Turn Your Enemies Into Friends
The fool turns a friend into an enemy.
The wise person turns an enemy into a friend.
Love Yehuda
Interesting story about the origin of Taps.
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Visit my Blog: http://yehudalave.blogspot.com/
Interesting story about the origin of Taps.
Please excuse the four-letter words toward the end of the
following story... I would have deleted them, but the story
wouldn't be the same..
.
JEWISH NEWLYWEDS
A young Jewish couple got married and went on their honeymoonWhen they got back, the bride immediately called her mother.
"Well", said her mother, "so how was the honeymoon?"
"Oh mama", she replied, "the honeymoon was wonderful! So romantic"... Suddenly she burst out crying.
"But, mama, as soon as we returned, Sam started using the most horrible language -- things I'd never heard before! I mean, all these awful four-letter words! You've got to take me home!!
PLEASE MAMA !"
"Sarah, Sarah", her mother said, "calm down!
You need to stay with your husband and work this out. Now, tell me, what could be so awful? WHAT four-letter words?"
"Please don't make me tell you, mama," wept the daughter. "I'm so embarrassed, they're just too awful!
COME GET ME, PLEASE!!"
"Darling, baby, you must tell me what has you so upset. Tell your mother these horrible four-letter words!" Sobbing, the bride said, "Oh, Mama..., he used words like:
"DUST, WASH , IRON, and COOK...
"I'll pick you up in twenty minutes," said her mother.
No insults intended.
It's just a spoof!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=y54FRMedT_s
Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January) is a national event in the United Kingdom dedicated to the remembrance of the victims of The Holocaust. It was first held in January 2001 and has been on the same date every year since. The chosen date is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by the Soviet Union in 1945, the date also chosen for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and some other national Holocaust Memorial Days.
In addition to the national event, there are numerous smaller memorial events around the country organized by many different organizations, groups and individuals.
The tragedy of the Costa Concordia.
by Rabbi Benjamin BlechI was a passenger on the Costa Concordia that just made headlines around the world as it sunk off the coast of Tuscany.
No, thank God I wasn't on this last harrowing voyage which resulted in horrible injuries and loss of lives. It was in the summer of 2008 that I had the opportunity of serving as rabbinic scholar-in-residence for a kosher program on this magnificent ocean liner. And I won't ever forget the luxury, the beauty, and the latest state-of-the-art technology that was evident throughout.
A high ranking member of the crew gave me a private tour, pointing out some of the remarkable advanced equipment and GPS which insured our total safety. What stayed with me was his jocular reference to a famous ship of a century ago, as he assured me that "no one will ever have a Titanic experience here."
And yet that's exactly what happened.
How could that possibly be? With all of our scientific progress, how can a ship still go aground?
The answer has profound implications for our understanding of the real root cause of such tragedies.
There was actually no reason for the Titanic to be in that dangerous area. It was only because people in 1912 were awed by the prowess of the Titanic to the degree of hubris that permitted the order to be given to sail "full speed ahead" through icy waters. This order was given by the Titanic's owners to recapture the trophy for fastest crossing of the Atlantic from the Germans in order to secure increased revenue for their venture, and was executed by the captain of the Titanic, who selected a northern crossing which was much shorter than the traditional southerly route used by the mariners for that time year.
This disaster was completely avoidable. North Atlantic crossings held perils well known to mariners, and firsthand reports of ice conditions had reached the officers of the Titanic earlier in the day. The Titanic had a radio, and both sent and received a steady stream of messages throughout the voyage.
Wireless operators had two functions – track weather reports and transmit messages for the rich. They made their money from the latter. On April 14, 1912, another ship, the California, continually sent wireless messages to the Titanic that a large iceberg (one million tons) was in Titanic's path.
No matter how good the technology of the Titanic, it could not compensate for moral error.
Receiving these messages annoyed the operator trying to get messages out for their rich patrons. The Titanic operator demanded the California stop bothering him. They did and turned off their wireless. The messages never made it to the Captain.
The 804 people who died were killed by greed. No matter how good the technology of the Titanic, it could not compensate for moral error.
