Jon's Random Links

Judaism

Yes, it's possible to be a Jewish atheist. I don't believe it is possible to be an atheist and accept the Jewish religion, but a Jewish atheist can accept or even relish being one of the Jewish people and being a part of the Jewish culture. An atheist is liberated from the religious commandments that don't have a humanistic basis, but nevertheless can embrace those traditions that are meaningful or useful.

Personally, I celebrate a few of the holidays, fast on Yom Kippur, and rarely eat anything called "bread" on Passover. I try to leave some raspberries in my raspberry patch for my neighbors. My rabbi has encouraged me to consider finding a way to keep the Sabbath. While I would not consider keeping it in the traditional way, I'm thinking about it! Certainly the idea of having one day a week that's somewhat special is appealing.

• Kahal B'raira Congregation for Humanistic Judaism
• Society for Humanistic Judaism
• The new, comprehensive Yiddish-English dictionary

• Open Source Software in Education
• Robocode: Learn Java by building violent robots.
• StarLogo
• BlueJ, a nice Java development environment designed for teaching Java

Lexington, MA

• Lexington 300'th anniversary
• The Lexington List
• Official town site
• Minuteman Library Network
• Minuteman
• weather
• Lexington Symphony

Charitable Organizations I Like

• Compassion and Choices. Death with dignity.
• Asian American Civic Association
• Vermont Jazz Center
• JazzBoston
• Americans United for Separation of Church and State
• Planned Parenthood Federation of America: It's way more humane, and way cheaper, to help someone prevent an unwanted child than to accept the consequences of an unwanted child.
• Rails-To-Trails Conservancy: Help convert abandoned railroad beds into bike trails, resulting in less pollution, more exercise, and more beauty.
• Seeds of Peace: Help Israeli and Palestinian kids break the cycle of violence. Donate in memory of Philip Rosenzweig, who was on American Airlines flight 11 on Sept 11, 2001.
• WBUR
• WGBH

Random Businesses I Like

• The Listful Thinker My sister Dena's amazing collection of lists to organize your life.
• The Java Room in Chelmsford MA, an elegantly understated cafe with unbelievable coffee, great food, a gorgeous grand piano and often great music. I'm a bit biased because I play gigs there.
• Lexington Photo Scanning a Lexington father-and-son company with a great reputation.
• The Art of Roasting, a coffee roastery that roasts delicious coffee in small batches, run by a friend/coworker/all-around cool guy
• Multicultural Book World, Bob Romanow's inner city book business
• Bollywood Cafe in East Lexington. An easy walk from my house and great Indian food.
• CedarWorks, maker of very high quality natural cedar swingsets. They really stand behind their work!
• East Hill Farm, Troy, NH
• Vicki Blier Window Treatments/Design. Okay, I wouldn't know a window treatment if it sat on me, but Vicki Blier is a very cool person with integrity and good taste.

Food blogs I like

If I ever wrote a cook book, it would be something like, How To Survive On Raw Vegetables, Random Frozen Foods, and the Occasional Stir Fry but some of my favorite people have food blogs, so I might as well link to them.

• 52 Weeks, 52 Meals, my daughter Katya's strange obsession with cooking and eating delicious food
• The Post-Grad Gourmet
• TC Foodies, even though I absolutely detest the word "foodie" and am not one

Really Random

• Dates specified in the form YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 1999-11-10) are unambiguous, international, lexically sortable, y2k-compliant, and complies with ISO standard 8601.
• McMaster-Carr catalog.These guys have everything.
• Apparently, if you want real Gifford's Ice Cream, including, one hopes, the sublime Swiss Chocolate, you need to go to York Castle at 827 Hungerford Drive in Rockville MD. Here's more on that. On the other hand, they say they are in Silver Spring.