I just received an e-mail update from Limmud SA, and promptly unsubscribed from the mailing list.  The catalyst was their decision to hold it as a residential event for the 2nd year in a row, but there’s more…

Up to and including 2010, I had only ever missed Limmud JHB one year.  Despite the dramatic increase in costs each successive year, it had become a fixture on the calendar for my daughter (Young Limmud age) and I.  In fact, Limmud 2010 JHB was so spectacular that I decided to put my name down as a volunteer for 2011.

I registered and, towards the end of 2010, was invited to an initial get-together and motivational session for the 2011 volunteers, and again provided my details and stated where I thought I could contribute.  After that, nothing.  Absolutely nothing, until months later when I, along with everyone else on the mailing list, received notice of the 2011 event and the shock news that it would be a residential event.

Costs had increased steadily over the years, but the two of us were still able to attend the 2010 event for under R1,000.  Attending the 2011 event, however, would require an investment of over R4,000 and an entire weekend away!

In addition, not only was Limmud now residential, but it would be held out of town at a Vaal resort.  This made the residential part mandatory instead of an option.  Whereas, had the event been held in town, one could have chosen to stay over (or not).  (I understand that a bus day-trip option was later offered for the Sunday, but by that stage I’d lost interest and made other arrangements.)

I logged my objections on their Facebook Page and was given the assurance that, despite the cost, this was not intended to be an elitist or “exclusive” event (in the true sense of excluding people who cannot afford the ticket).  Huh!?  How is an event with that kind of price tag not elitist or exclusive, even discriminatory?  As for volunteering, well I should contact them again and offer my services again…

What I found even more disturbing were the stories of “religious coercion” that emerged after the event.  Because Limmud had bookend the entire venue for the weekend, the organisers felt able to dictate to delegates how they should observe the Sabbath, with TV being banned, for instance.

So, for the 2nd year, Limmud SA JHB will be a residential event.  I still wish the organisers the best of luck.  I just won’t be there.

Some time back, a big shot from a roofing company I’ll never use again quoted for the various leaking roof surfaces in our Norwood home.  When I saw him off, he was driving the most massive Toyota Land Cruiser I’ve ever seen in my life.  The expanse of the bonnet was simply mind-boggling.

I envy some people their vehicles, but with this monstrosity, my first thought was “My God, how much of the planet’s resources are tied up in an abomination like this”.  Think about it.  Think about all the energy, raw materials and labour that went into something like this.  All that input is now effectively “trapped” until the vehicle is eventually scrapped, after being used for perhaps a couple of hours each day (usually to carry only one person, on often pointless trips).

In something approaching an ideal world, our pool of raw materials would be recycled endlessly, instead of new inputs having to be torn from the earth, while rust nibbles away at the end-of-life stock.

In June of this year, we spent a marvellous 10 days on holiday in Camps Bay (a sought-after suburb of Cape Town).  The beautiful holiday home of our benefactors (Thank you, van den Bergs!) came fully equipped with everything, including a Mercedes C200 Automatic with a GPS system.

Driving this beautiful vehicle made me question again why we choose to automate just about everything in our lives, with the exception of our gear changes!

Yes, the best drivers will probably always be better than an automatic gearbox at matching the car’s acceleration, incline, revs, speed and other conditions to the right gear ratio.  For most of us, however, a computerised gearbox will do a better job most of the time, and do it 100% consistently.

There’s a certain prejudice against the automatic transmission (“slush-box”) out there, a “real men don’t drive automatics” attitude.  Maybe it’s time to put all that behind us, time to convince vehicle manufacturers to put all of their development efforts and dollars into improving automatic transmissions and shifting the price premium/penalty onto the manual transmission.

In an era where we use micro-chips and servo motors adjust our seats and mirrors, we really shouldn’t be spending most of our car journeys selecting the right gear ratio.  Playing with the gear shift is still fun out on the open road.  Most of our travelling time, however, is spent crawling in traffic, alternating between 1st and 2nd gears, barely reaching the speed limit.  Perfect conditions for an automatic gearbox.  The laws of traffic jams also dictate that they generally occur on an uphill, so the handbrake (parking brake) must also be used extensively.

Just this afternoon I spent a good hour or so “paddling the canoe”, i.e. shifting constantly between 1st and 2nd during so-called rush-hour traffic.  That (along with almost constant clutching and de-clutching or “riding” the clutch on an uphill), is the natural state of the motorist today, rather than flicking through the gear changes on a sweeping mountain pass.  (My stint in peak traffic also reminded me that an automatic also does a much better job of consistently smooth gear changes than a manual, and I’m quite a smooth ‘changer.)

I’m all in favour of getting the driver out from behind the wheel, as part of long-term transformation of our transport system away from the private car and towards better public transport (assuming we have a long-term on this planet!).  Part of that transformation will be initiatives such as the Google driverless car.  Another part will be widely adopted innovations such as satellite navigation systems.  A driverless transport system also cannot exist without the automatic transmission.  Bring it on!

