By David Sigal, from appstudio

This app came about from my realization that when people go to Shul to daven, they almost never pull out an electronic device. Back 8-9 years ago I remember seeing people trying to daven in a shul from their Palm Pilots and that looked very unnatural. Pocket PC screens were dim, not multitouch, low resolution and one had to tap on a button almost every second to scroll the text. Besides, there are ample amounts of siddurim in a shul, and most people still prefer to read from a physical siddur.

Now with over 200 thousand apps on the iTunes App Store we were surprised not to find a single dedicated Birkat Hamazon app that I could use as a bencher. Mind you there are a few apps that have a text of Birkat Hamazon in them, but before iBirkat was released we haven’t seen a single app that focuses solely on benching. So I got myself a few Jewish apps, among them iPhone Siddur app, but the only time I found myself opening this app was to read Birkat HaMazon. After a few dozen times of opening said app and navigating to the bencher I realized there is a need in the market for a clean, convenient and quick access to the text of beching, and this is how iBirkat was born.

Designing this app we had a few things we wanted to accomplish and so far this is what we have achieved:

1. Currently this is the only bencher app that is on the market, that means that other apps that have Birkat Hamazon text in them are not focused on Birkat Hamazon, but rather include it along with other texts and features (no need in navigating through an entire Siddur).
2. Our app is free and has no ads in it, it is intended as public service app
3. iBirkat has elegant scroll view as opposed to static page views and our app takes advantage of the accelerometer and adjusts the text to the adequate screen position.
4. Birkat Hamazon text is available in iBirkat in most commonly used nussachim (Ari, Eidut Hamizrah, Sefard and Ashkenaz) which are easily accessible from main menu via a picker.
5. Overall pleasant design and ease of use

The app has been through two updates already, and we are working on producing a version for both the iPad and the new high definition iPhone 4 screen.

Download or find out more here

For a feature request or any comments about iBirkat you can email
appSTUDIO at: info@appstudio.co.il

]]> http://jcarrot.org/birkat-hamazon-iphone-app-ibirkat/feed 4 http://jcarrot.org/torah-vs-text-or-dont-study-with-your-mouth-full http://jcarrot.org/torah-vs-text-or-dont-study-with-your-mouth-full#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 18:47:15 +0000 Rabbi Matt Carl http://jcarrot.org/?p=6844

“Rabbi Shimon taught: ‘…Three who dine at a table and exchange words of Torah are considered as having eaten at God’s table…’”  (Pirke Avot 3:4)  I suppose a discussion of religion is considered verboten almost everywhere by certain people, but not in Jewish culture.  Then again, we like to talk politics in public, too!  But in the days of the Mishna, of course the conversation was only with the other people at the table.  After all, there was no e-mail, no phones…  and no text messages!  I remember, when cell phones were first becoming popular, my friend railing against people who would answer calls during dinner.  I agreed with her, but felt there should be some wiggle-room:  what if your friend is calling to say she’ll be late?  What if he needs directions to the restaurant?  Also, why should it bother me at the next table?  I understand if it is the person you’re dining with, but the “noise” argument makes no sense, since you wouldn’t be bothered by the people at the next table having a normal conversation.  Nowadays, we’re all used to this and most of us are pretty polite about it (music on the subway is a different story entirely, but I’ll restrain myself for now.)  Text messages, though around for years, have recently become more of a problem according to the NYT Dining section.

I have had a number of occasions lately to use my iPhone to “iTrump” someone in a friendly argument or, more often, to let myself be “iTrumped.”  (Term courtesy of Lisa O.)  The other night a friend was over, and we even busted out the laptop during dinner to look up something that was a part of the conversation.  I find these incursions of technology into the dining experience to be a little weird, but not particularly scary or tacky.  After all, cultures change and, as noted above, our culture values dining-table conversation differently than others.  Of course, the propriety of using such gadgetry on Shabbat or holidays has further ramifications that actually dove-tail quite well with this topic.  Perhaps the novice should start off by ceasing to use electronics during the Shabbat and holiday meals and move toward a more “traditional” observance from there.

