ו׳ בכסלו ה׳תש״ע (Monday 23 November 2009)

The Coming Shalit Deal

ו׳ בכסלו ה׳תש״ע (Monday 23 November 2009)

A deal to free Gilad Shalit is imminent. Or it isn’t. It’s impossible to tell from any article like this one. In general, reports that a deal is imminent are usually manufactured by one side, namely by one side’s negotiating team, to pressure the other side into restarting negotiations. They may also be planted in [...]

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Belichick: Genius

ו׳ בכסלו ה׳תש״ע (Monday 23 November 2009)

I am a big football fan. I regret to say that my beloved team, the Washington Redskins, rarely makes a playoff appearance, which means they play a maximum of 16 times a year. Of those, I’m rarely able to catch more than a few because I live halfway around the world, and the No Fun [...]

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Pinker vs. Gladwell

ה׳ בכסלו ה׳תש״ע (Sunday 22 November 2009)

Who is Malcolm Gladwell? Oh yeah, he’s that Canadian dude whose books you don’t have to bother reading because enough other people have read them that their ideas have seeped and saturated into the consciousness of everyone around you, and into your own as well – a process described, inevitably, in one of his books. [...]

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How bad can health care get?

ד׳ בכסלו ה׳תש״ע (Saturday 21 November 2009)

How bad can health care get? There’s no answer to that question except to say that its deterioration is only limited by our ability to recognize it. When I lived in America, I paid for medical insurance and more or less got what I paid for. Now that I live in Israel, I get the [...]

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Why I miss black people

ג׳ בכסלו ה׳תש״ע (Friday 20 November 2009)

There are black-skinned people in Israel, but they are Jews from Ethiopia or migrant workers from Nigeria or refugees from Sudan. Except the “Black Hebrews” there are obviously no black people here like there are in America. Wherever black people go, they bring some awesome things. One of them is fried chicken. There is no [...]

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My weekend agenda

ג׳ בכסלו ה׳תש״ע (Friday 20 November 2009)

Thursday: Get phone call from Girl One, announcing that her normal Thursday night class has been canceled. Tell her she’s joining me for burgers instead, at a place I love and she hates. While inhaling a delicious burger with Girl One, ignore text messages from Girl Two. Take Girl One back to my apartment. Yada [...]

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