I’ve taken this little quote from a flyer handed out at a bat-mitzvah I attended recently:

“On this occasion of my bat-mitzvah, it is appropriate to remember the unsuccessful attempt of Nazi Germany to destroy the Jewish people.”

Why do we judge Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe to have been unsuccessful?  The fact is that Hitler succeeded in murdering roughly 9 out of every 10 Jews who fell into his clutches.  A 90+ percentage success rate does not constitute failure in my books (and even that success rate would have probably been much higher had the Third Reich been more enduring)!

The fact that there were Jews outside of the sphere of influence of Nazi Germany and its allies should not deceive us.  Hitler’s failure lies in his having failed to conquer the entire world, rather than in having failed to exterminate those Jews who were within his reach or power to exterminate.  There is no doubt in my mind that, had he succeeded conquering other territories with Jewish populations, those Jews would have suffered the same fate as the Jews of Europe.

The fact that the UK (and most of the Commonwealth), the US, Palestine and much of Russia were not overrun should not deceive us into misreading history.  We survived because Hitler did not achieve his military ambitions, not because his attempted genocide did not succeed.

We should keep this interpretation in mind whenever we’re tempted to take refuge in the glib “Jewish survivalist” mentality (“they tried to kill us, we escaped, let’s eat”) we sometimes adopt as a defence mechanism.

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(I’m “personalising” this by mostly referring to Hitler rather than Germany, as the attempt to exterminate the Jews was very much part of Hitler’s psychopathology, rather than a natural outcome of the anti-Semitism endemic to Nazi Germany at the time.)

(The flyer acknowledged the Remember US Project, so I’m fairly certain the young lady whose bat-mitzvah it was didn’t compose this herself.)

My PC’s monitor packed up last night.  Nothing extraordinary about that, although I only had four year’s service from it.  (It’s a Fujitsi Siemens Scaleoview L19-2 LCD Monitor (the first LCD monitor I ever owned), so I did anticipate a longer lifespan.)

I needed to replace it with a similar Fujitsu, as the speakers are built into the monitor rather than the system unit.

The replacement was a Fujitsu L20T-1 ECO LED Display, which looked very nice on the display stand.

Here’s where change doesn’t necessarily equate to progress:

• The L19 had a DVI input in addition to the standard D-SUB input.  The L20 doesn’t have this.  My understanding is that DVI is a newer standard than D-SUB, and should be replacing it.  Why isn’t this being reflected in the later model?
• The L19’s stand allowed it to be positioned with the top at eye level, a comfortable height for long-term use.  The L20, on the other hand, sits well below eye level.  Even with it parking on top of my bulky external optical writer (+/-4cm high) it’s still not at a comfortable viewing height.
• The L20 has a “50cm widescreen display in optimum 16:9 movie format”.  But hang on, I’m not watching movies here, I’m working with documents and such, where height is at least as important as width.  The wide-screen is nice enough, but the 4:3 format of the L19 gave me far more usable display surface area.

Progress does not necessarily happen in a straight line, and change doesn’t necessarily equate to progress!

(The FSC Scaleo P bundled with the original monitor seems to have been ahead of its time in other respects.  It was the first PC I owned with no floppy/stiffy drive (amazing how I never missed it, even once).  Another, more questionable “first” was that it had no PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports, only USB ports.  These I have missed, on several occasions.  It also came with a Firewire port and built-in memory card readers.  The latter have proved invaluable over the years.  Lastly, it came with Windows Vista, which I quickly “downgraded” to XP!)

I know I’m more than a decade too late, but I’ve finally got this whole millennium thing sorted out, at least in my own mind.

The prissy millennial experts lectured us as to why the new millennium would begin in 2001 and not in 2000.  The reason?  The ancients “forgot” to start counting from Year 0/didn’t yet have the concept of zero.

I found this reasoning somewhat contorted and unconvincing.  Yes, the concept of zero was a relatively late arrival on the scene, but since when do we start counting from zero anyway?  If the error was made 2,000 years ago, why perpetuate it?  Why not instead simply write off the missing year and get everyone on the same page of the calendar (e.g. as happened when the Gregorian Calendar was adopted).

I’m now finally convinced that 2001 was the 1st year of the 3rd millennium.  Not because 0 hadn’t yet been invented, but because that’s the way we count.  Think about it:

1    1st year of 1st decade
10    last year of 1st decade (1 * 10, 0 * units)
11    1st year of 2nd decade
100    last year of 10th decade
101    1st year of 11th decade
1000    last year of 1st millennium
1001    1st year of 2nd millennium
1900    last year of 19th century
1901    1st year of 20th century
1999    2nd last year of 2nd millennium
2000    last year of 2nd millennium
2001    1st year of 3rd millennium

The fuzzy thinking about when decades, centuries and millennia tick over affects us every 10 years, not just every 100 or 1,000 years.  If we’re not sure when a new decade begins, how on earth are we going to get our century and millennium changes right?  Before we can get our minds around the idea that 2001 (and not 2000) is the first year of the new millennium, we need to get used to the idea that 1960 was the last year of the 50s, not the first year of the 60s!

