Hurricane Shutters

I've lived in South Florida since 1970. As everyone by now knows, South Florida's lucky streak is over and hurricane patterns have returned to their more usual statistical level.

On the drive here (I'm blogging at my mother's — via dialup!), I heard someone who had their house destroyed by Hurricane Andrew (in 1992) preaching the gospel of proper shutters. She gave out a NOAA URL for shutter information: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/shutters/. Word.

Why Shed Tears?

I had planned to spend some time today blogging further about the answerers — interesting fellows (all male, so far as I can tell) to know — or perhaps about several legal, political, or religious topics that have caught my mind lately.

One of the blog posts (had to stop myself from calling it an essay — what would de Montaigne say about blogging?) was to be about authenticity of religious expression. I was at a kosher food store yesterday (Friday) afternoon on an errand. Outside stood a yeshiva bochur (a Jewish Orthodox rabbinical student) or rabbi — Chabad Lubavitch, I'll wager. "Hello, friend!" he said to me. "I'm sorry, " I said, because I could tell from the other fellow standing there putting on tefillin that he wanted me to put them on too. Putting on tefillin is a mitzvah, a good deed, as, I think, is helping people do it. "But it will just take one minute!" he said, as I passed him on my way into the air conditioning.

As I left, he called to me again. I just ignored him. It was hot, and I was in a hurry, and I just couldn't be bothered. Even so, I almost turned around. As I walked to my car, I outlined a blog entry about why I didn't lay tefillin: because it would not have been authentic for me.

The phone rang early this morning, at about seven a.m. The caller ID said "Denise —," one of the aides who takes care of my bed-bound, enfeebled 98-year-old great-uncle Harry. My wife answered the phone, then handed it to me. It was my mother, borrowing Denise's cell phone. "Harry passed away. He died in his sleep, at about 6 a.m."

My wife and I showered, dressed, and headed to Harry's condo to be with my mom.

As I started thinking about this blog post, I opened my copy of Mencken's Dictionary of Quotations to "death." I found this one that I liked:

Why shed tears that thou must die? For if thy past has been one of enjoyment, and if all thy pleasures have not passed through thy mind, as through a sieve, and vanished, leaving not a rack behind, why then dost thou not, like a thankful guest, rise cheerfully from life's feast, and with a quiet mind take thy rest?

- Titus Lucretius Carus, De rerum natura ("On the nature of things"), book III, 57 C.E.

Or, from a more poetic translation by William Ellery Leonard (the above translation is unattributed in Mencken's Dictionary of Quotations):

Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?
For if thy life aforetime and behind
To thee was grateful, and not all thy good
Was heaped as in sieve to flow away
And perish unavailingly, why not,
Even like a banqueter, depart the halls,
Laden with life? why not with mind content
Take now, thou fool, thy unafflicted rest?

All this Epicurean philosophy is well and good. But in sorting through Harry's effects and arranging for his funeral this morning, we found his tallit (prayer shawl) and two kippot (skullcaps) — and two sets of tefillin. One Harry's, old and worn, and one probably his late son's; the son had no sons (and no interested daughters) to leave them to. Harry will be buried in his tallit, but tefillin are passed down — traditionally, to sons.

So yesterday, I refused to lay tefillin. Today, I own two sets. I can't help thinking, Lucretius to the contrary (not believing, necessarily, just thinking) that there's a connection there.

— — —

Tefillin, phylacteries (the Greek — from the Hellenized Jews of the period around year 1 B.C.E – 1 C.E. — term, I believe) are boxes observant Jews (mostly men, but controversially — but not to me — some women) strap to their foreheads and non-dominant arms when they say their daily prayers. Putting them on is called "laying tefillin."

Harry was — I had written "is" — my maternal grand-uncle; he and my late mother's mother — and my 100-year old great-aunt Dora, still with us; we celebrated her 100th four days before my 39th, on July 24th — were all siblings.

In Orthodox Judaism, many men receive semicha, rabbinical ordination, without intending to serve as, as the Reform movement calls them, "pulpit rabbis."

De rerum natura: see Wikipedia; link to document at the Gutenberg Project.

Chiseled Spam, Part Two

In his first email to me, Jeff Harrell presented quite a simple, lawyerly argument in favor of the answer. With his permission, I'm blogging his answer here.

From Snow Crash:

Y.T. has been privileged to watch many a young Clint plant his sweet face in an empty Burbclave pool during an unauthorized night run, but always on a skateboard, never ever in a car. The landscape of the suburban night has much weird beauty if you just look.

