I emailed Blogger support and they changed the RSS feed URI manually back to http://mountainsmog.blogspot.com/rss/MountainSmog.xml. The problem is that my <link> element, which uses a <$BlogSiteFeedURL$> tag (following their instructions) still points to http://mountainsmog.blogspot.com/rss/mountainsmog.xml, and I strongly suspect, without daring to make the experiment, that if I make any other changes to the feed settings […]
Thanks to Talmida for the pointer to Speculative Grammarian, which I think is the best online linguistics magazine ever. My favourite article so far: “The Original Language of Winnie-the-Pooh“.
I couldn’t resist this challenge on a mailing list I subscribe to. As someone pointed out there, a haiku should be about nature or seasons, otherwise it’s a senryu. אֲסַפֵּר לִבְנִיעַל יְצִיאַת מִצְרָיִםבְּחוֹדֶשׁ אָבִיב פָּך שֶׁמֶן אֶחָדנָתַן אוֹרוֹ בְּחוֹרֶףלִשְׁמוֹנָה יָמִים שֶׁבַע הֲקָפוֹתעֲרָבוֹת בְּעוֹז חוֹבְטִיםגֶּשֶׁם לִבְרָכָה
If I was capable, I would translate this into English. I’ve tried many times to translate Agnon, but I just can’t capture it. השמים היו טהורים והארץ היתה שקטה וכל הרחובות היו נקיים, ורוח חדשה היתה מפרפרת בחללו של עולם. ואני תינוק כבן ארבע הייתי ומלובש הייתי בגדי מועד, ואיש אחד מקרובי הוליכני אצל אבי […]
I realized during Rosh Hashana services last week that Aviad doesn’t know half as much as I had assumed that he did about the structure of the Mahzor. The middle of the silent Amida wasn’t a very helpful time to realize this, but I gave him a whispered overview of Malchuyot Zichronot and Shofarot before […]
For those using the RSS feed, I have been fiddling with the settings, and the most notable result seems to be that the URI has changed from http://mountainsmog.blogspot.com/rss/MountainSmog.xml to http://mountainsmog.blogspot.com/rss/mountainsmog.xml. Apologies if this has inconvenienced anybody.
Hat-tip to Avraham Bronstein for the link to “How is this year different from all other years?” Sample quotation: This year 5765 is the only year in all of history whose “keviut” (year-type determination) involves dechiyyat BeTU-TaKPaT at the end of the year, and whose Pesach falls on April 24. The “exercise for the reader” […]
In the Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashana, Hagar and Ishmael have been sent off into the desert and have run out of water. Hagar sits crying, out of sight of her son so as not to see him die. She has given up hope. At this point, just as in the […]
Every terrorist attack brings its own horrid variations on the same old tragedy. On the news tonight we heard someone describe how he had been sitting next to the suicide bomber for part of the bus journey until he had given up his seat to a woman and moved to the back of the bus. […]