One could even ask, “what if you call, SMS, Google-search, etc, your way into some aspect of Torah study while you eat?  Isn’t that laudable?”  This is not a formal p’sak halakha, but here’s my feeling:  The rule or maxim given in the name of Rabbi Shimon refers to people eating and talking together at the table.  Here too, there may be some wiggle-room:  The family gets together for dinner and wants to speak with the kid away at college, the cousin in Argentina or what-have-you…  But in those examples, the idea is to bring someone else to the table.  Most of the time, texting, answering calls, checking e-mail, etc, is a way for diners to take themselves away from the table, figuratively.  (If you need to find a way to be taken away, literally, I can suggest the “Fake A Call” app for the iPhone as a decent* way to exit yourself from that uncomfortable conversation/date/treyf.)  Even if you’re using it to get to Torah, I am suspicious of it if it takes you away from the conversation being had by the diners.  After all, Torah is “not beyond reach; it is not in the heavens…  neither is it beyond the sea…  rather, the word is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.”  (Deuteronomy 30:11-14)

*meaning that it works okay, not that it is morally decent.  I’ll let you decide that.

Some might say that by mixing Torah-study with eating, we Jews lose some concentration on what could otherwise be totally intentional eating.  I disagree:  Who likes eating in contemplative silence?  And the food of the body and the food of the soul can be mixed in ways that allow us to consider where our food comes from, to what end, and with whom we want to, or should, share it.  After all, “Man does live on bread alone” (Deuteronomy 8:3)  But, what Torah-study is all about and what eating ought be all about is about bringing the spiritual or heavenly down to earth.  As such, these are acts that require being “present” and while distractions are totally part of being in this world and tangents make for great conversation, they should be the kind that engage us with one another, not that remove us from what’s right around us.

Have a Shavuot full of food and Torah-study.  חג שמח

Kosher‘s interface is cleanly designed. Essentially, it’s a front-end viewer for a database hosted on Shamash.org, which has listings of restaurants, groceries, butchers, kosher food stores and even caterers. The database also contains reviews that visitors to these establishments have submitted. But the app also has a host of iPhone specific features and goodies that make it a compelling purchase for any iPhone user who keeps kosher or has friends who do.

What makes this better than a printed list culled from a website?
The iPhone specific features are excellent. (Note that the app also works on the iPod Touch, but without the GPS features.) The app allows you to use the GPS feature of the iPhone to find local restaurants, ranked in descending order of distance. You can also browse a global list of restaurants, and you can search for a specific place using various filters to narrow down the results (meal, cuisine, price, etc). Once you’ve found somewhere to eat, you can hit the map button to find the location using Google Maps and even get directions from your current location.

This makes Kosher app perfect for travellers visiting an unfamiliar city. In Cape Town, Tokyo, Moscow, Budapest or Rio de Janeiro? You’ll be able to find a comprehensive list of kosher establishments or places selling kosher products (groceries, butchers, restaurants, cafes, bakeries and so on). Here’s an example of the location of an Indian restaurant we visited in Paris:

There’s also a phone button that allows you to call the restaurants directly to make a reservation or to ask questions. Not wanting to pay for an unnecessary international call, though, I didn’t manage to test whether clicking on a foreign restaurant’s phone number works: all the telephone numbers seem to be formatted for local dialling from their respective countries, which might cause problems for direct dialling using the iPhone from abroad before your trip. The London phone number of this restaurant, for example, is formatted for dialing from within the UK, not from abroad:

What are the best reasons to get the application?
It’s really great to be able to search such a comprehensive database from your phone: it’s a helpful resource for tourists, travellers, and for those who prefer to eat only in restaurants certified by a particular rabbi or hashgacha, or who want to avoid a hashgacha they consider untrustworthy, since they can restrict their search to a specific kashrut certification.

