Category: Essay

A federal judge mandated that currency should be distinguishable by the blind, as an acquiescence to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

My spouses, comment: “Great, but when are they going to get around to helping the blind see the traffic lights so they can drive?”

It’s true that there are possible solutions to give currency a better readability to the visually impaired. Bills could be different sizes, they could be notched, holed, or braille punched. But these non-visual cues would actually aid in the defrauding of the blind if they come to depend on these features. Right now they have no assumptions, beyond trusting the giver, that they have the correct currency. In a system where the braille might be correct for the denomination, they would depend less on their trust in fellow human, and more on an artifice that is much more easily modified than all the watermarks, threads, microprint and other visually-oriented rigamarole.

From a legal perspective, it also would put a huge burden on the federal court system. If a person gives the incorrect change to a blind person, short changes them in effect, that’s misdemeanor theft. If they modify the currency to defraud someone, that’s federal counterfeiting charges. There’s really no way to push that kind of law down into the state or local systems, since currency is, well, federal.

Added to all this is the cost to change every one of the American currency manipulating machines. Counters, sorters, currency reading machines, ATMs. Sure, it can be done: all these sorts of equipment are used around the world, where there are lots of countries with differently-sized and -colored bills. But the cost to do all this, the user acceptance, is incredibly painful and will actually help counterfeiters defraud Americans even more.

All in all, I think marking currency for the blind is a bad idea.

The handicapped (differently abled, challenged, et al) are just that: working in a world where everyone has some kind of limiter that keeps some part of them from operating at 100%. Short, tall, fat, color-blind, dyslexic, dispeptic, depressed, manic, obsessive-compulsive, sloppy: you name it, someone has it.

Of course, people who are blind, deaf, or do not have even usual range of motion of legs or hands are at especial disadvantage. And the ADA has done a great job of ensuring that handicapped accessible spaces are the norm, not the exception (although that may be due to the “ahah!” moment of businesses, realizing that those in wheelchairs have credit cards too).

In the matter of currency, I think adapting ‘reading pens’–small form-factor OCR readers–is a better solution than overhauling the entire treasury system. Just as we ensure that parking spaces nearest building entrances are reserved for the handicapped, we should ensure that the blind have cost-effective access to these kinds of reader tools. And, if they can’t afford them, then the government (federal, state, local) should ensure there is a program for them to be either given away, purchaed, or lent.

An even better solution would be smart card readers or credit swiping machines that have the ability to vocalize transactions. That would keep cash out of the loop, and the blind consumer more in control over their money. Banks could provide blind users with free smart card or debit card services above and beyond sighted users. After all, it would drive both loyalty and keeping more cash where they can get their greedy hands on it.

And keep the currency, as with automobile driving, focused on the sighted user.

With the signing of the deal with India, North Korea, Iran and even Israel can breathe a sigh of relief. No longer can the United States declare that it has been even-handed in how it treats ‘rogue’ nuclear nations. Even the concept of a ‘rogue’ nation is no longer valid. India and Pakistan can now figure out how to stockpile for their next testosterone-fueled war of brinksmanship. Israel (whose possible possession of nuclear weapons I personally support) can stand proud in its theoretical ownership of these weapons — and several different and very accurate delivery systems.

The United States had had the ability to force Iran and North Korea to the table: the NNPT is, after all, something to which almost all countries are signatories. Now that chance is lost, and those two fascist regimes can stand beside Israel as rebels with a cause. After all, if India could cut a separate deal, why can’t they? And in the meantime, just like India, why should they not continue to create the tools for world blackmail?

I believe Halutz gave specific orders. I believe those orders were relayed. I also believe in the independence and free spirit that is as key to Israeli victories as it is to these tragic ‘mistakes.’

The adage of no battle plan surviving first contact with the enemy is late in the game when compared to Israeli battle plan tactical briefings. The division head meets with the brigade commanders and changes are made. The brigade commanders meet with their battalion commands and command staff and more changes are made. (Hopefully they are communication back upwards, but not always.) The batallion commanders brief the troops, then the company commanders have at them in smaller groups.

These last crew are key to changes in command. Despite orders, command structure and all the details involved, I know from first-hand experience what happens in the heat of battle. Don’t have enough HEAT shells to complete the barrage? Is the ammo truck late? Did an incoming rocket hit near our position? Did we miss our last target by just a few meters? Screw the orders and load those bomblets! The brigade commander will thank us later.

Sometimes that works. Clearly, in this case, it was tragic, wrong and criminal. Israeli military tactics are driven as much by local and temporal environmental conditions as they are by strategy and tactics. The war itself exemplifies just how we responded, incorrectly and incompletely, to the provocation. And left the field of battle with our troops still in enemy hands.

Olmert has to go. Halutz has to go. But their successors must drill down and ensure that moral and ethical decisions, and not just those generated by the heat of the battle, are made all the way down to the level of the gunner, loader and track commander.

