Interesting Posts and Articles #63

1. Artscroll makes a free download of kinnos for the Holocaust. As well as some permitted learning for Tisha BeAv -- the Artscroll gemara, in Hebrew and in English, of the story of Kamtza and bar Kamtza.
   
   
2. Contagious cancer among Tazmanian devils. This is not really something so new, but it still is scary.
   
   
3. A psak din purportedly from the Beis Din of Antwerp, forged! And also, a first-hand account of the bulldozer attack. Over at Mystical Paths.
   
   
4. Over at WebYeshiva, Rabbi Chaim Brovender talks about the seuda haMafsekes on Shabbos. My father-in-law jokes that on years with this structure, people who are usually not makpid to eat Shaleshudes somehow just have to do it when erev Pesach falls on a Shabbos -- as well as when erev Tisha veAv falls on a Shabbos. Anyway, the post includes a source sheet, available here: He cites Mishnah Brurah on this, who greatly restricts the statement of the Shulchan Aruch.
   
   
5. I would add that you can see Aruch haShulchan on this here, seif 12 on that page. Also, see the discussion over at Divrei Chaim, here and then here.
   
   
6. Drew Kaplan discusses according oneself with one's wife on Tisha BeAv.
   
   
7. Emes veEmunah has another guest post, from Rabbi Dovid Landesman. An excerpt:
   

   He told us that he had a kabbala from his rebbi that it is important to encourage children [almost Montessori!]. One parent asked him wehat he does to encourage his students. He replied with the following example.
   
   One of the talmidim who was doing rather poorly in the class approached him after a test and said: "Rebbi, I really studied and I think I got a 90." The rebbi replied: "Yankel, I'll be overjoyed if you get a 70!"

8. It is sad if people are really adopting North Vietnamese propaganda as truth because it serves their political ends. As I recently saw on Snopes, there is an email circulating that McCain is evil, as he admitted to being a war criminal and to bombing innocent women and children. (This actually reminds me of Kerry's Congressional testimony.) The email goes:
   

   Is this true?
   
   "I am a war criminal," McCain said on "60 Minutes" in 1997. "I bombed innocent women and children."

   But context is key. He was explaining that under torture, he was forced to write this false "confession." Thus,
   

   Sen. McCAIN: I m-made serious, serious mistakes and did things wrong when I was in prison, OK?
   
   WALLACE: What did you do wrong in prison?
   
   Sen. McCAIN: I wrote a confession. I was guilty of war crimes against the Vietnamese people. I intentionally bombed women and children.
   
   WALLACE: And you did it because you were being tortured...
   
   Sen. McCAIN: I...
   
   WALLACE: ...and you'd reached the end of the line.
   
   Sen. McCAIN: Yes.

9. The Times discusses how a new e-passport was easily hacked.
   
   
10. This is a post from a while ago -- At the Muqata: "A prophecy fulfilled?" Perhaps. It is certainly cute. But I would point out that this fellow did not just come up with the phrase
    "thorns in their sides" from thin air. Rather, this entered popular speech from the Biblical verse. Google searches reveal many occurrences of it, and one can talk of the proverbial thorn in your side. It is therefore not so surprising that eventually, some sheik would make use of the term.
    
    
11. My Machberes on Rubashkin.