In some languages that can be translated as “Welcome to Monsey!”. Amol, Touro College attempted to open shop in Monsey (above the bank on the corner of 59 and College next to the 7-11). In about a week, someone paid Pirsum to put signs all over the place declaring (falsely) how R’ Moshe ZT”L, R’ Yaakov ZT”L and any number of late gedolim opposed Touro on the grounds that they teach apikorsus. Next week their windows were smashed, their HVAC unit was broken, and someone broke in to the offices at night and vandalized the place. They left soon after.

Only if you first run it through the French, Esperanto, and Uzbekistani translations.

????? ??? ???

Meno: Ok. But those are no fun 🙁 Newtonian physics can basically just be boiled down to conservation of momentum.

How about Maxwell’s equations? You can never have perpetual motion, and you can never extract 100% of the energy from anything.

L’havdil, when R’ Akiva Eiger would write ??? he wasn’t saying “There’s no explanation”, he was saying “I am not wise enough to understand this.” Same thing over here. There is a rational explanation for the Uncertainty Principle and it is well understood among physicists. It’s just far to complicated and, unless someone here is works in particle science, no one on this thread understands it.

Sparky: You are falling to a common fallacy of quantum mechanics. People who think they understand quantum mechanics (unlikely, as the “father” of the science, Werner Heisenberg, stated that nobody fully understands it) like to apply all sorts of metaphysical aspects from it. Truth is, its just another branch of physics, like momentum, gravity, or nuclear power. There’s nothing “special” about it, and certainly nothing that proves that there’s a Ribono Shel Olom. “Observing” a particle is just a fancy way of saying “shooting smaller particles at it”. If the particle is small enough, the smaller particles (usually photons) knock it off course making it impossible to measure. Hence the Double Slit Experiment and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Theorom.

Do you know why Chazal say that looking up from Torah to say ?? ??? ???? ?? is chayiv misa? Because the person is learning the wrong way! How do we know? Because he sees the beauty in a tree, but not in Torah! If you need to look to science to see the “proof” of Hashem Yisborach, you are looking in the wrong place.

Joseph: Read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time or Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe

Special Relativity: There’s no such thing as “how fast is it going?” There’s only “how much faster than the other thing is it going?” All speeds are relative to something else. In our context, that’s usually the Earth. The one exception is light. No matter how fast you are going, the photons that make up light will always be traveling 299,792,458 meters per second faster than you.

General Relativity: Everything in physical existence is in a four dimensional medium called “the space-time continuum” (our three dimensions, plus time which in higher physics is treated as just another dimension). Picture it as an endless sheet of rubber. Everything with mass “bends” space-time, bigger objects bend it even more. So when you come near a really massive object, you start slipping down the a slope in space-time. That’s what we call gravity.

Not easy.

I have K9 web protection at home and my router is set up with the OpenDNS “Family Safety” which both work more or less fine, unless you try really hard to look for pritzus (which is why my wife can access my browsing history). Work is a different issue. They have a filter, but it’s not as strong as K9 and technically my boss can probably pull up my browsing history but he probably won’t unless there’s some sort of complaint.

I heard a speech by a mashkiach a number of years ago on this issue. I’ll try to convey the gist. I had mentioned that I once saw a group of bachurim in an airport, one of which was wearing a blindfold and being led about by the rest. I asked why we aren’t all going around like that all the time?

Rav Shlomo Wolbe ZT”L used to sit at the front of the bus not make any major effort to avert his eyes. He noticed that many men, mostly young bachurim, would sit in the back and stare at the floor the entire time. He commented “If you try to avoid the b’kiyus you’re just going to get the b’iyun.” In other words, unless you can guarantee that you will never look at a non-relative woman for your entire life (there are two or three tzadikim that can and do live such a life, but only with immense outside support) the first woman you see will have a much stronger effect on you, even if she’s 90 years old and toothless. So don’t go looking for problems, and try to avoid it when you can, but living as a hermit is a terrible idea.

Do you have a simcha there, or are just going for the experience?

Oh, and then there’s tuition. There’s always tuition. You’re ignoring it, but it’s the elephant in the room.

YWN ads offend me in general. They are so blatant, so in your face, often advertise some really shady stuff, and sometimes are designed to hide the fact that it’s an advertisement.

