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Mods, I believe I am blocked from the main board (News, not CR). I would really appreciate it if you could unblock me. I have asked before, and nobody has helped me. I have been here for 3-4 years. I may have to reregister as Pashuteh Yid 3.0, from my current 2.0. I would rather just be unblocked. Shouldn’t they send you some notice that you are blocked, if there is a reason?
I took a look at your account, and can’t see any block anywhere. Sorry.
Sometimes you get your dream chosson or kallah that you had set your hopes on for a long time, but the bigger question is does the marriage turn out to be such a dream, as well?
ICOT, In one bedroom of our house there was a ceiling light fixture that was totally worn out, frayed and possibly blackened, although it worked fine. I thought it was a big danger. I went to Lowes, and bought new fixture for 6 dollars. I thought would be simple job of unscrewing old one, unwrapping wires in electrical box, twisting new ones, putting on caps, and screwing new fixture back into box.
However, I found there was no box!!! The oisvarf who did the work before, just screwed fixture into the wood. I found two exposed wires (and also a conduit shield) buried in insulation. I tested the live wires against the conduit shield to find which was power, and then connected to the black wire of new fixture and other to white. I twisted the braided wires of the new fixture to the solid wires of line (which does not hold very well, even with cap), and screwed fixture into the metal bracket he had put in the wood.
I know this is very dangerous, and I guess I will need an electrican to fix. I did it temporarily because I reasoned that without a light, it is just as dangerous, if not more so, to have those live wires just lying around in the wood. I am also concerned that if water gets into the attic from any leak, it can cause a short. I did not use tape, as didn’t have any on hand. I probably should redo it with electrical tape. However, it works for now, so I don’t want to mess with it, especially since it was hard getting caps to stay on solid wire.
So may questions are:
1) This is not a new house (built in 1930’s). Was there ever a time when the code did not require a fixture box?
2) Can I install the box myself? The wire seems very short, I don’t know if the entire conduit line can be pulled so that there is more length, or if it is too short to go any more.
3) How would one splice conduit to make it longer, if necessary?
4) Is this common, that some guy will wire up something so dangerous, and just cover it up and hope nobody will ever find out. How did he get away with this.
5) Would you recommend an electrician to do all of what needs to be done, rather than doing it myself. I do not want to cut holes in ceiling and plaster and paint myself.
6) When I first bought the fixture, the guy in Lowes said they would install it, but would be 140 dollars. That is crazy expensive for a 6 dollar fixture, so I figured I would save big and do it myself. However, now that I see what a mess the previous installation is, what would you recommend? What do you think an electrician would charge to do all the necessary work here?
Thanks for any advice.
Walton, that reminds me of something I read. Non-Jews celebrate their holidays. Jews observe them. We observe Passover, we observe Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. We never say we are celebrating anything.
I used to hate charoses more than the maror. It was the walnuts. I hated walnuts since I was a young kid.
Recently I switched to slivered almonds, and sweet apples and dates, and it was so delicious I couldn’t get enough. I rationalized that we are sweetening the bitter, and this is the goal of life.
OMG, how could you all be so naive. Wolf took you all in.
He was referring to the old joke about a new Rabbi who comes into a shul. As he begins his position, the night of Pesach approaches. The Chazan begins to say Hallel. A fight breaks out. Some say we do say Hallel, some say we don’t. The new rabbi asks, what is the minhag of the shul, what did you do last year? Some balabatim yell we always said Hallel. Other scream, Liars, we never said Hallel.
The new Rabbi is totally perplexed how to handle this. After Pesach, he calls up the old Rabbi who had retired to Florida. He tells him, there was a big fight over Hallel on Pesach night. What is the established minhag of the shul? The old Rabbi tells him, that is exactly right, the minhag is to fight over whether to say Hallel.
If nothing else, this shows the dedication that the klal has for mitzvos. May we all get chizuk.
Of course, the mother has nothing to worry about.
edited
We do many chumras which are good, in that they make it extremely unlikely to actually violate something, but even without them, if one is careful and knowledgeable he also won’t violate anything.
The pasuk says that Chana actually got angry with the RBSH in a sense, and finally he listened. It says merov kaasah. You may want to try arguing with Him. Avraham Avinu said Chalila lecha, hashofet kol haaretz lo yaaseh mishpat?
All of us here give you our heartfelt brachos that you get your bashert immediately.
Chilul Hashem depends on what the average guy on the street says about the fellow. See Yoma 86, Mi shediburo bnachas im habriyos, Mah habriyos omrim alav, etc. It doesn’t say what do the gedolei hador say about him, it says briyos.
