Interesting Posts and Articles #280

1. The hunt continues, as they arrest another rabbi, Rabbi Tosef Elitzur, for the controversial book Torat Hamelech. I don't know whether the statements are correct al pi halachah; or even if they are correct, whether they are suggesting one should apply them in real life, or if they are, whether one should. But I can deplore the stifling of academic freedom nonetheless. Meanwhile, Rabbi Benny Lau explains why he thinks this is incorrect, and that it is not a matter of academic freedom.
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2. This week's Haveil Havalim hosted at Ki Yachol Nuchal.
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3. The egg recall expands to many more eggs (half a billion).
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4. At Hirhurim, an essay by Rabbi Michael Broyde about women leading kabbalat Shabbat, and what he sees as potentially problematic about it.
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5. The crazy extent to which "human rights" have been taken in some countries.
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6. Anglos get their shul in Bet Shemesh.
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7. At the Seforim blog, an intellectual tribute to Reb Tzadok haKohen of Lublin.
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8. Is Hebrew Google Translate chauvinistic? It translates "I wash the car" as masculine, while "I wash the kitchen" as feminine. Well, yes and no. I would guess that this is statistical machine translation at play. What they do is throw large translated parallel corpora at it, and train a trigram model. What is the likelihood of "watch" meaning "look" and of "watch" meaning clock. It depends on the words in context. It would seem that the corpora upon which this was trained had more women washing kitchens than washing cars.
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9. Failed Messiah reports certain statements by Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky. DovBear covers it as does Emes veEmunah. And what appears to be Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb's response. I suppose the statements themselves are not surprising. And he is entitled to his beliefs, as much as I think they are wrong. But it is good to know the sort of indoctrination being given in Ohr Samayach, such that we can consider whether we want to direct people towards that yeshiva, or support it. We put our impressionable young minds into the hands of very charismatic people, but don't always pay careful attention to the specific message being conveyed.
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10. Here on parshablog, are the Taliban barbaric for stoning the eloping couple to death. I think so, but what are the repercussions of that? And distracting dress on the sidelines of battle. Does Rashi indeed say what people commonly assume he is saying. I would guess not.