The Bookworm Beat 12/24/14 — A few quick links for Christmas Eve
These links aren’t related to Christmas Eve. They are simply interesting things that came my way today, as I was getting my family ready for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. (To those new to the blog, although I’m Jewish, I was raised celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah in entirely secular ways. That means trees and menorahs, and gifts of course.)
Understanding what cops deal with and what they can do
Given that rioters ran riot again today, this time because a cop shot a teenager who can be seen on video pulling a gun on the cop, this seems like the perfect time to bring two things to your attention. The first is the best “what it’s like for the police” post I have seen since the whole Ferguson thing became a cause celebre for the Left. I posted it on my real-me Facebook page and I urge you to share it with your friends in whatever way you do share posts that are chock-full of accurate, relevant data relating to major events (and the race/Leftist riots rocking major urban areas in America are major events).
Once you’ve read that post (which is fascinating from first word to last), then check out the following Facebook post. Be sure to stick to the instructions and watch the video — one or two or more times, if necessary — before you read the post. After reading the post, watch the video again:
Distilling “political correctness” to its essence
Snoopy the Goon, my friend and fellow Watcher’s Council member who blogs at Simply Jews, has what may be the definitive post when it comes to defining “political correctness.” Even better, it has a perfect illustration at the end.
Will the Middle East end with an ISIS versus Israel stand-off
During my lunch yesterday with my wonderful, intelligent, and conservative friend (he’s the one who helped lead me across the Rubicon from Democrat to conservative), my friend said that ISIS is the future in the Middle East. Because ISIS has the passion, the oil money, and the brutality, all Arabs and Muslims in its path will either join up or be slaughtered. This is so because of two factors about Arab/Muslim fighters: First, while they are vicious in pursuit, they are craven in retreat. That means that they’re lousy defensive fighters. When they lose, they are either slaughtered en masse by the even more violent victor or, because (as bin Laden knew) they are drawn to the strong horse, they desert their side in the fight and join the victorious army.
Indeed, even as we speak, it looks as if Israel will find itself facing off against ISIS very soon, since ISIS is pressing it from both north and south. Nor should Israel expect much help from Saudi Arabia, at least according to my friend. He theorizes that, to the extent the Saudi decision to drop oil prices (an act aimed at American fracking) is devastating the Russian economy, Putin will retaliate by siccing Muslim extremists into the heart of Saudi Arabia.
I have no love for the Saudis, whose petrodollars are largely responsible for the radical Islamist rise around the world. Nevertheless, to the extent the Saudis have suddenly realized that they created a monster, and are cautiously edging over to Israel’s side, I have this peculiar feeling I will regret it if Putin succeeds in destroying them from within.
My prayer for this holiday season, in addition to seeking victory and protection for all of the innocents in ISIS’s path — whether Christian or Muslim, old or young, male or female — is for Israel to have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to see this thing through, and emerge unscathed and stronger than ever.
Israel’s long ties to the land continue to be revealed
One of the most pernicious lies to come out of the Muslim world, and it’s a lie that the Christian Left embraces fervently, is that Jews have no ties to the land, and that it’s Palestinians who are Jesus’s true people. That’s why I celebrate every time archaeologists discover yet another sign that Jews’ ties to the Holy Land run back longer and deeper than those of any other people in the world:
Archaeologist Limor Talmi was minutes away from wrapping up her excavation of an ancient garbage pit last Thursday, when a piece of 1,600-year-old glass was brought to her, bearing imprints of menorahs.
The timing was fortuitous, not only because she was readying to close up shop but because it was also the second day of Hanukkah, the Jewish holiday most closely associated with the seven-branched candelabra.
In the same vein, God bless David Bernstein for instantly ridiculing and destroying the suggestion that, if Joseph and Mary were alive now, they’d run afoul of Israeli checkpoints:
Seriously, this sort of historical revisionism, treating ancient Jewish Judeans as if they were Palestinian Arabs, and then analogizing modern Israel to the oppressors of Jesus and his family, a common trope in the UK, would be laughable if it were not so pernicious. Pernicious not simply because it’s a ridiculous distortion of history, and not simply because it’s often accompanied by a large dose of anti-Semitism, with Palestinians playing the role of Jesus and the Israelis being the foreign oppressors crucifying him. But pernicious because it goes to the true heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict–the failure of the Arab side to recognize that the “Zionists” are not the “European settler-colonialists” of Third Worldist imagination, but a people with a three thousand year plus tie to the Land of Israel, whose religion was born there, who ruled two separate kingdoms there, who have prayed toward Jerusalem for two thousand years in their ancient Hebrew language, and so on.
Sadly, the Left ignores the fact that the truth shall set you free — no doubt because, so far, lies have served them so well.
Was it really the Norks who went after Sony?
Sony has announced that it will screen The Interview online, so I’m not going to take any more pokes at it, at least not for now. Indeed, it’s decision has led some at the conspiracy-oriented InfoWars website to wonder whether this whole thing wasn’t a marketing scam.
Others are wondering whether the Norks were involved at all. Marc Rogers, who describes himself as “the director of security operations for DEF CON, the world’s largest hacker conference, and the principal security researcher for the world’s leading mobile security company, Cloudflare,” has a different theory:
All the evidence leads me to believe that the great Sony Pictures hack of 2014 is far more likely to be the work of one disgruntled employee facing a pink slip.
Rogers provides a detailed analysis to support his thesis. Since I am currently less than enthralled by federal agencies, I think it’s entirely feasible that the FBI is wrong, wrong, wrong, and that Rogers is correct.
The history of Jews’ Christmas Day love affair with Chinese food
It’s a longstanding joke: on Christmas, Jews eat Chinese food. In an article originally published in The Atlantic, Adam Chandler says that this is no joke and explains how it came to be.
Apropos Chinese food, if you’re in San Francisco’s Chinatown, I have a Chinese restaurant to recommend. I have never recommended a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. In my experience as an SF native, the Chinese restaurants in Chinatown are always either (a) too geared to tourists; (b) too dirty, along with having horrible greasy, gristly food; or (c) too Hong Kong style, which means bland flavors and lots of offal. The other day, though, we ate at a wonderful Chinese restaurant called Hunan Homes. It’s one block from the affordable Portsmouth Square garage, which makes it relatively easy to get to. In addition, the restaurant is very clean, the service is excellent, and the food is affordable and delicious.
Cirque du Soleil plug
Since 1984, when it first burst on the international scene, I’ve seen every Cirque du Soleil show except for “O” which was closed for repairs when I was in Vegas. For the last ten years, I’ve found the shows boring — muddled, contrived, and stale.
With Kurios, however, Cirque’s most recent show, Crique has redeemed itself. The show’s theme is Steampunk, which is a sort of futuristic Victorian theme. The costumes were gorgeous, the sets imaginative, the music charming, and the acts were simply wonderful. Our group, which ranged in age from teenagers to late middle age fogies, all enjoyed every minute.