Back on the paddle again. It rolls across the yard on a set of RadiKS Mark IV Smartwheels. She upgraded to said magical sprockets after the following ad appeared in Thrasher magazine.

CHISELED SPAM
is what you will see in the mirror if you surf on a weak plank with dumb, fixed wheels and interface with a muffler, retread, snow turd, road kill, driveshaft, railroad tie, or unconscious pedestrian. If you think this is unlikely, you've been surfing too many ghost malls. All of these obstacles and more were recently observed on a one-mile stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike. Any surfer who tried to groove on that 'vard on a stock plank would have been sneezing brains.

Don't listen to so-called purists who claim any obstacle can be jumped. Professional Kouriers know: If you have pooned a vehicle moving fast enough for fun and profit, your reaction time is cut to tenths of a second—even less if you're way spooled.

Buy a set of RadiKS Mark IV Smartwheels—it's cheaper than a total face retread and a lot more fun. Smartwheels use sonar, laser rangefinding, and millimeter-wave radar to identify mufflers and other debris before you even get honed about them.

Don't get Midasized—upgrade today!

These were words of wisdom. Y.T. bought the wheels.

From The Diamond Age:

"Chiselled Spam," Miss Matheson said, sort of mumbling it to herself.
"Pardon me, Miss Matheson?" Nell said.
"I was just watching the smart wheels and remember an advertisement from my youth," Miss Matheson said. "I used to be a thrasher, you know. I used to ride skateboards through the streets. Now I'm still on wheels, but a different kind. Got a few too many bumps and bruises during my earlier career, I'm afraid."

Okay, more posts soon — I'm full of ideas. (Some would say that that's not all I'm full of. Hi, Becky!) Going to Barranquilla again next Wednesday — perhaps I'll get to blog some from there.

No thirty, as we say.

Chiseled Spam

Kudos to Jeff Harrell, "a dot-com refugee and desperately struggling writer," whose website is http://shapeofdays.typepad.com. Jeff has some interesting things to say about the documents recently discovered that purport to show that George W. Bush was suspended from flight status. He waggishly calls it Rath^ergate; you'll see why. (He points out that this was not his invention.) I had already downloaded the docs, and looked at them after reading his comments. Summary: they're almost certainly forged.

He also has a hilarious, black-humored Infocom game parody based on his life, called "The Great Adventure"; check it out.

He lives in Dallas, TX, and he's unemployed. The man is obviously bright as hell, detail-oriented, and quickly responsive to inquiries, as his answer to my question — the first correct answer I received — shows. Somebody hook a brother up, yo?

The answer in my next entry.

Um, make that a non-obvious reappearance

Um. Guess I'm not the Stephenson geek I thought I was.

As the estimable Professor Volokh reminds me, Enoch Root, who first appears in Cryptonomicon, also appears in Quicksilver and The Confusion (and, one presumes again, in The System of the World).

So allow me to be more specific: the reappearance I am thinking of is non-obvious, and the character does not have the same name. Further, the reappearance I am thinking of is in exactly two (no more, no less) of Neal Stephenson's books.

Of course, anyone who comes up with another instance that meets all my criteria will be pummeled brutally with a copy of The Big U warmly congratulated and have their answer also posted here.

¿Está claro? Muy bien.

Neal Stephenson and "cameos"

Okay, I admit it: I am a Neal Stephenson geek.

However, so are, inter alii, law professors Eugene Volokh (of UCLA law school and the excellent Volokh Conspiracy blog) and Larry Ribstein, of UIUC law school (see his blog entry on Cryptonomicon, which he calls "the greatest sci fi book ever.") Professor Volokh has made numerous references to Stephenson in the Conspiracy.

At one point, Professor Volokh writes, "Which character in Cryptonomicon is likely a descendant of Eliza, the Quicksilver/The Confusion [and presumably, The System of the World -- available September 21] character?

The answer, of course, is German mathematician (and Alan Turing's lover) Rudy von Hacklheber. I unfortunately first read his trivia question through an RSS aggregator, which did not properly hide the answer to the question (as he had intended).

Anyway, I have a Stephenson trivia question I am proposing to Professor Volokh, and to you all (ha, ha) here: I was re-reading some Neal Stephenson recently when I noticed that there is actually one (major) character who (almost certainly) appears in two of his novels. The second reference is small but significant, but the reference is not passed by name, as it were, but by description. Does anyone know who it is?

Please email me the answer at mitchell (at) silverman-esquire.com. (Yes, this is me.) I have some hints I'll be posting if I don't get any answers.