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Home » Blog » New Clozapine Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) requirements Starting November 15, 2021
New Clozapine Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) requirements Starting November 15, 2021
The FDA approved modifications to the Clozapine REMS program to ensure that the benefit of clozapine outweighs the risk of severe neutropenia that can lead to severe infections. Alterations to the clozapine REMS program will go into effect on November 15, 2021. The new REMS program will help clarify and enhance the prescribing information for clozapine, further explaining how to monitor patients for neutropenia and manage patients with severe neutropenia. The REMS program recommends that patients taking clozapine who shows signs of moderate neutropenia with an Absolute Neutrophil Count (ANC) <1000µL should discontinue clozapine and restart once ANC levels normalize to ≥1000µL. Patients with severe neutropenia with an ANC <500µL should stop taking clozapine and only resume clozapine if the physician determines the benefit outweighs the risk. (Clozapine and the Risk of Neutropenia: A Guide for Pharmacists: Table 1 Page 7)
The modifications to the clozapine REMS program will require physicians and pharmacies to re-certify in the clozapine REMS program and make changes to their current monitoring procedures to continue prescribing and dispensing clozapine to patients. Prescribers and pharmacies can re-certify through the clozapine REMS website.
Although patients are not required to take any action due to REMS program changes, prescribers must re-enroll or enroll their patients. Prior to enrolling patients into the REMS program, physicians must make sure their recertification into the clozapine REMS program is complete.
For patients currently taking clozapine, healthcare professionals will continue monitoring patients according to the current REMS requirements. However, providers can begin to re-certify and re-enroll all existing patients into the new REMS program now and must have that completed by November 15, 2021.
For patents starting clozapine between now and November 15, 2021, prescribers will enroll patients in both the current and new REMS programs.
For patients starting clozapine after November 15, 2021, prescribers will only enroll patients in the new REMS program.
The changes also make improvements to the process of submitting ANC results, which will reduce the burden on prescribers and reduce treatment interruptions for patients. Prescribers will now submit ANC documentation monthly, which is a change from daily, weekly, or biweekly documentation, depending on the patient's monitoring frequency.
Pharmacists and authorized representatives of pharmacies should know that the current "switch" system will no longer be available. This system allowed pharmacies to send prescription information simultaneously through (1) the Clozapine REMS Program to obtain the Pre-Dispense Authorization (PDA); and (2) their Pharmacy Management System (PMS) to adjudicate with the third party. Pharmacies will need to develop new processes and procedures to complete both transactions when dispensing clozapine.
The REMS Dispense Authorization (RDA) will replace the current Pre-Dispense Authorization (PDA). Pharmacies can access the new RDA forms through either the clozapine REMS website or by calling the REMS Contact Center. The first time a patient fills clozapine under the new REMS program, the RDA for outpatient pharmacies will verify that the pharmacy is certified, the patient is enrolled, and the patient's treatment is not interrupted or discontinued. For subsequent fills, the RDA will verify that outpatient pharmacies are certified, the patient is enrolled, a Patient Status Form has been completed in the last 37 days, and the patient's treatment is not interrupted or discontinued. There are no changes for inpatient pharmacies that dispense clozapine for inpatient use.
Wholesalers or distributors will have no changes to their current requirements. However, wholesalers or distributors will have to re-enroll in the Clozapine REMS by November 15, 2021 to purchase and distribute clozapine. Wholesalers and distributors will continue to verify pharmacy certification through the Clozapine REMS.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/clozapine-risk-evaluation-and-mitigation-strategy-rems-requirements-will-change-november-15-2021?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
https://www.clozapinerems.com/
https://www.newclozapinerems.com/home
Posted: October 2021
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December 2021 Question of the Month
Which stakeholder will have the most influence on the biosimilar dispensed from retail pharmacy?
PBM: 67%
Pharmacy: 17%
Biosimilar manufacturer: 8%
Physician: 8%
Patient: 0%
Wholesaler: 0%
November 2021 Question of the Month
How severe do you expect the 2021-2022 flu season to be versus previous years?
Fewer infections than 2020-2021: 0%
Similar number of infections to 2020-2021: 0%
More infections than 2020-2021 but still fewer than pre-COVID: 100%
Similar number of infections as pre-COVID: 0%
More infections than pre-COVID: 0%
October 2021 Question of the Month
Have you used telehealth services for an acute or chronic health concern?
Yes, starting pre-pandemic: 0%
Yes, starting during the pandemic: 50%
Not yet, but would consider: 50%
No, and would not consider: 0%
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You are at:Home»INSTANT REPLAY»NAC Responds to New, Positive Bank Regulations
NAC Responds to New, Positive Bank Regulations
By Matt Harding on December 3, 2021 INSTANT REPLAY
The National ATM Council is applauding the recent "decisive and welcome action" by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), which updated regulations that governed the banking of independent ATM businesses.
"While we are still studying the details of the FFIEC's updates to the independent ATM section of its BSA/AML Examination Manual, on our initial review, the changes appear to be substantial, well founded and very positive in terms of acknowledging that bank-sponsored independent ATM companies are not categorically high-risk accounts, despite the fact that we are, by definition, 'cash-intensive' businesses," said George Sarantopoulos, NAC Board Chair and CEO of the Brooklyn-based Access One Solutions.
He added: "NAC has worked diligently for a number of years with Congress and the bank regulators, seeking restoration of reasonable access to essential banking services for our nation's independent ATM operators, and this latest FFIEC action appears to represent the fruits of that labor. This is an exceptionally good thing, not only for the nation's independent ATM entrepreneurs, who require bank accounts to operate, but also for the millions of Americans who rely daily upon ATMs for convenient and essential access to cash."
Mike Powell, Chair of NAC's Governmental Affairs Committee, went on to thank the "excellent bipartisan leadership" of Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.), who "helped bring this issue, and the urgent need for corrective action, to the full attention of the FFIEC and its consitutent agenices.
Added NAC Executive Director Bruce Renard: "It has taken a truly broad and diverse collection of independent ATM deployers and suppliers from across the U.S., working together diligently for years, to have the federal government correct the prior mischaracterizations and stigma fostered by the former ATM-related provisions of the FFIEC Examination Manual. NAC and ATM Nation offer their heartfelt thanks and gratitude to these industry leaders for their dedication and perseverance that have led to this latest FFIEC Examination Manual update."
ATM NAC NATMC
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Xgody S9 has been introduced by the company as the device found its way to shopping stores. It's safe to say Xgody got its inspiration from the Meiigoo S9 when creating this, because both devices have a striking resemblance. Nonetheless, Xgody is selling the device under their own brand tagged Xgody S9 on shopping stores. It's equipped with dual rear camera, notch display and Face Unlock feature.
The new smartphone has a plastic body but achieves the trendy gradient dual color look. The dual rear camera can be seen at the top left corner, while the fingerprint scanner sits at the centre. It measures 9mm in thickness and is available in only Black, Red, Purple and Blue.
The S9 is built around a 6.18-inch FHD+ IPS LCD notch display. The screen boasts of 1080 x 2246 pixels in resolution along with a 403 pixel per inch density for clear visuals as well. Overall, the screen stretches up to 80.28% screen-to-body ratio.
It runs on Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box. Running the race here is the MT6750 chipset from MediaTek which comes with 8-cores of processor clocking at 1.5GHz offering a smooth ride.
The ARM Mali-T860 MP2 graphics card handles everything graphics. The phone packs 32GB internal storage space for storing your files, you can expand up to 128GB using a memory card. It comes with 4GB RAM space for multitasking through apps and tasks.
The Xgody S9 sports dual 13MP + 2MP rear cameras for all your photography needs. The camera is equipped with a dual-LED flash and other internal features listed in the table below. For taking selfies, there's a 5MP selfie shooter for that.
Powering up the S9 is a 5000mAh battery capacity with support for fast charging. Charging the battery from 0% to 100% shouldn't take up to 3 hours.
Xgody S9 has been introduced by the company as the device found its way to shopping stores. It's safe to say Xgody got its inspiration from the Meiigoo S9 when creating this, because both devices have a striking resemblance.


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VacationRentals411.com: Duck, North Carolina: 249 Christie-Beautiful Sound Views from Outside and Inside.
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We offer a diverse selection of private vacation home rentals, condos, cabins and beach lodging in North Carolina including Duck vacation rentals in Duck, North Carolina.


