Music Monday - The Peanut Vendor

A classic of musica Cubana. This is the original by the Havana Casino Orchestra...

Music Monday: Bluegrass Speed Metal - Hayseed Dixie plays Ace of Spades

Combining my love of speed metal and bluegrass:

Itamar was a Mossad inside job

The Itamar murders of course rattled my psyche... I was reading some Russian Israeli reports on how this is reported in the Arab mainstream media. It seems like initially, the reports were very minimalist. For example, they would say that "five settlers were killed", without reporting that three of them were children.

As the photos and other details began to leak out even into the Arab media, the responses on the various forums hosted by the Arabic media sites varied. A few were outraged - "God, why the children? This is horrible" posted one commenter. However, many became convinced that this could not have been done by Muslims and had to be Mossad, in order to blame and provoke the Palestinians. One commenter posted "The Koran prohibits the murder of women and children. The goal of this crime is to make the Palestinians appear guilty".

This of course on the heels of the Mossad bringing down the twin towers and releasing man eating sharks into the Red Sea...

Death in Context II

From a New Yorker article reviewing a book about Mao Tse Tung.

A great many premature deaths also occurred in newly independent nations not ruled by erratic tyrants. Amartya Sen has argued that “despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former.” Describing China’s early lead over India in health care, literacy, and life expectancy, Sen wrote that “India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame.”

Reading another article in the New Yorker about the BP oil spill. One of the people interviewed pointed out how the images of the pelicans and fish covered with oil and sludge seem to be a rallying point against the evil corporations who are willfully destroying our environment. Yet, over four hundred thousand birds are killed each year by wind turbines...

Crispix brachas

Say you're staring at a bowl of Crispix cereal and you're not sure what bracha to make on it... Star-K to the rescue...

*Recite Mezonos and eat the darker side (rice) first. Then recite Haodama and then eat the lighter side (corn).

Shit

Every morning on my way to work I carefully navigate through piles of shit on the sidewalk.

Are we living in a third world country? I am walking through the heart of the financial district in downtown Chicago, and there is excrement piled all over the sidewalk. Often, it is not even contained in piles, but smeared all over the asphalt by unfortunate pedestrians who came before me, not as vigilant as they should have been.

I am not even sure if it came from an animal or a human. I'd hate to meet the dog that could produce such a pile of crap - it must be a truly Baskervillian beast.

Music Thursday - You Only Want Me 'Cause You Want My Sister

A great song by "Evelyn Evelyn"