Times: Lap Swimming in the NYC Outdoor Public Pools

From The New York Times: "The Water's Fine, and So Is the Competition - Lasker Pool is part of the city's Lap Swim program, where outdoor swimmers can compete."

...It’s no secret that New York has outdoor public pools that are open throughout the five boroughs in July and August. What you generally find are parents and young children, and teenagers horsing around. Lesser known is the Lap Swim program, open from 7 to 8:30, a.m. and p.m. for Early Bird and Night Owl sessions. It’s a quiet, orderly affair, where adults swim laps in roped-off lanes in otherwise empty pools...

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In Mommy Edith's Memory - Please Quit Smoking Today

In 2000 my mother Edith Zahavy passed away on the 4th day of Tammuz after six months of hospitalization at Mt. Sinai in NYC. She was 79. For 63 years she smoked, mostly menthol cigarettes. The corporate tobacco pushers hooked her into addiction by giving her free samples outside her school, Hunter College, when she was a teenager. They supplied her habit for six decades. For several years prior to her death she could hardly walk because of her profound vascular disease, heart disease and emphysema. Her last months in the hospital on a respirator were awful as all of the organs of her systems weakened and failed.

My mother was a beautiful, selfless, generous, creative, religious person who dedicated her whole life to her family, to her friends and to her students. She first brought us up (myself and my brother and sister) and then went on to teach in the NYC public schools. She stood behind my father, me and my siblings through thick and thin. But through the years she always smoked, mostly Newports and Salems.

As I remember her -- an active vibrant woman -- I plead with you -- if you smoke cigarettes -- QUIT TODAY. Please for the sake of the memory of my mother -- for your own sake -- for the sake of your spouse, your parents, your children, your friends -- please stop.

(Repost annually from 2006)

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GulfNews.com: Is ‘World War Z’ a pro-Israel film? Movie-goers in the gulf region share Talmudic views

Paramount Pictures’ World War Z movie, starring Brad Pitt, imagined that the world was overrun by zombies and that Israel, one of the few countries that knew they were coming, built a wall around itself to prevent zombies from invading.

Gulf News has a fairly balanced report about a new zombie movie. Pro-Israel? Some say yes, some say no.

Dubai/Muscat: Movie goers from the region had mixed feelings regarding the zombie apocalypse film World War Z, which has sparked controversy for an alleged supposed pro-Israel bias.

The movie, starring Brad Pitt, imagined that the world was overrun by zombies and that Israel, being one of the few countries that knew they were coming, built a wall around itself to prevent zombies from invading.

People from all over the world took to social media to point out the resemblance between the barrier built in the movie and the separation wall built by Israel in the West Bank to separate it from the occupied Palestinian population, adding that the movie was promoting Israel’s policies.

“While I was watching the movie I did feel like I was supposed to feel good about the wall, the fear of the zombies made the wall look comforting rather than atrocious. I felt like they were attempting a mind shift. It was also interesting that only the [Israeli intelligence agency] Mossad was able to figure out the problem before everyone,” said Canadian national Mohammad Syed, works in the oil trade sector in Dubai.

Dubai resident Aleena Khan, from Pakistan, also said she believed that the movie was glorifying Israel, adding that the movie presented a misleading picture of the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis.

“I don’t think it was trying to justify Israel’s occupation, but it was glorifying the Israelis by emphasising on peace and harmony of the two nations, which is far from the truth. One has to face facts and admit that Israel is hostile towards Palestinians. It was a very rose-tinted version of what the relationship between the Israelis and Palestinians actually is,” she added.

Dr Abdul Khaleq Abdullah Professor of Political Science at UAE University on the other hand thought that the wall symbolised Israel’s insecurity.

“Plenty of Israeli propaganda came from the movie but the fact that they built a wall in my opinion shows how Israel feels insecure and so would go to any length to protect itself even if it meant coming up with over-the-top solutions like building the barrier or wall”

Palestinian national Saif Khalil, did not think much about the wall symbolism however thought that referring to Occupied Jerusalem as part of Israel was uncalled for.

Other movie-goers in the region said some people, especially Arabs and Muslims, were reading too much into the movie.

Palestinian national Maen Hadid, who works in a Dubai-based media company, said he did not feel the movie was trying to convey a pro-Israeli policy message.
“I think that the movie showed Israel as a country that normally exists just like any other country but their solution was to build a wall to protect those left inside, including the Palestinian Muslims,” said Hadid.

Bader Al Lawati, an Omani, said that after watching the movie, he read about the controversial views in the media and, “didn’t even think about it that way while watching the movie.”

British teenager Gwynfor Callaghan, who was born and brought up in Oman, said those viewing the wall scene as symbolising the situation of Palestinians were overreacting.

“It is a fiction made by Americans, so don’t think that the scene was intended against a group,” the British School Muscat student said...

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Times: Mindful Meditation Makes You three times more Compassionate

In a truly remarkable article the Times explains that science has demonstrated that mindful meditation makes a person more compassionate.

I wrote about the mindfulness of Jewish blessings and the compassion of the grace after meals in my 2011 book, "God's Favorite Prayers."

Ever since I studied and practiced meditation in the early nineties, I knew the connection between meditation and compassion was the basic premise of the practice. Yet I did not expect that science would "prove" the causal link.

The Times describes one breathtaking study - where the incredible conclusion is that mindful meditators are three times more compassionate than non-meditators.

Here is the article.

The Morality of Meditation
By DAVID DeSTENO
MEDITATION is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving your mind. With mounting scientific evidence that the practice can enhance creativity, memory and scores on standardized intelligence tests, interest in its practical benefits is growing. A number of “mindfulness” training programs, like that developed by the engineer Chade-Meng Tan at Google, and conferences like Wisdom 2.0 for business and tech leaders, promise attendees insight into how meditation can be used to augment individual performance, leadership and productivity.

