What candidate do you agree with most?

This is a website that rates how closely you agree with the candidates (including those who have already dropped out) based on their stances for the various issues in the election - the war, immigration, the environment, etc. I know you will all be shocked to learn that I tend towards the lefties, with my rankings being:
57 Kucinich
46 Gravel
34 Obama
31 Clinton
28 Edwards
25 Dodd
24 Richardson
21 Biden
0 Paul
-10 Cox
-19 Giuliani
-22 Thompson
-25 Brownback
-26 McCain
-42 Huckabee
-44 Romney
-48 Tancredo
-59 Hunter

Wedding report

We have returned from the big wedding. For the most part it was an Israeli wedding - big, but not that formal, despite being an evening wedding - but they did make some concessions to the Americans. Like seats for the ceremony, because Israelis usually just stand for that part. So here are some pictures for everyone.

The ceremony - for those of you who couldn't tell.

Both of the families together. My brother in law has two older sisters who are both married with kids. The sister with the straight hair and her husband (standing next to her) have the two older kids. And the sister with the curly hair and her husband have the toddler and an infant who wasn't there.

All of the Americans (and Canadians) who came. Considering that Israel is pretty far away, we had a good turn-out.

And the niece who was the flower girl and her cousin (who clearly is a new boyfriend for Mster). There was no other wedding party, but Tal must have seen an American movie with a wedding in it and decided that she wanted to be the flower girl. And she's five, so they let her. It was nice though, because there were also flower petals on the tables on the balcony where they had served cocktails. And lots of people were still standing up there to watch. So since most of the Israelis had never seen a wedding with a flower girl before, they decided that they should follow her lead and throw down their petals also. So there was a shower of petals from the balcony for the processional.

Improve your vocabulary and help the hungry at the same time

The website freerice.com was started by a guy who worked for charitable organizations and wanted to help his kids study for the SATs. They ask you random vocab words, and for each one you get right, they donate rice to the UN World Food Program (or "Programme" since the UN uses standard international spelling for their "organisations").

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

Amazon.com bought the $4 million copy of the fairy tales from Harry Potter (that Dumbledore left to Hermoine in his will, in case you don't remember). And while they couldn't print the text of the fairy tales on the website, for obvious copyright issues, they do have synopses of each of the stories. Clearly they will be published at some point, but since when that will be is unknown, for now everyone can just be content with the redacted version.

I seemed to have missed the news

I was recently driving behind a truck that listed the states where the company that owned the truck did business. A common enough practice, I'll grant you. Now this particular list included CT, NY, NJ, PA, MD, and VA - all well and good. It also included DC, which while not a state is a state-like entity. But then the list also included the Hamptons. Excuse me. The last time I checked, the Hamptons were part of New York. Did they break off from New York and form their own state without telling anyone? It just seemed an odd editorial choice as I was sitting behind the truck in traffic.

Happy Hannuka

I forgot to say it yesterday, so I'll say it today for the second night. Happy Hannuka to everyone.

Some things just need labels

S and I were putting up our grandmother's Christmas decorations today, and included among the decorations was the new nativity scene that we had gotten her last year (her old one was down to only having one wise man). So Jesus and Mary were pretty easy to figure out, as they were the only baby and woman, respectively. And we figured out two of the wise men (one had a king-like mitre on his head and one had a walking staff, as if he had perhaps followed the star of Bethlehem for a while) and we got which one was the shepherd. But then we were left with two people and we didn't know which one was Joseph and which one was the third wise man. So we made the executive decision that the one kneeling in adoration was the third wise man, but it would have been helpful if the proper designation to each of the figurines was written on the bottom.