Spring Break Recap

It's been a long time since my last post, mostly because I was traveling for spring break.

Highlights include:

Exploring Paris with Seth and Aunt Sue, to celebrate Sue's 50th birthday.

Robert visits England/London.

Venice and Florence with Ayelet and the Cambridge/Brown posse.

Rome with Lori. (Lori has already blogged about our whole itinerary, here).

I'm not sure how much energy to put into writing about all of it, as the blog hasn't gotten many hits lately. Email me if you'd like to catch up.

Three-item summary of Rome with visual aids:

1) Lots of Catholic churches. This is the view from the top of the biggest one:

2) Even older places of worship, usually with fancy pillars:

3) Amazing art. My favorite was the antique statuary:

Big Tobacco's Comeuppance

Yesterday there was some interesting coverage of the first decision in a series of suits against tobacco companies that will be tried in Florida. Elaine Hess was awarded 8 million dollars in compensatory and punitive damage from Philip Morris for the death of her husband. Stuart Hess died at age 55 after years of chain smoking.

The crux of the smokers' argument in these cases is that the companies knowingly hid information about the addictive and harmful effects of smoking. Of course, a long appeals process awaits these awards, which have "often been reversed or reduced" upon reaching the higher courts.

It strikes me as a difficult endeavor to mete out responsibility for the deaths of smokers, especially since there is still some debate about when exactly the knowledge of just how harmful smoking is became available and to whom. The jury in this case had a lot less trouble than I would, declaring that $8 million was the appropriate award in spite of the fact that "Hess was 58 percent responsible for the cigarette addiction that led to his death."

I'm hoping this is an AP typo for "50 percent". It's one thing to say "well, he was misled by the companies, but isn't he halfway responsible for his addiction?" and quite another to say "58 percent". What does that mean? What multitude of factors are weighed to arrive at such a specific proportion of blame? Maybe the lawyers in the audience want to chime in on this one. 

Of course, the issue of valuing Mr. Hess's life is an altogether separate problem. I'm in the unique position of having recently studied both economists' and philosophers' valuation of life (unsurprisingly, economists say 4-14 million dollars and the philosophers that I respect think that putting a number on the intrinsic value of life is foolish). Even if we accept that the tobacco companies "owe" Ms. Hess for 42 percent of the balance of the life her husband would have lived, I'm interested to know how exactly our legal system has decided to put a sticker price on that. I definitely think she deserves a judgment and that finally holding these companies accountable can only be a good thing; I'm a little less sure of the relevance of the $8 million dollar award, considering how many people have died due to tobacco whose loved ones undoubtedly need compensation as much as Ms. Hess does in this economic whatever-we're-calling-this.

Halfway Post

As of this past week, I'm officially halfway through my year abroad. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, the halfway mark makes the end seem much more real, and there are a lot of things I wanted to do in Europe that I haven't done yet. On the other hand, I miss home and am looking forward to senior year at Brown, so I think by the time June rolls around and I head back to the States I'll be ready.

Also, I already have a lot of travel plans for the coming months, so I'll definitely get to more places on my list in the second half of the year than I did in the first. At the end of the month I'm going to Athens, in March I'm going to Paris at least once, and at the end of Pesach I'm going to Rome. All incredibly exciting! I also can't wait to see the friends and family that I'll be making these trips with.

I have a couple of other things to post about, so another post will probably go up today or tomorrow.

My First Post About Jesus

There's something I've been pondering lately and I felt the need to get it off my chest. Maybe some of my readers who are more familiar with Jesus' life can lend me a hand.

According to Andrew Lloyd Weber (whom I take to be authoritative), during his final days Jesus was criticized by Judas for frittering away the JC Club's resources, using a "fine ointment" which could have been worth "300 silver pieces (or more)" instead of, you know, feeding babies.

That exchange seems reasonable enough, but here's my question: Didn't Judas later betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver? I had always assumed that thirty pieces was a relatively large sum of money. So, was the great betrayal financed with silver worth one-tenth the cost of a jar of ointment? Was this the most expensive ointment in history (maybe the diamond cream from Arrested Development) or was Judas bought off on the cheap?

Your input would be appreciated. I hope my Christian friends know that my flippant tone isn't meant to be offensive; I am genuinely curious about whether the thirty piece payment was a large sum or a token one.

On a related note (sort of...money?), I accidentally ruined my leather wallet by putting it through the wash yesterday. At first I was upset, but to be honest, I enjoy wallet shopping and it's not something one gets an excuse to do very often.

Funniest Series EVER!