You can save a list of favorites to your phone, which makes it easy to access the phone numbers and locations of places you visit often, or places you’ve been abroad and would like to recommend to friends, but don’t want in your main iPhone phonebook.

The app is also a great resource for religious eaters: it has the full text of Hebrew blessings before and after meals in several different traditions (Ashkenazi, Sepharad, Sephardic and  Chabad).

If you prefer to buy only certified food, or need to do so for a friend who keeps a stricter standard of kashrut than you do, the list of hechshers is a wonderful resource to have while you’re in the supermarket, since it lets you compare a symbol on a packet with an easy to read, comprehensive list.

You can submit your own review of a restaurant to the Shamash database, which is a nice feature. Here are the existing reviews of a fantastic place in Los Angeles:

Kosher app also links to the website of a restaurant (if available) and lets you email a listing to a friend.

Any caveats?

• Information on kashrut certifications is sometimes visible on the page of a specific restaurant, but doesn’t appear in a search for symbols on products: for example, the Sephardi Kashrut Authority in London appears in restaurant lists, but strangely, not in list of hechshers under “England” although, as far as I know, they certify packaged products under their own hechsher as well.
• When choosing a filter before searching for a restaurant, the bottom row of filter buttons is too close to the bottom icon bar of application options. This makes it easy to click “Near Me” by mistake when in fact you wanted to limit your search to Sephardic restaurants. The organization of the options in the “Filter” box could be clearer: it’d be better to have separate lists for cuisine, meals, and type of establishment. That way, you could choose “cafe/deli” or “caterer” from one list,  ”breakfast” as opposed to “dinner” from another, and “Sephardic” as opposed to “Mexican” from a third.
• One minor correction: the Sephardi blessing over wine ends with “hagefen” not “hagafen”.

What improvements would we suggest?

• It’d be really nice to rotate the iPhone and be able to view Birkat haMazon in landscape view, since the Hebrew text is quite small.
• What about being able to browse restaurant menus inside Kosher app without having to open the Safari browser? This would probably entail adding a feature to the Shamash database, but it could be as compelling a proposition for restaurant owners as for their customers: imagine easily being able to plan what you’d like to eat before a trip abroad to a culinarily-diverse location like Paris, where there are numerous kosher restaurants.
• What about being able to view photos of food from the restaurant, or photos of the restaurant interior itself?

The Shamash database really needs cleaning up. Kosher app itself is excellent, but sometimes its iPhone specific features don’t work perfectly because the entries in the Shamash database feed it erroneous data. Since the restaurant database can be edited by users and consists largely of submissions from people who’ve visited the restaurants in question, rather than professional reviewers, one should probably expect this sort of inconsistency. Nonetheless, perhaps RustyBrick can convince Shamash.org to spend some time checking the phone numbers and addresses for accuracy. Because of these database inaccuracies:

• Locations are classified somewhat inconsistently: sometimes under city name and sometimes by city name and zipcode. This is a merely cosmetic problem, but makes the listings appear slightly sloppy and makes it less easy to see restaurants in a particular neighborhood grouped under one heading, at a glance. (For example, after Zurich in the list of cities, there’s a load of incorrectly alphabetized cities. I’m not sure why they are there and not in the main list.)
• More seriously, when a restaurant is not correctly listed (such as one in Casablanca Morocco, which had the Massachusetts state abbreviation MA at the end of the address) the Maps application can’t show it correctly on screen. Viewing a location using Maps only works if the address from the Shamash database is perfectly formatted. Searching for a restaurant we visited in Paris (shown above) first brought up nothing. Since this was a test to find a place whose location I already knew, I was able to correct the address by deleting an extraneous street name and the bracketed name of the restaurant after the actual address which I knew to be correct. Only then did the map appear correctly, but this would have stumped a casual tourist trying to find an as yet unknown location.

