The nightmare of artificially low water prices

The Bureaucrat in Your Shower discusses regulation of maximum water flow rate in showers taken by USA residents.

I agree that it would be better to charge higher prices and make water desalination economically viable. Or at least require attachment of water consumption meters to shower heads, so that people can see exactly how much water they are consuming. Water consumption meters together with existing technology would at least allow people to enjoy brief and intense showers while conserving water in the large.

British Blitz vs. Al-Aqsa Intifada

I decided to try to compare the civilian losses from the British Blitz during World War II to the Israeli civilian losses during the Al-Aqsa intifada.

According to Wikipedia, about 43,000 British civilians were killed.
The only Internet source I found for estimating the total British population during World War II was Population Losses in World War II by Country by Andrew Gregorovich. According to this source, total British losses were 350,000 people, who were 0.7% of the total population i.e. total population of Great Britain at the time was 50 million.

During the Al-Aqsa intifada, about 1000 Israeli civilians were killed, and this was about 0.015% of the total Israeli population (about 6.5 million). The civilian British Blitz losses were about 0.086% of the total British population. In other words, as far as Israeli civilian losses are concerned, Al-Aqsa intifada had Israeli civilian casualty rate about 18% of that of the British Blitz.

And don’t ask me to compare the Palestinian casualties. They were the aggressors and they were the ones, who sent nominally-civilian suicide bombers, and they were the ones who brainwashed their youth that it is noble to die while killing Israeli civilians of all genders and ages and regardless of religion.

Lack of accessibility kills people (cont'd)

Tomorrow, Monday 9 January 2006, the organizations of and for the hearing impaired in Israel will hold a memorial event (combined with demonstration) in memory of Shmuel Katz Z”L, who was killed a month ago in a train accident, whose root cause is lack of accessibility of the train to people with hearing and sight impairments.

The memorial event will be held at 18:00 in the entrance to the Hagana train station, Tel Aviv.
Few weeks ago, I wrote about the accessibility problems of Israel Railways.

The Web site of Israel Railways is at http://www.israrail.org.il/english/index.html. They list the following E-mail address for suggestions/remarks/comments: [email protected].

Scratching a bookmarks itch in Mozilla

This tip may or may not be relevant for FireFox or more recent versions of Mozilla.

I have a long, hierarchical and mostly unsorted list of bookmarks used by my installation of the Mozilla 1.7.8 browser.
There is a search box, which allows me to locate a bookmark using text matching.

However, if I want to add a new bookmark and have to find the appropriate folder to which add it, the search box is useless for this purpose. Even if it finds me other bookmarks filed in the right folder (based upon their subject), it does not show me in which folder those bookmarks are.

The following hack solves the problem. The directory names are correct for Debian Sarge. If you use another Linux distribution or another OS, YMMV.

Look for the bookmarks.html file in your ~/.mozilla directory, load it (as a regular HTML file) in your browser, and bookmark it!
Its URL will typically be: file:///home/yourusername/.mozilla/default/something.slt/bookmarks.html

Next time you need to search for the folder where to add a new bookmark, load the bookmarked bookmarks.html file and run standard text search (Edit/Find in this page; usually bound to CTRL-F).

Then you can happily add your new bookmark to the best folder for your purposes.

I decided to do something about Norwegian Socialist Left party's boycott of Israel

My DEAF-INFO Web site, which disseminates deafness related information, and which is targeted at worldwide audience, now has a notice to supporters of the Norwegian Socialist Left party’s anti-Israel policy. The notice proclaims that they should not visit my Web site if they support their party’s anti-Israeli policy.

Philosophical dilemma of very creative people with disabilities – my opinion

I wrote about the philosophical dilemma and left a dangling hint that my own answer is forthcoming.

Henry Kisor, a deaf journalist, was educated by Doris Irene Mirrielees, who used an obscure methodology of educating deaf children. Her methodology was the oral one (teach ’em to speak and lipread and do not expose them to Sign Language) but with the twist that she emphasized general knowledge over communication skills. Her methodology was different from the usual practice of educators following the oral methodology, which emphasized the utmost importance of communication skills.

Henry Kisor did all right and grew up to be a successful journalist. He had good communication skills, certainly when using the written word as a medium of communication.

So a good answer seems to be: when there is a working substitute to the lost ability, then do not bother with the lost ability but invest your time with those abilities which you have. Cannot hear? Read, write and use Sign Language. Cannot walk? Use a wheelchair. Spend your time perfecting that profound scientific discovery rather than overcoming your deafness, blindness and loss of your hands.

כותרת: דילמה פילוסופית של אנשים יצירתיים מאוד עם מוגבלויות – דעתי

כתבתי על הדילמה הפילוסופית והשארתי רמז שהתשובה שלי עוד תבוא.

הנרי קיסור, עיתונאי חרש, חונך על ידי דוריס אירינה מיריליס, שהשתמשה בשיטה לא נודעת לחינוך ילדים חרשים.  השיטה שלה היתה אורלית (למד אותם לדבר ולקרוא שפתיים ואל תחשוף אותם לשפת סימנים) אבל עם השינוי שהיא הדגישה ידע כללי (תוכן) על חשבון מיומנויות תקשורת. השיטה שלה היתה שונה מהנוהג המקובל של מחנכים שעובדים בשיטה האורלית, שהדגישה את החשיבות הרת הגורל של מיומנויות תקשורת.

הנרי קיסור יצא בסדר גמור וכשהיה גדול הפך להיות עיתונאי מצליח. היו לו מיומנויות תקשורת טובות, כמובן כולל שימוש במילה הכתובה כאמצעי תקשורת.

כך שתשובה טובה היא כנראה: כשיש חלופה שעובדת ליכולת שלא קיימת, אז אל תטרח לשקם את היכולת החסרה אלא השקע את זמנך באותן יכולות שיש לך. אינך יכול לשמוע? קרא, כתוב והשתמש בשפת סימנים. אינך יכול ללכת? השתמש בכסא גלגלים. השקע את זמנך בליטוש התגלית המדעית הגדולה ההיא במקום להתגבר על חרשותך, עוורונך ואובדן היכולת להשתמש בידיך.

Nandor's Exhaustive Chemical Words Pages

Few days ago I wrote about pangrams and today I saw in Slashdot another way to play with words – build them from chemical symbols. I think it would have been more interesting if chemical formulae and chemical reactions could be used rather than just chemical symbols. However I do not see any competitor to Perl Poetry.

One goat kid, one goat kid

One who knows?
One I know.
One world.

Two who knows?
Two I know.
Yen and Yang. Fractal duality.

Three who knows?
Three I know.
The basic linguistic concepts of subject, verb and object. The IDF tradition of dividing everything into three parts. The RDF triplet for linking two concepts together.

Four who knows?
Four I do not know.
Four only Arthur Clarke and his story-whispering extraterrestrial ghosts know.

Infinity who knows?
Infinity I know.
Infinite is the world.