So, the pedantic millennium experts were right after all, but for the wrong reasons.  Pity I won’t be around for the next century or millennium changeover, to say “you’re right/wrong for the wrong reason/here’s why”.

Following on Twitter used to be a very selective thing.  You followed those you found truly worthy, and only followed back if you found your “follower’s” Tweets to be of real interest.

As with so many other social media platforms, however, Twitter quickly became a numbers game, and those with the most Followers were surely worthy of being Followed.  Except in the case of Shlebs and other Twitter A-Listers, it quickly became the expectation that if you followed someone, they should immediately follow you back.

With these pressure, I have become a lot less discriminating about who I will follow back, but I still don’t automatically follow anyone back,

With this in mind, here’s my “policy” as to who and whether I will follow you back:

• Thanks for following me.  I hope you find my updates interesting.
• I did not ask you to follow me, and your having followed me does not place me under an obligation to automatically reciprocate and follow you back.
• Should I find your Tweets interesting, I may choose to follow you back.
• Should I choose NOT to do so, however (or not do so quickly enough for your liking), and you then un-follow me, I will then block you and report you to Twitter as a spammer.
• I therefore ask that you think carefully about your motives for wanting to follow me.

This is not intended to be arrogant, but I’m quite tired of vetting my latest followers, only to find that I have already been un-followed!

A few thoughts on what Google is doing in this space.

Firstly, I have no doubt that a driverless system will very quickly prove itself capable of doing a much better job than our current “non-system”, reliant on the driver.  Think about what we’re expecting in our current scenario:  we need every single human being behind the wheel of a vehicle (and every pedestrian, for that matter) to not make a single error in judgement for the whole time he/she is on the road.  That’s quite a big ask, especially when most drivers (i.e. males) see their vehicles as an extension of their personal space, their bodies and/or their sexual organs.

How could the Google concept play a role – not just in assisting the “driver” – but in transforming our transport infrastructure, and the built environment in general?

• Provide dedicated lanes or even “tracks” for driverless cars
• Focus on bringing the driverless capabilities to green (or greener) vehicles, including sub-compacts and other vehicles more fitting for the urban commuter
• Possibilities for shared commuting.  Minibus taxis travelling fixed routes or travelling to destinations selected by passengers

The driverless car, especially in a sub-compact “pod” configuration has the potential to form the basis of a new, shared and publicly-owned transport system, taking millions of superfluous vehicles off the roads and improving the quality of life for all.

Google driverless cars can bring us one step closer to the ideal hybrid public transport system, where the infrastructure is publically owned, but the commuter has exclusive use of the vehicle or pod for the duration of the commute or journey.

Google driverless car - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

p.s.    I’m still the hell in about Google Notebook, Google Pack, Google Sidewiki and all the other products you’ve been slashing lately.  Please stop!  Rather get rid of Google Buzz.  Oh, and please stop messing around with Google Groups too.  You’ve mortally wounded it, no doubt intentionally.  Readers, expect to see an announcement regarding the demise of Google Groups before long.

Once upon a time, cars were divided into clear categories; hatchbacks, sedans, LCV’s (bakkies), etc.  At that time, it made sense that only certain types of vehicles, e.g. hatchbacks, station wagons (estates) and SUV’s, should have a windscreen wiper on the rear windscreen.  After all, it was only with these designs that rainwater and dust thrown up by the rear wheels could obscure the rear windscreen.  These neat categories have long since vanished, however.  Rather than set categories, vehicles fall somewhere along a design spectrum.  Dirt, dust, puddles and rainwater can obscure the rear windscreen of pretty much any vehicle.  So, to repeat the question in the title of this piece, why don’t sedans have rear wipers?

When I planned to buy my first new car in the mid-late 80’s, the vehicle at the top of my short-list was the Nissan Langley Exa Turbo.  Certain variants of this iconic range broke the mould by being fitted with just such a wiper.  The car of my dreams was a mere R15,000 in those days, but with my lousy salary at “one of the big four banks” in South Africa at the time, it remained forever out of reach.

I could have bought a domain through any one of a number of reputable registrars.  Because I’m going to be using it with Google Apps, I made the mistake of registering it through Google.  Oy!  After entering my credit card details, I was told to upload documents to verify my identity and residence (first time ever that this has happened).  This is the confirmation message I received at the end:

Thank you

Thank you for submitting your verification documents. Please note that it may take up to four business days for our specialists to review your Google Checkout account and your verifications documents. We will contact you at the conclusion of our review.

Four business days!?  WTF!?  Are you guys doing this using quill and parchment!?

So, instead of having my shiny new domain available at the speed of light, I face the prospect of a four business day wait.  With no certainty that my domain registration will even be “granted” by Lord Google.  Why didn’t they just cancel the ****ing transaction!?