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2011 Gregorian. Such a quiet year for the Omphalos. Even before New Year’s a year past, this blog had begun a mostly uninterrupted slumber beginning in 2009, what with most of my activity focused on directing the Open Siddur Project (2009-present), studying at Yeshivat Hadar (2009-2010), teaching with the Teva Learning Alliance (2010-2011), studying . . . → Continue reading: What Happened‽ So what‽ Now what‽ 
Ever want a keyboard configuration you could switch to for odd characters‽ You know, so you could add an Ḥ in Ḥanukah without copying and pasting from this page (or your favorite “Character Viewer” program). . . . → Continue reading: Varady’s Fabulous Flying Keyboard 
A very short meditation on negative theology and emergence. . . . → Continue reading: Ain Sof 
Endreal — where the explicit message of a film is the antithesis of its implicit message. Perhaps even an unintended subversion. e.g., Ducky’s rejection in John Hughes’ PRETTY IN PRINK; Trinity’s perfect eyebrows outside of the perfect world of the Matrix. And really, endreal doesn’t just describe film: it applies to numerous populist political campaigns and revolutionary movements. Can you think of other examples? (My friend Holly Johnson invented this useful term in the late 1990s.) . . . → Continue reading: Endreal 
A poem for Passover 2011. . . . → Continue reading: The Cutting Reeds 
Lately, for the Open Siddur Project, I’ve been putting together a font package for more easily distributing extant free/libre licensed Unicode Hebrew fonts. These fonts tend to be licensed with SIL’s Open Font License (e.g., EzraSIL and Cardo), or the GNU General Public License (GPL, e.g., Maxim Iorsh’s Culmus Project fonts). Because of the differences between fonts and other software code in their usage, there arose some conflicts which necessitated an exception to the GPL specifically for fonts. Unfortunately, the GPL font exception statement is somewhat buried in the Free Software Foundations GPL FAQ. Because important information on the GPL+FE is nowhere on the Internet included in one single post, I’ve reformatted it and shared it below. . . . → Continue reading: GNU General Public License + Font Exception 
A few weeks ago I was asked on the (Star) Trek Jews list what the Jewish concept of t’shuva means… here is what I wrote for someone who might know very little about Jewish thought and philosophy. I think I would have liked it to have more quotes from sources, TaNaKh, Talmud, and other scholars, . . . → Continue reading: On Potters and Potlings (or On turning forward with one’s head turned backwards) 
When late last year my friend Dr. Allan Tulchin asked for my help preparing two maps for a book on the history of the Protestant Church in medieval France, I was so happy to oblige. I love maps and I love historical research. Preparing these maps would exercise my mapping skills using GIS software and . . . → Continue reading: Beyond the Omphalos: Three Maps of Late Medieval France 
This is something of a guest post by proxy. My father, Dr. David Varady, is on his sabbatical and working at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. My mother, meanwhile, is working on visiting in person all the Dutch art she scanned from books during her tenure as the visual . . . → Continue reading: Professor Varady in the Netherlands 
According to one ancient Jewish tradition, the custom of not eating meat on Shavuot celebrates the vow God made with Noaḥ and his children on Mt. Ararat. Although the vow was witnessed by Noaḥ on Ararat, because Noaḥ’s descendants continued to eat the flesh of an animal with its blood, a suitable partner to the . . . → Continue reading: Let the mountains sing together with joy! |
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