This is all well and good, but if you stop to think about it, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the (perfectly commendable) pursuit of these benefits and the purpose for which meditation was originally intended. Gaining competitive advantage on exams and increasing creativity in business weren’t of the utmost concern to Buddha and other early meditation teachers. As Buddha himself said, “I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering.” For Buddha, as for many modern spiritual leaders, the goal of meditation was as simple as that. The heightened control of the mind that meditation offers was supposed to help its practitioners see the world in a new and more compassionate way, allowing them to break free from the categorizations (us/them, self/other) that commonly divide people from one another.

But does meditation work as promised? Is its originally intended effect — the reduction of suffering — empirically demonstrable?

To put the question to the test, my lab, led in this work by the psychologist Paul Condon, joined with the neuroscientist Gaëlle Desbordes and the Buddhist lama Willa Miller to conduct an experiment whose publication is forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science. We recruited 39 people from the Boston area who were willing to take part in an eight-week course on meditation (and who had never taken any such course before). We then randomly assigned 20 of them to take part in weekly meditation classes, which also required them to practice at home using guided recordings. The remaining 19 were told that they had been placed on a waiting list for a future course.

After the eight-week period of instruction, we invited the participants to the lab for an experiment that purported to examine their memory, attention and related cognitive abilities. But as you might anticipate, what actually interested us was whether those who had been meditating would exhibit greater compassion in the face of suffering. To find out, we staged a situation designed to test the participants’ behavior before they were aware that the experiment had begun.

WHEN a participant entered the waiting area for our lab, he (or she) found three chairs, two of which were already occupied. Naturally, he sat in the remaining chair. As he waited, a fourth person, using crutches and wearing a boot for a broken foot, entered the room and audibly sighed in pain as she leaned uncomfortably against a wall. The other two people in the room — who, like the woman on crutches, secretly worked for us — ignored the woman, thus confronting the participant with a moral quandary. Would he act compassionately, giving up his chair for her, or selfishly ignore her plight?

The results were striking. Although only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats — an admittedly disheartening fact — the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. This increase is impressive not solely because it occurred after only eight weeks of meditation, but also because it did so within the context of a situation known to inhibit considerate behavior: witnessing others ignoring a person in distress — what psychologists call the bystander effect — reduces the odds that any single individual will help. Nonetheless, the meditation increased the compassionate response threefold.

Although we don’t yet know why meditation has this effect, one of two explanations seems likely. The first rests on meditation’s documented ability to enhance attention, which might in turn increase the odds of noticing someone in pain (as opposed to being lost in one’s own thoughts). My favored explanation, though, derives from a different aspect of meditation: its ability to foster a view that all beings are interconnected. The psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and I have found that any marker of affiliation between two people, even something as subtle as tapping their hands together in synchrony, causes them to feel more compassion for each other when distressed. The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation’s ability to dissolve the artificial social distinctions — ethnicity, religion, ideology and the like — that divide us.

Supporting this view, recent findings by the neuroscientists Helen Weng, Richard Davidson and colleagues confirm that even relatively brief training in meditative techniques can alter neural functioning in brain areas associated with empathic understanding of others’ distress — areas whose responsiveness is also modulated by a person’s degree of felt associations with others.

So take heart. The next time you meditate, know that you’re not just benefiting yourself, you’re also benefiting your neighbors, community members and as-yet-unknown strangers by increasing the odds that you’ll feel their pain when the time comes, and act to lessen it as well.

David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Emotions Group. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More.”

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Without Wearing Neckties, Israeli Jewish adults attending synagogue 'happy and healthier'

Even though the ordinary Israeli who attends synagogue does not even own a necktie, a social scientist has "proven" that "Israeli Jewish adults attending synagogue 'happy and healthier'"

In fact the researcher involved already knew the answers before he even conducted his "studies." Professor Jeff Levin has spent his career "proving" the health benefits of religion for the world. There is zero chance at this stage of the game that he would come up with a conclusion to disprove his base assumptions.

We are shocked by this discovery though for a specific reason. We've been criticized for discussing in our "Dear Rabbi" column a rule requiring tie-wearing by Jews in a local synagogue if they want to receive a Torah-honor on Sabbaths and Holidays.

Here's a nugget from a letter to the editor of the Jewish Standard that fervently defends the wonderful meaning of the tie-wearing practice by Dr. Reuben Gross:

Rabbi Zahavy takes a strong stand with the congregant. He labels the shul’s dress code as “nonsense.” This is hardly appropriate language coming from a rabbi about a shul’s policy, which follows the dictates of no less a person than the prophet Ezra (6th century BCE), who enacted the rule that individuals should give special “kavod” (honor) to the Sabbath, marked by their change of clothing.

Truly we did not know that Ezra the Scribe (usually not called prophet) knew about neckties in the 6th century BCE.

And so we wonder how Jews in Israel who attend shul regularly can be happier and healthier even though they do not own or wear ties.

Or let's be positive here. Can you imagine just how happy and healthy these synagogue attenders would be in Israel if they wore neckties?

Perhaps we can start a new program to promote even greater health and happiness in Israel: Neckties Without Borders for Religious Sabras.

Here is a news report on the impressive research on the health benefits of attending synagogue:

Israeli Jewish adults, who go to synagogue regularly, pray often, and think of themselves as religious are much healthier and happier than their non-religious counterparts, two new studies have suggested.

Baylor University researcher Jeff Levin, Ph.D, said that commitment to Jewish religious belief and practice is strongly associated with greater physical and psychological well-being.

One study used 2010 data on 1,849 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the European Social Survey and has been published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, an official journal of the American Psychological Association.