But all in all, these are minor gripes: Kosher is an excellent and well-designed program. In our view, it’s well worth the $5 price. You’ll find all sorts of kosher restaurants and stores you might never have known about, you’ll be able to get directions and phone numbers for your favorite haunts in seconds from your phone and you’ll be able to upload a review of your meal as you sit digesting dessert and waiting for the bill to arrive.

And it only took two weeks, four trips to the hardware store, five different configurations, one temper tantrum, two phone calls to my carpenter-savvy father, three trips to my local bike shop (LBS) and looking at the photos of other exercise bike grain mills online about three hundred times.

Things that excited me about the process:

1. Everyone’s excitement, including the posts from the bike folks in Portland. Just generally feeling good and supported at the knowledge that there are folks out there who find this stuff cool, and, even more so, important.

2. Getting a little more comfortable with power tools, and learning about some new hardware. Locking washers have a little cut in them, and they will prevent your bolts from rattling off because they are in tension when tightened. Plywood is harder than regular boards, and a hole drilled in plywood will be perfectly smooth, but it will smell bad while drilling (chemicals?). Home Depot has a scrap wood cart that provided most of the wood for very cheap.

3. The fact that I can now get some exercise (it’s still takes a fair bit of force to get the thing going, it’s no weekend pedal in the park) and mill grain into fresh flour at the same time!

Some of the challenges I had to deal with:

1. Resistance. I ended up changing the rear sprocket to a smaller one, so that the ratio of front to back would be smaller (easier to pedal). Good thing too, because the inside of the crank shaft was all rusty and probably couldn’t have taken the kind of exertion it’s going to get in this set up. Now it’s all freshly greased and ready to go. If you’re considering a similar project and using an old bike, this is definitely something to pay attention to.

2. How to get the multi-cog onto the flywheel. Originally I bolted it to a piece of wood, and then bolted that piece of wood to another one on the other side of the flywheel, sandwiching the flywheel in the middle. This worked, but it put the actual cogs about 2″ out from the actual shaft on the mill. With so much pressure being exerted, it was twisting the whole mill from its base. I corrected this by fastening the multi-cog directly on the flywheel, and using the biggest cog (closest to the flywheel as possible). so now the chain is pulling maybe 1/4″ further out than the main shaft. Still not perfect — the best thing to do would be to get the cogs right on the shaft as Maureen Ash did — but I don’t know how to do that (Her full story is here). Hopefully this way will work for now.

3. How to secure the mill in exactly the right spot. I ended up bolting two 2x4s to the bottom of the frame. I attached the grain mill to a 3/4″ piece of plywood (from the scrap bin!). That way I can position the board with the mill exactly where it needs to be to have the chain line up, and then fasten it down with C-bolts (3″x4 1/2″). The way I positioned it, the mill is bolted to the board off-center, so that the bolts on the bottom can hang free, and the board can be bolted flush to the 2x4s.

4. Breaking a chain. Don’t push the pins all the way out — they don’t go back in!

If you’re interested in doing this, please feel free to contact me for more info on how I did it. I am by no means an expert — the list below explains some of the challenges I ran into as I was going along…and didn’t know about before I started. Hopefully this information will be helpful!

See my previous posts here:
Bicycle Power
Bicycle Power – Part II

The only problem is that now it sits a little closer to the pedals than the old wheel used to, and the chain sags. I need to get a chain breaker, I think, to tighten the chain (I have decided this will be easier than muddling with the front pieces of the frame!)

I don’t know what shortening the chain will do for the transfer of power. Will the resistance increase? Or is that only determined by the size difference of the front and rear gears? I remember really enjoying the ‘levers and pulleys’ unit in physics…but alas it was a long time ago….I guess we shall see what happens.

After I get the chain to fit, then I need to bolt the whole thing down so it doesn’t fly away while I pedal. I”m also thinking I’ll make a little slot for the flour container to fit in — I imagine there will be some vibrating, and it could easily rattle its way to a big mess.

