How Civilized Societies Behave Under Fire (and How Uncivilized Ones Behave Too)

Civilized societies build warning systems, bomb shelters, and defensive missile shields to protect their citizens.Uncivilized societies use their citizens to protect the missiles and terrorist apparatus.

Civilized societies warn the civilians on the other side before striking so as to minimize civilian casualties as much as possible.
Uncivilized societies fire indiscriminately at civilians in an attempt to maim and kill as many as possible.

Civilized societies are nearly unanimously disgusted and ashamed when one of their own commits heinous crimes against an innocent 16 year-old boy on his way to pray.
Uncivilized societies hand out candies and flash '3 fingered' salutes to celebrate the murder of 3 teenage boys returning home to see their families after a week of school.

Civilized societies place life above all else.
Uncivilized societies are obsessed with death and martyrdom.

Civilized societies dedicate the lion's share of their financial resources to providing basic welfare services and universal healthcare to their citizens, regardless of those citizens' race, creed, or religion.
Uncivilized societies divert nearly all of their resources to building and obtaining the instruments of war to use against civilians.

Civilized societies overwhelmingly support sharing the land that they have with another people for the sake of peace. They have withdrawn from land conquered in defensive wars on multiple occasions for this very purpose.
Uncivilized societies overwhelmingly support reconquering all of the land between the river and the sea.

Civilized societies are home to diverse populations, with Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, straight and gay, liberal and conservative, living together in the same cities and towns.
Uncivilized societies are so inhospitable to anyone even remotely different that you wont be able to find them living there.

Civilized societies try to teach their children to have tolerance for people that are different than them, even for those they vehemently disagree with.
Uncivilized societies nurture their children on hatred of Jews from cradle to grave.

Individuals that believe there's any moral equivalence between Civilized and Uncivilized societies are those Edmund Burke was referring to when he said "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Half a Lifetime Later, I Finally Get to See Soundgarden

I saw Soundgarden in Tel Aviv last night - great concert through and through with a great setlist and excellent musicianship on display - especially from Kim Thayil. Opener Gogol Bordello was really awesome too - they play Gypsy Punk music and have a crazy eclectic set of musicians and instruments on stage.

Last night was also filled with nostalgia and had me remember the time I almost saw Soundgarden in the 11th grade, back in 1996.

When I was in 10th and 11th grade, Soundgarden was easily one of my favorite bands. I knew 1994's Superunknown note for note and remember going out of my way to buy Down on the Upside with my brother Yaakov very soon after it came out - and both of us listening to that album over and over again.

I was supposed to see Soundgarden at NYC's Roseland Ballroom during the fall of 1996. I had gotten back from a 6-week teen tour in Israel and one of the girls I had become better friends with, Allison Ashenberg (who actually lives in Israel now), hooked up tickets for me, her and a couple of other people who now escape me to catch Soundgarden on the 3rd night of a 3 night run. From what I can remember, by night 2 of the run Chris Cornell's voice was totally shot to hell and they only played for like an hour and 15 minutes.

At this point in the story, I should point out was not allowed to see concerts at the Roseland, Irving Plaza, or any other place that had a mosh pit. My parents being good protective types had read in horror that some kid was stomped to death in the moshpit at a Smashing Pumpkins show at the Academy and that was the end of my chance to see most of the bands I was listening to live in concert.

I had no choice really - I did what any teenager that was even remotely independent would: I made up an elaborate alibi about some get together from my summer teen tour in the city that was going to end late and force me to sleep in the city. Thankfully people under 20 didn't own cell phones in 1996 so once I left my house in Riverdale, I didn't have to worry about being called by my parents and getting caught in my web of lies.

I headed downtown and went to hang out with this girl from my bus that summer who I kind of had a thing for, Aliza Finkle. Plus her apartment was right next to Washington Square Park in the West Village, which in high school seemed to be about as cool a place as anyone could live. And her parents were really interesting people - her mom used to be a model of some sort and they had really cool books and music and seemed incredibly worldly.

At about 5 Allison got a call that Soundgarden had cancelled the show because Chris Cornell had the flu. Fuckers! I had made up an elaborate alibi for no reason. They would reschedule the show at a later date they said. A couple months later, Soundgarden broke up and so I never got to see them. Until last night that is.

