As I walked toward the ferry that would take me to my hotel, I saw down the road this Traffic Light Tree. I'm still not sure if it's a sculpture or a working light, although I think it's the former. You can even see my office building in the background.

Cheerio from London, mate! Nothing much interesting going on here really. However, it is worth noting that the Michael Howard has been appointed as head of the Conservative Party (the Tories). He is the first Jew to head either England's Labour or Conservative parties - Benjamin D'Israeli who was prime minister had been baptized as a child.

Here's a quirk about the British parliamentary system that I love - the opposition party leader selects a "shadow cabinet" to mirror the existing cabinet appointed by the majority party. I think this would be a great idea for the U.S.

Well I'll be hopping the pond tomorrow and going to merry old England. Let's see what revelries await.....

Prince Charles accused of being homosexual (although British libel laws prevent the publication of much detail) and Is Charles Bisexual?

Cheeky council workers stunned motorists with rude road sign.

All kinds of excitement over Bush's visit the following week - most of it not good.

This is fantastic - a Church Sign Creator on the Internet. You know those signs you pass all the time with the cute sayings to get people to remember to believe in God and go to mass. This site let's you type in any four lines of text and it shows you what it would look like in front of a typical church. it's hard to explain, you just have to go there.

As much as I love books, I rarely spend a lot of money on "coffee table" books. Diaspora, though, seems like one of those that may well be worth it. Here's a nice write-up about it in my local paper, and here's the link to Amazon.com, where it's $30 off.

In constructing Berlin's Holocaust Memorial, is it just ironic or immoral that the company that made Zyklon-B (Degussa) plans to profit from the sale of anti-graffiti spray? To complicate matters, Degussa has supposedly been one of the most forthright companies regarding it's history of wartime activities. Read "The Price of Forgiveness" in today's New York Times.

Now, there could well be a very good reason for a Saudi man and unnamed female companion to be secretly videotaping a Jewish girls middle school, but I'm really stuck to think of a good one.

I would like to think that if I found this couple in my daughter's school that they would not have been able to make it to the parking lot, and boy had they better know how to speak English so that they could tell me exactly how far they would like me to shove that menorah up their....

But I digress.

I would most certainly stay abreast of the situation with the local authorities.

Last night I went to see Mary Blye Howe discuss her book "A Baptist Among the Jews" at the local JCC. I had read the book when it came out a couple of months ago and was intrigued by the insights that someone would have learning about Judaism not only from scratch, but with a previously held negative viewpoint.

What I found most interesting were her comments about how in many conservative Baptist churches, Jesus' break with the Pharisees and elders is taught as Jesus the Christian vs. the whole of the Jewish community as opposed to a Jew and his friends disagreeing with other Jews - therefore the thing about "all of us" killing Christ.

There was one woman in the audience who had the most obnoxious question of the night, basically accusing the author of not being able to love both the good in her Christian heritage and her newfound Judaism-based spirituality - telling her she had to choose one or the other but shouldn't claim to be able to enjoy the benefits of both. A lot of dirty looks followed, but no hissing. Mrs. Howe commented basically by saying that acceptance and sorting out of many ideas was better than rejecting everything outside of one's own immediate belief system regardless of what one believes.

In addition, I asked her what I could say to an evangelical Christian to get them to recognize me as a person practicing a valid religion instead of a target for conversion, and she said you can't do anything - they're to set in their ways like machines. That was very disheartening, but she herself had a very difficult time breaking away from that tradition herself and is still ostracized by a large segment of her own community outside of her particular church which is relatively liberal.

The best comment from the audience came when someone said that we should give the book to Children so that they can have a "Jew Among the Jews" experience since so few of us ever explore the various branches of our own faith.

There's a lot to learn here and it will reinforce your love and knowledge for the basic tenets of the religion as practiced by all Jews.

On October 29, I wrote a post about my disappointment in PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and the tactics they use for what is otherwise an arguably worthy cause.

Earlier today I was going to write about how I was going to boycott McDonald's since the widow of it's founder, Mrs. Ray Kroc bequeathed $200mm to National Palestine (er...Public) Radio.

How are these two linked? PETA to NPR: Reject McDonald's 'Blood Money' Bequest

I am changing course and making sure my wife the vet increases her PETA donation for 2004.

