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The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

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Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#141

Post by WJW »

gadders wrote: post #119
bravesoul2 wrote: post #104

Why not make a tiny 10cm wire at the north pole to do the entire planet? And bless the oceans for unlimited holy water. Anyone who goes to the beach is baptised.

It does seem to me that an omniscient God would see all these attempts to outwit him via looking at the small print, but then it's not me that would end up in hell or purgatory or whatever the Jewish equivalent is.

An omniscient God can't be outwitted by stuff in the small print. If there's a loophole in the small print, God put it there on purpose. If anything, He would be delighted that some of his followers read the holy books closely enough to find some of the easter eggs that He put in there.

The whole idea of "the spirit vs the letter of the law" is a secular one that came up as a result of imperfect human lawmakers. But when dealing with holy texts, that is obviously not required because axiomatically God doesn't make mistakes.

Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#142

Post by msgodel »

petesergeant wrote: post #140
rmason wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember attending a tech conference years ago in Dearborn, Michigan. One of the speakers was a devout Jew from NY City. On Saturday he taped the lock open on his hotel room so he wouldn't need to use a key. This drove hotel security nuts and one of the conference admins had to get involved because the hotels employees who were all Arabic did not accept his explanation. They were certain he was up to something shad…

> because the hotels employees who were all Arabic did not accept his explanation I feel like I would expect Arabs to be the most likely to accept this? Abrahamic religion that also still practices all sorts of ritualistic stuff in a region with a historically high Jewish population?

At my last employer I remember a Muslim coworker explaining the fasting thing they do to me and the two of us having a small bonding moment after mutually understanding the whole denial of self thing (I'm protestant.) I think people under appreciate the potential for that kind of thing.

Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#144

Post by msgodel »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #134
SlowTao wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not the brightest spark as it took me a few months of living in a heavily Jewish area to realise that the pedestrian traffics light were configured to run every cycle so they didn't have to press the button. Probably a lot more details I also missed.

Buttons in pedestrian traffic lights are far from universal, my country is not Jewish and pedestrian lights without a button are very common. Actually I dislike those with buttons. They send the message that cars passing and pedestrians stopping is the "default", and ensure that a lone pedestrian always has to stop, regardless of luck, while establishing the ritual that pedestrians need to "beg" for being allowed to…

Cars have much more inertia and often more traffic than pedestrians, it makes sense to give them right of way and reduce the ambiguity with traffic control devices in most places.

Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#145

Post by WJW »

cperciva wrote: post #69
vrosas wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Jewish friend once told me, specifically discussing this wire, that Jews consider finding loopholes in their own rules a national pastime. The same thing goes for the hotels where someone is paid to wave their hand in front of automatic doors so the guests don't force the door to "work" for them or the elevators that run 24/7, stopping at every floor so they don't have to even work by pressing a button.

My favourite in this genre comes from a physics DPhil student I knew in Oxford: He insisted that it was permissible for him to work in the lab on Shabbat because after all he was really just studying the works of God and so it was no different in character from reading the Torah. I'm not sure entirely how serious this argument was, but he wasn't entirely unobservant; he made a point of not playing in orchestra on Fri…

Just asked my wife about this, who grew up Jewish and also loves debating these things as she's a programmer. Apparently the rules describe certain activities that one is not allowed to do, which in practice block most people from doing their profession. Reading books is not on that list, but nowhere does it say that the book needs to be the Torah. So it would definitely be allowed to read research papers, as long as you don't take notes (because writing is forbidden). Even a book critic could be reading books during shabat without any issues.

Operating a particle accelerator (ie actually pressing the buttons) would probably be a no-go, but if you set it up beforehand and it runs through the weekend without interaction then that would be fine.

Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#146

Post by UltraSane »

elAhmo wrote: post #118
throw37384848 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jews can absolutely change their laws. For example butchering animals and women rights are completely different now! Orthodox Jews at East Europe still do not allow women in synagogue, very similar way is Islam!

Islam does allow women in mosques.

Only in the back LOL

Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#147

Post by robocat »

xorcist wrote: post #128
sjs382 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the group, but generally the owner of the land that the drug is on needs to be involved in its creation. So, for a sidewalk, the local government. See this article that states that the path of a Houston eruv was leased from the city for 50 years for $1. https://jhvonline.com/mayor-signs-new-rental-agreement-for-h...

Wouldn't the natural thing to do be to bury it? That's what we do with other important wires. Hanging it off old telephone poles seems like a recipe for recurring disaster. Does it need to be a metal wire? Or is, say, a plastic pipe enough? In the spirit of the other comments here, there are plenty of those already in place. Certainly with the involvement of the land owner, which in these cases probably are the city…

From https://eruvinitiative.org/eruv-basics/

  In fact, an entire tractate of the Talmud, called “Eruvin,” is focused on discussing these topics. Most subjects regarding Eruvin are fraught with differing opinions of Jewish Law, and therefore it is of utmost importance that questions related to the Eruv should be discussed with a Posek (Jewish Legal Expert.
There's a bunch of info on that site. I just watched the video on "How to Make a Home Made Shabbos Belt", which is a hack to meet some rules about carrying keys on Saturdays.

Not Jewish, I just enjoy systems of rules.

Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#148

Post by WJW »

nehal3m wrote: post #108
bradrn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. The Jewish perspective is essentially that Jewish law stems from the creation of an all-knowing God, and therefore any seeming ‘loopholes’ must not only be known to Him but explicitly intended to exist. On this basis, it must be perfectly valid to use them!

That's just a loophole to justify exploiting loopholes.

Only if you believe the loopholes to be actually loopholes. I'm not religious, but taking the word of God and declaring that it means something else than what it actually says would be a textbook example of the sin of hubris, no?

Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#149

Post by sandworm101 »

focusgroup0 wrote: post #127

[flagged]

It isnt about god. This is about a set of rules for living a good life. Those rules are under constant scrutiny, being reevaluated to facilitate the needs of the community. The line between religeous debate and "litigation", between theologians and lawyers, is a fiction. They are the same trade under different hats.

Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#150

Post by graemep »

focusgroup0 wrote: post #127

[flagged]

Firstly, if the article is accurate, it still separates private from public spaces. An omnipotent and omniscient God would have made the rules anticipating good faith interpretations in different times and cultures.

It still means accepting a restriction. I am Christian so do not think the same way about religious law, but if I was asked to come up with a defence of this idea, I would argue it fulfils the purpose of the rule - e.g. people still cannot pop into a office. I am sure someone who knows Jewish law could come up with a much stronger argument, but I just want to make the point you should not assume it is bad faith workaround

The article also says there is a 100 pages on this in the Talmud so that implies there has been a lot of discussion and argument about this.

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