tuluum's Diaryland Diary

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Whoa, this is a LONG ONE!

Currently Reading: Trees, Earth, and Torah: A Tu B'Shevat Anthology

Currently Listening To: Can't Get You Out Of My Head - Kylie Minogue

because I can't...

I am totally falling asleep at this point but I feel compelled to write something, just a little something.

Worked throughout the day on some web copy which has been merrily zipped and emailed off to Australia... with love (j/k). Then I watched "The Surreal Life". WHOA! Was that a riot or what? Can I just say that whatever vestages of 80's yearning I had for da Feldog is now G.O.N.E. What an ass! Go Gabrielle! Go Jeri! And as for Hammer World .. whatever .. haha. Oh yeah I will tune in next week :D

I am extremely looking forward to cooking tomorrow. It has been weeks since I prepared a good Shabbes meal and as I said before it's a habit that I will not slack off on this year. That habit sustains me.

Reading Vee's blog I learnt that Sean "Gimme Da Light" Paul's last name is Henriques! Being of Jamaican Jewish stock I immediately recognized the name as that of a prominent Jamaican Jewish line. I had to double check, so intrigued was I. Here's what I found :D

"Born to a Portuguese Jewish-Jamaican father and a Chinese-Jamaican mother, Sean Paul Henriques grew up known to his friends as the "copper- color Chiney bwoy...", excelling in sports in his teen years. Sean played water polo for the Jamaica National team as well as representing his country in swimming in the 1989 and 1991 Carifta Games."

Very cool :) Especially since the director of the video "Little X" is Trini, so yeah big up to all the Trinimaicans in da house! Woo!

At this week's Macworld Expo Steve Jobs launched some kickass developments in the world of our favorite digital fruit! I'm totally ready and willing to shell out for iLife at some point later this year but my enthusiasm at the moment is dedicated to Safari, Mac's new open source browser. It is so light and speedy. I trashed my Netscape and I am not looking back! If you run Mac OS X I tell you, no.. i COMMAND you to download it now.. Ok, it's a beta app but the bug report interface is very intuitive and I have had no crashes or scares yet. For an application that has not even reached 1.0 status I give it two perky nipples up! My only complaints are some problems that it seems to have with forms and CSS on some pages, as well as with security certificates, but I expect that will be ironed out in the next release (which I am sure will be around the corner).

hmm.. I think I'll take the money that I was gonna spend on a Tu B'Shevat seder and put it towards RAM instead...

I exercised so much this week that lying down is far from comfortable. Every time that I have to move or turn I moan, and not a happy moan either. Still I get a perverse joy knowing that my body is rebuilding itself and that I am shedding my older layers of apathy and neglect. I want to begin a Panchakarma schedule shortly but will probably wait until the end of the month, or the start of next month. That reminds me that I have to contact Carl about next month's UJCL (Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean) conference. Ugh.. my plate is so damn full... I will -try- to take care of that tomorrow.

In the meantime, this is where I tackle this week's LM exercise (which I should have done days ago :)) If you wanna sign up for the Life Makeover's mailing list drop me a line :)

WEEK TWO: NEW YEAR, NEW ME

My internal goal: I want to be bolder with my creativity.

My affirmation: here's a little jpg of a poster I made for my wall"

3 actions I can do this week that support this goal and can be done right away:

a) sing at the top of my lungs every chance I get check

b) contact DP and set up a time to meet and jam pending

c) write 3 songs pending

(N.B.: Face Challenges every time they pop up immediately. You will trust your gut instincts more, become more confident, and accomplish more stuff more easily)

WHO AM I AT THIS POINT IN MY LIFE IN RELATION TO MY INTERNAL GOAL?

At some point in the last few years I have grown exceedingly fearful. All of the energy, passion, and sense of self which I gained in the US has steadily been eroded and sapped since returning to 'native shores'. I am not sure why my uncertainty has grown but I also know that lack of avenues has also not helped, as has lack of communal support. I am aware that I will have to forge and create opportunities for myself and this is where I have historically fallen short, except for when I was at Smith. I am tired of feeling stifled and crippled and waiting for these barriers to fall has not gotten me anywhere.

***this is where i go all bloggy on your ass***

If, like me, you have laid awake at nights, blinking at your ceiling and wondering if spiders bleed this link will give you much ease.

Remember when I told you about some Trini Blogger called ChineeBizkit? Anyway here's where you can find him.

I also recently got a hit for "sweat rice", as well as "ebonics for dummies", both coincidences (which I thought only occured in a Buddy Lee alterna-reality) made me think of Trance immediately :)

*HI BABES* (waves frantically all dork-like)

YUMMMM I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but Justin Timberlake's CRY ME A RIVER and it's scathing video are totally rocking my world these days... and uh.. I like his .. hands ;) *sigh* jailbait : I tell you if my Rolling Stone doesn't arrive there will be HELL in this place!

