Interesting Posts and Articles #36

1. OU: Why Orthodox Jews should pray for Kennedy
2. Chaptzem has a photo of an ambulance from the women's division of the New Square Hatzalah. Not really.
3. The NY Times on how high tech devices keep the elderly safe from afar.
4. The New York Times: Atomic monitor signals concerns over Iran's work.
   
5. A tale of three criminal records, and why tougher gun-control laws may be ineffective if the courts do not make use of even existing ones and prosecute criminals.
6. Mystical Paths has two miraculous mezuzah stories. In the first, the mezuzah is affected by its owner, a missionary in disguise. But in the second, the mezuzah affects its owner, causing him to limp, and then causing its next owner to limp. If I believed this to be so, I would be reluctant to advise anyone to put up a mezuzah, since it is effectively a time-bomb which will harm its owner as soon as it develops a psul. Mikey makes an interesting comment on that post.
   
7. Rabbi Eli Mansour on whether it is permissible to put a mezuzah in a car. A good follow-up to that early story about that irreligious taxicab driver who had it affixed on the doorpost of his car.
8. Did Obama lie about his uncle being part of the brigade that liberated Auschwitz?
9. Did a company in Singapore patent images which are hyperlinks? It is possible. On the other hand, see this comment from Slashdot:
   

   "If you read their patent claims on their website they aren't quite making that broad of a claim. They believe they have a patent on submitting a search and showing image (of the respective website) links as a result of that search. I agree that was done long before, and they actually state on the website that it was not in "wide use" for "enterprise websites" prior to 2000. So apparently the think they can patent ideas that have prior art, just as long as they aren't being used by the majority of large companies.
   
   If you actually subscribe to their insane claims, or are extremely paranoid, you could get around it very easily by not having the image use a href. Their patent claim specifically mentions hrefs."

10. UK approves research using animal-human hybrid embryos. Lemon Lime Moon is against this, and against savior siblings. Personally, I think there is nuance to be seen here, and the moral arguments, and Torah position, is not so clear cut.