On Sunday, November 16th, my shul is having a Mitzvah Day and yours truly is in charge of a project under the auspices of Keep Plano Beautiful. Our task is to clean-up sections of White Rock Creek which for the most part starts in Plano, runs past the shul and south through Dallas. My hope is that we don't have to clean up messes like this one, found in the same creek about 15 miles south.

"DALLAS- A stolen car in a creek bed has yielded the body of an unidentified man and another person, say police who are trying to determine how the two died.

One body found Tuesday inside the car lying in White Rock Creek off Interstate 30 was identified as that of a man. The gender of the other could not be determined because of decomposition. Autopsies were pending."

Yuck.

I have to agree here that this smacks of racism (is it racism if someone is anti-Muslim? Anti-Muslimitic?)

Plan to Make Old Building Into New Mosque Rouses Opposition

How often will you find the Anti-Defamamtion League on the same side of an issue as the Council on American-Islamic Relations?

The NY Times just posted a story on their website that is either the biggest story since Watergate or the final deathblow for their claims to objectivity - Iraq Said to Have Tried to Reach Last-Minute Deal to Avert War

"As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal.

Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections."

Is this for real? If it is then it's an incredible cover-up. If it's not, then it's the biggest piece of political propaganda ever to appear in the "news" section of a major newspaper.

I guess we'll see tomorrow.

I have an idea for a trade - the Saudis send us much needed oil and we send them much needed sand. Seriously.

This comes from a new site called Yahweh is in the House, a semi-parody of Allah is in the House.

If you want me to believe in astrology and fortune telling, then tell me who could have predicted these three improbable stories:

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial "In Defense of P. Diddy".

Al Sharpton will be hosting Saturday Night Live.

Knicks win.

Tell me that this would not be the most highly watched pay-per-view event in world history:

The Grand Prior of the Knights Templar of the US challenges Osama bin Laden to a duel by sword.

From the challenge - "I will come to you alone, a single knight amidst thousands of your followers. You can have me killed in front of your followers . . . but then, of course, your reputation as a coward and an infidel will be sealed for all eternity."

Cool.

There will be a total lunar eclipse this coming Saturday night, November 8. Wouldn't it have been really cool if there was an eclipse on Halloween?

This is what makes me proud to be a Jew - 60 Minutes has a segment tonight about Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and how they deliver the exact same level of care to Israelis and Palestinians alike - even suicide bombers. The sacred value of human life is respected over all other concerns.

I plan on sending them a donation, which I should have done long ago. Please join me. I've started a section of links on the right to my favorite charities. Don't see that on too many blogs...

Many have posted this before me, but there is a great synopsis of the history of Anti-Semitism here written by Natan Sharansky. Mr Sharansky, as many of you know was the best known Russian Jew (refusenik) who eventually emigrated to Israel and became a member of the Knesset.

You have to read the whole thing, but it's interesting that he notes is that virulent anti-Semitism existed with or without Israel, in lands with or without Jewish inhabitants, and in societies both free and repressed.

I find it amusing that the New York Time's hatred for Rush Limbaugh is so complete that in their article about radio personality Delilah the author writes the following:

"Delilah, with her audience of millions, has said that she's the anti-Howard Stern; she's also the anti-Rush Limbaugh, extremely female in a male-dominated medium and genre."

That in itself is not so bad inasmuch as it's accurate - but the caption on the picture they show on the website labels Delilah as "the anti-Limbaugh", using the author's description of her instead of her own description as the anti-Stern. I guess the editors feel that the author knows more about how Delilah should be defined than Delilah herself.

By the way, my wife's been listening to Delilah for months and loves her show. I'm hoping her empathy for the calling audience rests in her past relationships with men and not with me!

This is the kind of thing that you always think would never happen in a Jewish school:

Students at Private Jewish High School in LA Expelled for Making Sex Video

According to the article -"The video was made last spring by a sophomore girl and two junior boys, who were not identified by officials with Milken Community High School. Two of the three students involved thought the video was recorded only for a small group of friends, said school head Rennie Wrubel." This means that one of the students was planning to distribute this to the whole school. That makes him (I'll assume it wasn't the girl) an incredible jerk as well as a distributor of child porn.

The synagogue that sponsors the school, the Stephen S. Wise Temple is also one of the most liberal Reform synagogues in the country. I think it's funny that they have to advertise their services as "Shabbat A.M." as if it were "Good Morning America".