Abstract: Techniques allow for automatic signing of a digital document in response to some event and/or when the document satisfies some predefined condition. The document may be, for example, an agreement, a technical paper for publication, a press release or marketing materials, or any other digital document that might need to be assented to, approved by, and/or attributed to one or more persons or representatives. The techniques may further provide support for automatic signature tracking and notification in order to assist with auditability. In one example embodiment, the techniques are implemented in the context of an e-signature application or service, which may be installed locally on the user's computer or provided to the user via a network from a server. In one example embodiment, the e-signature service is configured to automatically impress a signer's signature into a given document, if the signer's pre-established auto-sign criteria is met.
Abstract: A system with an interactive user interface for a plurality of users to author an electronic document simultaneously is described. The system displays visual feedback on the interface to prevent the users from interfering with one another. The system displays data from a remote database linked into the document based on unique identifiers. The data is displayed as an "artifact." The system monitors and tracks each user's access category level, as well as the access category level of each piece of data pulled from the remote database. The system compares a user's category level to the data from the database to make visible only the portions of the document the user has the appropriate access category level to view and/or modify. The portions of the document that have a higher category level than the user will be hidden from the user either in part or completely. Also, there may be an indicator to the user of such redacted or hidden content from the user's viewer.
Abstract: A proxy server in a cloud-based proxy service receives a secure session request from a client device as a result of a Domain Name System (DNS) request for a domain resolving to the proxy server. The proxy server participates in a secure session negotiation with the client device including transmitting a digital certificate to the client device that is bound to domain and multiple other domains. The proxy server receives an encrypted request from the client device for an action to be performed on a resource that is hosted at an origin server corresponding to the domain. The proxy server decrypts the request and participates in a secure session negotiation with the origin server including receiving a digital certificate from the origin server. The proxy server encrypts the decrypted request using the digital certificate from the origin server and transmits the encrypted request to the origin server.
Abstract: Visual and non-visual elements associated with the candidate files are analyzed to determine whether the candidate files are malware. A visual element (e.g., icon) is extracted from the candidate file, and the icon's image is compared to a group of reference images associated with trusted entities. If the icon's image matches a reference image, the candidate file may be malware masquerading as trusted software. The non-visual elements associated with the candidate file are used, in combination with the visual elements, to determine whether the candidate file is malware.
Abstract: Apparatuses, systems and methods for providing a remote user computing system with secure wireless diagnostic and programming access to an IED operatively coupled with electrical substation equipment are disclosed. An exemplary apparatus comprises a portable computer system comprising a processor and one or more non-transitory memory media storing executable instructions and a cellular modem in operative communication with one another. An antenna external to the portable computer system is adapted to be operatively coupled with the cellular modem and physically positionable independently from the portable computer system. A communication interface adapted to establish a physical electronic communication link between the portable computer system and the IED. The portable computer system, the antenna and the communication interface being provided in a human portable kit.
Abstract: A method begins by a processing module applying a share encoding function on data to produce a plurality of encoded shares and generating a plurality of random numbers. The method continues with the processing module obtaining a set of personalized authenticating values regarding user access to the data and generating a plurality of hidden passwords based on the set of personalized authenticating values. The method continues with the processing module generating an encryption key based on a corresponding one of the plurality of hidden passwords and a corresponding one of the plurality of random numbers and encrypting the encoded share utilizing the encryption key to produce an encrypted share for each encoded share of the plurality of encoded shares. The method continues with the processing module facilitating storage of the plurality of random numbers and each of the encrypted shares.
Abstract: A semiconductor device may include: a bus; first and second function modules configured to communicate via the bus; a first encryption module configured to encrypt first data output from the first function module using a first encryption key to generate first encrypted data; and/or a second encryption module configured to decrypt the first encrypted data using the first encryption key, to output the decrypted first data to the second function module, and to encrypt second data output from the second function module using a second encryption key to generate second encrypted data. A semiconductor device may include: a bus; first and second modules configured to communicate via the bus; and/or an encryption module configured to use different encryption policies for first data, which is output from the first module and stored in a memory, and second data, which is output from the second module and stored in the memory.
Abstract: A method, non-transitory computer readable medium and device that assists with scaling infrastructure in a mobile application environment obtaining a number of mobile application installations of a mobile application on a plurality of mobile devices. A number of mobile application installations corresponds with a number of backend enterprise web applications online on one or more web applications servers is determined where the backend enterprise web applications are associated with the mobile application. The number of backend enterprise web applications online on the one or more web application servers is modified when the determining indicates the number of mobile application installations does not correspond with the number of backend enterprise web applications.
Abstract: Systems and methods for protecting memory pages of a computing device using a hypervisor comprise: in response to receiving a hypercall from a trusted program, detecting by the hypervisor a token associated with the trusted program; checking the token associated with the trusted program against a saved token of the hypervisor; in response to detecting that the token associated with the trusted program matches the saved token of the hypervisor, transmitting addresses of a plurality of memory pages from the hypervisor to the trusted program; and performing a checksums verification for data stored in the plurality of memory pages.
Abstract: A server sends information to a client that allows the client to establish a first key at the client. The server then receives a session ID that has been encrypted using the first key. The first key is then established at the server, which can then decrypt the session ID using the first key. After the server validates the session ID, it determines a second key that is different from the first key. The server then receives the session ID encrypted with the second key, and decrypts the session ID encrypted with the second key.
Abstract: A data security method including creating a token-including plaintext by including a predefined token into a plaintext, generating a cyphertext by encrypting the token-including plaintext using format-preserving encryption, generating a decrypted cyphertext by decrypting an input text, determining whether the decrypted cyphertext includes a first predefined token, if the decrypted cyphertext includes the first predefined token, recreating the plaintext by removing the first predefined token from the decrypted cyphertext, and if the decrypted cyphertext does not include the first predefined token, using the input text as the plaintext.
Abstract: A computer-implemented method includes receiving, from a remote communication device and at a server system, information that indicates a unique identifier for a physical item that corresponds to media content, the identifier differing from identifiers for other physical items that correspond to the same content; associating the received information with an account of a first user of a hosted internet service; and subsequently providing, by the hosted internet service, content that matches the content that corresponds to the physical item, based on a determination that the received information authorizes the first user to obtain the content provided by the hosted internet service.
Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer programs for using an implicit certificate are disclosed. In some aspects, a message and an implicit certificate are accessed. The implicit certificate is associated with an entity. A modified message is generated by combining the message with a value based on the implicit certificate. A digital signature can be generated based on the modified message and transmitted to a recipient. In some aspects, a digital signature from an entity and a message to be verified based on the digital signature are accessed. An implicit certificate associated with the entity is accessed. A modified message is generated by combining the message with a value based on the implicit certificate. The message is verified based on the digital signature and the modified message.
Abstract: A method of performing operations by a processor of a computer terminal, includes determining an operation system (OS) speed scaling gain used by the OS to transform mouse movement data, which is received from a mouse device via a device interface circuit, into mouse speed data that controls positioning of a mouse pointer relative to pixel locations on a display device. A computer terminal identifier is generated based on the OS speed scaling gain. A computer identification message containing the computer terminal identifier is communicated through a network interface circuit. Related computer terminals and computer authentication nodes are disclosed.
Abstract: Systems, methods, software, and combinations thereof for evaluating entropy in a cryptography system are described. In some aspects, sample values are produced by an entropy source system. A typicality can be determined for each of the sample values. A grading is determined for preselected distributions based on the typicalities of the sample values. A subset of the preselected distributions are selected based on the gradings. An entropy of the entropy source system is calculated based on the subset of the plurality of distributions.
Abstract: Targeted content may be provided to a designated set of one or more interconnected resources. Programmatic operations are executed using resources that are private to the one or more interconnected devices. The operations, when executed, cause or result in (i) monitoring activities of one or more users of the designated set; (ii) developing profile information of the one or more users, where the profile information is based at least partially on information determined from monitoring activities of the one or more users; (iii) generating, from the profile information, a set of coded data that represent selection criteria; and (iv) communicating the set of coded data to a programmatic source external to the system, where the represented selection criteria enables programmatic selection of content resources from a content library for the system.


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Piping complications and defective systems can plague even well-maintained condominium communities. For buildings over 25 years old, age-related deterioration and corrosion are common enemies of drain, waste and vent (DWV), domestic supply (hot and cold potable water), and hydronic (heating and cooling) piping systems. Both polybutylene and certain yellow brass fitted systems are prone to premature failure, often leading to catastrophic leaks. Unfortunately, these problems can affect all community types, from garden style all the way up to mid- and high-rise properties.
The good news: SageWater's One Call Repipe® process can resolve any type of piping problem in any occupied condominium building—and residents don't have to move out and water is guaranteed on nights and weekends.