The Costa Concordia was the proud symbol of contemporary scientific marvels. It, too, was unsinkable. Its GPS unerringly kept it on a safe course. Yet the ego of the captain who wanted to go closer to shore so that he could show off his "toy" to friends on the island overrode every precaution.
A GPS, just like God's Perfect System for guiding us through life, otherwise known as the Torah, can only give us direction. It can't force us to carry out its will. We still have the freedom to obey or to disregard its warnings. But what we can never avoid is the consequences of our actions.
That's why our moral choices, dictated by a commitment to higher ethical principles, will always be more important than our scientific achievements.
Babel
That lesson goes back many thousands of years to a major biblical story. It was the tower builders of Babel who are portrayed as the first age of technology. Until then, people were farmers or shepherds. They responded to nature but did not know how to control it or shape it. But the time came when they learned how to build bricks and fashion homes impervious to the weather. Overwhelmed with a sense of their importance, they decided to build a tower with its top in the heavens so that they could topple God from his throne.
What they desired above all, the Torah tells us, was "to make for themselves a name." With scientific advancement came the ego of the technocrat who was convinced that his intellect made God unnecessary.
It was not too long ago that the first astronaut, the Russian Yuri Gagarin, in the same spirit as the builders of the tower of Babel said on his return from outer space, "I looked and looked, but I didn't see God."
But the end of the biblical story makes clear the price that must always be paid when we choose self worship over the authority of a divine GPS. With all of its brilliance, the society of the tower of Babel doomed itself to extinction. Bricks became more important than people. When a brick fell and shattered, they cried but when a person toppled to his death they ignored him. Feelings were replaced by formulas. Human speech and communication no longer mattered. Talk became babble. Technology created a seemingly more perfect world - peopled by those who were far more imperfect.
What I think needs to be stressed as the ultimate lesson is how much we need to reorder our priorities.
The captain was amongst the first to flee.
Reports of what went on as the Costa Concordia sank are chilling as they reflect upon so much of contemporary behavior. When the Titanic went down, women and children were given precedence. A great majority of them survived because of the chivalry of those, like Benjamin Guggenheim, who chose to stay behind, changed into his evening clothes, and said to those to whom he gave his seat in the lifeboats, "We dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen."
Today's passengers fought with the crew for the few seats that offered the chance for survival. The captain was amongst the first to flee, giving the lie to the noble ideal that the captain goes down with the ship. The strong pushed aside the weak. And the moral order that defines us as civilized, as the best of creation, as those formed in the image of God seeking to emulate his divine attributes, also perished with the victims.
We live in an age that worships every new scientific breakthrough. We are obsessed with gadgets meant to make our lives easier and more fun-filled. Yet we spend so little time stressing the importance of a value system without which all of these advances are meaningless.
This tragedy happened because of human error. It was compounded by striking moral failures. What it requires from us now is the reminder that our emphasis on technological achievements must be joined to greater concern for ethical growth. Only with a commitment to both can we prevent disasters of Titanic proportion.
It is no accident that parshat Bo, the section that deals with the culminating plagues and the exodus, should turn three times to the subject of children and the duty of parents to educate them. As Jews we believe that to defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilization you need education. Freedom is lost when it is taken for granted. Unless parents hand on their memories and ideals to the next generation - the story of how they won their freedom and the battles they had to fight along the way - the long journey falters and we lose our way.
What is fascinating, though, is the way the Torah emphasizes the fact that children must ask questions. Two of the three passages in our parsha speak of this:
And when your children ask you, 'What does this ceremony mean to you?' then tell them, 'It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.'" (Ex. 12:26-27)
In days to come, when your son asks you, 'What does this mean?' say to him, 'With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. (Ex. 13:14)
There is another passage later in the Torah that also speaks of question asked by a child:
In the future, when your son asks you, "What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?" tell him: "We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. (Deut. 6:20-21)
The other passage in today's parsha, the only one that does not mention a question, is:
On that day tell your son, 'I do this because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.' (Ex. 13:8)
These four passages have become famous because of their appearance in Haggadah on Pesach. They are the four children: one wise, one wicked or rebellious, one simple and "one who does not know how to ask." Reading them together the sages came to the conclusion that [1] children should ask questions, [2] the Pesach narrative must be constructed in response to, and begin with, questions asked by a child, [3] it is the duty of a parent to encourage his or her children to ask questions, and the child who does not yet know how to ask should be taught to ask.
