Jeff Gates relates a Yom Kippur tale that’s as heart-warming as an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. In fact, it’s explicitly a Larry David-ish take. I enjoyed it, and not just because of the massive jetlag and fizzy-headedness caused by a combination of getting up at 4am Dutch time (= 9pm real time), flying all day, and not eating since some time but I can’t figure out when at this point.

(If I had any guts, my Daily Open-Ended Puzzle would be: Why the hell am I fasting? But, I figure that’s maybe not such a great way to mark the Kippur of Yom. Oy, I am so going to hell.) [Tags: jeff_gates yom_kippur larry_david]

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John Palfrey notes that small-chance candidate for the Massachusetts governorship, Christy Mihos, has taken the domain http://www.kerryhealy.com; the Republican candidate is Kerry Healey. “Who wants a governor who cheats — or whose staff cheats — in such an obvious, silly way?” asks JP, rhetorically. If Mihos were doing something fun or amusing with the typosquat, I wouldn’t care. But just redirecting to your own homepage? It’s an unworthy trick. [Tags: politics john_palfrey christy_mihos]

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So, as our country decides torture is ok so long as we called it “aggressve questioning,” where the hell are the Dems? [Thanks, Mathew Gross, for the link!]

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Yom Kippur is about to begin here at the airport Sheraton in Amsterdam. (The worst way to handle a day of fasting: Fly west across 7 time zones.) Yom Kippur is the day of atonement so: If I’ve done badly by you, please let me know how I can make it right (beginning by apologizing to you).

No, I’m not kidding. Take it off line: selfevident.com [Tags: yom_kippur atonement]

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After a very long trip, I arrived at the MarktPlein conference in Maastricht last night at 6pm. So, I have a jet-lagged impression of the place based on a fifteen minute schlepp from the train station to the conference hall. The brief version: Twisty old streets. Broad river. Bikes, not cars. Good beer. Dutch people everywhere. Conclusion: I’m ready to move here.

The conference is on “Markets are conversations” and all around the hall they’ve stuck sheets, each with a different thesis from Cluetrain.com. Maybe it’s just the jetlag, but my first impulse is to scribble wiseguy comments on them. If only I were Rageboy…

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