The other study used 2009-10 data on 991 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the International Social Survey Programme's Religion III survey and has been published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. (ANI)

Rabbi Neckties

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JStandard: Was the Supreme Court ruling on gene patenting good for the Jews?

Yes, the Supreme Court ruling on gene patenting is good for the Jews.

As the Jewish Standard science correspondent (and our sister) Dr. Miryam Wahrmann observes, "That case could have a dramatic impact on the development, cost, and availability of [life-saving] genetic tests."

See her in-depth cover story "Supreme Court ruling on gene patenting changes the landscape for BRCA testing" here.

And her related stories:

New website educates the Jewish community about genetic health issues

Sharsheret’s genetics for life addresses hereditary breast and ovarian cancer

Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore
Experience God's Favorite Prayers

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Am I dead yet? NYTimes Warns of Dire Consequences of "Cheating Ourselves of Sleep"

From The New York Times, a poorly argued article, "Cheating Ourselves of Sleep," concludes that, "Failing to get enough sleep night after night can compromise your health and may even shorten your life."

I shared the article with a friend who knows that often I do not get enough sleep and the response was that based on this article I ought to be dead by now, several times over.

Here are some phrases and then snippets from the awful alarmist article, in order but without context, showing how little hard logic, science or medicine underlies the claims in the article about your health from the prestigious New York Times. 

Note the use of blurry terms like "chances are" "most people" "can compromise" "may even" "can profoundly affect" "are negatively affected" "a risk factor" "tend to" "can be harmed" "linked" "may ultimately result" "risks...are higher" "may also be" "risk may also be elevated" "risk may result" "increased risk" "can also experience" "may be more susceptible" -- the connections between lack of sleep and all of these potential health conditions are just plain blurred and conditional and none of them is causative. Nowhere does the article give any hard numbers or actual percentages of anything bad caused directly by diminished sleep.

Yes if you don't sleep enough it is nearly a certainty that the next day you will feel tired. I don't know where and how the Times concluded that less sleep "may even shorten your life." 

That's going way out on a limb. As I read this foggy article through a few times I could see nothing that proves too little sleep will cause you to die more quickly.

Here are the shoddy sentence snippets for the above hazy phrases.

• Think you do just fine on five or six hours of shut-eye? Chances are...
• ...most people require seven or eight hours of sleep to function optimally. 
• ...can compromise your health and 
• ...may even shorten your life. 
• ...can profoundly affect memory, learning, creativity, productivity and emotional stability, as well as your physical health.
• ...a number of bodily systems are negatively affected by inadequate sleep
• ...a risk factor for depression and substance abuse
• ...People with PTSD tend to relive their trauma when they try to sleep...
• Dr. Germain is studying what happens in the brains of sleeping veterans with PTSD in hopes of developing more effective treatments for them and for people with lesser degrees of stress that interfere with a good night’s sleep.
• ...myriad bodily systems can be harmed by chronically shortened nights. 
• ...linked insufficient sleep to weight gain. 
• ...may ultimately result in Type 2 diabetes. 
• ...The risks of cardiovascular diseases and stroke are higher in people who sleep less than six hours a night.
• ...(In terms of cardiovascular disease, sleeping too much may also be risky. Higher rates of heart disease have been found among women who sleep more than nine hours nightly.)
• The risk of cancer may also be elevated in people who fail to get enough sleep. ...The increased risk may result from diminished secretion of the sleep hormone melatonin. 
• ...an increased risk of potentially cancerous colorectal polyps in those who slept fewer than six hours nightly.
• ...Children can also experience hormonal disruptions from inadequate sleep. 
• Dr. Vatsal G. Thakkar, a psychiatrist affiliated with New York University, recently described evidence associating inadequate sleep with an erroneous diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children. In one study, 28 percent of children with sleep problems had symptoms of the disorder, but not the disorder.
• ...short sleepers may be more susceptible to everyday infections like colds and flu. 
• ...During sleep, new learning and memory pathways become encoded in the brain, and adequate sleep is necessary for those pathways to work optimally. People who are well rested are better able to learn a task and more likely to remember what they learned. The cognitive decline that so often accompanies aging may in part result from chronically poor sleep.
• With insufficient sleep, thinking slows, it is harder to focus and pay attention,...
• ...In driving tests, sleep-deprived people perform as if drunk, and no amount of caffeine or cold air can negate the ill effects.

Some Talmudic points of complexity to consider:

1. If you sleep less, you have more waking time, so in effect you definitely are living awake longer. There are no hedges about that fact.
2. That assumes that being awake is preferred to being asleep - because you can produce more and experience more of life. If you are unproductive and idle - sleep may be no less preferable to waking.
3. The article does not even begin to delve into the value of dreaming while asleep. At the very least, dreams can be interesting, entertaining and dramatic. I've done some impressive things in my dreams and also have confronted some true nightmares.
4. I've solved numerous problems while dreaming and have come up with innovative concepts and ideas.
5. Aside from the alleged health value of sleep - of which I not convinced - it is hard to assess what has more value - waking life or sleeping life. And your mileage may vary. Some people never remember their dreams. Some people dream in black-and-white - nothing at all colorful or vivid.

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Times: Cholesterol Drugs Called Statins are Bad for You

I stopped taking statin pills 6+ years ago when Lipitor gave me liver disease. My cholesterol is low now due to my strict regimen of aerobic exercise and a healthy diet. No pills.

A medical study described in the Times pitting exercise against pills should be incredibly troubling to people who take statins:

...The unmedicated volunteers improved their aerobic fitness significantly after three months of exercise, by more than 10 percent on average. But the volunteers taking the statins gained barely 1 percent on average in their fitness, and some possessed less aerobic capacity at the end of the study than at its start...