There is nothing natural about this at all. To the contrary, it goes dramatically against the grain of history. Most traditional cultures see it as the task of a parent or teacher to instruct, guide or command. The task of the child is to obey. "Children should be seen, not heard," goes the old English proverb. "Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord," says a famous Christian text. Socrates, who spent his life teaching people to ask questions, was condemned by the citizens of Athens for corrupting the young. In Judaism the opposite is the case. It is a religious duty to teach our children to ask questions. That is how they grow.
Judaism is the rarest of phenomena: a faith based on asking questions, sometimes deep and difficult ones that seem to shake the very foundations of faith itself. "Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?" asked Abraham. ""Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people?" asked Moses. "Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?" asked Jeremiah. The book of Job is largely constructed out of questions, and God's answer consists of four chapters of yet deeper questions: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? ... Can you catch Leviathan with a hook? ... Will it make an agreement with you and let you take it as your slave for life?"
In yeshiva the highest accolade is to ask a good question: Du fregst a gutte kashe. Rabbi Abraham Twersky, a deeply religious psychiatrist, tells of how when he was young, his teacher would relish challenges to his arguments. In his broken English, he would say, "You right! You 100 prozent right! Now I show you where you wrong."
Isadore Rabi, winner of a Nobel Prize in physics, was once asked why he became a scientist. He replied, "My mother made me a scientist without ever knowing it. Every other child would come back from school and be asked, 'What did you learn today?' But my mother used to ask: 'Izzy, did you ask a good question today?' That made the difference. Asking good questions made me a scientist."
Judaism is not a religion of blind obedience. Indeed, astonishingly in a religion of 613 commandments, there is no Hebrew word that means "to obey." When Hebrew was revived as a living language in the nineteenth century, and there was need for a verb meaning "to obey," it had to be borrowed from the Aramaic: le-tsayet. Instead of a word meaning "to obey," the Torah uses the verb shema, untranslatable into English because it means [1] to listen, [2] to hear, [3] to understand, [4] to internalise, and [5] to respond. Written into the very structure of Hebraic consciousness is the idea that our highest duty is to seek to understand the will of God, not just to obey blindly. Tennyson's verse, "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die," is as far from a Jewish mindset as it is possible to be.
Why? Because we believe that intelligence is God's greatest gift to humanity. Rashi understands the phrase that God made man "in His image, after His likeness," to mean that God gave us the ability "to understand and discern." The very first of our requests in the weekday Amidah is for "knowledge, understanding and discernment." One of the most breathtakingly bold of the rabbis' institutions was to coin a blessing to be said on seeing a great non-Jewish scholar. Not only did they see wisdom in cultures other than their own. They thanked God for it. How far this is from the narrow-mindedness than has so often demeaned and diminished religions, past and present.
The historian Paul Johnson once wrote that rabbinic Judaism was "an ancient and highly efficient social machine for the production of intellectuals." Much of that had, and still has, to do with the absolute priority Jews have always placed on education, schools, the bet midrash, religious study as an act even higher than prayer, learning as a lifelong engagement, and teaching as the highest vocation of the religious life.
But much too has to do with how one studies and how we teach our children. The Torah indicates this at the most powerful and poignant juncture in Jewish history - just as the Israelites are about to leave Egypt and begin their life as a free people under the sovereignty of God. Hand on the memory of this moment to your children, says Moses. But do not do so in an authoritarian way. Encourage your children to ask, question, probe, investigate, analyze, explore. Liberty means freedom of the mind, not just of the body. Those who are confident of their faith need fear no question. It is only those who lack confidence, who have secret and suppressed doubts, who are afraid.