For example, people who make a big minyan on the plane, and block the aisles and the bathrooms and crash into all the other passengers and crew are making a chilul hashem. People think it is rude. We don’t say, too bad, a Jew is supposed to daven with a minyan, tough luck to all the rest of you. Rather, chilul hashem depends on the onlookers.
As far as getting asked out by the Pizza man, all one has to do is say it is so nice of you to think of me, but my parents want me to date Jewish guys, or my parents pick out my dates, etc.
One can handle situations such as getting asked to study for an exam over dinner with warmth, as well. One just says, Thanks so much for asking, but I study better at home.
I assume the OP is not dorming at the college, just commuting. Being a commuter makes it quite easy to take classes, do what work you have to, be nice to people, and then go home. One doesn’t have to actively participate in social gatherings, since one is usually not there in the evenings when they happen.
Even if one is dorming, there are quite a few schools that have clusters of frum kids who spend their time together, and not in general campus social life. Some have active batei medrash that have ongoing shiurim and chavrusas.
As far as Mod-80’s concern that one’s eternal life is at stake, why does being rude not also put one’s eternal life at stake? We know that even though arayos is one of the big three, yet one who says I will let a woman drown, rather than carrying her to safety is a chosid shoteh. Bein adam lachaveiro is just as important to one’s eternal life, if not more so. See Rosh on first page of meseches Peya in the big shas. He says that the RBSH gets more nachas from ben adam lachaveiro than ben adam lamakom.
This cold shoulder business is the opposite of all midos tovos. Perish the thought. Chas vchalila. One can be extremely warm and kind, and still not cross any lines. One should greet everybody b’sever panim yafos, offer to help in any way, ask them how their day is and how their family is doing, etc.
Only with extreme warmth is the essential message of yiddishkeit transmitted. Still, one doesn’t have to touch anybody, or get involved with anything off-color. Just be warm and kind and friendly and outgoing. It is so pashut, I don’t even know what is the shayla.
Note that I have deliberately avoided the word evolution. That word is often used to obfuscate and obscure the essential problem of self-assembly which applies to both living and nonliving things. People erroneously believe that living things have a greater power to self-assemble because of the theory of evolution.
In fact, evolution only says that certain morphologies (structures) will in the long term be more stable than others, and will survive at the expense of the less stable. But it says absolutely nothing how those structures came into being in the first place. In fact, from the point of view of chemistry, dirt (or plain carbon) is probably more stable than any organism, to begin with.
Self-assembly is an equally difficult problem for living or non-living things. Maybe more so for living things, since they are so much more complex.
The problem with having so many in the house at once is that you can’t really supervise or watch them all at the same time. I hope they are honest.
Another idea is to capture Meshal, Haniyeh and the whole gang, try them and sentence them to death by hanging. Put them up on the gallows with a noose around their heads. Then inform them that they will die in the next 15 minutes unless they produce Gilad Shalit.
Gavra, The point is that upon who is the burden of proof? Maybe it is upon the agnostic to prove that a complex system can self-assemble. Therefore, if he can’t, then G-d must exist.
The only alternative to G-d is self-assembly. If that is impossible, then we have conclusively proved by elimination that G-d does exist. To conjure up a process of self-assembly, it would help to have some evidence that a working device has successfully been built using that method. If one cannot point to such a device, then it is only a figment of the questioner’s imagination. He is relying on a belief in some imaginary process as a viable alternative to G-d.
If he turns around and says prove that G-d exists, since that is only a figment of your imagination, the refutation is that since you are proposing something physical in our world, it can be tested. However, we cannot test the existence of a supernatural being who exists outside of our world.
Note, let me just clarify the concept of self-assembly. Suppose you wanted to design a bookshelf that was easy for the buyer to put together. You pack the pieces which have magnets attached into a box. You instruct the user that all he needs to do is open the box, dump the pieces on the floor, and the magnets will automatically pull all the parts together into a nice sturdy bookshelf. (Note some magnetic forces will be designed to turn screws or whatever, so it will not just be held together by magnets which could pop apart. But even if you could only get the thing into the right shape and held together magnetically, that would be quite a mean feat.)
You might choose to place electrical charge instead to guide the parts, or chemical interactions among atoms. Whatever you like.
Do you think this has been successfully done in any useful device? Now, even if one did it, he is starting with parts that were initially designed a certain way. If he had only a random jumble of atoms, how much more difficult is the problem?