Whoa - statins are bad for your aerobic fitness. That's not what we want to hear.

...This finding joins a small but accumulating body of other studies indicating that statins can negatively affect exercise response. Lab rodents given statins, for instance, can’t run as far as unmedicated animals, while in humans, marathon runners on statins develop more markers of muscle damage after a race than runners not using the drugs...

Whoa - statins promote muscle damage in athletes. I felt muscle damage after one week when I took the Lipitor. Blood tests showed that the drug attacked my liver.

Finally, it's wrong that the Times frames this in an article whose title is a question, Can Statins Cut the Benefits of Exercise?, when the article describes a study that demonstrates it is a fact that statins do cut the benefits of exercise - they promote muscle damage - or in plain terms - statins are bad for you.

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Is Stephen Hawking Jewish?

No, the famous scientist Stephen Hawking is not a Jew. He attended St. Albans, an independent Christian school, as a child.

Hawking is a noted British theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He has written a new book in which he challenges the notion that God created the universe.

According to the Guardian: Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God.

Even though Hawking is not a Jew, British Chief Rabbi Sacks has seen fit to challenge his heresy:

Chief rabbi challenges Stephen Hawking in row over origins of universe

Wikipedia informs us that, regarding religion:

Hawking has stated that he is "not religious in the normal sense" and he believes that "the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws."

Our dad, Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy, wrote a book on the subject of cosmology and religion -- "Whence and Wherefore - Cosmological Destiny to Man Scientifically and Philosophically Explained: An Analysis Relating to 'In the Centre of Immensities' by Sir Bernard Lovell ".

Purchase the Kindle edition of this book here: Whence and Wherefore

He brilliantly defends the notion that God created the universe and finds solace and wisdom in that conclusion. In 2010 we sent a copy to Professor Hawking. We did not hear back from him.

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Talmudic Chaos v. Halakhic Linearity in the Logic of Judaism

In 2011 we published an article, "In Search Of The Logic Of Judaism: From Talmudic Chaos To Halakhic Linearity," which you can download and read from the link here.   

We used mathematical ideas to differentiate the linear organization of the halakhah from non-linear thinking of the Talmud. Our abstract says: 

In this paper we examine some common views of scholars concerning the idea of the halakhah in Judaism. We then explain why their methods failed to account for the main philological and historical evidence regarding the term from the Talmudic texts. Then we suggest as a heuristic explanation that the logic of the Talmud defies linearity and can be discussed productively using chaos theory.

The authors in this volume cover varied topics with sophistication and erudition. The publisher's page provides details about the book, as copied below. 

Schumann, Andrew, Tzvee Zahavy, Avi Sion, Aviram Ravitsky, Stefan Goltzberg,  Judaic Logic

Title:	Judaic Logic
Series:	Judaism in Context 8
Publisher:	Gorgias Press
ISBN:	978-1-61719-194-7
Language:	English
Format:	Hardback, Black, 6 x 9 in

1. Introduction, Andrew Schumann
2. In Search of The Logic of Judaism: From Talmudic Chaos To Halakhic Linearity, Tzvee Zahavy
3. Maimonides’ Use of Logic In The Guide of The Perplexed, Joseph A. Buijs
4. Structure And Sources of The Hebrew Commentary on Petrus Hispanus's Summulae Logicales By Hezekiah Bar Halafta, Alias Bonenfant De Millau, Mauro Zonta
5. Aristotelian Logic and Talmudic Methodology: The Commentaries on the 13 Hermeneutic Principles and Their Application of Logic, Aviram Ravitsky
6. A Fortiori Reasoning In Judaic Logic, Avi Sion
7. The A Fortiori Argument In The Talmud, Stefan Goltzberg
8. Sense In Making: Hermeneutical Practices of The Babylonian Talmud Against The Background of Medieval And Contemporary Views, Sergey Dolgopolski
9. Judaic Syllogistics: The Baba Qama From The Logical Point Of View, Andrew Schumann
10. Symbolic Computation And Digital Philosophy In Early Ashkenazic Kabbalah, Yoel Matveyev 

The Publisher's Description of the book tells us: 

Judaism differs considerably from other theistic religions. One of the main features is that Jewish religious laws are not dogmatic but based on specific legal reasoning. This reasoning was developed by the first Judaic commentators of the Bible for inferring Judaic laws from the Pentateuch. The book is about Judaic reasoning from the standpoint of modern logic. Its first goal is to define Judaic logic. This logic was aimed to be a methodology for deducing religious laws. The idea that this methodology can be viewed as original logic that is not less deductive than Aristotle’s logic did not emerge until the Late Middle Ages. At that time Medieval Hebrew works about Judaic reasoning were influenced by Arabo-Islamic philosophy as well as by Latin Scholastic logic. In this volume we discuss different forms of influence of the Aristotelian logic on developing the Talmudic methodology. Then we aim to sketch semantics for the Judaic reasoning, explicating Talmudic case study and Rabbinic situation analysis to develop general approaches to formalizing Judaic logic. This consideration of Judaic logic has relevance for modern logic and analytic philosophy and may be compared with the contribution made by the formalization of Ancient Greek logical systems to 20th-century logic and language philosophy.

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Is Elk Meat Kosher?

IKEA has been caught selling pork as elk meat in their lasagna (April, 2013). That is not kosher.

Anyways, yes, elk is a kosher species. JTA reported in July 2008 that yes, you can purchase kosher slaughtered and processed elk meat.

Here a recipe for elk steaks.

Kosher elk coming to stores

Elk meat is about to become available to kosher consumers.