The one essential, though, is to know and to teach this to our children, that not every question has an answer we can immediately understand. There are ideas we will only fully comprehend through age and experience, others that take great intellectual preparation, yet others that may be beyond our collective comprehension at this stage of the human quest. As I write, we don't yet know whether the Higgs' boson exists. Darwin never knew what a gene was. Even the great Newton, founder of modern science, understood how little he understood, and put it beautifully: "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
In teaching its children to ask and keep asking, Judaism honoured what Maimonides called the "active intellect" and saw it as the gift of God. No faith has honoured human intelligence more.
Love Yehuda
Harry & Bess
Thought you'd enjoy this one!
This one you want your Children and Grandchildren to read.They won't believe this happened, but it DID.
Harry & Bess
This seems unreal.....
Harry Truman was a different kind of President. He probably made as many, or more important decisions regarding our nation's history as any of the other 42 Presidents preceding him. However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House.
The only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was in Independence Missouri. His wife had inherited the house from her mother and father and other than their years in the White House, they lived their entire lives there.
When he retired from office in 1952, his income was a U.S. Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an 'allowance' and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.
After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to Missouri by themselves. There was no Secret Service following them.
When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, "You don't want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale."
Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, "I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise."
As president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food.
Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the Presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now for sale. (sic. Illinois )
Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, "My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!
I say dig him up and clone him!! At least he was honest!
Enjoy life now-it has an expiration date!
A Separation | |
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Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Asghar Farhadi |
Produced by | Asghar Farhadi |
Written by | Asghar Farhadi |
Starring | Leila Hatami Peyman Moaadi Shahab Hosseini Sareh Bayat Sarina Farhadi |
Music by | Sattar Oraki |
Cinematography | Mahmoud Kalari |
Editing by | Hayedeh Safiyari |
Studio | Studio Moon |
Distributed by | FilmIran (Iran) Sony Pictures Classics (U.S.) Memento Films (worldwide) |
Release date(s) | 1 February 2011 ( Tehran Fajr Film Festival) 15 February 2011 (Berlin Film Festival) |
Running time | 123 minutes |
Country | Iran |
Language | Persian |
Budget | $500,000 |
Box office | $3,100,000 (Iran) $9,181,000 (Abroad)[1] |
A Separation (in Persian: جدایی نادر از سیمین Jodái-e Náder az Simin, "Separation of Nader from Simin") is a 2011 Golden Globe Award-winning Iranian drama film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, starring Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat and Sarina Farhadi. It focuses on an Iranian middle-class couple who separate, and the intrigues which follow when the husband hires a lower-class caretaker for his elderly father. The film received the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bears for Best Actress and Best Actor at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival, becoming the first Iranian film to win the Golden Bear.[2] The film won 69th Golden Globe Awards Best Foreign Language Film.[3] The film is also the official Iranian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2012 Academy Awards.[4][5] On January 18, 2012, the film was named as one of the nine shortlisted entries for the Oscars.[6]
Contents[hide] |
Nader and Simin have been married for fourteen years and live with their eleven-year-old daughter Termeh in Tehran. The family belongs to the urban upper middle-class and the couple is on the verge of separation. Simin wants to leave the country with her husband and daughter, as she does not want Termeh to grow up under the prevailing conditions. This desire is not shared by Nader. He is concerned for his elderly father, who lives with the family and suffers from Alzheimer's disease. When Nader firmly decides to stay in Iran, Simin files for divorce.
The family court judges the couple's problems not to be grave enough to warrant divorce and rejects Simin's application. Simin then leaves her husband and daughter and moves back in with her parents. On the recommendations of his wife, Nader hires Razieh, a young, pregnant and deeply religious woman from a poor suburb, to take care of his father while he works at a bank. Razieh has applied for the job without consulting her hot-tempered husband Houjat, whose approval, according to tradition, would have been required. Her family is, however, financially dependent on the work, and she takes her daughter to the house with her.
