SlichosGenendel: As someone mentioned, maybe they knew you would open doors looking for your room, and didn’t want you looking in at all, even if you would never look in on purpose.

Who knows.

We lend out our house occasionally and my sister puts a sign on her door asking people not to go into her room- she gets a bit neurotic about it, especially when there are little kids who can mess stuff up. Unfortunately, it’s happened.

The bottom line it, it’s her right and it’s your host’s right. People have gotten burned.

We once came home after yom tov and discovered that we had cookie crumbs all over the bedrooms.

Sometimes you just want to contain the mess and not want to risk it.

The cheshbonos are complicated, and absolutely NONE of your business and not worth asking about on a forum like this.

Okay, my mistake.

This just brings me back to what I’ve believed for a long time- the internet needs a sarcasm button.

Or a sarcasm face or something. We’ve got :), :(, :D- what’s a good mouth shape for sarcastic?

For the klal, re: rebdoniel’s post:

The 7-11 is at 59 and College across from Chai Pitaland (if anyone’s interested)- the gas station with cholent is the Getty on the Hill mentioned above.

However, DON’T stop in Monsey specifically for gas. The prices are quite high, especially when we have New Jersey around the corner. (And you don’t even need to get out of the car!) The only place in New York State where we get gas (unless our tank is literally running on empty) is Costco.

Don’t bother going to the Citgo gas station on the Palisades for gas (for snacks, maybe- I believe the store MIGHT be a little bit bigger). It’s negligibly less crowded than the ones by the GW, and is strategically located RIGHT by the NY/NJ border in such a way that while it’s thirty seconds from NJ, it still has NY prices.

Why not just buy snacks at Walmart or Costco or your local supermarket? Much cheaper.

Now, what I’d REALLY love to know is which rest stops have good bathrooms.

Biology: I’m not saying those are the numbers (that WOULD be ridiculous), but the concept that maybe the number of people auditioning is disproportionate is not far-fetched at all.

The type of person who would try out for Jeopardy in the first place probably has at least a relatively decent ability in the first place- remember, there are so many factors that go into selection, whether logistics (can you take off from work long enough to try out/film, are you within a reasonable distance of the place where they shoot), personality and photogenicity (yes, that’s a word, I googled it just to make sure), etc. Intelligence and knowledge are part of it but not the entire thing.

I’d be careful basing this off that book, though. The APA did an investigation of it afterward, and while most of the ideas were found to be true, many of the ideas concerning race and genetic intelligence were discredited. Even so there are plenty of books debating the concepts behind the bell curve when it comes to intelligence.

While that is always the case in science, don’t rely on it like the law.

jewishfeminist02: I have one more year for the teen tournament- I think I really will try out… *omigosh!* 🙂 Except this is the one situation where I regret my old-movie-centric popular entertainment habits.

I sure hope I’m likable :)… Problem is that I’m not photogenic AT ALL.

I never watched “religiously” or anything, but I’ve seen enough that I think I’d do pretty well. I remember kind of snickering at some of the teen questions, though.

BTW: They have a website, J! Archives, with the questions from all 29 seasons, including the names and bios of every single contestant. I’m pretty sure it also includes celebrity, teen, and college games.

HaKatan: You’re not going to convince anyone who is already on the other side with these arguments, because you’re not attacking the underlying reasoning, just using your opinion and applying it to situations.

You’re looking at everything from the point of view that Israel is apikorsus- others are looking at everything from the opposite viewpoint.

For example:

You say that the Satan sometimes causes us to succeed and survive. Others say that Hashem helped.

You each say that based on what you ALREADY thought. It is a counter-measure that will leave you EXACTLY where you started. You are not proving anything, because you’re relying on you own convictions and you don’t seem to have convinced the others of those basic beliefs.

I’m personally not so much agnostic as possessing my own individual opinions about individual things that don’t always conform with the party line.