Noah's Ark Processors in South Dakota, which sells kosher meat under the Solomon's Finest Glatt Kosher label, is expecting to slaughter its first elk for the commercial market on Monday. It will be shipped to supermarkets including Fairway and ShopRite the week of July 14, according to owner Ilan Parente.

Those stores have been carrying the company's kosher buffalo for the past 10 years, he said.

Parente said Noah's Ark has been raising elk for 11 years and exploring the idea of processing its meat for the kosher market for at least six.

"It took that long for the rabbis to say yes, it's kosher," he said.

Elk is a member of the cervidae family, which includes deer.

Rabbi Seth Mandel, who oversees Orthodox Union-certified kosher meat processing in North America and South America, says this is the first commercial production of kosher elk meat.

Although he says elk is "good meat, not as tough as deer," Mandel expects elk to be a specialty product like buffalo that will "take a while" to penetrate the kosher market.

Parente disagrees.

"We don't look at it as exotic," he said. "These animals have been here before the cow was introduced to North America. They're native to this country."

In addition, Parente points out that elk is "70 to 80 percent leaner than beef, it's tastier and a lot healthier."

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Desperately Seeking the Soul

Some thoughts upon reading the Times > Opinionator > The Stone > Gary Gutting

"Mary and the Zombies: Can Science Explain Consciousness?"

...Also, few philosophers think these thought-experiments show that there are souls or some other sort of supernatural entities. Frank Jackson, who first proposed the Mary scenario, and David Chalmers, who gave the most influential formulation of the zombie example, remain philosophical naturalists. They maintain that there is no world beyond the natural one in which we live. Their claim is rather that this world contains a natural reality (consciousness) that escapes the scope of physical explanation. Chalmers, in particular, supports a “naturalistic dualism” that proposes to supplement physical science by postulating entities with irreducibly subjective (phenomenal) properties that would allow us to give a natural explanation of consciousness. Not surprisingly, however, some philosophers have seen Jackson’s and Chalmers’s arguments as supporting a traditional dualism of a natural body and a supernatural soul...

And in the follow up post, "Mary and the Zombies: Consciousness Revisited"

We need to examine much more carefully both the apparently obvious premises and the reasoning based on them. Along these lines, professional philosophers have uncovered a number of subtle and complex problems for both arguments. For anyone interested in pursuing the discussion further, I would recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles “Qualia: The Knowledge Argument” (by Martine Nida-Rümelin) and “Zombies” (by Robert Kirk).

We opine, It’s interesting to see how the limited our language and concepts are in their ability to describe consciousness, And all of this is way more sophisticated than what we had in the Mishnah and the Talmud when they tried to define kavvanah - direction of thought - concentration - or any forms of meditation.

This suggests that there is a self-consciousness-limit to the ability of science and language to self describe what is going on in consciousness. The Mary and Zombie hypotheses are in essence metaphoric stories that posit the existence of straw creatures so that we can discuss among ourselves un-self-consciously, fome of the most crucial aspects of consciousness - namely its physicality or spirituality.

We need a new vocabulary that has more complexity than the physical v. spiritual. To me consciousness has characteristics that are:

(1) intangible (2) non-physical (3) transitory (4) vivid and real (5) dismissible (6) motivation (7) fearsome (8) fill in the blank - put in any other emotions.

How does one describe thoughts? We learn to slow them down and commit them to verbal or written expression, art or music, all of that flows from consciousness.

Sensory consciousness is the intake mechanism. Dreaming, imagining, creating, orating - etc - are the output means of consciousness.

We like one comment on the second article/post in the Times:

Judy Shimkus - Supposing consciousness results from a yet-unknown type of energy?

Actually we’d say it’s a given - we know the energy is there - we just have no granular enough science (chemistry, physics, psychology)  or modern language terminology - to describe consciousness in all its nuances.

There must be millions of operations that comprise human consciousness - and parsing and studying some parts of  them is surely possible given the super-computing power that we have now at our disposal.

The recording of all human thoughts - wow that would be not just a stream - but one cosmic sea of consciousness. The capture of every human dream... another vast sea. And then top have Google make all of that searchable as it expands second by second - billions of thoughts of billions of people.

And the meta-processing of all that would raise the billions to exponential powers. Are we not approaching the infinite?

We’d like to mention the notion of “soul dust”  here - in another application of the imagery. The components of consciousness are as numerous (in each individual) as the grains of sands of the sea.

Why assume that we need to dilute down consciousness to a few principles and elements? In fact we need to ramp up science and language and mathematics and statistics and create a rich symbology or consciousness that has the ability to express every derivative of the principal blocks of the c-world.

The financial world develops symbology to express the derivative instruments of each underlying equity or base instrument. The c-symbology will be way more complex by orders of magnitude.

Check Out 45 Talmudic Books
See the 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English
Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore
Experience God's Favorite Prayers

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App Measures Your Brainwaves to Know When You're Busy

We like this, been waiting for it for decades.

Gizmodo reports, "Automatic Do-Not-Disturb Measures Your Brainwaves to Know When You’re Busy."

Italian-born neuroscientist Ruggero Scorcioni has developed a new technology that will help you get stuff done by deflecting phone calls or other notifications away when you're busy. Finally, technology to help keep your brainspace clear when you need it.

Ruggero showed us his tech implemented as an app on smartphone at an AT&T event in New York this morning. The technology works by measuring your brainwave activity using a commercially available headset which talks to your phone via Bluetooth. When your activity goes above a certain adjustable threshold, Ruggero's app automatically holds your calls using a publicly available AT&T API.

The key to Ruggero's app are the algorithms he uses to process the brainwave data. Beyond simply holding your calls, Ruggero says the technology could be used to hold your e-mail notifications and other interruptions until you've got the mental bandwidth to address them. He won an AT&T hack-a-thon back in January, and used the $30,000 prize to start his new company Brainyno. Here's hoping he finds a way to keep those pesky Facebook alerts from distracting you when you're trying to work.