Find wonderful things at Detroit Michigan Children's Museums. Children's Museums in Detroit Michigan are wonderful things to do with your child. Detroit Michigan Kid's Museums are excited to get you playing, learning and having fun. Detroit Michigan Children's Museums will captivate & amaze you and the whole family. Detroit Michigan Children's Museums are an excellent example of the great things to discover in Detroit Michigan. "Detroit Michigan" offers a whole bunch of things to discover like exciting activities and cool entertainment that is thrilling in Warren MI, Windsor MI, Sterling Heights MI, Farmington Hills MI and Troy MI.
Detroit Michigan Children's Museums are perfect for a day with your family or friends. If you want a family fun experience, Detroit Michigan Children's Museums may be the great activity you are searching for.
On this page you will find a directory of Detroit Michigan Children's Museum, Detroit Michigan Kid's Museum and Detroit Michigan Learning Centers for Children.


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Robert Moreno, an American citizen living in South America, is shot in the Bahamas by a sniper. The killing was commissioned by the U.S. government, who received a tip-off that Moreno was planning a terrorist attack on a U.S. oil company headquarters. But this intelligence was fatally incorrect: anti-American Moreno ordered a protest at the oil company, not an attack. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are drafted in to investigate. While Sachs traces Moreno's steps in New York, Rhyme travels to the scene of the crime in Nassau, where he finds himself on a dangerous path trailed by the sniper himself. As details of the case start to emerge, the pair discover that not all is what it seemed. Can they achieve justice and escape with their lives intact?


It's Saturday, and I love a good cocktail late in the afternoon. Especially on a warm, sunny day!
Not only does this cocktail look spectacular in the glass, it tastes über yummy. Make a big pitcher of these for your next shin dig, and you'll have people on your front porch all the time!
This was delightful. Crisp, clean and quite refreshing. Perfect late afternoon drink that can easily be consumed anytime of the day!


As always, Claussen's Florist & Greenhouse is open year-round, seven days a week. We offer you a beautiful, warm place to come and enjoy the splendor of the area's largest selection of tropical foliage and flowering houseplants. We have created a rain forest effect in our greenhouse–the perfect solution to chase away a dreary day. You'll find a listing of available plants on our What's in Season page atwww.claussens.com. Our Garden Center page shows our great line of unique pottery. Claussen's has specialized in flowering annuals, perennials, and seasonal flowering plants for over 35 years.


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Representatives urge GAO investigation of SREs
By Erin Voegele | August 26, 2019
A dozen members of Congress, led by Rep. Abby Finkenauer, D-Iowa, sent a letter to U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro Aug. 21 urging the U.S. Government Accountability Office to examine the review and approval of small refinery exemptions (SREs) under the Renewable Fuel Standard, including the U.S. Department of Energy's viability scores for the 40 SREs reviewed to date by the DOE for the 2018 compliance year.
The letter notes that recent litigation in the D.C. Circuit has revealed that the DOE had given a viability score of zero to at least half of the 48 SRE applications field for compliance years 2016 and 2017, meaning that the DOE had no concerns about the refiner's financial viability. The members of Congress cite a July 19 letter Energy Secretary Rick Perry sent to Sen Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in which Perry admitted the EPA granted at least one waiver in conflict with his agency's recommendation. "This raises questions about the review process and what other factors the EPA is considering in approving the waivers," the members of Congress wrote. "A comprehensive review is needed to ensure appropriate oversight going forward as well as ensuring the transparency of EPA's process."
Finkenauer and her collages ask Dodaro to consider seven specific elements the GAO's investigation, including the viability score of each SRE applications submitted for the 2018 compliance year, whether the DOE has made any changes to how it makes SRE recommendations to EPA, what factors besides the DOE's viability score are considered by EPA and whether those factors have changed since the previous administration, and the percentage of SREs since 2011 that received a disqualifying score from the DOE but were ultimately granted. The GAO is also asked to determine how many times the DOE has recommended a partial SRE waiver and how many times the EPA has actually granted such a waiver, whether the EPA or DOE consider the economic viability of the parent refiner company when considering an SRE applications from an individual refinery, and whether the DOE takes renewable identification number (RIN) values into account when assessing SRE applications.
Growth Energy has spoken out in support of Finkenauer's call for a GAO review of SREs. "We applaud Congresswoman Finkenauer and other biofuel champions for standing up against the EPA's abuse of the exemption process to enrich well-connected refiners at the expense of farm communities and rural workers," said Emil Skor, CEO of Growth Energy. "Already, dozens of biofuel plants have closed or cut production, and hundreds of millions of bushels of grain are falling in value, just as farmers face the worst economic conditions in a generation. The EPA needs to account for these lost gallons immediately and start repairing the damage before more rural communities lose hope for a comeback."
In addition to Finkenauer, the letter was also signed by Reps. Collin Peterson, D-Minn.; Rodney Davis, R-Ill.; Roger Marshall, R-Kan.; Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa; Cheri Bustos, D-Ill.; Mike Bost, R-Ill.; Cindy Axne, D-Iowa; Don Bacon, R-Neb.; Dusty Johnson, R-S.D.; Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill,; and Darin LaHood, R-Ill.
A full copy of the letter can be downloaded from Finkenauer's website.


Nigel Holdcroft – a view from Nelson Street: Independents - what is the point?
I have still to be convinced of the relevance or contribution of independents in local government. Elected councillors have in my view two primary duties. The first is to aid ward residents in dealing with specific issues which may arise across a range of council run areas to include housing, planning, education, social care etc. There are many members locally from all parties who fulfil this role conscientiously and effectively, often benefiting for the assistance of more experienced party colleagues. The performance of each councillor relies primarily on their own skill and dedication and the colour rosette they choose to wear is relatively insignificant.
However the second important role is to collectively formulate policy and priorities and to oversee implementation by council officers. It is in the second area that successful local government remains dependent on party involvement.
Each party, whether mainstream or more fringe, offers a clear underlying philosophy on fundamental issues such as regeneration, adult social care, education etc. giving the electorate a meaningful choice. If elected the party group is able to rely on a basic and sufficient ideological cohesion and organisational unity to deliver its core values with responsibility being maintained by the existence of a credible opposition acting as a balancing force.
In Southend we have the unusual concept of a recognised group of independent councillors who cooperate and campaign in a manner similar to the other party groups but who have no shared ideological background, overriding issue or geographical base. This inevitably means that they must concentrate on specific ward sensitive local issues or pursue negative campaigning in that they lack any consensus on the more fundamental challenges facing local government.
They include an unsuccessful Labour candidate and a former Conservative councillor as well as others across the political spectrum. Whilst this is suggested by some as a strength the question remains as to what would happen if they were to hold the balance of power at some stage in the future. Which party administration would they support and how could they agree on the fundamental priorities of the council within their own group, never mind with their new political allies? They are seeking to build what is in all reality a party group without dealing with these fundamental issues.