If OURTorah wants to maybe instead make a comparison to the war with shevet Binyamin over the pilegesh beGivon, or the war with shevent Efrayim (sh vs s), or just malchus Yehuda and malchus Yisrael, that would probably fit better.

Toi: the point isn’t whether the chareidim are right or not. The point is that R Shafran’s comparison is not a particularly fitting or good one.

It’s funny- I watch stuff on YouTube all the time, but I didn’t think so much about it. I really should.

One thing is that while the things I usually watch are famous and are put out by major companies that make millions off the people who actually buy the stuff (which, in my somewhat dubious system of rationalizing, is more okay), I remember reading that the makers of Ushpizin were actually having a really hard time because of illegal piracy, so I probably would buy it, as it’s a yid’s parnassah.

I should really rethink all of this…

IMHO, jewishfeminist02 and HaKatan are both right. While the number of gay people will not increase (obviously), the number of people who publicly identify as gay and are proud of it will increase.

I don’t think that the OU, or anyone else, has any reason or necessity to go out and protest at all. They can’t change anything and once the law is made, considering that it’s a nationwide law and not Jewish-specific, why is it really our business? If Jewish men or women want to marry each other in a Jewish ceremony and have it be a Jewish wedding, this Supreme Court ruling is not going to make it any more mutar.

HEY!

What was THAT for?!?

‘Course not! So what do YOU think happens next? 🙂

WIY: I know, you’re totally talking to Mademoiselle Marriage Expert here, but I don’t think that going into a marriage thinking like that is really going to get you anywhere.

The Chofetz Chaim (I believe) actually talks about the concept of eizer kenegdo. A wife is supposed to be an eizer, a helper, but also, when the husband needs it, she should be kenegdo, against him, if he is on the wrong path.

The words eizer kenegdo are by no means a permission slip to become the autocrat in the house and expect your wife to be nice and sweet to you if you aren’t EXACTLY the same to her.

And you’ll find that shalom bayis will be much greater if you don’t critique her food unless she asks/gives you permission.

The lyrics to Yesh Tikva are in the description of the YouTube video. This is what they’ve got over there:

Lyrics:

????? ?? ???

????? ?????

?? ????, ?????

????? ????

?? ?? ???? ?? ????

?? ?? ?? ?????

???? ?????

?? ?’ ?????

?? ????

?? ???? ????? ???

?? ????? ???? ??? ????

?? ????, ?? ????

?? ????? ?? ???

?? ??? ?’ ???

???, ???

??? ????

??? ??? ????

?? ????, ?? ????

?? ???? ?? ???

????? ???? ???

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English Lyrics translated by Rabbi Eli Freidman

Look around, far and near

Where’s the joy, where’s the cheer

Why the fear, why the frown

Why the smile upside down

Shake yourself from the dust

Scrape your soul from the rust

Know that this too shall pass

For in G-d we trust

There is hope

If we sing our hope together

We have faith that is stronger than the terror

No despair, no dismay

Everything will be okay

He is with us night and day

Brother dear

Dry your tears

Take my hand, never fear

Let’s advance, side by side

And let’s cast our fright aside

Don’t forget all the love

That we have from Above

And you’ll see with the dawn

All the pain will be gone

ETA: Just realized I didn’t really help you figure the second chorus out- and I can’t even listen to it myself to figure it out :(. Sorry…

Oh, okay, maybe. I can definitely see what you’re saying.

I’m not saying this is your tayna per se, but I don’t really care how much it’s Sherlock Holmes. I just like it in general. We just have different tastes, which I hope is okay :).

I know people who bike from Monsey and Queens.

Just a quick idea, maybe check the list of people in Bike4Chai 2013 and see if you know any of them. Since I’d assume that they’re practicing a LOT (I know three people in it and they bike all over the place), they probably know some good routes.

Also, while you’re there, donate a couple bucks :).

OOM: Like I’ve said, I never saw that one, but based on my knowledge of its plot, the elements that wouldn’t pass the censor here are pretty much not in the other episodes.