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Is TV Kosher for Dogs?

Is TV kosher for dogs? Yes it is, now that the Israeli Dog Channel offering, DOGTV, is live in California, at $9.95 a month.

TV channel for dogs launched in Israel

An Israeli cable TV company has launched a television channel that is aimed primarily at dogs.

The channel, available in Israel via the Yes satellite company was first launched last February in California's second-largest city San Diego, where it reached some 483,000 homes.

"DOGTV is scientifically developed and Pup approved. DOGTV is cable's first television network for dogs that is created exclusively for canines, and the humans who love them," the Jerusalem Post quoted the company's website as reading.

It further read that the channel provides TV for dogs with three types of programming offering relaxing and stimulating content as well as positive behavioural reinforcements.

The company's site said that dogs that are left alone tend to become anxious so the calming sounds and music in the relaxing segments on DOGTV were created to keep them peaceful.

The site added that unlike any other TV channel, every frame and every sound on the channel is designed 100 percent for dogs.

The company has claimed that years of research led it to develop special content to meet the specific characteristics of canine vision and hearing, like enhanced colouring to emphasize details and stress on contrast, brightness, and frame rate; and the use of sound effects, music and specific ranges of frequencies that best suit dogs.(ANI)

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Is Niacin kosher for your heart?

No, niacin is not kosher for your heart.

USA Today via Detroit Free Press alerts us to a new study that found, "Niacin doesn't help heart, may cause harm, study says."

We knew this eleven years ago. After Lipitor gave us hepatitis and the cardiologist told us to take Niaspan, instead we looked it up and found no reason to believe that Niacin pills would be a benefit to us.

After doing the math, we politely refused to take any cholesterol reducing medication. The studies showed a "reduction in risk" which meant that the meds did not cure or prevent disease.

Now it turns out that we were right. The meds actually can cause disease.

PS: Friday we got our cholesterol numbers (first time in about 5 years): 191 total, 88 HDL; 2.2 ratio Total/HDL. We eat eggs every day and take no meds. We swim 100 laps a day and eat nuts and vegetables, fish, yogurt, cheeses and lean meats.

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Is Marijuana Kosher for Passover?

Via Earth Times with a big smile. Passover pot is not a problem for Sephardic Jews. Is cannabis kosher for Passover for Ashkenazic Jews?

Is pot kitniyot? It's up to the rabbi

JERUSALEM (UPI) In Israel, rabbis are trying to determine if hemp and its cousin, marijuana, are on the list of legumes that some Jews must abstain from during Passover.

This year, the Green Leaf Party, which advocates legalization of marijuana, warned its members by e-mail that it may be considered kitniyot, or a legume. Observant Ashkenazi Jews abstain from kitniyot during the holiday.

Rabbi Daniel Ayin told the Jerusalem Post that the issue is whether hemp seeds -- and marijuana -- are considered edible. If they are edible, then Ashkenazi Jews should not eat them during Passover.

Ayin said that individual rabbis can make the decision for their congregations.

One couple, who for some reason did not want their last names used, told the Post they only realized that they might have a problem when a friend offered to buy their marijuana. Daniel and Sarah, both recent emigrants from Chicago, said he told them he was making the rounds of all his observant friends before the holiday.

To play it safe, the couple got rid of their stash -- not by selling it, which they decided would be inappropriate -- and gave the house an extra ritual cleaning.

[repost]

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Was Ludwig Wittgenstein Jewish?

At the Times, philosopher Paul Horwich asks, Was Wittgenstein Right? His answer is that most philosophers vote no, and yet Wittgenstein's reputation is stellar.

We want to know, was Wittgenstein Jewish? Despite his extensive Jewish heritage, according to Jewish law, no, Ludwig Wittgenstein was a not Jew. He was a Catholic.

His mother and maternal grandmother were Catholic. Despite that, Wittgenstein rejected religion, yet at times claimed to be Jewish in spirit and thought. And some have speculated that he went to school with Adolf Hitler.

Wikipedia explains all of this.

Wittgenstein's mother was Leopoldine Kalmus. Her father was Czech Jewish and her mother was Austrian-Slovene Catholic—she was Wittgenstein's maternal grandparent and only non-Jewish grandparent, whose ancestry was Austrian and an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich Hayek on her maternal side. Ludwig was born at 8:30 pm on 26 April 1889 in the so-called "Wittgenstein Palace" at Alleegasse 16, now the Argentinierstrasse, near the Karlskirche. Karl and Poldi, as she was known, had nine children in all. There were four girls: Hermine, Margaret (Gretl), Helene, and a fourth daughter who died as a baby; and five boys: Johannes (Hans), Kurt, Rudolf (Rudi), Paul—who became a concert pianist despite losing an arm in World War I—and Ludwig, who was the youngest of the family.

The children were baptized as Catholics, and raised in an exceptionally intense environment...

Some speculated that W. went to school with Hitler.

There is much debate about the extent to which Wittgenstein and his siblings, who were of 3/4 Jewish descent, saw themselves as Jews, and the issue has arisen in particular regarding Wittgenstein's schooldays, because Adolf Hitler was at the same school for part of the same time. Laurence Goldstein argues it is "overwhelmingly probable" the boys met each other: that Hitler would have disliked Wittgenstein, a "stammering, precocious, precious, aristocratic upstart ...". Other commentators have dismissed as irresponsible and uninformed any suggestion that Wittgenstein's wealth and unusual personality may have fed Hitler's antisemitism, in part because there is no indication that Hitler would have seen Wittgenstein as Jewish.