Joseph: What <i>you</i> are saying is patently false. I suggest you speak to some American full-time learners to find out what they get through federal programs.

WIC gives formula, milk, orange juice, cereal and little else and stops when the child turns three. In contrast, Israel has Tipat Chalav.

There’s no socialized healthcare in the US. If you’re not insured (which can be hundreds of dollars a month) any medical problem is prohibitively expensive. Medicare is terrible and pays a percentage of any hospital bill. The Israeli system pays for virtually all of any medical costs, from hospital stays, to doctors visits, to any required drugs. Having a single baby in the US can set a family back thousands of dollars in the first month, even on Medicare.

Food stamps and Welfare are also mirrored in similar programs in Israel. Section 8 is a joke, either you go on a 10 year waiting list for a tiny apartment near a frum community, you move in with gangsters next door to you, or you do something illegal and probably assur to cheat your way in. There’s no Kiryat Sefer apartment for sale for 90,000 dollars.

Then there’s cost of living which is much higher in the US than Israel. One example is transportation. Either you live in an expensive metropolitan area (i.e. Brooklyn) or you buy a car. There’s no other option.

Not to mention that parents pay nearly nothing for tuition compared to the US. The government pays nothing to US kollels, all the funding is through tzedaka. Ma she’ein kein in Israel where every yungerman gets a stipend. To live full time in kollel without outside support in Eretz Yisroel is very very difficult, nobody is denying that. But it doesn’t hold a candle to the difficulties of doing it in the US.

The Gaon does not disagree with me. What he’s saying is that “??? ????? ?????? ????? ??????? ???? ???? ???????”. I am saying that the same fathers who push on to their sons a love of learning over gashmiyus have a much higher tendency to obsess over gashmiyus.

You know who you remind me of? A woman my wife knows. Her husband is in kollel full time, and she feels the constant need to remind everyone of it and how difficult her life is. My wife got annoyed at her once when she started a conversation with the implication that our family goes on vacation all the time (which she can’t do because she’s so poor and it’s hard, ya know?). So she retorted with “My husband uses all of his vacation time from work for Yom Tov, simchas, and visiting parents. Unlike yours, he doesn’t get the entire Chol HaMoed or Bein HaZmanim to spend with his family.”

It’s almost as if, I dunno, she feels like she has something she needs to prove to herself because she’s so uncertain about it. What do you think Joe?

I feel like LuL is pushing the standard Chareidi (false) narrative that going to the army is comparable to going off the derech. Honestly, when it comes to making choices in life, in my opinion for a Chareidi born and raised in Eretz Yisroel it’s a far easier choice to choose to stay in kollel than join the army. It’s not difficult at first, free healthcare, cheap housing, and you can get by on the stipend when you only have 0-1 kids. It’s later in life that gets difficult.

So, I’ll have to disagree with nearly this entire subject. While in the long run, in general it may be more difficult to live as a full-time kollel family, but for a Chareidi Yeshiva bachur/maidel to make that decision at 22 it’s almost frighteningly simple.

Lemme just end with a story.

A few years back a meshulach from Eretz Yisroel came to my house. He was American, and ran a kollel in a major Chareidi city. He talked about the difficulties and the cost and the Chedarim, etc. Then he brought up the government funding cuts and I had to interrupt him. I basically told him “Look, I don’t know what the government has been giving you before or what they pay you now. But I do know that it’s far far more than anyone in the US gets. Did you know that I have to pay over $20,000 just to send one son and one daughter to Yeshiva/Bais Yaakov pre-school? Please don’t appeal with that line to anyone else, as you’ll find very little sympathy.”

Does a frum Rabbi do anything other than attend simchas and speak on Shabbos? I imagine that Reform Rabbis do all the Rabbinical stuff, just little to none of the halacha stuff. They are also often the spiritual leaders of their Temple’s day school and in charge of curriculum.

In every Jewish wedding, someone is pregnant. In a frum wedding it’s the mother of the bride. In a Conservative wedding it’s the bride herself. In a Reform wedding the Rabbi’s expecting. And in an Open Orthodox wedding it’s the chosson.