So, the BDH reported on an alum who works for Comedy Central today, and I ended up taking a look at his website. Why? A web-based live action parody of The Legend of Zelda (NES). There are only 6 short episodes, but he's working on a second season. (This video is inappropriate, and the series becomes increasingly inappropriate, so don't watch it if you're not cool with that.)



Watch the rest here.

Dreams are Weird

I've been having two recurring dreams lately. In the first, I'm inside a Super Nintendo-style RPG, based in Oxford, and there's a lot of spire-climbing. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it has served to confirm my belief that life would be cooler if I had magical powers.

The second dream involves taking the LSAT at Montclair State University. For those of you who aren't following my life closely enough, I've already done that. It's your basic test-anxiety-failure-no-pencil type dream, and I'm not really clear on what it signifies when I've already taken the LSAT. Maybe I spent so long preparing for the stupid test, that now my subconscious decided to use it as a symbol for anything I find intimidating and insanely unnecessary.

In closing: read this. I didn't have time to write about Israel while the conflict was still making news, so I'm going to pass the buck to the best piece of journalism I read about it in the last week.

Also, no hamsters have done anything interesting in the last six months, ever. Trust me, I googled it.

Much Ado About Two Gentlemen of Venice's Dreams...or something.

Phew...this first week of term has been a bit of a doozy. I had my first Plato tutorial, which was actually fascinating, and I'm scrambling to finish reading most of Shakespeare's early comedies (see title). I really like reading Shakespeare, and I guess I prefer it to the weeks this autumn when I had to read dozens of case studies and history books, but it's definitely hard to absorb so much of his work in so little time. Thankfully, I saw the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Hamlet when my mom was here and I'm going back to the RSC to see A Midsummer Night's Dream next week; seeing the shows staged definitely helps me get a grasp on their overall tone and the finer plot points more easily than only reading them.

This has also become the week of 'looking for summer jobs'. There's a lot of interesting work for undergraduates out there at policy research and public interest advocacy bodies, but the application process is pretty daunting (as it is in most fields, I suppose). The plan of attack for the moment is just to cast as wide a net as possible and hope that I can get something nailed down soon before most of the better positions are taken. If you're a past supervisor/professor/co-worker of mine, secretly read this blog, and are dying to serve as a reference, shoot me a line. (I will be doing more than just posting that to find them though...the blog's traffic has been down since I, you know, stopped writing anything.)

Even though I need to be reading and writing a ton, I am taking some time off Friday evening to go to London for the night. Last term I let work take priority pretty much without exception, and I'm trying to shift to the mindset that this is my one time being free to explore Europe and I should make use of it. I'll let you all know how that plan goes after I hand in my paper next week!

Oh...almost forgot: OBAMA!! We watched the inauguration in the common room at Mansfield and I am incredibly optimistic based on what he had to say and these first couple of days in office. The mood in England isn't hard to discern; the whole world (minus parts of the Mid-East) seems to be in love with him. I don't think it's particularly hard to see why, although I'm hoping that now that he's done campaigning his official stance will shift back to supporting gay marriage. As it is the new White House website has an LGBT issues section stating his intentions to: a) support federal recognition of civil unions, b) oppose constitutional marriage amendments, and c) repeal Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell. That sounds like a good start to me.

I feel a little bit out of touch with people, especially with all of you guys at Brown. Send me a message on Facebook or Skype/AIM (both "jonahfab") so we can catch up.

Over and out.

Back to work

It's been a while since I wrote, because I've been traveling around like crazy over my 6-week winter break. I don't think I'll go into too much detail here about it, but highlights include finally exploring London on my own, spending two weeks in Israel (seeing awesome friends like Lizz, Emma, Meital, and the Sarigs), and then coming back to England to spend a little over a week showing my mom around. We went to Stonehenge, and I was surprised by how awesome an experience that was. Pictures really don't convey the scale and atmosphere of the site.

Now I have to prepare for my first classes next week. The themes of this term are Shakespeare and Plato. First up, early comedies and early Socratic dialogues, respectively.

I've also rediscovered television. Since Mom left, I've watched every episode of 30 Rock. I had seen a couple before, but I didn't appreciate its mind-blowing superiority until I watched from start to finish. Some favorites that stick out: 

Jenna: Kabbalah "combines the fun part of Judaism with MAGIC!" 

Congressman: "I can't support that. Dam is a swear word. I'd support it if instead of dam we called it a 'god finger'."

Greenzo: "You should really decide what you want before you open the fridge. You just released enough hydrofluorocarbons to kill a penguin." *pulls outs cute penguin photo* "This penguin!"

I'm still working on getting vacation photos on the internet. Also, if I decide it's worth it to go there, there may be a post about the situation in Israel.