Wittgenstein and Hitler were born just six days apart, though Hitler had been held back a year, while Wittgenstein was moved forward by one, so they ended up two grades apart at the Realschule. Monk estimates they were both at the school during the 1904–1905 school year, but says there is no evidence they had anything to do with each other. Several commentators have argued that a school photograph of Hitler may show Wittgenstein in the lower left corner, but Hamann says the photograph stems from 1900 or 1901, before Wittgenstein's time.

In his own writings Wittgenstein frequently referred to himself as Jewish, at times as part of an apparent self-flagellation. For example, while berating himself for being a "reproductive" as opposed to "productive" thinker, he attributed this to his own Jewish sense of identity, writing: "The saint is the only Jewish genius. Even the greatest Jewish thinker is no more than talented. (Myself for instance)." While Wittgenstein would later claim that "[m]y thoughts are 100% Hebraic", as Hans Sluga has argued, if so, "his was a self-doubting Judaism, which had always the possibility of collapsing into a destructive self-hatred (as it did in Weininger's case) but which also held an immense promise of innovation and genius."

In practice, W. rejected religion.

It was while he was at the Realschule that he decided he had lost his faith in God. He nevertheless believed in the importance of the idea of confession. He wrote in his diaries about having made a major confession to his oldest sister, Hermine, while he was at the Realschule; Monk writes that it may have been about his loss of faith. He also discussed it with Gretl, his other sister, who directed him to Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. As a teenager, Wittgenstein adopted Schopenhauer's epistemological idealism. However, after his study of the philosophy of mathematics, he abandoned epistemological idealism for Gottlob Frege's conceptual realism.

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Israel's Plagues Hotline: Press 8 to Report Locusts

AP reports a real news story from Israel.

Israel opens locust hotline as devastating insects hit neighbouring Egypt ahead of Passover
BY IAN DEITCH, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JERUSALEM - Israel is on a locust alert as swarms of the destructive bugs descend on neighbouring Egypt ahead of the Passover holiday.

Israel's Agriculture Ministry set up an emergency hotline Monday and is asking Israelis to be vigilant in reporting locust sightings to prevent an outbreak.

Locusts have a devastating effect on agriculture by quickly stripping crops.

Swarms of locusts have descended on Egypt, raising fears they could spread to Israel.

The locust alert comes ahead of the Passover festival, which recounts the biblical story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. According to the Bible, a plague of locusts was one of 10 plagues God imposed on Egyptians for enslaving and abusing ancient Hebrews.

And here's the "menu" you get when you call the "Israel Plagues Hotline."

Listen Carefully, Our Plagues Hotline Menu Selections Have Not Changed

Press 1 to Report a Plague of blood (דָם): Ex. 7:14–25
Press 2 to Report a Plague of frogs (צְּפַרְדֵּעַ): Ex. 7:25–8:11
Press 3 to Report a Plague of lice or gnats (כִּנִּים): Ex. 8:12–15
Press 4 to Report a Plague of flies or wild animals (עָרוֹב): Ex. 8:20–32
Press 5 to Report a Plague of pestilence (דֶּבֶר): Ex. 9:1–7
Press 6 to Report a Plague of boils (שְׁחִין): Ex. 9:8–12
Press 7 to Report a Plague of hail (בָּרָד): Ex. 9:13–35
Press 8 to Report a Plague of locusts (אַרְבֶּה): Ex. 10:1–20
Press 9 to Report a Plague of darkness (חוֹשֶך): Ex. 10:21–29
Press 0 to Report a Death of the firstborn (מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת): Ex. 11:1–12:36

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Are Legumes Kosher for Passover for Ashkenazic Jews?

From Haaretz - the "legume revolution" has begun and many are saying that yes, legumes are kosher for Passover for Ashkenazi Jews, under certain circumstances.

We find this debate and discussion to be a caricature and burlesque of the meaningful human, social and philosophical purposes of religious theology, law and custom.

Efrat rabbi tilts against Passover food restrictions for Ashkenazi Jews. Others, unhappy with holiday legume laws, launch Kitniyot Liberation Front.
By Raphael Ahren

Trying to ease the life of Ashkenazi Jews who observe the dietary laws of the upcoming Passover holiday, an American-born Orthodox rabbi recently issued a halakhic ruling expanding the menu of permitted food products during the weeklong holiday.

According to Ashkenazi custom, the consumption of legumes and other non-wheat grains, known as kitniyot, during Passover is forbidden because of a resemblance to hametz, leavened grain, which is strictly prohibited on the holiday. Since most Israeli Jews who observe the holiday's dietary laws are of Sephardic descent, and thus do not have this custom, many kosher for Passover products in the country contain kitniyot, such as rice, corn and beans. In recent years, a growing number of Orthodox Jews - especially Western immigrants to Israel - have started rebelling against the kitniyot ban, arguing they are adapting to the Israel's mainstream practice because the ban is a custom and not law.

A few week's ago, Rabbi Zvi Leshem, of Efrat, issued a ruling that it is permissible to consume products and dishes containing kitniyot, as long as they do not constitute the main ingredient and are not directly recognizable. His decision will help those who do not want to entirely abandon the tradition of avoiding kitniyot but have difficulties finding certain items - such as oil, mayonnaise or chocolate spreads - that do not contain kitniyot in their ingredients.

"Some of those products that are labeled 'for those who eat kitniyot only' are permissible according to all opinions, since the ratio of kitniyot ingredients is less than 50 percent and they are therefore annulled in the majority of non-kitniyot ingredients," writes Leshem, 54, who was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate and holds a PhD in Jewish philosophy from Bar-Ilan University. "Since only products are forbidden in which kitniyot constitute the main ingredient, many oils, cookies and dairy products containing kitniyot are completely permissible for Ashkenazim." In addition, he permitted quinoa, the grain-like crop which is "a very new food" unknown to the sages who enacted the ban on kitniyot.

