interesting new math manifesto

it's a little frustrating when i read something and know it will be echoing in my subconscious for a long time stealing precious cycles, especially now when between work and the wedding i have no downtime.. i find myself wanting to hide from everything and 1) learn a lot 2) work on web interface ideas 3) figure out new ways of understanding/seeing the world. (note that 1 & 2 are intimately tied to 3, and vice versa)
(don't remember where i linked to it from)

what would you do w/ free video broadcasting thanks to google?

i say all israeli yeshivas should be video-recording all good shiurim, and uploading them to google video. It would be cool if it got swamped w/ shiurim.

faith and happiness

We have two(2) major commandments that encompass all of the other commandments. Loosely described, our first commandment is to love God. Our second commandment is to fear God.
there are many levels and many explanations of fear and love, exactly what they mean, how to perform them, and why exactly are they of all the possible forms of expression, the ones that God asks of us? I don't really want to explain any of them here. I want only to observe that maintaining proper fear of God leads to true happiness. Not, necesarily what one might expect, but look at examples from psychology and the people around you. On the other hand, something not as easily understood, proper love of God leads to true faith. (read: emunah) My rav once taught me that Moshe Rabeinu performed all of the miracles that he was a party to through simple faith. If we understood faith as we do today, how does one perform a miracle through faith? Obviously faith is something more elusive and more powerful than we imagine. To love God though, properly, i think we need true happiness.

zayin adar

Moshe (Moses) Rabbeinu's hillulah is today. There is no other who ever rose to Moshe's level. It is explained that even though R' Shimon Bar Yochai, the AriZal, the Baal Shem Tov and possibly others were able to perceive levels of Torah beyond even that which Moshe brought down, still, not a one of them experienced these levels as Moshe did. Moshe experienced God and Torah through prophetic vision unlike any other person, living or not. The Tanya explains that through Hochma (wisdom) one can perceive levels beyond those available through prophecy, but the perception isn't the same as experiencing those levels through prophecy. Because higher levels can be attained, the talmud tells us: Hacham Adif m'Navi (a wiseman is preferable over a prophet)

seen on MacOSXHints:
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

jEdit

don't know how many of u ever try out new code-editors or how many of you have your favorite ones.. I picked up jEdit on a whim since i couldn't use TextMate on a pc.. and i've slowly been converted, it's free & reasonably small. It's super-flexible and has tons of plugins. plus, the macros are very flexible and you can script a heck of a lot with them.. the plugin architecture must be great based simply on all the diverse functionality available in the plugins.. all the key mappings are completely customizable.. don't think i could say enough good things about it. I was hesitant at first--it being a java app, and i still have little faith in java applications, especially as a mainstay. But it's a great little program. I keep finding new great features and all the things that annoyed me about it are configurable. (i'm slowly discovering)