Always_Ask_Questions

I forgot fertilizer (Fritz Haber) in ~ 1910 – saved billions of lives from starvation. On the least of most forgotten greatest inventions. Stricken out of history for being a German patriot during WW1 and inventing poison gas. He fully did teshuva though for his German sympathies before his death in the 30s.

R Yohanan says when dying “be afraid of King of Kings (at least ?) as the mortal Kings”. Given lack of power for the current monarchs, we should observe carefully remaining dictators – Hu, Putim, Kim, to appreciate what yerat shamayim is.

ok, so we agree on big picture here. Practical question is which medicines are seriously affected by possible quality problems… I think I heard of synthroid issues also, as ubi says.

for politically minded, this seems like a lose-lose – choosing between “china” and “big pharma”. Hope you side with US pharma for a change. And also note that those who attack “big pharma” implicitly support “big China”, similarly as those who fight “climate” help Russia as previous generation those who were fighting nuclear were helping USSR to sell their oil/gas.

Where can I get sefer of teshuvos by Achashverosh, could you ship it by Purim?
Seems like respect would require indeed talking to the husband in his language, you can also consider that women have more feelings and prefer to talk to children in appropriately called “mama loshon”.

We have an example of a bilingual family, right? A woman who had to spit into Bava’s eye due to language problems with her husband. Any piskei halakha coming from there? One thing is true (and is evident in that story) that men are less flexible and more fixed in their ways, so the wife might consider speaking his language as it is hard for him to change.

But it would be also wise to look long-term: do they plan to settle in E’Y, or go back & forth? If they are planning fully Israeli life, then the husband, and future children, would be better off talking the language of their neighborhood. OTOH, if children are planning to earn a living, speaking American English and having American business attitudes will help them land a job in one of the above mentioned IBM, Intel, Rafael, so that they can have a good-paying job and spend half a day in learning.

I thin Bava Metzia talks that things are not usually bad by themselves, depends on who and how is using them. Nuclear weapons ended WW2 in Pacific quickly and probably prevented USSR from occupying a lot of countries thereafter. Internet gave a lot of poor people access to information and education; people in China access to less filtered news. Jewish kids can get access to quality professional education without stepping into a campus with a lot of noreshkeit; people in Brooklyn can write on YWN about what they hate without leaving their heder.

jackk, thanks for defending the honor of emoji research. do you have an opinion whether NPR public funding is indeed 2% as claimed?

I think you guys have a legit an interesting debate, but it is outdated. I am claiming that current Israel is not permeated by original Zionism. The anti-religious left is now more into global liberal ideas; traditional, mostly Sephardi, Jews were not affected by it to begin with. What you have is – a state consisting of multiple Jewish groups, many of who are not observant or partially observant. It is the same as in other countries, except that all of them share the bus. In other countries, you simply do not meet these people and do not depend on them. Maybe, Israel gives you an opportunity to show these Jews – who mostly were not religious before they came to Israel – the beauty of Torah. Instead, you are hating them. Look at Yonah and Kikayon. Do you have no chesed to this small country populated by Jewish people?

significant ones, ordered by time, more or less, not dividing into bad and good:
wheel (Amerindians did not), alef-beis, paper, military horse saddle, growing beans with wheat (responsible for growth of Northern Europe and Ashkenazim), long bow, printing press, marine chronometer (enabled measuring longitude and actually going to an exact location), steam engine, electricity, cotton gin (American thingy), radio, federal reserve (economic stability), Kalashnikov, potential functions and support vector machines (first serious machine learning technology), PC, Netscape browser (rather than internet, making it available to non-geeks), altavista search engine (first working one), zoom

rw, could you clarify how many and out of how many were taken off the market, according to your sources, hopefully separately for brands and generics?

also, taken from the market may be a sign of monitoring working, even if at this late stage

note that late during Trump administration, after shortages of medicines started, there was an initiative to identify what ingredients are sources from non-friendly countries and looking for substitutes.

It may depend on the drug. Some are very sensitive to changes in production, many others are easily copied. you would need to research a specific drug.

Another example of a well camouflaged false claim: there was popular theme in the 80s and 90s of accusing “rich getting richer”, and the simple jingle proof was “2% of highest earners earn XX% of GDP” or something like that. Heard it on NPR many time and it sounded convincing. What’s the catch?

These 2% of “rich” people are not the same people each year … Someone sells a business, a farm, wins a lottery – he joins the “rich” for that year (and gets taxed accordingly). This is not to deny that are rich people, but the proof was a lie.

