Gleanings

Language
I went running with Itamar to Park HaYarkon to a Muscle Beach like workout park along the Yarkon River and learned something interesting about language adoption. It was five AM when we arrived and there were a bunch of Asian women speaking in their native tongue with occasional tangents in Hebrew and English.
All over Tel-Aviv you see women like these who accompany elderly Jewish Israelis, and what I found interesting is that when they speak Hebrew they have the same Eastern European accents as their employers. Imagine Jackie Chan speaking and it sounds like Jackie Mason. When I heard them, all I could think of was the Woody Allen movie, What’s up Tiger Lily.

Commercialism
I like to think of myself as a student of media, and I have been very sensitive to the nuances of Israeli advertising as compared to the American advertising media I am most familiar with. There is a lot of science that measures and tells us about our consumer behavior and how to address it, and I have always thought that this is a sham because humans are too complex to be measured in metrix that answer all questions about their behavior.
In support of my believe, I find that the differences between American and Israeli advertising don’t illustrate a difference in human constitution; i.e. now I am an Israeli consumer and included in the metrix of Israeli research. The differences in advertising simply illustrate the malleability of human responses. There is not one way to scientifically declare that 6 minutes of commercials during any given half hour of television is the maximum amount tolerable to humans. At best, we can say that this thesis applies now in this specific context.
My point, we need to be more critical of science. It doesn’t describe the world any better than religion, great literature or fine art.

Antibiotic treated fruits and vegetables
I have heard all the arguments against the industrialization of farming and have been sympathetic, but it the opponents of agribusiness really want to make there case, they need to bring people to a place where agriculture is still uninfected by hormones and antibiotics. The fruits and vegetables in Israel are so delicious. I could just eat tomatoes and cucumbers all day and be happy.