The Guardian has a fascinating interview (video and text) with NYU professor Tony Judt, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in late 2008. Judt is managing to work on essays and books, and to continue teaching, despite the rapid onset of the disease:

Judt is already working on the book, using the same memory technique that he deployed for his NYRB essays. During the night he builds in his mind a Chinese memory palace – or in his case a modest Swiss house – and into each of its rooms he imagines placing a paragraph or theme of the piece he is composing. The next day he recalls each room in sequence, unloading its contents by dictating it to his assistant.

Some people have tried to comfort him with the thought that such mental discipline renders Judt’s condition bearable. How wrong they are. “There have been people who have said to me, ‘Tony, you are so lucky. More than anyone you live the life of the mind. It could have been so much worse.’”

To which he replies: “Hello! Are you from Planet Zurg? This is one of the worst diseases on Earth. It is like being in a prison which is shrinking by six inches each day.”

‘A bunch of dead muscles, thinking’ (The Guardian)

Years before Bret from Flight of the Conchords there was – Ben.

Ben was a reporter on the Cornish Guardian while I was a reporter at the Western Morning News, almost ten years ago.

Cornwall is one of the most beautiful parts of England but it can be a bleak and miserable place, especially when you are in your twenties and your girlfriend lives about 3,000 miles away.

Fortunately, Ben was always there to cheer me up. He was adept at getting into odd scrapes, such as the time someone broke into his car in Newquay purely for the purposes of using it as a toilet, provoking an anguished appeal by Ben to Devon and Cornwall Police to test the offending material for DNA. Or the time he tried to intimidate a bouncer with the only threat he could make – “I write things down” – which, needless to say, didn’t get him very far.

But Ben was also gifted with the ability to come up with odd songs at a moment’s notice. My favorite ditty was “Dorothy Perkins,” which Ben composed about a girl who worked in a clothes shop opposite our offices in Bodmin.

Ben now lives in Coventry and writes a blog about Coventry news. (His video about the perils of Coventry Ring Road is a must.) He contacted me recently to say that when he mentioned his songwriting to a local band they offered to record Dorothy Perkins professionally. The result is embedded below for your listening pleasure.

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Behold the subtle message of Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV: A cartoon about a Palestinian Authority policeman called Buffoon who kisses an Israeli soldier’s feet and watches while another Israeli machine guns children to death so that he can drink their blood.

(Via Tablet Magazine)

I’m not normally one for statistics, but the numbers in David Brooks’ latest op-ed, on Israel’s phenomenal technological and economic achievements, are striking:

Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates.

Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.

[...] No single explanation can account for the record of Jewish achievement. The odd thing is that Israel has not traditionally been strongest where the Jews in the Diaspora were strongest. Instead of research and commerce, Israelis were forced to devote their energies to fighting and politics.

Milton Friedman used to joke that Israel disproved every Jewish stereotype. People used to think Jews were good cooks, good economic managers and bad soldiers; Israel proved them wrong.

But that has changed. Benjamin Netanyahu’s economic reforms, the arrival of a million Russian immigrants and the stagnation of the peace process have produced a historic shift. The most resourceful Israelis are going into technology and commerce, not politics. This has had a desultory effect on the nation’s public life, but an invigorating one on its economy.

Tel Aviv has become one of the world’s foremost entrepreneurial hot spots. Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation on earth, by far. It leads the world in civilian research-and-development spending per capita. It ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of companies listed on the Nasdaq. Israel, with seven million people, attracts as much venture capital as France and Germany combined.

The Tel Aviv Cluster (NYT)

George Galloway with members of Neturei Karta

I am sure George Galloway, who has just been deported from Egypt, is delighted to have some Orthodox support for his Viva Palestina campaign. Still, I was a little surprised that he would accept it from Neturei Karta. You see, Neturei Karta don’t oppose Israel per se. They just think the current State of Israel must be abolished so that the Messiah can come and establish a real Jewish state in the Holy Land. Then again, Neturei Karta are already pals with Hamas and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (they even attended his Holocaust conference), so I suppose they make perfect bedfellows.

A beautifully shot video about Birobidzhan.

When I think of Jewish New York, I think of media and finance, of bankers, lawyers, philanthropists, doctors, writers, and the mayor. I think of Katz’s deli, the diamond district, and B&H.

In my six years of living here, I have never considered Jewish poverty. But, as I learned while reporting my latest story for the JC, it is a huge issue for New York’s Jewish population.

The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty estimates that 250,000 Jewish New Yorkers live in poverty. For the neediest few, there is literally nowhere left for them to turn when they are in need of a hot meal than friends, family, synagogues, and now, a small but growing number of kosher soup kitchens run by a relatively new non-profit called Masbia.

Charedi Poverty, New York-style (the JC)

The site has been offline again the past 24 hours while I transfer to a new web host. Hopefully, there won’t be too many more bumps before I settle in.