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Random Musing Before Shabbat-Lekh L'kha 5775 More Nodding Heads, Whistling Airs, and Snickersnees
I'm an admitted Savoyard (in simple terms, a fan of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas.) I have made any number of references to them in my musings over the decades (just as I've referenced other favorites like "Man of La Mancha," and "The Princess Bride," parodists like Tom Lehrer and Allan Sherman, and many more.)
The title of this musing is a reference to the text of "The Criminal Cried" from the Mikado, in which three characters relate a most affecting tale about a non-existent execution. (You can also read some following dialog to place my comments into perspective.)
Some years back when I first mused upon this topic, I noted that I had been stopped dead in my tracks by two peculiar pieces of text. Both are in Chapter 15 of Genesis, in our parasha, Lekh Lekha. G"d again comes to Avram in a vision, telling him to not fear. Avram replies with a lament that as he has no blood heir, and asks who is to reap the promised reward. G"d tells Avram that his own child shall be his heir. Then , in verse 5 we read:
וַיּוֹצֵא אֹתוֹ הַחוּצָה, וַיֹּאמֶר הַבֶּט-נָא הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וּסְפֹר הַכּוֹכָבִים--אִם-תּוּכַל, לִסְפֹּר אֹתָם; וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ, כֹּה יִהְיֶה זַרְעֶךָ
He (G"d) took him (Avram) outside, and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars. All you can count, He (G"d) said to him (Avram") thus shall be your seed."
Let's try those first few words again:
He (G"d) took him (Avram) outside...
G"d did what? Oh wait, it's just a vision. The Torah isn't being anthropomorphic-Avram is, for imagining this in his vision, right? But wait, if G"d implanted the vision, does G"d control the content? Apparently, either G"d or Avram wanted (needed) this conversation to be sort of buddy-buddy. Can you imagine in your mind that you and G"d, in some anthropomorphic form, are standing around inside your house talking, and G"d puts his hand on your shoulder, and escorts you outside and says "Hey, look up and try and count the stars..."
This seems a rather intimate form of vision. Is that a problem? I wonder if it is only from our modern mindset that we find it thus. Our understanding of G"d is, for lack of a better term, more global. G"d is everywhere. G"d is One. So to us, the idea of strolling through the garden with G"d feels odd. Would this have been odd to Avram? Early religious stories abound with direct contact between anthropomorphic gods and human beings. (In our own tradition, we need only look back on Chapter 9, and the whole nefillim thing.)
This desire to personalize G"d, to anthropomorphize G"d, to imagine person to person contact and intimacy with G"d is all pervasive. Is that a possible explanation for the success of Christianity? For Jews, intimate contact between humans and an anthropomorphic G"d are not the norm, yet such stories still pervade our literature and sacred texts. A pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire, and G"d's heiny are as close as we ever really get in "real life."
Although Christianity maintains the ethereal, incorporeal G"d, it throws in a little piece of corporeal G"d. Do people really find that easier to wrap their heads around than an unknowable, undefinable G"d? As a society, we seem to like the idea of George Burns, Morgan Freeman, or Alanis Morrisette as G"d incarnate. I've heard and read Jews complain that these films all cater to the Christian majority and thus present a view of G"d inconsistent with Jewish thought. Reading in this parasha that G"d took Abe outside for a chat makes me question that. (G"d apparently walked with Noah, too. Later we get to Abraham's visitors. Angels or G"d? It's not entirely clear. With whom did Yaakov wrestle? But Moses, our great Moses, only gets to see G"d's ass? Something's off here.)
The text proceeds apace on to my next puzzling piece. G"d tells Avram that his descendants shall be as numerous as the uncountable stars. G"d tells Avram that this is the land he is giving them for an inheritance. Avram, still somewhat unconvinced, asks how he shall know that this honor shall be his. G"d's somewhat odd response is to ask Avram to offer up a cow, goat, sheep, dove and a baby bird - which Avram does. Then, as the sun begins to set, Avram falls into a deep sleep, and feels a deep dread. (So is this real dread, or dream dread?) Then G"d foretells the bad news that his descendants shall be strangers in a strange land, enslaved and oppressed for 400 years, but that G"d will set them free and give them wealth.
Supposedly (though not obviously based on the text) still in this deep sleep, Avram then sees, when the sun has set, a smoking oven, and a flaming torch which passed between "those pieces."
What pieces? What is all this? What is the symbology?
But wait -this is all a Bob Newhart show ending, isn't it? It was all a dream. Even the dream was a dream within a dream or vision. That explains it all, right? Nothing to worry about here. People just sometimes envision strange things in their visions, including dreams with even strangers things in them. Right?
However, one can just as easily read this text as if it is describing actual events as they occurred, and not as part of some dream. which it is we cannot be sure. Does it make a difference? Weirdness in dreams is one thing, but weirdness in reality is another entirely. Weirdness in dreams can be attributed to the subtle influences of the Deity, but they do not require the Deity to break the laws of physics. Weirdness in reality requires the Deity to break the physical laws of the Universe. Just as we ask "can G"d create a rock too heavy for even G"d to lift?" we can also ask: can G"d create a universe with physical laws that even G"d has to obey? (Or can G"d create a universe with physical laws that only G"d does not have to obey?" However, if G"d created a loophole for G"d, it is possible for G"d's creations - i.e. us - to find and exploit that loophole? Is that the explanation for the Babel story and the confounding of languages? Were we close to finding a loophole?)
Dreams figure so prominently in religious literature because they help avoid that thorny problem of omnipotence versus self-limiting acts of creation.
Getting back to our text, I still wonder-why is all this here? Why do we need this level of detail about Avram's vision, and of the dream within that vision? The text could just say "G"d told Avram 'don't be afraid. You shall be rewarded. Though childless now, you will have an heir, and the inheritance of your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. So trust me.' "
We don't need all this corroborative fiddlestick (thanks you, W.S. Gilbert.) Yet the story is embellished with snickersnees.(a large, sword-styled knife-for you non Savoyard types, let's just say "embellishments.") The point, as it is made in G&S's "The Mikado," is that things are bad enough, they don't need any embellishing of what is already a big lie. Just tell the lie simply, and perhaps it will be more believable. (Oh what a tangled web we weave, and all that.)
Now, I'm not implying that the Torah is telling a lie. Yet I am wondering why, like so many other places in the Torah, we have details that don't seem critical to the story. Now, for lots of those, we don't have a problem-our sages have figured out the deeper, hidden meanings. Why, our sages explain the whole "count the stars" thing, from their point of view, as not literally meaning that Avram should count the stars, but that the stars represent astrological predictions which Avram (and thus all Jews) should not believe in. That is to say, though the stars may have foretold that Avram was to remain childless, he shouldn't put his trust in the astrology.
OK, I sort of get that. But the sages didn't seem to put much time into explaining either the "He took him outside..." or the smoking oven and flaming torch vision. Guess it baffled them as well. Asking "what's bothering Rashi" is only a valuable exercise insofar as Rashi was willing to offer explanations for what was bothering him. How many oddities in the text did Rashi and so many other sages and commentators ignore, simply because they didn't really have a good explanation? I know I've run into a fairly sizable number of puzzling pieces of Torah text that, at least as far as I have been able to discover, no rabbi has tackled. Maybe it's just rabbinic tzimtzum leaving behind puzzles for future generations to solve. That would be the charitable explanation. I'm generally not inclined to be so charitable to the rabbis of the Talmud and other Jewish texts. My bet is still on "I'm not touching that one with a ten foot pole, because I have no clue how to explain it, even making esoteric connections."
I'm still not anywhere near as learned as I'd like to be. I've done some digging on this since I first wrote this musing years ago, and still no luck. Nevertheless, I'm sure if I dig deeper, I'll find some rabbi's explanation somewhere for both of those. Not sure I'd buy them, however. Just as I was years ago, I'm still stuck with the "what does this add to the story?" question. Then, as now, so are you.
Some other musings on this parasha:
Lekh L'kha 5774 - Theistic Singularity: Revisiting the Intellectual Ekhad
Lekh Lekha 5773 - The Journey Continues
Lekh Lekha 5772 - Out of Context
Lekh Lekha 5771 (5765, 5760) Things Are Seldom What They Seem An Excerpt from the "Journal of Lot"
Lekh Lkha 5770 - Revisiting the Ten Percent Solution
Lekh L'kha 5769 - Of Nodding Heads, Whistling Airs, and Snickersnees
Lekh Lekha 5768 - The Covenant That (Almost) Wasn't - Excerpts from the Diary of Terakh
Lekh Lekha 5767-Penile Pilpul
Lekh Lekha 5766-The Other Siders
Lekh Lekha 5765 - Redux 5760
Lekh Lekha 5764-Ma'aseir Mikol-The Ten Percent Solution
Lekh Lekha 5763-No Explanations
Lekh Lekha 5761-The Intellectual Echad
Lekh L'kha 5758-Little White Lies
Random Musing Before Shabbat–Noakh 5775–To Make A Name For Ourselves (Revisited)
I first wrote the original version of this musing in 2001, just weeks after the events of September 11. I've interspersed some new thoughts and comments, and edited some comments, even back-tracked on a few, but the basic ideas of the original musing are still there. I would be surprised (and perhaps concerned) if my feelings about some of the questions I raise weren't different now.
Everyone is tippy-toeing around it, but there it is, staring us in the face. We're afraid to say anything lest we be mistaken for certain fundamentalist Christian ministers who have no shame in utilizing a horrid tragedy to bolster their own agendas. And so we look over it, we do not press it (with apologies to Sir W.S. Gilbert. As Tom Lehrer would say, the rest of you can look that up when you get home.) However, the comparison is unavoidable.
Tower of Babel. World Trade Center. Tower of Babel. World Trade Center.
Don't go there, everyone says. And they don't mean actually, physically going there. There's no real comparison between midgal Bavel and the WTC, right?
Well, had ya goin' there, didn't I? I don't think the story of the Tower of Babel and what happened on September 11, 2001 to the twin towers of the World Trade Center have any connection whatsoever that would in any way appeal to my sense of decency, dignity and my understanding of who and what is G"d, and what is our relationship to G"d. Those ministers preaching that the destruction of the towers was Divine retribution for abortion, homosexuality, pornography and anything else on their radar screens are about as far off base and they can be.
At midgal Bavel, G"d perhaps feared that humans were striving to be G"d's equal, building a tower to come up and challenge G"d. And so G"d came down and confounded human speech. (And boy, is it ever still confounded. But a digression-imagine, for example, if we all still spoke the same language, and that was the language of the Torah? Then there wouldn't be much room for the subtleties of interpretation caused by translation. And then where would we be? Interesting question. Are we better off being a Disney-fied "small world?" Send me your answers!)
Note, however, that G"d did absolutely nothing to the tower! Its one of those popular Bible misconceptions. G"d did not destroy the tower or send it crashing to the ground. No, G"d simply confounded the speech of the humans and scattered them around the earth. The tower, perhaps, was just abandoned and never finished and perhaps decayed on its own. But G"d took no direct action against the tower. So the comparison to the WTC is based on the erroneous idea that G"d also struck down midgal Bavel. Didn't happen.
The rabbis generally maintain that the primary sin of those who built migdal Bavel and the reason G"d confounded the speech of humanity was because by all remaining in one place they were ignoring G"d' instruction to spread over the earth. Modern Jewish scholarship tends to dispute with the rabbis (surprise, surprise) considering it quite a stretch to consider what was essentially a Divine blessing given to humankind (to become numerous and spread over the earth) to be a Divine commandment. In our own time, I think it's just as much of a stretch to read into G"d's blessings to humanity, and to our patriarchs, commandments that encourage really poor and questionable family planning.
Was the tower built simply as a matter of human hubris? Because it could be built? There may have been a very pragmatic reason for building a tall tower. Could it have been a place to find shelter from a future earth-devastating flood? Did humans distrust the covenant that the rainbow represented? (Josephus believed the tower to be an attempt to rise above the level of another flood, and he and other commentators point to the use of bitumen which could be a waterproofing technique.)
It should be noted that, offering some evidence that the story of migdal Bavel is an etiology with origins long pre-dating the Torah, there is a Sumerian story in which the god Enki also confounds human speech.
However, (and you knew that had to be coming, didn't you?) let us examine this story and terms of what is now happening. One lesson it teaches us is that while working together to accomplish a task might isn't always necessarily a good thing. That some in our midst protest the military actions we are taking in response to September 11, that some even see the acts as Divine retribution, that we don't all agree on how we see things even in the light of September 11 is a good thing. It puts a positive frame around G"d confounding human language. We can see differences in language as also being metaphor for differences in viewpoints, desires, goals, interpretations, etc. If we work together too much, we might lose sight of who we are, and try to become gods, and assume that we can take any action we want at any time-that we are invincible, omnipotent, etc. We must value our differences, value the confounding.
And, to flip things around, it also gives us a goal. Perhaps the road to Moshiach or the messianic age is to eventually find a way, despite the confounding of our language and our being scattered all over the earth, to find our way back to a common language, and, metaphorically, back to Gan Eden and our innocence.
The story should also be a lesson to us to think about our relationship to our world and to Gd. Why did we build the WTC (or the Burj Khalifa, the Sears/Willis tower, or the Saturn V booster, or send humans to the moon, or the new One World Trade Center, or, well, you get the drift...?) Is it all about office space, efficient use of land on a crowded island? Or is there still a bit of hubris in it? To someone living in poverty in a 3rd world country, the WTC could be a sign of promise and hope, but it could also look like America giving the finger to the rest of the world, couldn't it? Certainly, the new One WTC structure is, almost intentionally, giving the finger to the terrorists. It certainly wasn't a necessary building in terms of NYC real estate needs. One WTC is a statement, and a prideful one at that. Not sure there's any getting around that. I'm not saying it shouldn't have been built (though, for me, the memorial itself is far more important than a replacement tall building) but in light of the growing discomfort with economic disparity in this country, what does One WTC symbolize, and whose interests does it truly represent? None of this is to suggest that anything that happened on September 11th was in any way justified. I was angry and sickened, and wanted to see justice done to the perpetrators and their supporters. The frontier justice part of me enjoyed our strong response. But the Jew in me, the lover of Torah, wants us to ask, when we look at the empty spaces where the towers stood, when we look at the destroyed walls of the Pentagon, what else we might be able to learn from this beside the obvious lesson to be better prepared to deal with terrorism?
Looking back at these thoughts 13 years later, knowing how we were dragged into a war under false pretenses, how we hunted down and killed the mastermind behind the plot yet now face newer and even stronger and scarier threats, how we all too willingly sacrificed our privacy and freedoms in the name of security causes me to want us to look even harder as our stories from the past. G"d did not knock down the original WTC towers anymore than G"d knocked down the tower of Babel. Humans were responsible for the construction and destruction of both. Think about that for a second.
Look at what our ancestors said. "Come, let us build a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves.." )(Gen. 11:4) The tragedy that struck them notwithstanding, are we, too, building towers to the sky, sending rockets into space, just "to make a name for ourselves" ? Are Osama bin Laden and his ilk (and now ISIS/ISIL) doing what they are doing "to make a name for themselves" despite their protestations of religious, ethical and moral underpinnings? (And those are underpinnings, I believe, without a foundation, and I hope they crumble. I've read their holy Quran, and I'm hard pressed to find support in it for their actions.)