Every civilian killed or maimed in Lebanon from these cluster bombs is a civilian with a legitimate and legal gripe with Israel. Whether or not the questionably competent leaders at the top knew of their use.

I read this from one of my daughter’s 3rd-grade classmates.

Q:	Veterans are important because…
A:	…Or else we would not be able to say the Pledge of Allegiance

Moved me to tears. Just frank words from an eight year old Jewish boy.

Phantom checkposts are easily set up and lethal to civilians and soldiers alike. With all the technology deployed to keep people safe, solving this problem is a no-brainer.

IFF (Identify Friend-Foe) is a forty-plus year technology geared to giving fighter pilots instant identification of planes in their area of battle. These radio transponders trigger a coded response whenever there is a coded query.

Checkposts could easily use this technology. Transponder codes would be changed daily, and checkposts would be issued a properly coded frequency. Vehicles approaching the checkpost could trigger an IFF request and, if they do not receive the proper response, know that they are driving into a trap.

If we wanted to get just a bit fancier, we could add a small satellite transmission package that would send the location and IFF codes up to US or Iraqi response teams every time an IFF mismatch occurred. That could get drones recording the scene, and air support on the way within seconds of a suspicious checkpoint being queried — maybe even before the shooting starts.

…headlines like “Vujcic vaults Mac TA over Joventut” don’t mean anything at all to you.

Maybe it’s just a sports thing.

It’s a tenet of Jewish law that Jews unjustly incarcerated must be released. Jewish communities throughout the ages have paid ransoms, sometimes when Jews were kidnapped by antisemitic despots specifically to milk money from the Jews.

There are Jews in prison in America for all kinds of reasons: murder, robbery, white collar crimes, passing bad checks, meth and drug use. Even espionage.

From all accounts, Pollard was a lousy, self-motivated spy who was an unprofessional bull in the intelligence china shop. His puppy-like eagerness to help Israel damaged Israel’s professional intelligence-gathering capabilities in the United States and burned the careers of Israeli intelligence handlers who might otherwise continue their critical job of keeping Israel one step ahead of its enemies.

The fact is that Pollard, a United States citizen, who was given the trust of the American intelligence establishment, violated that trust. Saying that his moral higher calling was to violate that trust and pass information on to the Israelis (whether or not the Israeli government sanctioned that action) does not remove his culpability for his crime.

Pollard’s spying is different from a lot of other intelligence gathering methods. The mole, when properly handled, provides great raw and processed intelligence data for the country on behalf of which he or she is spying. But moles, once discovered, have no cover. The country they work for might try to extract them, but they are clearly guilty of the crimes they committed. In America, where justice at least approximates fairness, he was found guilty. Do the crime, do the time. Pollard must serve out his sentence. And Israel, while it should continue to ask for his release, should also understand that it’s a pro-forma request: he should not be released for betraying the country to which he swore allegience.

I don’t agree with the American position, where Israel is not given all the information it needs to protect itself. But America is its own soverign nation, and I, as both an Israeli and American citizen, understand that. It’s jejune to think that Pollard could not understand that he was on his own if he was found out. And absurd to think that Israeli, and especially American Jews, cannot understand this basic fact of life in a civilized and law-abiding country.

When I was getting married, I’d asked a person I thought was a good friend to officiate at our wedding in the Galilee. We’d gone over all the texts, and, aside from a mutual trade of rings, was fairly straightforward. He looked it over, then met with us. “You don’t need two rings,” he told us in his gentle, unyielding voice. “You see,” he said, “to give a ring, is to receive one as well.” The (il)logic of this was somehow connected to the fact that if I purchased her from her father, I would receive a bride. I give, I receive.

We dumped him, had our wedding at the crack of dawn, officiated by the town rabbi in his competitor’s synagogue. That afternoon, in front of friends and family, we had a mutual exchange of love, of vows, and of rings.

Today (and this is quoted from the Jerusalem Post):

“Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski … called for a cancellation of the parade. “This is a time to prove real tolerance and maturity and to cancel the march in the heart of Jerusalem for the benefit of all of us,” said the mayor, adding that a cancellation would “renew the strength, recognition, understanding and togetherness which encompass the city.”

I’m slow. To which togetherness was he referring? The violence of the UltraOrthodox, their death threats, and their fascist behavior? The togetherness of joining with Moslem fanatics in an orgy of hatred of that which is other? Or the togetherness where people can celebrate their freedom to be different, and not inflict their will on others?

The funny thing is that Mayor Lupolanski, an UltraOrthodox Jew himself, was stoned by his fellow zealots as he left a simcha in Mea She’arim.

These guys are nuts! Nuttier, in my humble opinion, than the guys dressed in girls clothing with clothespins on their nipples (or angels, like the beefcake above). At least they aren’t out to hurt anyone with anything more than bad style!