"It is a mitzvah [commandment] to publicize this decision, which is based upon the traditional Halachic methodology of the great authorities throughout the generations, and not upon looking for unnecessary stringencies," Leshem concludes.

"I tried to show that certain things that people think are prohibited are really permitted," Leshem, who lived in Cleveland and Indianapolis before he immigrated to Israel in 1979, told Anglo File this week. He said he used to avoid products labeled "for those who eat kitniyot only" for many years before looking into the matter.

"It is very misleading, certainly for Anglo olim [immigrants] who are not used to the whole issue. The obvious thing that most of them do is avoid anything that says kitniyot. But that's in many cases unnecessary."

But more and more Ashkenazim, especially Anglos, feel that in Israel it no longer makes sense to observe a custom followed by a minority.

Louis Gordon, for example, said he wondered about the kitniyot divide since he moved from Baltimore to Israel 21 years ago. "I couldn't understand how kitniyot is kosher for these and treif [not kosher] for those," he told Anglo File. "There are people for whom kitniyot is worse than hametz. It didn't make any sense."

To vent his frustration, Gordon, 44, recently created a Facebook group called Kitniyot Liberation Front. The site, which currently has over 600 members, many of them local Anglos, seeks to promote awareness of lenient rabbinic opinions regarding the use of legumes on Passover. His opinion is mainly based on the views of Rabbi David Bar-Hayim, the head of Jerusalem's Shilo Institute, who in 2007 issued a ruling allowing Ashkenazim in Israel to eat kitniyot.

"The issue of kitniyot turns the holiday of Pesach from one of abstaining from hametz into abstention from kitniyot. Ashkenazim won't eat with Sephardim - this is not what God put us on earth for, to divide the people," the Yad Bimyamin resident told Anglo File.

The opposition against kitniyot will soon reach the "breaking point," Gordon predicted. "A lot of people are pushing hard for this." Especially Anglo immigrants are ready to drop the kitniyot prohibition, which has to do with the fact that newcomers often feel they're abandoning their family traditions as soon as they arrive in Israel, he said.

“If you’re looking to leave the galut [Diaspora] mentality behind then you’re definitely going to leave kitniyot behind.”

David Schwartz, a former New Yorker living in Ra’anana, says he started eating kitniyot soon after he moved to Israel.

“When I grew up in the States kitniyot wasn’t an issue, it was just assumed that it was hametz,” he said. “I didn’t even know there was an issue until I came here and realized that half the country was eating humus and corn and the other half wasn’t.” In the last few years eating kitniyot has become “considerably more acceptable among my Orthodox friends,” added Schwartz, a member of the Conservative movement, whose Israeli branch permitted kitniyot two decades ago.

Leshem, too, said he noticed many Orthodox Israelis disavowing the kitniyot prohibition. “It bothers me even though I can understand where it’s coming from,” he told Anglo File. “I’m in favor of unity among the Jewish people. But it does not seem to me halakically legitimate to just abandon the custom.” His ruling allows Ashkenazim to eat in Sephardic homes, as long as they’re not eating actual recognizable kitniyot, or dishes containing mostly of kitniyot, he added.

Although Gordon, of the Kitniyot Liberation Front, argues for an end to the “foolish custom” of banning kitniyot, he hinted that his wife is not ready to introduce the controversial items to her kitchen. “We don’t serve kitniyot, but if I’m out or if I’m with Sephardim and they’re serving it, it’s not an issue at all,” he said.

“The real idea behind the Liberation Front is that we need to forget about the little things. Kitniyot are little things. We mustn’t panic about eating something we know is not hametz on Pesach,” Gordon said. “If this is the thing that consumes the attention of the Jewish people, we’re really in a bad situation. We have much bigger issues to worry about.”

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Roman Vishniac Photographs Exhibit at the International Center of Photography

The photographs of Roman Vishniac are on display at the ICP at 6th Avenue and 43rd Street.

We don't expect that Vishniac's portrait of our dad is in the exhibit.



Portraits of Albert Einstein and Marc Chagall made it into the exhibit.

    

The portrait selections in the exhibit are just one part of a larger collection. The catalog describes the portraits this way:

Portrait Studio and Nightclubs, New York

Upon arriving in New York in 1941, Vishniac turned to photography to support his family, opening a portrait studio on the Upper West Side. Always resourceful, he mined his connections in the Russian and German-Jewish expatriate communities to secure famous subjects for portraits—Marc Chagall, Albert Einstein, and Yiddish Theater star Molly Picon among them. These photographs of well-known artists, intellectuals, and performers helped establish Vishniac's reputation in New York, attracting a broad clientele to his studio, including Jewish émigré dancers, actors, musicians, artists, intellectuals, and scientists. His success in portraiture ultimately allowed Vishniac to pursue photomicroscopy, biology, and scientific research—fields that would become his primary focus over the next fifty years.

Vishniac also turned his camera to the city's nightclubs, where war- weary New Yorkers, abetted by a swell of immigrant performers and off-duty servicemen, sought distraction at a frenzied pace. His dynamic and skilled work, focusing on jazz musicians, actors, comedians, and dancers, exhibited here for the first time, incorporated highbrow and lowbrow, popular and avant-garde, focusing primarily on three Jewish- owned nightclubs: New York's first integrated nightclub, Café Society, The Village Vanguard in bohemian Greenwich Village, and the burlesque joint Leon & Eddie's. Much like his earlier work in Eastern Europe, Vishniac's portraits of Jewish émigré intellectuals and performers capture the vitality and resilience of Jewish life, this time from the perspective of a different segment of the diaspora, facing its own set of challenges.

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