I support space research and sending man into space, simply for the sake of exploration, if nothing else. And surely so we can learn, explore, maybe meet other life forms, etc. I support engineers and architects finding clever and better ways to use technology, allowing them to build tall towers into the sky, so that people might live and work in them, and that we might sustain our world. (For I am not so naive as to believe that we could any longer sustain our world in a simple agrarian manner.) I, as an inconsistent pacifist, with great reluctance, can support building mighty structures to house the military that are sometimes needed to defend freedom and liberty. And I, with a great deal of reservation and apprehension, might support the actions that are sometimes necessary to insure that freedom. (The shadow of the Shoah lingers under the surface, challenging my pacifist tendencies.) All these and more, I support. But I would support none of these that were being done just to "make a name for ourselves." There is a part of me that, as a U.S. citizen, is proud of the rebuilt One WTC. I'm equally proud that, as a U.S. citizen, I can also express my reservations about whether we really needed to build One WTC. Symbols have their place, but I wonder how the millions spent building One WTC might have gone to other good and worthy projects – perhaps affordable housing to help reverse the "tale of two cities" that NYC's Mayor De Blasio says, rightly, that it has become. Is One WTC really just a symbol of politics and corporate hubris? I'm not sure.
It may or may not have been their motivation, nevertheless, we must not make the mistake of having the hubris that might have motivated those who built midgal Bavel. Let us be content to be the humans we are, and let G"d be what G"d will be.
Noakh 5774 - Let's Rebuild That Tower
Noakh 5773 - Nothing New
Noakh 5772 - The Long Haul
Noakh 5771 - Redux 5765 - A P'shat in the Dark
Noakh 5770 - Don't Ham It Up
Noah 5768 - Redux 5761 - Getting Noticed
Noakh 5766-What A Nimrod! (Revised)
Noakh 5765-A Pshat In The Dark
Noach 5764-Finding My Rainbow
Noach 5763-Striving to be Human
Noach 5762-To Make a Name for Ourselves
Noach 5761-Getting Noticed
Noach 5760-What a Nimrod!
Random Musing Before Shabbat–B'reisheet 5775–One Favorite Things (not a typo!)
A few days ago on Facebook, a friend posted a request for people to list their favorite verses of Torah. It generated many interesting (and many predictable) responses. (The author of the post compiled the answers on Sefaria and you can find them here. http://www.sefaria.org/sheets/5156?embed=1)
I'm not fond of being asked to name a favorite anything. (The title of this musing is NOT a typo. Read on.)I like many things, even, and especially, in the same genre.(As Oscar Hammerstein II put it, "these are a FEW of my favorite things." He understood.) Like many things in my life, the things I like, and the order/priority of my liking them can and does change regularly. Some might accuse me of being disloyal. If you won't pick one, pick a few, and stick with them.Sorry, I can't (and won't) do that. Others argue that if I truly liked something, or it made a significant enough impact on me, I would always remember it and it would always appear in my list of favorites. Not so. Our minds don't work like that. We cannot call up data as directly as we can from a computer's digital memory. Our memories are more like a web, with all sorts of factors influencing which paths our thoughts travel collecting the data of memories. Internal and external factors can greatly influence how, on any given day, at any given moment, I construct a list of favorite things in any topic.
Luckily for me, I happened upon the thread on Facebook long after others had posted. Some of them posted verses that I would consider among my favorites, and might have posted myself. I decided to behave and not be my usual gadfly self, protesting at being asked to list one favorite. I just listed one. It is, indeed, one of my favorites, and here was the perfect opportunity to share it. In point of fact, there were several occasions over the past few weeks when I referred to this verse – with adults and with youth. I've even written about this verse before, back in my 5761 musing.I wrote then:
How ripe Bereshit is.
Simple but powerful messages.
G"d creates. G"d punishes. G"d saves. Failure to obey has a price. Humans can overcome and survive tragedies. Humans can and will kill each other. One day in seven is set aside to honor the one who created us.
But there is for me, no more powerful statement in all of Bereshit than this:
Even after the pain and torture of having one son murder another, Chava was willing to have the faith to have another child.
That simple statement of faith means more to me than almost any other I know of. It is a lesson for all of us.
Here is the verse to which I am referring:
וַיֵּדַע אָדָם עוֹד אֶת־אִשְׁתּוֹ וַתֵּלֶד בֵּן וַתִּקְרָא אֶת־שְׁמוֹ שֵׁת כִּי שָׁת־לִי אֱלֹהִים זֶרַע אַחֵר תַּחַת הֶבֶל כִּי הֲרָגוֹ קָֽיִן
Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and she called his name Seth, because
El-him gave me another seed in place of Abel, because Cain slew him.
We're told, a few verses later, that Adam later had other sons and daughters, but they are not named. (There's an opportunity here for a fascinating digression. The Torah is replete with geneaologies, including Cain's. Why does the Torah only mention Cain, Abel, and Seth? Another story to write some day? Adam's other children. Rife with possibilities and opportunities for some modern midrash. If I'd thought about it sooner, I might have suggested we welcome Adam and Chava's other children in our Sukkot as ushpizin! Next year I must remind myself to do just that. For now, we'll leave this loose thread un-pulled, lest this whole musing unravel.)
(Wait a minute. I can't do that. I have to stop and imagine for a minute just how Adam and Chava's other children and their descendants might feel at being left out of the Torah. A chopped liver reference comes to mind.
There is a possible explanation in verse that follows 4:25.
וּלְשֵׁת גַּם־הוּא יֻֽלַּד־בֵּן וַיִּקְרָא אֶת־שְׁמוֹ אֱנוֹשׁ אָז הוּחַל לִקְרֹא בְּשֵׁם יְהוָֹֽה
and to Seth was also born a son, and he called his name Enosh; It was then that he began to call out in the name of Ad"nai.
It was with Enosh's generation that worship of Ad"nai began. Adam and Chava's other children don't matter because they were not among those who did so. At least, that's one possibility.
But wait! Cain gets a genealogy. He may be cursed, but his line is reported in 4:17-24, just preceding our verses.
The Hebrew of verse 26 is tricky as well. Most translations try to gloss over the Hebrew by translating a verb that is 3rd person masculine singular (i.e., he, or it) as a collective or plural. The implication is that this is the time when all people began to worship G"d. The Hebrew doesn't quite say that, at least not plainly. Me, I'm all in favor of following the principle of lectio difficilior potior – the more difficult reading is stronger (i.e. preferred.) Thus I've left the translation as "he began to…" He could refer to Enosh, but one could also substitute "it" giving the words a potentially more universal feeling – as in "It was then that it was begun to call out in the name of G"d." That leaves a little mystery.
Perhaps we avoid the issue of a genealogy of Adam and Chava's other children to help us avoid other obvious glaring questions like "where did Cain's wife come from?" The rabbis answer this by saying Cain had a twin sister and Abel had two twin sisters. Some modern scholars suggest that the "author" of the Torah wasn't concerned with other "people" that may have already been around when G"d created Adam and Chava. The Torah never specifically states that G"d only created Adam and Chava. This is the creation story of the Israelite community, and only concerned itself with that particular narrative and the people that mattered to it. That's also another possible explanation for why there are no genealogies for Adam and Chava's other children. They just weren't a part of "our" story. This can also be coupled with the argument made by some that Torah does not specifically state that G"d covenanted only with the Abraham and thus the Israelites. Other covenants with other peoples remain a possibility. They are just outside the scope of Torah. This argument is further bolstered by the apparent insertion of a more universalistic creation narrative at the beginning of the Torah before the Adam/Chava creation narrative. Few scholars doubt the Adam/Chava story is the older of the two. Scholars believe the opening creation story was added later. Some are bold enough to suggest that Gen 1:1-2:3a was potentially added during Babylonian exile. I'm not sure I agree, but it is a thought-provoking idea.
So let's add to our list of missing voices in the Torah those of the other children of Adam and Chava. Time to move on.
Back to Adam and Chava's choice (hmmm-was it a choice for both of them?) to have another child after Cain slew Abel. This takes tremendous courage. It's easy to write this off as simply normative in ancient times. (It is still true today among more traditional Jews. Having children is a mitzvah, not to be taken lightly. ) After all, children died all the time. (Wait a minute – if indeed Adam and Chava were the only people on earth, how would they know this? Then again, all they knew as p'ru u'vru.) However, this was a murder. Their child took the life of their other child. The grief must have been unbearable. Yet they soldiered on.
There are many possible explanations for their choice, some of them quite mundane and pedestrian . The Pollyanna in me wants to hold on to the more beautiful and hopeful understanding of the choice that Adam (and Chava?) made. Adam and Chava could have decided to not have any more children. If their children were capable of such horrible things, why bring more into the world? is this only a modern sensibility? I'm not sure.
This one verse has provided more than ample fodder upon which I can muse. The same could be said about any number of verses in the Torah. I have a whole year of them to which I shall look forward. I can't wait to get started.
B'reisheet 5774 - Toldot Adrian
B'reishit 5773 - Mixing Metaphors
B'reishit 5772 - The Unified Field Theorem of the Twelve Steps
B'reishit 5771 - B'reishit Bara Anashim
B'reishit 5770 - One G"d, But Two Trees?
B'reishit 5769 - Do Fences Really Make Good Neighbors
B'reishit 5767-Many Beginnings
Bereshit 5766-Kol D'mei Akhikha
Bereshit 5765 (5760)-Failing to Understand-A Learning Experience
Bereshit 5764-Gd's Regrets
Bereshit 5762--The Essential Ingredient
Bereshit 5763--Striving to be Human
Bereshit 5761--Chava's Faith
Bereshit 5760-Failing to Understand
Random Musing Before Shabbat–Hol HaMoeid Sukkot 5775–Gog Me With a Spoon
Torah, indeed all of the Tanakh, is replete with scenarios in which everybody gets the bad end of the deal. The Israelites get thrown out of their land for their insolent ways and their sins against G"d. The enemies of Israel (and thus the enemies of G"d?) get slaughtered for having the audacity to attack G"d's chosen people and favorite land, even though their attack was part of G"d's punishment of Israel..
Or,worse yet, G"d causes a people to attack Israel, for the sole purpose of wiping that people utterly, They are evil for attacking G"d's people, but it was G"d who caused them to attack! What at Catch-22.
Gog and Magog. Pawns in G"d's plan, to be utterly wiped out for daring to try and destroy G"d's chosen people. Such a lovely haftarah we read.
To top it off, all of it is for really questionable reasons. Maybe G"d has failed to read Qoholet, for G"d is looking pretty vain.
"Must punish My people for profaning my name and failing to heed my commandments." "Makes Me look bad to the rest of the world if I don't punish them, and makes me look weak to My own people." "Must punish the people who dare to attack and threaten My people, or it will make Me look bad to the rest of the world (and to My own people? But wait, isn't this a logistical inconsistency?)" "Hmmm. Maybe I should make these people attack my people, and then wipe them out as an example to others. What a great idea!"
Seems G"d wants to have the cake and eat it too. Well, isn't this something G"d should be able to do? Let's not go there today.
G"d, apparently, has not heard of or learned about the model of "positive discipline." G"d, it seems, is into punishing everybody, and then prone to bouts of "this hurts me more than it hurts you" and Divine "guilt." G"d is not above laying waste to a people just to make a point. Sigh.
You, Master of the Universe, set up the system. You set the bar impossibly high with the certain knowledge that your creations would consistently fail in reaching it. What a Sisyphean universe You've given us.
You created all mankind, yet You fail to learn from the stories of Yitzchak, Esav and Yaakov, and Yaakov and his own sons, and You show favoritism upon only one people? You treat those favored people like crap anyway, because they are constantly failing to live up to Your standard.
Let me ask you a question, G"d. Why didn't you send us a warrior messiah? Do You like inflicting punishment upon us, Your chosen people, and upon the other nations who dare challenge us? There are times when You truly appear sick, twisted, and sadistic. Agreed, there are times when You appear loving, though You must admit that many of those times the loving is a promise for the future rather than a present reality.
My idea of love, G"d, is not You beating our enemies up (or beating us up for that matter.) The classic Jewish apologetics speak of a covenantal love. They teach us that G"d's love appears in the love that we show for each other, and for G"d. It appears in our just deeds, our love and caring for others. This the Jewish answer to Christians who ignorantly describe their religion as being about the G"d of Love" whereas Judaism is about the "G"d of Law."
I'm not tempted by the fact the Christianity claims to be all about a "G"d of Love." I'm quite happy being Jewish. However, I just don't think we've done well in explaining how G"d continues to show G"d's Love for us. We tend to rely on historical examples, most especially the Exodus.
Miracles abound. I don't doubt that. I experience them every day when I allow myself to sense, experience, and do love, blessing, loving kindness, justice, compassion, and so much more. These are, surely, examples of G"d 's love.
The Judaism of my understanding teaches me to show my love for G"d in all that I do. I show it in how I act and behave and think and do. In these acts, I should sense G"d's love for me. It's not that simple. Judaism doesn't offer the simple faith of "Jesus loves me this I know, 'cause the Bible tells me so." That's too simple, too easy for me. It makes me want to shout "where's the beef?" As a Jew I am taught to respect the Torah, but also to question it.
That's what I'm doing now. I'm showing my love for G"d by questioning G"d. Maybe, just ,maybe, it might be enough for me to know that G"d's love for me is expressed in the mere fact that I can, that I am practically expected, to question G"d. What greater expression of love could there be?
So this Shabbat, I'm gonna show my deep and abiding love for G"d by doing the thing I sometimes think I do best – asking questions of G"d, questioning G"d's actions as told to us through our sacred texts, and as experienced through our own history. Answers may come…or not. It's the questioning that matters.
Ad*nai loves me, this I question,
'cause the Torah (gives me that impression? gives me indigestion? makes that concession? tells of our freedom from oppression? is our prized possession?
Shabbat Shalom and Moadim L'Simkha,
Hol HaMoeid Sukkot 5774 - Godot is Waiting for the Bald Soprano at the Zoo
Sukkot III 5772 - Fragility
Sukkot I 5770 - Fire and Rain
Sukkot 5767-Precious Congealed Light - Or Y'kator V'kipa'on
Sukkot 5764--Bayom Hazeh
Sukkot 5763--Sukkot Time Travel
Random Musing Before Shabbat–Yom Kippur 5775-Afflicted
G"d certainly has a sense of humor. I wake up this morning, ready for Yom Kippur tonight, the day on which I am to afflict myself – and it seems G"d has already chosen to afflict me, no help needed on my part. At school we had our regular all grades RELISH (Ruakh L'Shabbat) program of which I am the musical centerpiece. Guess what – I have been afflicted with a cold, and my voice is pretty much shot and unusable. Gee, thanks, G"d. I manage to force my voice through the 40 minute program (of which 30 minutes is singing.) I think I managed to afflict all with my raspy voice! And I still had to get through the remainder of this half day of school, which I somehow manage, without completely losing my voice.
Thankfully this year, at least, I am directing a HHDays choir for Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur morning services. so I won't need my voice to be in shape for singing. But for Ne'ilah I am leading a family service, and the hours of self-imposed affliction from the start of Yom Kippur until then aren't going to help much healing my voice.
In addition, G"d has afflicted me (or perhaps, subconsciously, I have afflicted myself) with a severe case of writer's block. I've made any number of attempts to start and finish this musing, and this is pretty much the best I've been able write. Pretty lame. All of you are going to suffer through enough self-affliction in the next day that you don't need any extra from me, so I'll spare any further attempt to write anything coherent, and offer up links to previous Yom Kippur musings.
I wish you all a tzom kal and g'mar chatimah tovah.
Shabbat of Shabbats Shalom,
Yom Kippur 5774 - Blanket Apologies II
Yom Kippur 5772 - Al Khet Shekhetanu
Yom Kippur 5765 - Blanket apologies
Random Musing Before Shabbat-Lekh L'kha 5775 More ...
Random Musing Before Shabbat–Noakh 5775–To Make A ...
Random Musing Before Shabbat–B'reisheet 5775–One F...
Random Musing Before Shabbat–Hol HaMoeid Sukkot 57...
Random Musing Before Shabbat–Yom Kippur 5775-Affli...