Razieh soon becomes overwhelmed by taking care of Nader's father. On the first day of work, she finds that the old man is incontinent and she phones someone to ask if it would be a sin for her to clean him. Assured that it would be acceptable, she continues in the job, but later hopes to get her husband into the position, without revealing that she herself had worked there initially. Nader interviews Houjat and hires him, but Houjat, who is heavily in debt, is put in jail by his creditors on the day he is due to start - and so Razieh returns to work for Nader.
Whilst Razieh is cleaning, Nader's father wanders out of the apartment. Razieh runs to find him, and sees him from across a busy road, peering down at a newsstand. (Although we do not see what happens after Razieh has seen him, later on in the film, we learn that Razieh is hit by a car in an attempt to protect Nader's father from being hit).
The next day, Nader and Termeh return to an empty house. Termeh discovers her grandfather lying unconscious on the floor in his bedroom, with one of his arms tied to the bed. When Razieh returns, an argument ensues between her and Nader, and he throws her out of the apartment, and accuses her of having stolen money from his room (unbeknownst to Nader, Simin was actually shown taking the money in an earlier scene to pay movers). Razieh returns to protest her innocence, and to request her payment for the day's work. Outraged, Nader shoves Razieh out of the apartment. She falls in the stairwell and hurries out of the building. Houjat's sister later calls Simin to inform her that Razieh is in hospital and they discover that she has suffered a miscarriage.
A court is assigned to determine the cause of the miscarriage and Nader's potential responsibility for it. If it is proved that Nader had knowledge of Razieh's pregnancy and caused the miscarriage by his actions, he could be sentenced to one to three years imprisonment, and much of the film revolves around this issue. Nader accuses Razieh of neglecting his father. The hot-headed and aggressive Houjat physically confronts Nader on several occasions, and threatens him, his family, and Termeh's teacher, who testifies on Nader's behalf. When Houjat is sent out of a court hearing for an outburst, Razieh reveals that he is deeply depressed and self-destructive, and that he is taking antidepressants for these issues. Nader learns from Razieh's young daughter that the reason she was absent the day Nader came home early was because she had gone with Razieh to see a doctor, something that Razieh was adamant about not revealing earlier. This, combined with Houjat's explosive temper causes Nader to wonder if perhaps Houjat is physically abusive to Razieh and possibly the cause of her miscarriage.
Termeh protects her father with a false statement and Simin attempts to arrange a financial deal with Razieh and Houjat, to compensate them for the loss of their unborn child. Nader is initially outraged by Simin's suggestion that they pay off Razieh and Houjat, as Nader feels that it would be a shameful admission of guilt. The morality of all of the characters are called into question as it is revealed that Nader did indeed lie about his knowledge of Razieh's pregnancy, and that Razieh has serious doubts as to whether Nader's actions caused her miscarriage, as she had been hit by a car the day before.
Eventually, everyone—including Houjat's debtors—meets at the home of Razieh and Houjat to consummate the payment. Nader, still wary about the true cause of Razieh's miscarriage (but not knowing about her being struck by a car) writes the cheques and slyly says he will give them to Houjat, under the condition that Razieh swears on the Qur'an that his actions were the cause of her miscarriage. Despite Houjat's desperate urgings, she cannot bring herself to do it, as she believes it will be a sin, and worries about it backfiring and affecting their daughter. Totally dejected, Houjat breaks down, hits himself violently and storms out of his home—the money is not paid.
Back at the family court, Everyone is wearing black, indicative in Persian culture of a death in the family. Nader and Simin's separation is made permanent and Termeh is asked to decide whether she wants to live with her mother or her father. Termeh tearfully says that she has made a decision, but requests that the judge ask her parents to wait outside in the hallway before revealing it. Nader and Simin are shown waiting silently and separately in the hallway, and the credits roll, with the viewer not learning of Termeh's decision
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This guy has guts!!
In this video clip a Lynx Mk.80 of the Royal Danish Navy attempts to land on the offshore patrol vessel Ejnar Mikkelson (P571). This patrol vessel weighs in at 1720 tons, which is relatively light compared to frigates and destroyers, and thus it is quite lively in the rough North Sea waters. The patrol vessel is of the Knud Rasmussen Class and has been in service with the Danish Navy since 2009.
