User:Xiong/Old Torah

I'm no more a Jew than I am a Chinese; but I know a little about a curious custom among the Orthodox.

It is forbidden ever to destroy the name of the god of the Jews -- however written. This extends beyond, say, Hebrew or Yiddish. I first learned about this when I saw, on an ordinary calendar, quotations from Torah, translated into the vernacular, in which the deity's name was indicated by "G-d". If the name were written in full, then the calendar could never be destroyed -- not even by fire. Old, worn-out Torahs themselves are simply stored in the synagogue attic for all time.

I should probably call this page "Synagogue attic", but User:Xiong/Old Torah is easier to write.

This is not an archive of my Talk. Old Talk is always available by examining the Talk page history.

Note that metadebate on all things China is immediately filed at: User talk:Xiong/Chinatalk. This here is an archive of other talk.

Articles that will never see the light of day

Synchronous idle

Synchronous idle or SYN, ASCII 22, used to keep modems busy doing nothing. Close your eyes and imagine billions of dollars of telecommunications hardware all over the globe which are momentarily idle -- that is, they have no data to communicate. Yet they must continue to communicate in order to maintain a synchronous connection. If they were people, they would be chanting OM! OM! OM! OM! Synchronous idle is machine meditation. Maybe if,instead of bragging about the size of their autos or organs, people chanted SYN! SYN! SYN! SYN! whenever they had nothing to say, there would be fewer wars and fist fights over parking spaces.

Bizarre Sightings

Postmodern Art Critics

"I hail bin Laden as the greatest postmodern artist since Marcel Duchamp." -- somebody who doesn't like Erased De Kooning.

Requests for Money

Oops, no room left here. :)

Oh wait, here's a dollar -- no, it's gone. Sorry.