Stay tuned…

Since I’ve found myself with a little downtime, I’ve embarked on a really fun project: mechanizing our Country Living Grain Mill with an exercise bike. The grain mill on its own is fantastic — nothing like baking with freshly ground flour. But it’s quite a bit of work, once the novelty wears off. So the thought of using my thighs, which are substantially bigger than my forearms, to turn the flywheel is exciting indeed.

My first step was to find an exercise bike, which I did. I’m pleased that it was not only cheap, it isn’t one of those ugly grey and black plastic things, and it will look nice in our living room!

My next step was to remove the rear sprocket from an old bicycle wheel, so that I could attach it to the flywheel on the mill, and then synch all that up with the pedals on the bike.

I’m in progress. The glue is drying so I had a minute to write this. I’ll keep you posted as it develops! Meanwhile, do check out these other awesome bicycle-powered machines: Maya Pedal; the folks at HSU; and other pedal-powered grain mills.

Oh readers!� What an exciting time for a Yenta!� My first Shmethicist column got a shout out in The Forward.� And readers’ questions are pouring in.

So I thought I’d start with the spiciest query . . . and I don’t mean the one about habaneros versus jalapenos.

Dear Shmethicist–

I am a 39 year old married mother of two. I love my husband, who is a good provider and wonderful husband. He is very reliable and a kind man.� I find him as bland as a baked potato without sour cream.� Our sex life has been pretty lousy.� That is until recently.

You see, recently I have started an email affair with a 62 year old chef who keeps a blog.� The blog is a little boring, but the flirty emails he sends me…sometimes with “attachments”…are all I need to get cooking.� I don’t feel any guilt about my secret online flirtation and it has really fired things up for my husband and I in the bedroom.

Since I am guilt-free over this, does that mean� I lose my nice Jewish girl status?� Must I call it quits with my geriatric online lover even though it is only helping my marriage?� The blogging chef lives on the other side of the country and there is little to no chance we would actually meet in real life.� Is my fantasy life kosher or treyf?

Signed,

Nice Jewish Girl or Pig in a Blanket?�

Just because you have a favorite dish (say, the eggplant parmesan at Alejo’s restaurant in Los Angeles) doesn’t mean you don’t occasionally crave something else.

And while variety is the shmorgasbord of life, this presents one of the greatest challenges for sustaining a long-term relationship.� The Shmethicist understands – taking a vow of monogamy doesn’t mean you’ll never be attracted to anyone else again.� The shmethical question here is, how do you handle that attraction?

I admit it, I fantasize about that eggplant parmesan.� And I eat it every time I’m in LA.� In fact, I’ve been known to go to Alejo’s three times in one week for their eggplant parmesan.� You see, I am a pescetarian.� And my meat-loving partner is allergic to eggplant. So we have an agreement . . . I get my eggplant needs met outside the relationship, and he gets his meat needs met outside the relationship.

But the key ingredient is that we have that agreement.� I know he eats meat.� He knows I eat eggplant.� No one is deceiving anyone.� And this agreement extends to crushes … when one of us has a crush, we confess it to the other one.� We can obsess and we can flirt, and we don’t have to share every sordid detail, but we can’t deceive each other by keeping the crush a secret.� Even though the flirtations never become physical, keeping them secret is still a no-no, because emotional infidelity can be just as hurtful and destructive, or maybe more so, than actual sexual infidelity.

But enough about me. What about you?� You have more than a crush, NJGoPiaB.� You are having an “affair,” with some level of “attachment” – as you yourself put it.� Which seems pretty treyf to me.

But what do I know?� Well, enough to seek a second opinion, namely that of my fellow Jew and the Carrot contributor Rabbi Shmuel.� And to keep this marginally food-related, I analogized the question.

Shmeth:� There is a clear prohibition against eating treyf foods, but is there a
prohibition against otherwise enjoying them?

