Interesting Posts and Articles #208

1. Orthonomics notes an interesting frum dating practice, of not referring to your date by his or her first name.
   
   
2. The BBC on how in Bangladesh, two papers took an Onion article about the faking of the moon landing to be true.
   
   
3. And at news.com.au, how a bunch of weird species have been newly discovered trapped in an extinct volcano -- a giant rat, a fanged frog, and a grunting fish.
   
   
4. Emes veEmunah on why he owes a huge thank you to this site, which he deems quite offensive.
   
   
5. Life In Israel reports that Rav Ovadiah Yosef maintains that mashiach will be Sefardi, and so was Moshe Rabbenu. I think this is likely a distortion, just as depicting Moshe Rabbenu with a streimel is a distortian. The same at Vos Iz Neias.
   
   
6. According the Yeshiva World, someone sent a blood libel pamphlet to the judge in the Munchhausen mother case. The Jewish Worker tells us a bit about the first of the two booklets.
   
   And Yeshiva World also notes kol koreis calling for tefilot on behalf of the mother, because she is being persecuted. Perhaps we should daven for her to have a refuah sheleimah?
   
   
7. Vos Iz Neias on demands by airlines into Israel to end the "impurity of kohanim" procedure, in which if there is a transported corpse, it must be unloaded first, before any passengers disembark, creating a tircha detzibbura.
   
   
8. And also at Vos Iz Neias, using the Talmudic method as New Math. The problem, to my mind, is that people are good at interpretation, so any invented method, or aspects of it, can be called Talmudic. Read the article and see what I mean. Also, there have been major innovations in mathematics since the time of the gemara and Rishonim, such as zero as a placeholder, how to carry out multiplication and division, and so on. Much of what Tosafot, or Rif, strive to prove at length in a confusing manner can be conveyed in a much simpler manner using modern mathematics.
   
   
9. Hirhurim about teaching and ruling, within true Authentic Judaism. And he practices authentic Judaism by asking a shailah and following the rabbinic counsel, despite it being against his own judgment.
   
   
10. Here on parshablog, I note a DovBear post discussing just where Moshe went in Vayelech Moshe, and put forth that obviously Moshe didn't go anywhere.