Depends on house rules. But the way I’ve always played it is that as long as everything on the board is legal (i.e. no pieces without a place) you can re-arrange whatever you want.

Lemme see, I pull up my RPN sci calculator app, type in 367 ? 7 y?. Google for an IEEE-754 floating point converter, and voila!

0x41C7320AA60374BC

Unless you meant 367 7 y? ? which is a whole nother ball game and the reason PN/RPN notation is SO IMPORTANT PEOPLE! (0x428DFC6A)

oomis: I once was asked by a potential Shadchan if I could sing, because if I can’t, that would be a dealbreaker for the girl. I laughed and called her ridiculous.

Godwin’s Law:

“Reducto ad Hitlerum” For any argument on

the Internet, as time increases the likelihood of one side being

compared to Hitler approaches 1.

TOO MANY QUESTIONS!

In the past decade, the world has seen a kind of renaissance of board games. The world has long moved past Monopoly and Stratego and standard entertainment fare. There are literally hundreds of new games coming out every year for every type of person in every conceivable genre. It would take me hours to even begin answering your questions, there’s just so many factors that go into it.

I’ve seen the frum oilem only partially embrace it (Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan are somewhat popular in heimishe homes) which is surprising considering that the content of most of these games is rather benign by moral standards and very few have any issues in regards to Shabbos. What annoys me the most is the frum publishing companies that make their own games just slap a few extra themes (“reskins”) on boring old existing titles like Candy Land when there’s so much potential for so much more. Seriously people, look up your local tabletop game store (yes, such a thing exists) and ask for a recommendation. Barring that, head out to Barnes and Noble and ask them.

I like games that are short (30-60 minutes), don’t involve too much luck, and can be played with 2-4 people. Right now my family is really enjoying Forbidden Island which is a co-operative game where everyone has to work together to collect treasures on an island before the water rises too high.

I have a few others on my “I want to play” list. There’s Hanabi, a co-operative game where everyone can see each others cards, but not their own, and have to tell the other players what they have in their hands, but the rules prevent giving away too much information.

Then there’s Sabotuer, which works in large groups. Everyone works together to dig for the treasure, except for one or two people who have to prevent the others from finding it. And no one knows who they are, so it often devolves into a shouting match of accusations and counter accusations.

MIR BACHUR: You don’t remember how you got them, they came with the dira. One gores the other three times and damages your friends shirt in the process.

BRISK BACHUR: You’re makdish one and then make a simcha when it gets a mum. The other is shechted and you’re still arguing over how to take ma’aser from the fleish.

LAKEWOOD BACHUR: The first cow has a baby. It now has to feed both the second cow and the baby on the alfalfa that it gets from government farm grants.

NER YISROEL BACHUR: You lock one up and make sure it stays kodesh until you find a bull, while the other heads out to pasture two nights a week.

TELSHE BACHUR: You really only have one cow, you just made the corral smaller to give the illusion of more cows.

CHAIM BERLIN BACHUR: They both die of emphysema.

LANDERS BACHUR: You send them both to a specialist who can train them to produce more milk.

YU BACHUR: They are better than all the other cows and you can explain why.

Recently I was at my parents, who live in a very frum city. The house phone rings and my mother says, “Here, listen to what we have to put up with” and answers on speaker. It was a robo call in Yiddish about some sweepstakes or other. She barely even glanced at the caller ID. Apparently, every call that comes in that they don’t recognize the number is a teletzedakaer.

I told my father that what they’re doing is illegal and can be reported. He said that there’s a possible maasrus shaaloh so he didn’t want to. I disagree, as there’s no mesirah if the person is actively committing a crime, there’s no shaaloh of medinas ra, and people are being bothered by it.

There’s a specific issur of swimming with someone of the opposite gender that has nothing to do with how they’re dressed.

Also, I’ve heard b’sheim Rav Wolbe ZT”L not to close your eyes everywhere you go “If you don’t get the bekius, you won’t get the beiyun”. In other words, don’t try to look at people dressed inappropriately, but you also shouldn’t make a fuss about not looking at anything as it would just mean that your taivos will be that much greater when you accidentally see something.

7. During Aleinu, fill your mouth with phlegm then spit on the ground.

Never really understood that one.