My dad once bought a little yellow Datsun sports car with a flimsy cloth convertible roof. It had almost no back seat, but we kids would cram into the tiny bench. We loved it, but my Mom hated it.
Gavra what is the infinite monkey theorem argument? Is that the idea of a monkey typing Shakespeare if he bangs on random keys for enough time? I think that would require much more than 15 billion years.
Again, we probably cannot come up with a proof, because we don’t know what 15 billion years can do. However, the idea of anything self-assembling even in 15 trillion years is quite far-fetched.
As of this writing, we don’t even know how a single protein can self-assemble into its correct 3-D shape, EVEN GIVEN ALL THE ATOMS BONDED TOGETHER IN THE RIGHT ORDER (which is already 99.9999999999999% of the difficulty).
Let me move onto argument #2.
Proving G-d exists is a rather complicated project, since we really can’t process the idea of an infinite being.
Let us try something much simpler. I will prove you have a soul. If I can convince you of that, then it follows there must be a G-d.
Claim: You feel pain, therefore you have a soul. If I take my laptop and bash it with a hammer, does it feel pain?
Gavra, I did not mention anything about life in my post. I also did not say that we are fortunate to have special constants. I simply said, knowing what we know about matter, is there anything in our world that leads one to believe a 747 may self-assemble? Even if we are fortunate to have the best constants possible, are our constants good enough that a laptop PC may spontaneously form out of mud?
Let me try. Would help if you could get your friend to open a screen name here, or to post his questions and answers with a screen name so we can dialogue.
Here goes:
An atheist believes that if you take some mud and dirt, heat it up, pressurize it, then wait 15 billion years, out will emerge a 747.
Since many of us have trouble believing this, we therefore believe in G-d. Please relay to your friend.
The truth is that after I read the whole thing, it actually was.
I mamash thought this thread was about a new type of car transmission.
Gumball, excellent, see its not as hard as it seems. And you can also lose weight at the same time by following the Entenmann’s diet. You eat three solid meals of Entenmann’s a day, but they don’t all have to be donuts.
Ofcourse, sorry to hear about the difficulties. It is not a bad idea to try to attend one of his weekly shiurim, and speak afterward. However, if that is not possible, then it may take time. One thing for sure, is that the weeks before Pesach are the worst for any Rav. I myself who know him very well, never try to call during that time, unless it is an immediate and quick Pesach shayla.
If you can wait until after Yom Tov, may be best. However, if it is urgent, then maybe keep trying. Note, the secretary is not Jewish. This Rav always felt that having a frum, Jewish secretary means that people’s private matters may somehow get out into the Jewish community at large. He therefore bdvaka has a non-Jewish secretary who is unlikely to have any frum friends to whom she might unwittingly relate anybody’s personal info.
Veteran, although I have not seen the video, I have a relative who was bitterly complaining about it. He said it makes the Japanese seem like they were doing something wrong by arresting people who were smuggling drugs. In addition, the boys’ excuse was that they thought they were smuggling antiques. (They knew they were doing something illegal.) My relative also asks, shouldn’t these boys have wondered why they were being paid a high amount, and 3 plane tickets were bought, when the guy could just as well have shipped his goods Fedex, if there was nothing illegal?
I personally feel that we should try to help these boys, because a single mistake should not ruin their lives. However, to make it seem like they were innocent, and the Japanese are the guilty one’s is reprehensible.
Seriously, math is the language of science. All science comes from intricate mathematical relationships. Aside from that, there is inherent beauty in math, itself. There is nothing like proving a brand new theorem that nobody has seen before that links together many disparate pieces of data into one coherent picture.
It is very sad that in many yeshivos, math and science are taught just to be yotzei zayn, without motivating the students to appreciate or enjoy the tremendous chochmas haborei that goes into the laws of nature.
There is also nothing like developing a new insight or cure for a disease that can help someone. This is an entire world of chochma that is so deep, and many go through life without the slightest clue as to what they are missing. Instead of using one’s brains to unravel the mysteries of creation, we use it to unravel our neighbor’s private business, and waste our energies gossiping and frittering away valuable time because of our incessant boredom.
One who is involved in Torah learning and chochmas hateva can never ever be bored. There is no yetzer hara to gossip. Math is the gateway to chochmas hateva. It is like entering a palace.
Just a tiny example. All our cells contain numerous types of proteins. These are composed of chains of amino acids. The orders and types of amino acids give each protein a special shape. The shapes determine their reactivity. This determines their function. Some proteins are clear, like the lens of an eye. Some regulate the passage of small molecules through channels which causes charge differences between the inside and outside of the cell membrane. This is the method of nerve conduction of electrical impulses.
