Interesting Posts and Articles #180

1. SerandEz on the Beis Yaakov dilemma. While there may be some good points, I don't agree with the author's conclusion that:
   

   No, the school doesn't have to change their policies. But for the sake of even one girl's happiness, for the sake of even one girl's yiddishkeit, don't you think they should?

   Not if it will undermine their educational mission. If I were teaching calculus and one student did not know addition, then even though it might make that student less unhappy, I should not change the class into one teaching first grade math. The answer is to direct the student elsewhere, because of the obligation to the other students in the class. If they believe that their way is the proper way of chinuch in general, whether they happen to be wrong or right, they cannot be subject to the tyranny of the minority.
   
   
2. On the Main Line discusses a reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Trusty Shovel, ans whether what they categorized as kefirah is as bad as they portrayed it.
   
   
3. More Yerushalayim riot blogging. The Yeshiva World on how the rosh yeshiva of the Mir forbade the students of the Mir from participating in these protests. The Muqata with a link to pictures, and wondering about the details of the mother allegedly with Munchausen's, and whether the kid had cancer. And the Yeshiva World, more pictures, and greater coverage. An excerpt:
   

   Moshe Friedman, who is a member of the Munchausen mother’s family has released a message calling for calm and an end to the violence. “I repeat, in the name of the rabbonim and the family, please, stop, the violence is counter-productive and hurts our case. It diverts the public’s attention”. Friedman calls for calm law-abiding protest, tefilla, and tehillim.

   Meanwhile, the mother has been released to house-arrest, so this may help quiet matters.
   And Daas Torah notes an article in Haaretz about collective punishment against chareidim. At Matzav, a defense of the Shabbos protests.
   
   
4. Hirhurim on whether Jews should oppose gay marriage from a legal perspective, when the true battle is a cultural one that has been neglected.
   
   
5. The Junk Food Science blog on whether it is really the case that a low-calorie diet is life-extending.
   

   The long-awaited research on the effects of calorie restriction on aging in rhesus monkeys from the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin National Primate Research Center have just been released. It found no statistically significant difference in the number of deaths among the monkeys who’ve been eating a calorie-restrictive diet for more than 20 years compared to the monkeys who’ve been allowed to eat ad lib all day as much as 20% over their normal calories.

   Yet they promote it, the blogger claims, by cleverly manipulating the result by excluding monkeys who did not die of diseases associated with old age.