To the best of my knowledge, the others are much better. (I’ve seen the first three and the last one. You can really watch them in any order, though I’d say leave the last one for the end.)

As far as Hitchhiker’s Guide went, I thought that the plot was a bit disjointed (like, what was the point of that guy with the metal spider leg thingies?) and I wasn’t overly fond of the peple who played Trillian and Zaphod. And the ending was kind of a cop-out.

There were definitely parts of it that I absolutely loved. And like I said, the trailer was hysterical.

Okay, people.

I was born in October. For the purposes of this discussion, I will say that I was one of the smarter kids in the class.

In my first grade class (which was grouped ENTIRELY RANDOMLY), we had four reading groups. I was in the highest group. (Actually, I knew how to read already, but that doesn’t matter, because since I was a tiny little five year old when school started I MUST have been intimidated by all those big six-year-olds who didn’t know how yet just because they were a few months older than me.) With me in that group, if I remember correctly, were girls born in August, October, December, March, and probably a bunch more equally scattered around the calendar.

Look, intuitively, what you’re saying makes sense. BUT:

– schools don’t typically point out to the other kids which are older and which are younger. No kid is going to be, “Yenty is older than me, so I’ll never be able to read like her!”

– check out reading groups in school, and see if the higher groups REALLY have more older kids. Maybe they do, but I’d be skeptical.

– what you’re really saying is track the kids, so that the “dumber” kids don’t have to be discouraged by the “smarter” kids. I have my issues with tracking, but this is quite frankly the stupidest way to track kids I have ever heard of. Unless the classes are shuffled after a while, considering that if the lower class really has some less intelligent kids than the older one it really will move more slowly, if there are the occasional “smart kids” shoved into that lower class SOLELY because they are on the younger end of the scale, they are now permanently stuck in the “lower” class.

The merits and pitfalls of tracking in general are discussed much more effectively in other forums by more qualified people than I, but this is merely another method, and one a lot more arbitrary. There are plenty of smarter kids born in January and November, just as there are plenty of “dumber” kids born in February and October. By mixing the classes by “developmental level,” you are setting the younger kids- placed in the lower class by a fluke of birth at a permanent disadvantage by putting them in a class that will always move more slowly if the kids are really not at the same level.

Do you always want your kids sheltered and not facing challenges? Do you really only want your kid to see people like him/her? (Oh, right, this is a frum audience. But still.) In life, we need to deal with people of all types and learn in all types of conditions.

I’m too tired to really think of more stuff, but while I think that in theory this is a good idea, and while I think that it may not be so bad to use birth month as a criteria for class placement without giving a thought to the academics, a kid is not doomed to failure for seeing an older or smarter kid doing better than he/she does. And that smarter kid may easily not be older.

Signed, an October baby who did quite well for herself.

PBA: But a good teacher makes sure the kids understand. If the older kids are actually smarter, then they’ll naturally move ahead more quickly- unless you’ll want them to artificially stop.

You have also not presented an iota of proof that a few months’ difference really makes a kid smarter.

All I can say is that in my elementary school class, the valedictorian was born in October (younger end) and the salutatorians were born in December (older end) and August. (None of them were me, btw.)

Are there statistics that show that kids born in the later months actually perform at a lower level than older kids? I’ve never seen it, and while I’d say that Gladwell’s not a great source because he cherry-picks, I don’t seem to remember him even mentioning a classroom component in Outliers.

nisht: EEEEWWW.

That’s disgusting.

Yes, that’s definitely YOUR read on things.

That was NOT necessary.

Ohhh, I loved him in Hitchhiker’s Guide also, though I hated the movie itself. When the trailer is light-years better than the movie, you know you’re in trouble. But he was Arthur Dent, that’s all there is to it.

But you should really give Sherlock another chance. Happens to be I’ve never seen that episode, but at least try it from the first one. It’s REALLY good.

Why don’t you like it?

Ira Rennert has contributed millions to frum people and organizations. My mom, through her work, has worked with him in giving money to several yeshivos and thousands of yeshivaleit in Israel.