After hearing the show was cancelled, I hung out downtown for a few more hours and then made my way up to Jonathan Smith's house on the Upper East side where I was sleeping. I was supposed to catch a bus out to my school in New Jersey the next morning.

At roughly 10:30 p.m., I got a panicked call from my Dad. He had somehow tracked down Jonathan Smith's number. He had realized I had never left the number of where I was staying and called another kid from my summer tour's parents (AJ Stone) - and found out that there was no bus get-together that night.

Smith and I were sitting facing each other taking waterfall rips and blowing them through a laundry sheet stuffed into a cardboard paper towel roll in his bathroom (as if that's actually masked the smell of anything before) when his Dad knocked on the door and said I had an urgent phone call. I'm pretty sure the Smith's entire east side apartment smelled like the lawn at a Grateful Dead show - maybe his parents had an insanely bad sense of smell - but there didn't seem to be any parental issues on his end, only mine.

I had smoked marijuana only a handful of times at this point of my life - and I'd never had to actually talk to my parents before while high. Needless to say as paranoid as I was, my Dad was a lot more paranoid as he suspected that the reason I had made up an elaborate web of lies wasn't to see Soundgarden - which I had had to confess to when he found out there was no get-together - but to engage in the evils of teen soft drug use.

I somehow managed to eventually get off the phone with him - and when I got home from school the next night I had to endure a multi-hour interrogation from both him and my Mom, with the two of them playing good cop/bad cop.

The entire experience didn't stop me from occasionally getting high in high school - very rarely on school nights - I was a very responsible student with aspirations of attending a top college. The occasional toke is too damn fun - we'd generally spend hours acting goofy and giggling after a smoke - to believe all the stupidity adults feed you about how it will get you to try harder drugs, stop caring about anything and ruin your life.

Actually I can say based on my own personal experiences that in retrospect, the opposite of all those things is true. The occasional smoke in high school made me less constrained by standard modes of thinking and allowed me to take more mental risks that I think ultimately have made me a much more successful person - in both work and life. It turns out that in most fields and human interactions generally, the ability to step outside of your preconceived views and break down the doors of perception (to use an overquoted phrase) is highly valued and rewarded. I'm not saying you need a literal drug to achieve that - but very few people are born with the ability to step outside themselves and be truly creative. And so there's generally some out of body experience or trigger experience that allows the people that are truly creative to tap into an ability that we're all born with, a bit better and more deeply than the rest of us.

All of this was going through my mind as Soundgarden burned through 19 songs in a little over 2 hours - including half of Superunkown, which just had a special 20th anniversary release (that made me feel old!). My personal highlights were an especially hard-rocking Jesus Christ Pose (with Chris Cornell introducing the song as 'about a dude born not far from here, a craftsman, a carpenter and generally badass guy' which left most of the Israelis scratching their heads trying to figure out who he was talking about), pretty much everything from Superunknown including a slowed down, especially angsty 4th of July and great audience sing along on Blow up the Outside World, and Beyond the Wheel which was their final song and ended with Kim Thayil on stage alone in some sort of weird guitar worshiping ritual that created lots of cool distortion and ambient sounds.

And yes, I got to taste my first mosh pit, finally at age 34 ;-) The mainly tattooed and pierced dudes in the pit were all smiles whenever they collided with someone - all that angst that must have existed in mosh pits when the participants were 16 seems to have melted away now that they're in their 30s and early 40s. Seems like we all turned out pretty much ok in the end.

Alan Turing and Biblical Literalism: A Prayer for the New Year

I happened to stumble across this article on CNN last night. The gist of it is that the previous day the Queen of England pardoned Alan Turing - who broke the Nazi Enigma code in WWII, saving thousands of British lives, and who also invented the prototype for the modern computer, the eponymous Turing Machine - for indecent homosexual acts he committed in the 1950s, shortly after which he killed himself. Wanting to know more, I looked up his story on Wikipedia.  

It is a story that is both fascinating and depressing. Turing was a brilliant scientist who at the age of 15 was already solving complex mathematical problems without any formal training. By age 16, he understood Einstein's theory of relativity implicitly debunked Newtonian physics although Einstein never stated this explicitly in his work. After studying at Cambridge and Princeton, he joined Britain's elite code-breaking unit and single-handedly cracked the German's Enigma code, saving countless lives during WWII. 