Many of the cool things you can do with your TiVo depend on what software version is running. This simple recipe lets you determine the version.
Press the TiVo button on your remote.
Scroll down to Messages & Setup and press the Select button.
Scroll down to System Information and press the Select button.
Look for the line that starts with System Information. You should see something like 3.0-01-1-010. The first two numbers (3.0 in this example) are usually all that you'll need to know.


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(-) Benjamin Franklin Cooling (1)
(-) Fred Schultz (1)
(-) Lennarth Peterson (1)
(-) Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya Foreword by Raymond A Spruance (1)
Spencer C Tucker (2)
Edward J Marolda and Robert J Schneller Jr (1)
James Webb (1)
USS Olympia
Herald of Empire
By Benjamin Franklin Cooling
The USS Olympia is the oldest extant steel-hulled warship in the world. Constructed as part of a congressionally mandated program to build a modern fleet prior to the turn of the 19th century, she became famous as Adm. George Dewey's flagship at the Battle of Manila Bay. Today she is part of a naval shrine at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia ...
Rigging Period Ship Models
A Step-by-Step Guide to the Intracacies of Square-Rig
By Lennarth Peterson
The rigging of period ship models is arguably the most complex and daunting task for the modeler. An eighteenth-century man-of-war boasted mile upon mile of rigging, over 1,000 blocks, and acres of canvas. To reduce the rigging in scale and yet retain an accurate representation is a formidable undertaking. After studying numerous eighteenth-century museum models, the author has drawn some ...
By Fred Schultz
An anthology of writings by those who participated in historic events, and those who reported on them, profiles undersea explorers and navy veterans, and addresses the importance of naval history to historians and journalists.
The Battle That Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story
By Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya; Foreword by Raymond A. Spruance
This landmark study was first published in English by the Naval Institute in 1955 and was added to the Classics of Naval Literature series in 1992. Widely acknowledged for its valuable Japanese insights into the battle that turned that tide of war in the Pacific, the book has made a great impact on American readers over the years. Two Japanese ...