But scientists do not know how to predict the folding of the chains of amino acids. At each step in the folding process, there are 3-D forces pushing and pulling the protein from all sides because of chemical interactions between the atoms of the amino acids. This plays out like a movie, eventually getting the protein into the right shape for it to do its job. But at each millisecond, the forces must move the protein into a certain direction so at the next millisecond it will be in the proper position. However, the forces depend on the position of the atoms. (Think of a magnet.) But the positions of the atoms are changing because of the forces from the previous millisecond.
This leads to complex differential equations that govern this type of system. Nobody really knows how to set them up or solve them. If we could, we could probably cure cancer and many other diseases. Many hereditary diseases are caused by a mutation, which substitutes an incorrect amino acid in even a single position in the chain. This has drastic effects on the shape and function of the protein. In many cases we don’t know how to explain what is going wrong with the mutated protein, or how to fix it. Many people are working on complex computer programs in the field of molecular dynamics to simulate these types of systems. The goal is to cure diseases. Maybe we could cure Tay-Sachs and Cystic Fibrosis and Muscular Dystrophy if we better understood the mathematics of the chemistry of mutations.
This is just one example of the complex math found in nature. It is an entire world which most people do not even know exists. At least if the schools explained why we study all this math, it might motivate students to start working on research and doing some serious thinking. Instead, the students are told, you only need this for the regents, and you will never use it in life. Very sad. Literally training students to be airheads.
I’m going to the store to buy a henway.
What’s a henway?
About 10 pounds.
Gumball, I will help.
Suppose you have a box of 8 Entenmann’s donuts. You eat 7 of them for the main course. How many are left for your dessert?
Now, that’s not too hard, is it? See, you can do it.
Chana, I am glad you were able to name her after your mother.
Happiest, I am a bit confused, because the son you will have IYH very soon, as soon as you find your chosson, will carry on your chosson’s last name.
My doctor wrote I should take cholent as necessary.
Happiest, I agree with the others that have given you a bracha. The koach of a bracha comes from one’s concern for the plight of others. Having experienced many difficulties myself, I know what it is like to be in a difficult situation. I wish you a complete yeshuah, and may this Chodesh Haaviv be the springtime of your life, and a time of boundless joy. As the RBSH has answered my tefilos, I am sure he will answer yours. Keep davening and you will get all you ask.
Eclipse, may you have a complete yeshuah soon. May hashem give you bracha, parnasa and good health in everything.
For those in college, here is a tip. MIT has a free site called OCW (Open Courseware) where there are online materials and even videos of many actual courses taught by real experts and explained well. Very good for review. Some courses have more online content than others.
Other colleges may have similar, but you often have to search for the particular subject. You can probably find HS level videos, as well.
I had a Rebbe who is one of the gedolei hador, and he was completely ambidextrous. He would often write a sentence on the board with one hand, and when he got to the middle of the board, he would switch hands and finish the other half.
He has written numerous sefarim on shas and chiddushei Torah.
I believe I later had a math professor who was similar, and also a complete genius. I concluded that some very bright people are ambidextrous.
The more important question is what is Heimish. Only once that is resolved can the other issues like Brim up vs. Brim down be properly understood.
In Vista I have tried to add Hebrew, but it says you need to install additional language packs, and goes into a long megillah. I once spent some time trying to download, but eventually gave up. Anybody who can enlighten, please do so.
Let me add my voice to that, as I have on other threads. If I am behind a lady driver on a single lane street, I usually figure my trip will now take three times as long.
In addition, they will often move to the left shortly before making a right turn, and vice versa, for reasons known only to them.
They will dart out like a cowboy, without looking, from a side street onto a main road, but then the cowboy stuff abruptly ends, as they plod along at about 15 miles under the limit. Even if there is a two-lane road, very often there will be two women drivers driving side by side, both at 15 mph below the limit, so one cannot pass either of them. It is called synchronized torture.
Somebody once used the phrase, the Anti-Destination League.
Observanteen, those are nice dreams. With davening and hard work, hopefully you will achieve everything you seek to.
Brotherofours, that is true. I once read a saying that the most important thing in finishing a task is to start it.
For a long skirt (below the knee), you technically don’t need any socks, according to Reb Moshe. However, the norm in the frum world is to wear socks, but the material shouldn’t matter, unless you are Chassidish.