After the war he invented the prototype for the modern computer, the Turing Machine, which gave formalization to the concepts of algorithm and computation. He is considered the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.  

In his personal life, Turing had known he was gay since he was a teenager and while not open about it, he never denied it either. Following an incident in 1952 where Turing's house was robbed by an acquaintance of a lover of his, in which it came out that Turing had slept with another man during the police investigation, Turing was offered a choice between prison or receiving weekly female hormone shots for an entire year to 'control' his deviant libido. Not surprisingly, Turing ended up killing himself just a year after he received chemical castration treatments.

What really shocks me about this entire incident is the level to which blind hatred for homosexuals (or any group as was the case of Jewish scientists living in Germany in the 30s) caused England to essentially kill off one of its most dedicated and remarkable citizens. Turing dedicated his life to helping the State and was a hero and patriot in every sense of the word. 

I recently finished reading 'God is not Great' by Christopher Hitchens. The way a man like Turing was treated - despite his great brilliance and heroism - clearly has its roots in statements that appear in Leviticus calling for men that sleep with other men to be put to death by stoning, as well as statements in the new Testament recently made famous by the scandal surrounding the Duck Dynasty show (a show I ave no interest in watching). Literal interpretations of these sorts of edicts lead directly to the kind of self-defeating persecution of great minds and great individuals simply because they were born a certain way (created by God in that way if you will) and that the sin of their birth doesn't correspond with a statement made by a nomadic tribe 4,000 years prior, in an entirely different place, time and cultural setting.  Similarly, Naziism obsessive Jew-hatred had clear roots in 1800 years of Church dogma, initially begun in the new Testament.

My prayer for the new year is that we learn to have true respect for all of God's creations - the ones that are living and breathing and creating on a daily basis in the here and now. And that those of us that are inclined towards religion in one way or another use it only as a force for good.

P.S. Apparently there's a movie about Turing's life and death staring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Kneightly coming out in 2014. I'll definitely be seeing it.

Update: The movie is called The Imitation Game and it's awesome! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Turing specifically or in understanding the concept of genius in general.

No, Muslim Hate Speech Is Not Acceptable

Maybe it's time to start shutting down certain select mosques. Like this one the 'brothers' prayed at:

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, attended the Cambridge mosque for services and are accused of setting two bombs that killed three people and injured at least 264 others at the April 15 Boston Marathon.

The FBI has not indicated that either mosque was involved in any criminal activity, but mosque attendees and officials have been implicated in terrorist activity:

• Alamoudi, who signed the articles of incorporation as the Cambridge mosque's president, was sentenced to 23 years in federal court in Alexandria, Va., in 2004 for his role as a facilitator in what federal prosecutors called a Libyan assassination plot against then-crown prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Abdullah is now the Saudi king.

• Aafia Siddiqui, who occasionally prayed at the Cambridge mosque, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 while in possession of cyanide canisters and plans for a chemical attack in New York City. She tried to grab a rifle while in detention and shot at military officers and FBI agents, for which she was convicted in New York in 2010 and is serving an 86-year sentence.

• Tarek Mehanna, who worshiped at the Cambridge mosque, was sentenced in 2012 to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid al-Qaeda. Mehanna had traveled to Yemen to seek terrorist training and plotted to use automatic weapons to shoot up a mall in the Boston suburbs, federal investigators in Boston alleged.
• Ahmad Abousamra, the son of a former vice president of the Muslim American Society Boston Abdul-Badi Abousamra, was identified by the FBI as Mehanna's co-conspirator. He fled to Syria and is wanted by the FBI on charges of providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill Americans in a foreign country.
• Jamal Badawi of Canada, a former trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston Trust, which owns both mosques, was named as a non-indicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial in Texas over the funneling of money to Hamas, which is the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Funded by the Saudis, affiliated with the muslim brotherhood, What does America have against stopping hate speech that leads to action (repeatedly)? This is no different than the KKK - and more dangerous.

Or do muslims get to say and do whatever the fuck they want until after they plot to kill or actually kill innocents?

