David on the Lake: February 2010

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Martin Grossman and his frum murderers...

Any reader of this blog knows how opposed I am of the death penalty.
Here's one example

Since I can remember, I've been a lone sheep debating my position, from Shabbos tables to dormitory rooms, to offices. I have yet to meet a minyan of frum people in my life that agrees with me on this issue. It's just part of the whole hook line and sinker of conservative, talk radio mind numbing rhetoric that seems to have gripped us as a whole and have taken away any ability to think with our own faculties.
I therefore sit here today flabbergasted, sad, angry and ashamed of my brethren...who I implicitly accuse of murdering one of our own.

How on earth can you so blindly support the death penalty every opportunity you have while turning a blind eye to every plea of clemency and every utterance of "bleeding heart liberal" calls for mercy, and then get the chutzpah to act all shocked when a Jew is caught in the trap that YOU have set??

And then how dare you accuse the Governor of Anti Semitism when all is doing is following the laws that YOU frum Jew have always supported??

I stand here today fully convinced that I'm the last frum person standing with common sense left...

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The Devolution of the Coffee Shop

Some of the greatest ideas of the past 300 years were born and incubated in the great institution of the Coffee Shop.
The cafe was the place to be if you were an artist, writer, musician, philosopher or abstract thinker. It was where you went to connect with people and exchange ideas. It was the oak room where passions swirled with the smoke of cigarettes. It was where you lounged outdoors sipping on your hot beverage while watching the world pass by.

I therefore find it somewhat ironic that the coffee shops of today have taken a complete 180 degree turn and are now synonymous with people seeking to disconnect with their surroundings.
Walk into any starbucks today and chances are you'll see a large percentage of patrons leaning over their laptops disconnecting from the world around them. I don't know, perhaps the great ideas online are being born in coffee shops. Maybe people still feel the compulsion to go to the coffee shop for inspiration even though the inspiration is being directed to points well beyond the cafe. But I do sometimes wish I can re-visit a coffee shop from the 19th century and get swept up in the intense connections and the ideas that flowed out of those communes.