Shmuel:� It depends – one cannot derive “hanaah” (benefit) from milk and meat – you can’t give a cheeseburger to your dog

Shmeth:� Can one righteously smell a bacon double cheese burger and think, Yum! or is that a violation of the law?

Shmuel:� It depends – can you camp out behind Macdonald’s and get high on the Big Mac fumes all day? No.� But if you are innocently walking past Hu Kee Lau when the Moo Shoo Pork is up and you get a whiff you don’t have to fast or go to the mikva� (remember, Rashi says that we are not supposed to say that treif tastes terrible, rather that it’s OK – we just don’t eat it).

Shmeth:� What about if I notice my neighbor cooking a bacon double cheese burger and I knowingly open the window JUST SO I CAN smell it and get the olfactory yum?

Shmuel:� Should be avoided – to get a bit technical you should avoid any scent upon which you are not allowed to make a bracha (eg incense from idolatry, etc);
it’s brought down in much greater detail in the Rambam (who actually once
served up a dish which freaked out some dinner guests because it resembled a
cooked human hand – it was some type of root or herb but he was trying to
make a point that you can’t rush to judgment).

Shmeth:� Ethically, if I make a fake bacon double cheese burger – soy bacon and
either soy cheese on real burger or real cheese on veggie burger – am I
treading on dangerous ground?

Shmuel:� Not at all – here is a true case where it’s simply the letter of the law
that governs – you can’t eat milk and meat together or treif meat (not
shechted) or chazzer, etc. but if you want to make faux frog’s legs out of
chicken wings and then taste them and smugly pronounce “yup, tastes like
chicken” – well go right ahead.

There you have it.� If your husband is bland as a baked potato, slather on the sour cream.� Fry up some soy fakin’ bacon and crumble it on top.� Your commitment is to him, so you have to figure out a way to make HIM your hot potato.� Maybe that means the two of you need some new recipes in the bedroom.� Maybe a fine wine can bring out more enticing flavors in your post-prandial nibbling.� Maybe you should explore using kitchen gadgets as sex toys.

Maybe you are sorry you asked me.� But you did.

And anyone else out there can too, by sending their ethical food quandaries to shmethicist@jcarrot.org anytime.� Especially if they’re actually about food.

There’s no food without water, and some people love to talk about how the destruction of our watersheds will lead us all to perdition before our teeth even fall out. It’s the kind of doom-saying that makes a lot of folks want to crawl under a rock instead of thinking about change.  But saving enormous amounts of water is actually pretty easy and, to a large degree, can be accomplished with a time investment instead of a monetary one. In the spirit of the new year, here are some tips and resources on how to change your kitchen for the better (world-wise and wallet-wise).

Start with your Sink.

To repair the world, you can start by repairing your sink.  Fixing leaking faucets can save 20 gallons of water a day. Just spend a couple of bucks and a few minutes screwing on an aerator and watch your water bill go down. If you need one, you can also get a water filtration system for your tap instead of drinking bottled water, which uses lots of water in production and pollutes the world with plastic. Finally, unlike quails and manna, water still falls from the sky – so you can harvest rainwater for your garden using a rain barrel. The Florida Extension teaches you how to build one here.

Or, you could get fancy.

Going Gray.

The big kahuna of water recycling is gray water filtration. It sounds complicated and expensive, but it’s actually one of the most direct responses possible to falling watersheds and apocalyptic water-shortage scenarios. The idea is simple – take a shower, put the water back in the ground, let the dirt filter it, eat your apples, and feel smug.

First, a definition: Gray water is second-hand water from the shower, bath, dishwasher, kitchen sink or laundry machine. It has some soap and chemical contamination, but much lower concentrations of toxins and nitrogen than black water, which comes from toilets and garbage disposals. When gray water is applied to a garden, the soil and root systems filter the water, the bits of compost left over from washing dishes feed your growing things, and clean water goes back into the ground supply, where it belongs.