And where are all the people on the left that go nuts every time a christian or Jewish politician/Rabbi/priest says something remotely offensive about gays or other minorities (something which of course should be condemned)? Why do they not seem to care about speech like this, speech that apparently has very real world consequences again and again:

A former trustee appears in a series of videos in which he advocates treating gays as criminals, says husbands should sometimes beat their wives and calls on Allah (God) to kill Zionists and Jews, according to Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group that has investigated the mosques.

No, my blog has not been hacked by Republicans... but when you actually think about that 8 year old boy who was killed, it makes you wonder why their life is more valuable than his?

Naftali Bennett IS Andre from The League

Most people that know me know what a huge fan of the FX TV series 'The League' I am, especially the comedic stylings of Paul Scheer, better know as Andre, the nebbie character who is way more successful than his peers but who is nonetheless the butt of pretty much every joke due to his absurd fashion style and ridiculous mannerisms.

You also probably know me as a centrist to the core politically - someone who eschews ideology across the board (heck, it's the reason I called this here blog the Common Sensorium). I am far from a supporter of ideological causes, both in Israel where I live and in the U.S. where I still vote and spend about 6 weeks of the year.I definitely have ZERO interest in supporting an ideologue like Naftali Bennett, head of the right wing Bayit Yehudi party in the upcoming Israeli election.

Which is why I was so shocked to discover that Naftali Bennett and our beloved Andre (aka Paul Scheer) are in fact one and the same person!

As Exhibit A, I provide irrefutable photographic evidence. I bet you can't even guess which of this is Bennett and which is Andre:

In my utter state of shock I fired off an email to Andre's Bayit Yehudi campaign manager, Andre Bennett (no relation I'm told). Andre Bennett neither confirmed nor denied what is now clearly the undeniable truth, that Naftali Bennett and League star Andre are one and the same person. However, when asked how he could be running as such a cleancut, religious nut type while helping write and starring in what is possibly the most depraved TV show of all time, he did give me one of his patented 'Child Please!'s (actual patent the property of Chad Ochocinco).



What more proof do you need?

So for all you potential Bayit Yehudi voters out there, I just hope you realize that you're supporting a candidate that shoots porn in his upscale downtown loft and then screens it at a Succa Party for Baby Geoffrey's Jewish preschool teacher. Sick, just sick!

Snow in the Desert

Well, not really. Jerusalem has been getting snow since recorded history. The word 'sheleg' already dates back to Isiah  (and maybe older - feel free to chime in if there's older biblical references to snow). [Actually, I looked back and it dates back as far as the book of Exodus, referring to Moses' hand being white like snow at the scene of the Burning Bush]

Here's our snow day in pictures.

 Early morning view from our kitchen

 Our parking lot

Our car

 Buildup on our balcony

 View from Zohara's window, looking east

 My favorite shot - the view from our balcony at roughly 8 a.m.

 Getting ready to rock out with our snowsuits out!

 Snow day!

 Winter wonderland

 Car driving wrong way in traffic circle near our house!

 A serious storm!

 Yours truly

Singing in the Rain

So here we are in day 3 of our 5 days superstorm. We've passed the high wind phase and are in the steady, non-stop rain phase. Tomorrow we enter the dropping temperatures with a chance (I'll believe it when I see it) snow phase. It's weeks like this I am extra grateful I work from home.

Here's the view from right behind my building - we had 2 fairly large downed trees that resulted from the 100 km/hour (60 mph) winds we had yesterday. There were downed trees all over the neighborhood.

We have been very impressed with the city's response to the storm. Yesterday I saw city workers out with chainsaws in the peak of the wind gusts taking down dangerous trees and branches before they got blown onto people and cars. Then on the way back from dropping the kids I noticed a downed telephone pole with lots of electric wires across from our bedroom window. I called the police who then came to check it out. They called the telephone company who called me for directions to the downed pole. Again, in the midst of 100 kph wind gusts they removed the pole and neutralized the wires. Then today I got another call from the police asking me to rate their response time, courteousness and whether the problem was resolved. What is happening to Israel?! Seriously amazing.


This is the mall in Modiin, where a bunch of my coworkers live. Pretty crazy.

All in all, the Kineret is at its highest level in years and maybe it's just me but I find extreme weather events (or at least tracking them from the comfort and safety of your own home) entertaining. Up to a point of course. I'm not about to go singing in the rain.