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Home // Blog // What is an Aircraft Airspeed Indicator?
What is an Aircraft Airspeed Indicator?
Airspeed provides critical information to the aircrew about aircraft safety conditions during flight. Aircraft are expected to maintain level flight without exceeding certain speeds or flying under the standard limit. If the aircraft is going too slow, the aircraft may stall. Alternatively, if the aircraft is going too fast, the pilot risks structural failure. As such, an aircraft airspeed indicator is an integral part of the aviation industry. In this blog, we will cover the inner-workings of an aircraft airspeed indicator and its importance.
An airspeed indicator (ASI) is a differential pressure gauge that measures the dynamic pressure of the air through which an aircraft is flying. Typically expressed in knots (kn), this unit is the standard promoted by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Moreover, an ASI's display consists of a single needle that sweeps across a dial, starting with 0 at the 12 o'clock position. In order for an ASI to measure dynamic pressure, it must measure static air as well. Through the use of a pitot tube and static ports located on various parts of the aircraft, this pressure data can be acquired.
As an aircraft moves through the air, an airstream flows into the pitot tube, increasing the dynamic pressure. This movement is generally recognized as the ram air effect. Prior to taking off, an aircraft sits on the runway and its ram pressure is measured as a static element. However, once the aircraft is in motion, the ASI reflects the difference between the static pressure measured by the static ports on the fuselage and the ram pressure collected from the pitot tube on the wing or nose. The air from the pitot tube is delivered into a diaphragm inside the ASI that is surrounded by lower pressure air from the static port. Mechanical linkages between the diaphragm and ASI translate this movement into data displayed by radial motion of the ASI needle.
ASIs belong to a system of instruments recognized as the aviation "six pack" that include an attitude indicator, altimeter, turn coordinator, heading coordinator, vertical speed indicator, and of course, an airspeed indicator. The airspeed indicator, however, is unique in that its display features brightly colored arcs on the dial to indicate various airspeed ranges. A white arc indicates the range wherein the flaps on an aircraft should operate. Generally, this arc indicates the limits for landings and departures. A green arc shows the range for normal operating speed, and the upper limit of this range is the maximum cruising speed for an aircraft. A yellow arc should only be reached during optimal flying conditions and is recognized as a caution range. Lastly, a red arc is a range that should never be reached as this may lead to structural damage to the aircraft.
There are two types of ASIs popularly used for aircraft. The first is a steam gauge indicator which is the most commonly used and has been described above. The second type is a glass panel, or Electronic Flight Display (EFD), which is a digital display that compartmentalizes all the functions of the steam gauge onto one compact screen. The EFD displays airspeed in a vertical box called the airspeed tape which is situated to the left of the attitude indicator. Its compact design only allows for part of the numbers to be displayed, but has an arrow that indicates the current airspeed of the aircraft. Moreover, as previously discussed, the colors and their indications remain the same for both airspeed indicators.
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DNA from 4,500-year-old Ethiopian reveals surprise about ancestry of Africans
Mota cave in Ethiopia, where researchers found the body of a 4,500-year-old man whose DNA was still preserved.
(Kathryn and John Arthur)
By Karen KaplanScience and Medicine Editor
DNA from a man who lived in Ethiopia about 4,500 years ago is prompting scientists to rethink the history of human migration in Africa.
Until now, the conventional wisdom had been that the first groups of modern humans left Africa roughly 70,000 years ago, stopping in the Middle East en route to Europe, Asia and beyond. Then about 3,000 years ago, a group of farmers from the Middle East and present-day Turkey came back to the Horn of Africa (probably bringing crops like wheat, barley and lentils with them).
Population geneticists pieced this story together by comparing the DNA of distinct groups of people alive today. Since humans emerged in Africa, DNA from an ancient Africa could provide a valuable genetic baseline that would make it easier for scientists to track genome changes over time.
See the most-read Science stories this hour >>
Unfortunately, such DNA has been hard to come by. DNA isn't built to last for thousands of years. The samples of ancient DNA that have been sequenced to date were extracted from bodies in Europe and Asia that were naturally refrigerated in cooler climates.
That's what makes the Ethiopian man so special. His body was found face-down in Mota cave, which is situated in the highlands in the southern part of the country. The cool, dry conditions in the cave preserved his DNA, and scientists extracted a sample from the petrous bone at the base of his skull. The resulting sequence is the first nuclear genome from an ancient African, according to a report published Thursday in the journal Science.
Radiocarbon dating revealed that the bone was 4,500 years old. That meant Mota (as the researchers called him) lived before Eurasians returned to the African continent.
Consistent with that timeline, Mota did not have any of the genetic variants for light-colored eyes or skin that evolved in the populations that left Africa. Nor did he have variants that arose in Eurasian farmers that allowed them to digest milk as adults.
Mota did have three variants that are known to help modern-day Ethiopians live in high altitudes. (The present-day town of Mota lies more than 8,100 feet above sea level.)
When the researchers compared Mota's genome to those of contemporary humans, the closest match was with the Ari people of southern Ethiopia.
With this information, the research team was able to investigate the mysterious group of Eurasians that came to Africa 3,000 years ago. They created a model that assumed the Ari genome was a mixture of DNA from Mota and an unknown population from west Eurasia. Then they "plugged in" DNA from several candidate populations to see if they could get a combination that looked like Ari DNA.
NEWSLETTER: Get the day's top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>
Two results stood out from the rest. One was for modern-day Sardinians, who are known to be the closest living relatives to the earliest farmers. The other was for members of the so-called LBK culture in Germany, early farmers who lived about 7,000 years ago.
If the Eurasian settlers who arrived in Africa 3,000 years ago were indeed descendants of the LBK farmers, then the story of their migration through Africa needs to be revised, the researchers wrote.
By comparing the LBK genome with DNA from Africans alive today, the scientists calculated that these ancient farmers may have made up 25% or more of the population in the Horn of Africa during the migration years. All of those migrants ultimately pushed farther into Africa than previously thought, they determined.
African populations from the western and southern tips of the continent got at least 5% of their DNA from these Eurasian migrants, according to the study. Some groups from Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea can trace more than 30% of their DNA to these migrants.
"The ability to sequence ancient genomes has revolutionized our understanding of human evolution," wrote the research team, which was led by Marcos Gallego Llorente of the University of Cambridge and Eppie Ruth Jones of Trinity College Dublin. They said they are eager to find "even older African genomes" that may make the story more complete.
Follow me on Twitter @LATkarenkaplan and "like" Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.
MORE SCIENCE NEWS:
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Karen Kaplan is science and medicine editor at the Los Angeles Times. Before joining the science group, she covered technology in the Business section. She is a graduate of MIT and Columbia University.
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Alice & Oliver (Hardcover)
By Charles Bock
April 2016 Greenlight First Editions Club Selection
The award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Children has created an unflinching yet deeply humane portrait of a young family's journey through a medical crisis, laying bare a couple's love and fears as they fight for everything that's important to them.
New York, 1993. Alice Culvert is a caring wife, a doting new mother, a loyal friend, and a soulful artist--a fashion designer who wears a baby carrier and haute couture with equal aplomb. In their loft in Manhattan's gritty Meatpacking District, Alice and her husband, Oliver, are raising their infant daughter, Doe, delighting in the wonders of early parenthood.
Their life together feels so vital and full of promise, which makes Alice's sudden cancer diagnosis especially staggering. In the span of a single day, the couple's focus narrows to the basic question of her survival. Though they do their best to remain brave, each faces enormous pressure: Oliver tries to navigate a labyrinthine healthcare system and handle their mounting medical bills; Alice tries to be hopeful as her body turns against her. Bracing themselves for the unthinkable, they must confront the new realities of their marriage, their strengths as partners and flaws as people, how to nourish love against all odds, and what it means to truly care for another person.
Inspired by the author's life, Alice & Oliver is a deeply affecting novel written with stunning reserves of compassion, humor, and wisdom. Alice Culvert is an extraordinary character--a woman of incredible heart and spirit--who will remain in memory long after the final page.
Praise for Alice & Oliver
"This hauntingly powerful novel follows a family's fight for survival in the face of illness. A stirring elegy to a marriage."--O: The Oprah Magazine
"A rewarding reading experience . . . a testament to the resilience of humans and our willingness to forgive."--San Francisco Chronicle
"The novel's power is in its two characters' messy negotiation of their fears, errors and shifting affections. . . . Bock offers a forceful reminder that there are plenty of roiling emotions underneath that till-death-do-us-part."--Los Angeles Times
" A] heart-wrenching story of a young couple whose lives change when Alice gets diagnosed with cancer . . . a refreshingly unsentimental look at the vicious disease."--Entertainment Weekly
"Alice & Oliver has a] tough-minded commitment to truth-telling."--The Washington Post
"Even more than the meticulous details of drugs, treatments and side effects, Bock's tender portrayal of his characters] in all their desolation gives Alice & Oliver] its ring of truth. . . . I loved this novel."--Marion Winik, Newsday
"Alice & Oliver shows that, even in a situation that's about as terrible as it can be, there can still exist happiness, surprise, and life, that strange strong spirit that's with us until the end."--The Boston Globe
"The most honest, unsentimentally powerful novel about cancer that I've ever read."--Michael Christie, The Globe & Mail
"Wrenchingly powerful . . . Bock chronicles the daily struggles of a young wife and mother facing her own imminent mortality. This is a soul portrait of a family in crisis, written with a fearless clarity and a deep understanding of the bonds that can hold two people together even in the darkest hour."--Richard Price
Charles Bock is the author of the novel Beautiful Children, which was a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book, and which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Slate, as well as in numerous anthologies. He lives with his wife, Leslie Jamison, and his daughter in New York City.
Coverage from NPR
Paperback (April 18th, 2017): $18.00
Hardcover, Large Print (August 3rd, 2016): $30.99