Collect your gray water.

All you need to make gray water recycling cheap and efficient is a garden and a penchant for biodegradable cleaning supplies. Collection systems can be as simple as a bucket.  Just plug up the drain in your bath or shower and transport the water to your garden. Once you get it out there, apply it to the ground only – not directly on to plants. Apply it over a large area, not all in one place, and make sure that you’re pouring it out over a flat area or into a trench to stop run-off. Water ornamental plants first, and avoid using the gray water on roots and greens. It works well for tomatoes, broccoli, eggplants, cauliflower, squash and other plants with roots in the top layer of the soil. The UMass extension provides this wonderful page of tips for hand-transported gray water use as do the Gray Water Guerrillas.

A backyard garden can take up to one half gallon per square foot of loamy soil per week. This isn’t all that much considering that an average household uses anywhere from 50 to 100 gallons per day, up to 80% of which is gray water. Luckily, some sources are better than others for your garden, making the choice easy if you don’t have a lot of real estate to spread out your gray water use.

After shower and bath water, use water from the bath room sink, utility sink, washing machine (you can run the outlet hose right into a trench in the back yard), kitchen sink, and dishwasher. Whichever sources you use, don’t let your gray water stand around. It’s generally warm and full of life, so the longer it sits, the more potentially harmful organisms can breed. You need to use gray water within 24 hours or it’s no longer sanitary.

Every time you shower, wash dishes or launder clothes, reasonably clean water mixes with sewage and must be treated through a costly, energy gobbling, chemical-dependent process. By keeping gray water out of the septic system you decrease strain on those systems, lower your water bill, recharge the groundwater in your area, and use the nutrients present in your dead skin cells and food bits to feed plants and even yourself. Finally, as Oasis Design (a California sustainable design company) points out, when you’re pouring your “waste” water into the ground around food you’ll be eating, you’ll probably feel inspired to use fewer chemicals in cleaning yourself and your house.

If you’re shorter on time than money, it’s possible to install diversion pipes and filtration systems that can go so far as to make gray water potable or semi-potable. These systems disperse gray water without human contact or muscle work, but they’re costly to maintain and install. For more tips on saving water in your home, and a huge list of references for water conservation, check out this resource page from TreeHugger.com.

Next up on Greening your Kitchen: Energy Efficient Appliances

Bikes. Waffles. Calls to worship. What could be more tailor-made for Hazon than that? Did I mention the factory farm chickens attached to the back of this baffling, waffling vehicle? The shotgun and machete attachments?

I just came across this strange short film today, and while I’m not sure what to make of its deadpan, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the state of the world’s food systems, violent religious conflicts and our over-reliance on technology, all I know is that it made me laugh, and it made me want waffles.

And that’s good enough for me.

Waffle Bike by artist Tom Sachs and the Neistat Brothers.

The Boston Herald announced that Fenway Park is installing a kosher hot dog vending machine:

The home of the Fenway Frank, which claims to sell more hot dogs than any other ballpark in the country, is adding a new option for Jewish fans who adhere to strict kosher dietary laws. A new automated “Hot Nosh” vending machine, to be located in the big concourse under the bleachers, will cook and dispense all-beef, glatt kosher hot dogs in under a minute.

That’s cool at the ballpark, but how about in a Jewish day school?

Feder first eyed Kosher Vending Industries because his children’s Jewish day school, the Maimonides School in Brookline, lacked a hot lunch program. After Passover, the school will roll out another Hot Nosh machine that cooks and dispenses kosher pizza, mozzarella sticks, vegetable cutlets, onion rings and potato knishes.

Um, are there any Jewish foods – vendable! – which aren’t fried and unhealthy? And since when did mozzarella sticks and onion rings make it into the “Jewish” cultural food category?

Plus, there’s more Jewish weiners (and thus a few more Weiners) in the ballpark pews these days.