Shorespirit's Journal: Round-up

a quiet weekend, but not to the point of turning into boring. my choir performed (a fair number of the people I invited actually showed up), and I stopped briefly at a Roman dorm party that gave an idea of what a symposium would have been like had bad hip-hop been a classical Roman genre.

had dinner last night at my favorite doggy eatery. it had been some time since I've last been, and the resident basset hound had grown old and lounged at the enterance. Donna, the proprietor, pointed out the new infusion of "paws for peace" signs into the decor before going off to feed the dog and grab some pizza herself.

we fell to musing about the smell-a-vision proposals that were being talked about a few years ago but have dropped from the press, having a scent generator in your TV or computer. people were talking mostly about using them to send out perfume samples, but it seemed like they would greatly enhance cooking shows. we speculated on what odor the government could have used to make the state of the union address acceptable. I voted for nitrous oxide.

anybody know why smells have vanished from our multimedia future?

on the more hopeful side of gustatory news, some chefs and other concerned French have petitioned the Catholic church to change its French word for the deadly sin of gluttony from gourmandise, arguing that the gourmet life by no means represents surrender to a base temptation. surely the Americans will be after greed next?

the Israei papers Ma'ariv and ha'Arets had skeptical articles on the Jehoash inscription this week. apparently said tablet and the James sarcophagus and miscenallious other hot antiques came to public attention courtesy of the same dealer, who will say only that he has exclusive sources in the West Bank but may in fact simply be well-connected with the Jordanian antique workshops.

A note.

[Chacham]

ha'Arets [haaretz.co.il] has an english edition [haaretz.com]. The paper is extemely liberal, and virulently anti-religious. But it has been called, "The New Yok Times" of Israel. Ma'ariv [maariv.co.il] is a more to the center paper, and has wider readership.

So, ha'Arets will have better articles, but very biased. (I don't read them, CNN, or Reuters anymore for the same reason.) Ma'ariv is likely to be less biased.

Re: papers

[Shorespirit]

that's the conventional wisdom about ha'Arets and Ma'ariv, but I haven't noticed that much of a difference. maybe because I tend to read the news stories, not the editorials :-)

Re: papers

[Chacham]

Well, with ha'Arets the news is an editorial.....