I'm a big fan of the BCC field so the following was of great interest to me:

The Jewish Ethicist: BCC E-mail Ethics

By: Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir, JCT Center for Business Ethics

Q. Is it unethical to send a "bcc" of an e-mail? I'm worried that this could be deceptive.

A. While the ethics and etiquette of e-mail are still evolving, the basic principles of thoughtful behavior are always applicable.

For the e-mail uninitiated, "bcc" stands for "blind carbon copy." Once upon a time, copies of correspondence were made by putting two or three sheets of paper in the typewriter with a sheet or two of carbon paper sandwiched in between. Usually the original stated "cc to" indicating that carbon copies were being sent to other individuals; occasionally a "blind" carbon copy was made and the recipient was not informed. Today our e-mail programs do the same thing by sending a copy of an electronic letter to the "bcc" recipient without the knowledge of the original recipient.

There are many reasons we might want to keep the additional recipient hidden, some of them good and others not so good.

A not-so-good reason for this is when you conceal the other recipient because you know the addressee would not want the message known. The message you send generally reveals some private information about the recipient and the nature of your relationship, and if recipients want this information kept private their wishes should be respected. If you feel you have a very good reason to disclose the information, then at the very least the recipients should be informed that the content is known, by making the copy a "cc" instead of a "bcc".

The problem is far worse when the message you send contains a copy of the letter you originally received -- the usual case in the world of e-mail. Letters you receive should generally be kept in the strictest confidence, and Jewish law protects them in a variety of ways. Revealing the content of a letter may be considered a form of gossip; in addition, the ancient decree of Rabbenu Gershom prohibits reading someone else's mail without their permission. (This should remind us that forwarding e-mails can also be problematic.)

However, there are some valid reasons to take advantage of the bcc feature. One good reason to keep someone hidden is to protect his own privacy. Using the "cc" line not only reveals that the letter was sent to others, it also discloses their identity as well as their e-mail address. This can be ethically problematic, as demonstrated by the following true story:

Not long ago there was a very unfortunate incident in which an individual who ran a small-scale meeting service (shadchan) wanted to send a message to all of her clients. She wrote a message and put each one on the "cc" list. Being a neophyte in the new-fangled world of e-mail, she probably didn't realize that this would disclose the identities of her customers. Many felt significant embarrassment at having it widely known that they were using this person's services. Using the bcc would have saved his customers from this discomfort and the business from suffering significant ill will.

In other cases, people don't mind having their identities revealed but they don't want to go the extra step and have their e-mail addresses publicized, since this can lead to unwanted mail, which may be annoying, offensive, or even threatening.

Another possibility is that the "cc" is being sent to an innocuous individual, but the recipient doesn't know that the recipient of the copy is trustworthy. Sending an ordinary "cc" may cause the recipient unnecessary worry that confidence has been breached. For example, on some sites queries sent to the Jewish Ethicist are first received by the host site, which then forwards them to me. When I reply to the questioner, I often send a copy of my answer to the representative of the host site. (This is a courtesy because these representatives are often extremely curious to know how I will respond.) This doesn't breach any confidence, because that person has already seen the letter. But if the letter had a cc, the recipient would be understandably concerned, because he or she probably doesn't know that the other recipient is already in the loop. So I generally use a bcc for these replies.

In these three cases, it is definitely appropriate to use a "bcc" rather than a "cc". But we may still encounter the problem mentioned above: the recipient may be misled into thinking the communication is private. There are two solutions to this problem:

Mention in the body of the letter that a copy is being sent to another individual. Perhaps in the future I will add to my replies the line, "I'm sending a copy of this reply to the editor of the host website."

Avoid shortcuts. Instead of sending the exact copy of the letter with a bcc, prepare a sanitized copy that eliminates any problematic details, and send it as a separate e-mail to someone who needs to know about the correspondence but doesn't need to know the identity of the correspondent.

There are many reasons that your recipient might want not details of your correspondence to be known. Perhaps the personal details revealed by your letter are unflattering; perhaps they are confidential. Even positive information can have negative consequences if it is too widely known. The book of Proverbs tells us, "When someone blesses his friend in a loud voice early in the morning, it is considered like a curse" (Proverbs 27:14).

Therefore, careful thought is needed before routinely forwarding e-mail or sending copies. At the very least the recipient should be informed about the disclosure, except in the cases we mentioned where the message isn't really private or when this disclosure could cause unjustified worry. Even in these cases we can often find better solutions than the bcc, which should be used sparingly.

Send your queries about ethics in the workplace to [email protected]

The Jewish Ethicist presents some general principles of Jewish law. For specific questions and direct application, please consult a qualified Rabbi.

The Jewish Ethicist is a joint project of Aish.com and the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem. To find out more about business ethics and Jewish values for the workplace, visit the JCT Center for Business Ethics website at www.besr.org.

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