arieh's New Writeups

The Butler Report (thing)

2004-07-14T20:19:50Z

The Butler Report examined UK intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction, in particular relating to Iraq, in the wake of the 2003 War. It had some criticisms of the way in which intelligence was used to make a political case for war, but was largely supportive of the Government and intelligence services.

Context

After the 2003 Coalition invasion of Iraq, public attention in the UK and USA focused on the failure of the Iraq Survey Group and others to locate Weapons of Mass Destruction. Despite repeated intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein had a covert WMD programme, significant stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, little to no evidence of such programmes was found by mid-2004.

In the United Kingdom, particular attention was paid to the Government's publication of a dossier entitled …

Seventeenth of Tammuz (thing)

2004-07-06T17:18:09Z

The Seventeenth day of the month of Tammuz is a Jewish day of mourning and fasting. It is the first day of the Three Weeks, which climax in Tisha ba Av.

History

It seems that a fast in Tammuz is ancient in origin. Zechariah refers to "The fast of the fourth month" (Zech 8:19), but it's not clear that it's on the seventeenth; a more likely candidate is the 9th of Tammuz, the date that Nebuchadnezzar's army breached the wall of Jerusalem in the time of the First Temple.

The Seventeenth of Tammuz was the date when, in the year 70CE, Titus's troops breached the wall of Jerusalem after a long siege. This marked the beginning of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple.

The Seventeenth of Tammuz absorbed the earlier fast day, because their purposes and dates were so similar.

According to the Mishna (Taanit 4:6) a variety of other tragedies…

Can God lie? (idea)

2004-05-05T10:40:15Z

Well, according to Jewish tradition there's at least one occasion in the Bible where God does lie. And it shows that lying isn't always bad.

The scene: Abraham has just invited in three strangers and fed them, when one tells him his wife, Sarah (who is 90 at the time), will have a child. Sarah is inside the tent, and overhears the conversation:

Gen 18:12"So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?"

However, when God speaks to Abraham, what does he say?

Gen 18:13 "Then God said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?'"

Notice what's been done here. God has misreported Sarah's speech in the tent, where she claimed Abraham was too old to have children (he was 100 years old), instead leading Abraham to…

Editor Log: May 2004 (thing)

2004-05-03T12:39:32Z

On Soft Links.

Something I've noticed is that many nodes are sparsely softlinked, if at all. This is the case, as you might expect, with lots of old nodes. But newly created nodes can also suffer the same problem.

Every website has hyperlinks like our hard links. They aren't anything special. What makes E2 great is the self-organising nature of the linking process; the soft links. These are formed when you move from one node to another, and demonstrate associations between nodes that readers may think of, even if writers don't see it.

However, it's not enough to create a writeup and hope that soft links appear. It's your job, as the creator of a new node, to ensure that it's linked to relevant and interesting other nodes.

You should know this already. It is explained best in E2 FAQ: integrate your writeups and most vividly in Link and Link. But for whatever reason, many noders don't softlink their nodes enough.…

Yehuda Halevi (person)

2004-04-20T00:13:16Z

"My heart is in the East, and I am at the end of the West"

Yehuda Halevi (the Levite) was born in Toledo, then the capital of Castile, in or around 1086. This was during the Muslim rule of Spain, that age which still today the Jews and Muslims call the Golden Age; very different to the Golden Age spoken of by the Christian Spaniards. This was an age of religious freedom, cultural wealth and material prosperity, while European Jews and Eastern Muslims were undergoing the trauma of the Crusades, Castile was relatively untroubled.

Halevi studied under the Isaac Alfasi at Lucena, learning Talmud as well as other disciplines. He became - like many of the time - something of a linguist, speaking Aramaic, Arabic and Hebrew, and also studied medicine, becoming a practicing doctor in Toledo. There he married and, when the pressures of a hectic life got too much, moved with his family to…

There there (thing)

2004-03-28T02:09:24Z

(The Boney King of Nowhere)

"There there." is track nine on Hail to the Thief by Radiohead, as well as the first UK single released off that album, with the B-sides Paperbag Writer and Where Bluebirds Fly. It lasts 5m24s.

It's a song with real depth of sound; An intro of drums and an intense bass-line provide a rhythm that sets the tone for the song, continuing for fully 30 seconds before the guitars come in. If fact, when played live, Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood switch to playing drums. Then a rich guitar part, a long and complex riff - I think it's a riff, though it may never actually repeat exactly the same. Very softly, quite high, barely audible, in typical Thom Yorke fashion, lyrics come in.

In pitch dark I go walkin' in your landscape
Broken branches trip me as i speak

…