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USB Menorah
Fiver-rah writes "There's USB Christmas trees; lame acrylic things with LED lights that are powered by your computer. It's an amusing idea, but it doesn't really take advantage of being attached to a computer. Enter the USB Menorah. It can correctly calculate the dates of Hannukah for at least the next few thousand years (or any historical date back to 2 B.C.E.). As well as 'lighting' the candles based on when the sunsets (I set the default geography for San Francisco/Berkeley, but you can enter any latitude/longitude and (assuming you don't live too close to the arctic
circle) it will be correct to within a few minutes. Furthermore, the shamas (candle you use to light the other candles) can blink out any morse-code message you want--it'll convert the words to morse code for you! And you can even put it into Kwanzaa mode! Each candle can take three different colors (Red, Green & Yellow),
allowing you to do some animation. Software is a GPL command line program for Mac OS X. Basically only the USB communication stuff needs to be ported for other OS's. Delcom
(the manufacturer of the USB interface chip) supplies drivers for
Windows, and a few people have written Linux drivers, so it wouldn't be
too hard for a motivated individual."
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You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Is a USB FM Radio. They seem to have made them a few years ago, but there don't appear to be any widely marketed now.
How about lame LEDs on a circuitboard?
Jeez, if you're gonna be making fun religious hacks, don't knock the other stuff for being lame until your stuff doesn't look like it was ripped out of something else.
Here I was expecting some fun candle-shaped thingy...
You can't take the sky from me...
The current Jewish calander is only about that old. (give or take a century).
Before that the dates were decided apon witnesses of the new moon coming before the Sanhedrin. (the high court)
So any exact date before that is meaningless, as there are no records for the length fo each historical month. (29 or 30 dayes - this is a moon month)
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
Apparently, there is strong evidence that the myth of the eight days was actually developed some 500-800 years after the events of Syrian oppression that began the Chanukah celebration. The Rabbi explained that the current theory (he is a Reform Jew if that makes a difference?) is that some religious celebration was not observed because the group of Jews were in hiding and that after they felt safe to come back into the open, that they celebrated over the course of 8 days rather than just one, and the tradition stuck. The Menorah was adopted as a Rabbinic invention several hundred years later, so perhaps it is intentional (or appropriately coincidental) that it only goes back to 2BCE.
Yawn.
I'm not Jewish and I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject. All of the specifics in this post come from a book i've been reading, "War Without End" by Anton La Guardia, a reporter for The Daily Telegraph in the 90s.
Yawn.
We are not talking about a prehistorical time.
There are outside confirmations that the battles against the Greek (Greek not Syrians) did in fact happen.
About The candle lasting eight days, this is another matter.
There is strong evidance that the religious leaders of later years moved the center of the story from the war victory to the re-opening of the Temple.
This was done because they did not like the royal family, who were decendants of those who had led the revolt.
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
Just to be precise, the device that is used during Hannukah is not a "Menorah," but rather a "Chanukiah" [Chah-noo-kee-yah, with "Ch" pronounced gutterally]. A "menorah" is the seven-branched candelabra that was around in the ancient temple (and often used today in synagogues as decorations). A "Chanukiah" is a nine-branched candelabra that is used on Hannukah to celebrate the 8-day "hannukah miracle," where legend had it the temple candles burned for 8 days and nights with oil that should have only lasted one night (so therefore a chanukiah has 8 candles plus one candle to hold the shamash, the candle that lights the other 8). Sometimes the nine-candled version is called a "Hannukah Menorah," but just "Menorah" is technically the seven-branched one, not the one used druing the holiday.
No, I'm not someone who goes around correcting people about this. I really don't care either way, but rather just in case anyone was interested...
Reform Judaism rejects the accuracy of Oral Torah, which is where we get (in mesechta Shabbos and Megilla Taanis) the information of the holiday, so yes it's likely that claiming that Rabbis a few hundred years later pulled Channukah out of a hat, in spite of there being a lot of *real* and credible historical evidence for the Maccabees and earlier Channukah celebrations, would be something that is part of his bias. After all, one of the cornerstones of Reform Judaism is that the Oral Torah is inaccurate, so there's a theological reason for him to discredit Channukah, the only holiday legislated solely by Rabbinic law. Just because he's a liberal theologian doesn't mean that he doesn't have any biases.
Not to split hairs or anything, but plenty of Jewish people wouldn't touch a USB menorah because they forego use of electronics on holy days. Also, no one lights menorahs during Hanukkah. They're called hannukiahs. A menorah has a completely different spiritual meaning and was kept lit in the Jerusalem temple. People like hannukiahs at home.
The other required feature is that regenerative braking isn't allowed to dump power back into the power line. It has to dump it into a resistor bank, so as not to do "work" with the energy of descending riders. This is normally enabled only on the Sabbath.
Of course, these features combine to use far more energy than normal mode, so they don't comply with the spirit of the Shabbat, not to do work. Just the letter.