Mark Twain +1 I am quoting this to my teen kids all the time.

HaKatan notices that Reform is dying and Zionism is not to justify bigger evil of Zionism. Maybe it means that Reform was wrong (more)? They led their communities to full assimilation. I would add that original Zionism is also not around. You describe it how it looks in 1930s, maybe you read some seforim from 100 years ago and did not go out much.

Goldilocks, great tips! If you need to post those photos, do it after coming back.

Also, please consider that school finance committee can also find those videos when you are asking for a discount.

CTL > Federal Government said to the states if you don’t raise the drinking age to 21, we will cut off all federal highway funds to your state.

CTL, I always wondered how this is allowed to be legal. Feds collect taxes for the enumerated powers – defense, commerce, etc. Fine. Now they are are using the power of that money to compel states to do many other things. Constitution and bill of rights were made to limit federal powers. What is the limit here? Is there anything feds can’t compel by withholding funds?

RebE, indeed! It is better to NOT be born in Sopron, but if you are born in Sopron, better escape and count your blessings!

Same as previously discussed comparison between Bavel and Israel – Bavlim learn how to argue and fight, but the best ones wrote a bigger Talmud.

But we should not argue – Hashem sends every person his own challenges and one should not be jealous – not of riches, not of challenges. You were strong enough to get to Sopron , I – to some other challenges (that I chose not to advertise here).

charlie > But natural immunity did not provide protection against the omicron variant.

It provided, similar to the vaccine, protection from severe outcomes in part due to T-cell immunity that is more general than antibodies and come to play after someone is infected.

What we really need for non-vaccinated is a way to get exposed to a light case. For example, make them come into an infected room for 2 minutes [this will avoid possible exposure for 2 hours]. Or, better, release a weakened variant (either find a natural one or engineer). Of course, FDA that had hard time understanding the value of imperfect home tests, will not approve of such “unethical” path even as it will save millions of lives.

My miracle beats yours, Reb E: Hashem made sure I never even came to Sopron!

> Causing major additional expenses to families who are very tight in their budget

On one hand, we have halakha of not competing with another Jew when he is doing business with a non-Jew. This typically applies when a non-Jewish aristocrat hires a Jewish tradesman. I am wondering whether this still holds when the power differential is reversed, In this case, we presumably talk about Jewish employers (who possibly chose not to work themselves) hiring (possibly illegal, not speaking English) workers (possibly not paying employment taxes) lacking a lot of legal protections. While we may not be obligated to care about these workers as we would for Jews, it is not clear that one _has_ to participate in this race to the bottom in order to spare expenses to others.

edited

HaKatan, there are many ways to skin this cat, here is a statistical one:
12% of American Jews go to (any kind of) synagogue weekly
25% of Israeli Jews do (32% of those who call themselves “traditional”)
27% of Americans go to religious services weekly.

21% of American Jews say religion is very important
30% of Israeli Jews do, 32% of traditionals do.

you could argue, of course, that given a more religious, and more Jewish, environment in Israel the difference should be larger.

US also had it’s share of Jewish socialists in 1930s and even later who were fighting religion. They simply assimilated and now fight climate change instead of other Jews.

All kiruv work is great, but the number of non-O Jews percentage wise affected by it is very small, and, I think, getting smaller.

The issue of “working most of the week” is not so pashut.

Daf Yomi talks about the person who would learn one day a year (traveling/working the rest of the year) and this might be equivalent to full time learning if done properly.

jackk, in the spirit of respectful discussion, could you try to summarize the court filing in a non-partisan manner, without omitting something that is not good for your side?

I did not read the filing, but I read previous documents, and I recall a bunch of serious stuff, like a university using their DARPA-provided IP data to come up with “suspicious” IPs, while one of the researchers explicitly telling all that this is not suspicious; Sussman requesting this “research”, and then taking as a “concerned citizen” to authorities, with also implications that others are aware of what was going on. this is fomr memory and early docs, so maybe you can help us get more details on this.

By the way, what’s up with tables and supersizing everything?

Seems like _sitting_ on a chair is more traditional and safe (and Kings used to sit even in Beis Hamikdash, nobody put them on a shaky table!).

Mahybe you guys should start a “Jews for Covid” fund. What a shanda.

Gadol, wow … first time ever I am envious. Send this info to the kahal, this is an easy way to have kollel fully paid!