Solar Decathalon

Last week on the Mall the Department of Energy had a competition for people (university groups) to build solar powered homes. They had to make the homes functional and livable (though not necessarily affordable, so some of the houses are really expensive given the amount of house you would be getting). It's a pretty cool idea. Unfortunately, I didn't find out about it until after it was over, so I couldn't go down to Washington to see it. But the competition website has pictures and NewsHour with Jim Lehrer did a report on it.

And the judge went in for that

I was in court yesterday - pretrial motions. One of the other cases on the docket was setting their trial date. And the defense counsel had possibly the best reason ever why the trial couldn't start the day after the Superbowl. His wife is the chief legal counsel for the NFL players union, and she has to go to the game. So he also has to go to be his wife's (and this is a direct quote) "cabana boy". So they had to pick another day to start the trial.

creepy and weird

I was at a student's house this evening, and a guy came and knocked on the door. He said he was from the power company and that he needed them to turn off everything electrical in the house so he could read the meter box. That seemed an odd request, since why did he have to come at all to do a meter reading, and why was he there at 6 in the evening. But the brother of my student was talking to their dad at the time and the dad said that he didn't know anything about a guy from the power company coming. So he called Pepco, and they didn't know anything about it, which doesn't bode well. So obviously the next thing he did was call the police. So we sat barricaded in the house waiting for the police to come as this guy wandered around the yard trying to get our attention. And then the power went out, so we were a little concerned that he was going to murder us while we sat there at teh dining room table, or something like that. So eventually the police got there, and the dad got home from work (the mom had taken the youngest kid to soccer practice or some such activity), and the guy left. But it was very disturbing while it was all going on.

Happy Reading

This week is Banned Books Week. In its honor, everyone should try and read at least one book that has been banned at some point. To help with your reading selection, here is the list of the 100 most challenged books of the 1990s. It's not that they were necessarily written in the '90s. It was just that people decided they hated them in the '90s. So have fun taking a stand against censorship.

For your consideration

As requested, here are some pictures of sukkot from around town. We (S, Yule, and I) went on a little odyssey around town to get some pictures for everyone, before other people showed up for dinner. We did, however, forget to get a picture of our own sukka until it was too dark, and as I own neither a camera nor a camera phone (these pictures were taken on S's phone), I need to wait for her to come back up to the B-more to take the picture. But one is forthcoming, so not to worry.


This is the one at the strip mall. The stores on either side are both kosher resaurants, one is meat and one is dairy.


This one, when S got out of the car to take the picture, the guy came out of his house to tell her that his dog wouldn't bite her. But we also think he found her crazy, because she was taking a picture of his sukka on her phone.




And these three are all the sukka at our old school. It's off the back of the cafeteria, so the kids can eat lunch there from school. It used to be bigger when we went to school there, before they built the new auditorium. That got built in the courtyard where the cafeteria opens to, so that cut into the space available. Many of the decorations are made by students. The decorations on the back wall there include the decorations from the nursery school kids, one of whom is S's and my cousin. His is clearly the best semi-circle piece of paper colored in yellow to look like a banana.

Amusing Sukkot sightings

In honor of everyone's favorite Jewish holiday, I thought I would tell you about some sukkot around town. One of the kosher restaurants in town (that caters mostly to a lunch crowd) has a sukka on the sidewalk at their strip mall. I guess that way people can have their soup and salad outside in the sukka. There is also a sukka where the family, in attempt to make it just like their home, is flying an American flag from it, which isn't a combination one sees very often.

Flying Spaghetti Monster

Yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I'm sure everyone celebrated. But just on the off chance that you missed it, I give you the only religion to celebrate the holiday - the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was founded by Oregonians, so you present and past Oregonians can feel proud about that. Their eight not-quite-commandments are pretty good guidelines to live by. And if you scroll down to the bottom of the main page about the church, you can see a picture of the FSM billboard in Baltimore. I feel that the Baltimore Synod is composed entirely of Hopkins grad students.