When God gave Israel the law through Moses, and the Jews agreed to keep those many commands established in the Old Covenant, it was meant only for that race and nation who would be called God's people at that time. The law had never been given to us Gentiles, who were considered unclean, far off and separated from God without a covenant. After the New Covenant was established by Jesus Christ, Gentiles were coming to God by faith in Jesus, and the leadership from the church in Jerusalem agreed that Gentiles would not need to be troubled or burdened with what their fathers had been unable to bear under that heavy and impossible law. Plus, the Jews who had been under the law were made free from it, and became dead to it as they married another and became the bride of Christ. You can't live by something that doesn't give life. That's why the old way had to be removed completely and replaced with a better covenant.


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Mike Shaub
Clinical Professor of Accounting
430 Wehner
College Station, TX 77843-4353
Pivotal Change in US Public Policy: How the Sarbanes-Oxley Act Affected Internal Auditing and its Relationship to External Auditing
International Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Performance Evaluation, 2009
Murphy Smith, Michael S. Drake and Mike Shaub
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi-Department of Accounting, Brigham Young University - Marriott School and Texas A&M University
Accounting regulation, SOX, internal auditing, public policy
Arachnophobia: A Case on Impairment and Accounting Ethics
Julie S. Persellin, Michael K. Shaub, and Michael S. Wilkins (2014) Arachnophobia: A Case on Impairment and Accounting Ethics. Issues in Accounting Education: November 2014, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 577-586., Mays Business School Research Paper No. 2507282
Number of pages: 35 Posted: 10 Oct 2014 Last Revised: 11 Sep 2018
Julie Persellin, Mike Shaub and Michael S. Wilkins
Trinity University, Texas A&M University and University of Kansas
Long-lived assets, impairment, fair value measurement, IFRS, ethics