The Lynx is the export version of the Royal Navy HAS.3 and regularly operates in the harsh conditions of the North Sea… and the pilot, well what can I say about him… one thing is sure, he definitely has Viking blood in his veins. He takes a while, but when he finally puts her down, note the excellent placement of the helicopter in its designated landing area after touchdown.
See Attachment.
this video is really awesome,
This is amazing…can you imagine the camera that they used to get this! The hummingbird going after the bee is amazing! Have the sound on.
Nature is remarkable and the wonder of slow-motion photography helps us better understand and appreciate the nature we never would see or appreciate otherwise.
Yesterday I wrote about the VW Bug factory in Germany. Here is some history I did not know that my friend Poli sent me after I sent it out:
Adolf Hitler 'stole idea for Volkswagen Beetle from Jewish engineer'
Adolf Hitler, who has always been given the credit for sketching out the early concept of the iconic Volkswagen Beetle in a meeting with car designer Ferdinand Porsche in 1935, stole the idea from a Jewish engineer and had him written out of history, a historian has sensationally claimed.
The Nazi leader's idea for the Volkswagen, or 'people's car', is seen by many as one of the only worthwhile achievements of the genocidal dictator.
However, Paul Schilperoord's book, 'The Extraordinary Life of Josef Ganz - the Jewish engineer behind Hitler's Volkswagen', may change that forever.
Hitler stipulated that the vehicle would have four seats, an air-cooled engine and cost no more than 1,000 Reichsmarks - the exact price that Ganz said the car would cost.
Three years before Hitler described "his idea" to Porsche in a Berlin hotel, Ganz was driving a car he had designed called the Maikaefer, or May Bug.
The lightweight, low-riding vehicle looked very like the Beetle that was later developed by Porsche, who is still considered the foremost car designer in German history.
Jewish inventor Ganz had been exploring the idea for an affordable car since 1928 and made many drawings of a Beetle-like vehicle.
Hitler saw the May Bug at a car show in 1933 and made sketches, and within days of the meeting between them in 1935, Ganz's car magazine was shut down and he was in trouble with the Gestapo.
The journalist and inventor left for Switzerland and died in Australia in 1967.
He is not mentioned in VW's first corporate history or in the Story of Volkswagen exhibition in Wolfsburg.
"So many things were the same in Hitler's sketches," the Daily Mail quoted Schilperoord as saying.
"Hitler definitely saw his prototype and I'm quite sure he must have read Ganz's magazine.
"It's quite clear Ganz had a big influence on how the idea was developed by the Nazis.
"'Ferdinand Porsche drove Ganz's prototype in 1931. I found a lot of evidence that all similar rear engines in the 1930s can be traced by to Ganz.
"Even the price was the same. Porsche said doing this for 1,000 Reichsmarks was not possible but was forced to make it happen by the Nazis," he added.
Meanwhile, Porsche's image is at stake, with some critics claiming he was a war criminal.
However, VW admits to producing military parts and using slave labour, Porsche was never tried for war crimes.
Volkswagen has put the doubt over the car's origins down to the fact that many people at the time were talking about the concept of a small and low-priced car.
It claims that through Hitler, Porsche found the funding that Ganz lacked and was able to make something real out of what was a popular idea.ARTICLE URL: http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_adolf-hitler-stole-idea-for-volkswagen-beetle-from-jewish-engineer_1638037
What a Long Strange Trip
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204257504577150973998496702.html
Be Honorable By Treating Others With Respect
The Sages in Pirkei Avos (4:1 what we call ethics of the Fathers) define the honorable person as "someone who shows honor and respect to other people." They are teaching us that it's not how other people treat you that makes you important and honorable. Rather, it's how you treat others.
The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are the winners:
1.Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2.Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
3.Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4.Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5.Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6.Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7.Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
8.Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
9.Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10.Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11.Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
12.Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13.Glibido: All talk and no action.
14.Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15.Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
16.Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17.Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
And the winners are:
1.Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.
2.Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3.Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4.esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5.Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6.Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7.Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.
8.Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9.Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10.Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11.Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.
12.Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13.Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14.Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15.Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men