felt agitated.  He didn't, although he was a little disappointed that there wasn't going to be a Dodger game tonight.  Unfortunately, they have not come up with a pill for disappointment yet.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Truth and Gorillas

Many years ago, there was a story in the local paper in Utah about a shootout at a motel.  Some gunman had burst in and started shooting.  At least one person was killed before he left.  The police were happy that an eyewitness survived.  When the door had burst open, she had taken a dive behind the bed, and escaped the shooting.  

Now put yourself in the position of the "eye witness".  I know that if I had been that woman, I wouldn't have been able to tell the police anything.  The door burst open and shooting started and now I know what the carpet behind the bed looks like.  

Sometimes eye witnesses are really good.  Like when Richard's mom Bernice was held at gun point.  She assessed the height of the gunman by standing by him and judging from her height.  She also got a good look at the gun because she knew the police would ask about that.  Ever pragmatic, she also handed over all the drugs that were about to expire so she wouldn't have to do the paperwork on them later to send them back to the company.  Nobody got shot and there was no paperwork later.  It was a win win situation.

When my son was still in high school, I chaperoned a field trip to San Francisco. (I know... what was I thinking?)  We went to the Exploritorium and they had a display about vision and perception.  My cluster of students and I went up to a television that had a video running.  The instructions were that, even if the film had been spliced, you should count how many times a basketball that they were dribbling actually touched the floor.  So my group and I were determined to find the correct answer.  We knew that there were going to be abnormalities in the film since it was spliced, so we had to be very careful to actually see when the bounces occurred.  We were really concentrating on what was happening, so it seemed odd to us that people were looking over our shoulders and giggling at us.  We did count all the bounces.  What we had failed to notice was the guy in the gorilla suit who kept walking in and out of the picture.  Yes, if I'm busy counting, I do not see the guy in the gorilla suit.  People who weren't counting and only giggling, couldn't really believe that none of us had noticed the gorilla.  If police had interrogated us before the gigglers explained, I'm pretty sure that we all could've testified that there was no gorilla on the scene.  Would we have been telling the truth?  

In Hebrew the word for "truth" is "emet".  In Hebrew it is spelled aleph, mem, tav.  Aleph is the first letter of the alephbet, mem is the middle letter and tav is the final letter.  Because all truth is contained within the letters of the alephbet.  But apparently so are gorillas.

Monday, August 6, 2012

Long Lost Son

My son and I took dad to the "tumor board" today.  It was a bunch of doctors who examined him and then decided what to do with him.  After the exam, we were asked to sit in a waiting room for an hour and a half. Since we had gotten up at six (instead of ten) dad and Hamad were exhausted and fell sound asleep.  A large African American man came in and indicated that he needed to get by me.  I thought he was just looking for a seat, so I hoped up and took the seat by Hamad.  That stopped the man in his tracks.  He wasn't looking for a seat, he though Hamad was his son who had run away two years ago.  He was about to give Hamad the biggest hug of his life.  Hamad says that he learned today that if you fall asleep in public, you may end up in the arms of a large black man.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

A Delicate Situation

Several years ago when my dad broke his first hip, the doctors said that he had to go to a rehab unit in a nursing home.  My dad has mild Alzheimer and a good case of grumpy old man syndrome.  The month he spent in that nursing home, which was not a bad place as far as that goes, was absolute torture for him.  This is a man who put his own grandmother in a nursing home and had always told us that when the time came, he wouldn't mind.  Well, when the time came, he did mind.  Very much in fact.  He wouldn't eat the food they served, so I was running over constantly with home cooked food.  He was so lonely that my son set up a DVR player so the two of them could sit all day watching epic movies together.  He wanted to go home so badly and it broke our hearts not to have him at home.  So we promised him that we'd never do that again.

This time when he broke his hip, some nice ladies came to see which facility we wanted him transferred to.  We told them that we'd just take him home.  Oh, they did not like that idea.  They all told us what a horrible idea that was.  Nonetheless, it's what we did.

Ironically, all of his doctors thought it was a great idea.  They thought that it would be much better for dad to be in his own surroundings.

On the day we were to take him home from the hospital, Hamad commented to a nurse that maybe he should quick get married so we'd have help taking care of dad.  The nurse was from the Philippines.  She told him to marry a Philippina because in their culture they never send their old people away.

Well, we sure as hell do in our culture.  My 22 year old son has put his life on hold until we get dad back up on his feet.  It's slow.  There are lots of other things he'd rather be doing, but he takes his promise to dad seriously.  I get two responses to this.  Occasionally, someone realizes that he gets it.  He understands what truly matters in life.  Overwhelmingly, I hear that it's unfair for me to expect him to spend time taking care of his grandfather because he should be able to go out and live his own life.  This is his own life.  This is his only grandparent left alive and when he's gone Hamad will "get on with his own life".

The problem is that when I explain what we are doing in life right now, I have to couch it very carefully because so many people do have their elders in nursing homes and they don't want to feel guilty.  I realize that there are cases where there is no other choice.  I have very dear friends who have had to resort to that.  However, many people are in nursing homes today because it is "inconvenient" to have them at home.  So I have to watch myself if I don't want people to tell me what an idiot I am.  In our case, it is better for us to have dad at home.  After he dies, Hamad and I will not have to live with the regret about what we should have done.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Jonah Lehrer Scandal

Several months ago Richard gave me some books for my birthday.  One of them was "Imagine" by Jonah Lehrer.  I really enjoyed that book and have been thinking about recommending it to my two readers.  (Actually, my blog just passed the 700 hits mark yesterday.)  It's a fascinating book about how creativity works.  So this topic was simmering somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, when I had to dash to Ralph's to buy some Liquid Plummer yesterday. (High ho the glamorous life.)  I didn't catch the first part of the piece, since my emergencies aren't ever timed very precisely, but they were talking about a big publishing scandal.  After a moment they mentioned the name of Jonah Lehrer.  It caught my interest right away, since the dark recesses of my mind aren't really ever that far away.  "That's the guy," I thought.  So I'm driving and trying to imagine what kind of dreadful thing he could've done.  Did he fake his memoir?  (Memory being what it is, who doesn't?)  But no... it was more insidious than that.  He misquoted Bob Dylan in his book "Imagine".  Since Bob Dylan is still alive, this is a bit of a problem.  You can click here to see what the NY Times had to say about it.


Mr. Lehrer had to resign from his job and has lost his credibility in the publishing world.  I still think it's a really good book.

Last night while my son and I were drinking champagne and painting (his paintings are more realist, mine are more abstract, especially when I'm drinking champagne) I mentioned this debacle to him.  In the course of our conversation I told him that it was too bad because there were some really good Dylan quotes in that book and that if Dylan didn't say those things, he should have.  Based on that, Hamad thought I should go ahead and recommend the book anyway.  I hereby recommend this book, complete with Dylan misquotes.

Too bad for you that you can't go out and buy a copy.  The books have been pulled from shelves and a "corrected" version will come out at a later date.  I think they should just reprint the dust jackets with things like, "Unedited Edition complete with fake Dylan quotes!"

As for Mr. Lehrer, I think the writing gig will still work for him.  Scandals come and go and we all have to keep moving forward.