Conversation started Feb 4, 2013 at 17:02.
msh210
msh210
Feb 4, 2013 17:02
All: What do you think of a question like this? "I've noticed a phenomenon in the Jewish community / custom religious Jews do / custom Jews do. I haven't hung out in the more general (non-Jewish/irreligious) community enough to know whether it's a broader phenomenon/custom. It may be; I just don't know. Is it Jewish-specific? If so, why do Jews do it?"
And if that's okay, then what about this? "[Same lead-up.] Is it Jewish-specific? If so, why do Jews do it? If not, why do people do it?"
 
1 hour later…
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
Feb 4, 2013 18:17
@msh210 I'm fine with this if it's more like "Is it related to Judaism? If so, how and why?" Whether it's Jewish-specific, but not related to Judaism (e.g., let's say, moneylending in Europe in the Middle Ages) is off-topic for us. Once we answer whether it's related to Judaism and how, we're done.
@msh210 "If not, why do people do it?" is 100% off-topic
 
1 hour later…
Monica Cellio
Monica Cellio
Feb 4, 2013 19:24
@IsaacMoses I agree with this (and the followup).
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
Feb 4, 2013 19:57
Yeyasher kochacha, @HodofHod!
4
msh210
msh210
Feb 4, 2013 20:27
@MonicaCellio Me too.
HodofHod
HodofHod
@IsaacMoses :)
Monica Cellio
Monica Cellio
@HodofHod good job!
Meta-Man
Meta-Man
Feb 4, 2013 20:59
1
Q: I'm no longer getting prompts for tag names

Bruce JamesWhen I started on Mi Yodeya, I would ask a question and type in tag names and the machine would prompt me with similar choices that have already been made into tags. That feature is not working anymore, on this site, or any other Stack Exchange site. Even if I type in "Kosher" or "Halacha" noth...

bug tags
 
2 hours later…
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
Feb 4, 2013 23:17
@msh210 Was there a particular question or trend that prompted this?
 
6 hours later…
msh210
msh210
Feb 5, 2013 05:06
@IsaacMoses Something I was thinking of asking (and may yet). Perhaps I'll first do some Googling to make sure it's a Jewish thing.
And... a simple search shows it's not a Jewish thing.
I still wonder why it's done, but won't be asking on m.y^H^H^HMY.
But if anyone knows -- Why do funeral homes (funeral parlors, funeral chapels) give out calendars?
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
Feb 5, 2013 05:55
@msh210 Good question! Looks like a job for ...
amazon.com/Economic-Naturalist-Explanations-Everyday-Enigmas/dp/…
msh210
msh210
Feb 5, 2013 06:47
@IsaacMoses Maybe so, but I don't think the book discusses this question in particular. (Based on a Google Books search.)
Perhaps I should e-mail David Feldman. Or, um, a funeral-home director.
@IsaacMoses I haven't read that book, but am mostly done with Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which, as opposed to its advertising that it is a history of the universe and world and human species and so on, is primarily a history of cosmology and geology and paleontology and so on. (I.e., it's a history of the science more than a book of science.) It's very interesting, but I was very, very impressed by [continued]
[continued] by the number of times the author indicated that scientists, faced with evidence that didn't fit into their theories or, often, outright contradicted them, ignored it, granted its existence but then ignored it, discredited it, played it down, deliberately misinterpreted it, or tried to wedge it in to their theories artificially. It doesn't give me much faith in the existing theories.
@msh210 Done. (The former.)
 
8 hours later…
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
Feb 5, 2013 15:00
Re: http://meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/1460/im-no-longer-getting-prompts-for-tag-names , I'm now having this problem, too. I tried Ctrl-
F5ing, and that made the whole site into text-only for me.
@msh210 The latter (if it's someone you know) may get results quicker. Either way, if you learn something, I'd love to hear about it.
@msh210 I'm certain that some parts of some of them are wrong.
@IsaacMoses I restarted my browser (FF 18.0.1 running on WinXP), but have the same problem.
I tried Chrome on the same computer and have the same problem
IE8 also
Same goes for other SE sites and SO, but not MSO
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
Feb 5, 2013 15:32
in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Overflow Chat, 11 mins ago, by Isaac Moses
Did all SE sites stop working right for anyone else?
et seq. It looks like maybe my work started blocking cdn.sstatic.net, for some reason
muqata.blogspot.com/2013/02/turkey-and-latkes.html
Monica Cellio
Monica Cellio
@IsaacMoses sounds like an interesting book. Thanks.
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@MonicaCellio Yeah; there are some neat explanations in there.
Monica Cellio
Monica Cellio
@msh210 I suspect that if you ask a random funeral-home director, he'll tell you that he does it because it's traditional. :-)
That is, any individual member of a group that does a certain thing may not know why they do it.
But asking can't hurt if you have someone to ask.
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@MonicaCellio True, but somewhat less likely when there's corporate money being spent :)
 
Conversation ended Feb 5, 2013 at 15:41.