The Odd Life of Timothy Green is a 2012 American fantasy drama film co-written and directed by Peter Hedges and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Based on a concept by Ahmet Zappa, the film is about a magical pre-adolescent boy whose personality and naïveté have profound effects on the people in his town. It received mixed reviews from critics and had modest ticket sales in its debut weekend.
Plot
The film is told from the perspective of Cindy (Jennifer Garner) and Jim Green (Joel Edgerton), as they explain their experience with Timothy (CJ Adams) in an effort to persuade an adoption a...
@SethJ - I very much disagree with what you just wrote. Historical ignorance may be the problem here (assuming that the OP wasn't actually intending to refer to the inquisition), but correcting people's misconceptions is not. Do we not have a responsibility - on this site especially - to clear up such errors?? Historically, when Jews described the mass conversion and the exile, they used words like שמד and גירות. They did not call it אינקוויזיציה. This is a recent problem, and I don't think historians should just let it go. — Shimon bM12 mins ago
@SethJ (you couldn't have pung him. i used my all powerful mod superping :) )
@SethJ Ok, so correcting that should be acceptable. Perhaps the way to do so is via comment and edit, but if the OP made such a historical overlap, perhaps they need to rethiink exactly what they mean to ask
But I think that only applies when it's relevant. Otherwise common practice seems to be, "I think you meant to ask about X when you asked about Y. Here's the information you're seeking, because your intent is still pretty obvious."
Just commented on one of Alex's answers and it occurred to me: If and when he does visit again, he'll probably be immediately scared off by the huge red number of inbox messages.
@Daniel Just made it up? Don't you know the story with... the Shpoler Zeide I think it was? hang on, I'll Google it bl"n when I've caught up on backread....
In my opinion…
Short term:
I think that the right place for this type of information is the tag wiki.
For example, if you want to know what muktzeh means, just hover over the muktzeh tag on main:
Longer term:
The NY Times web site has a feature where, when you select a word or phrase, a...
We should have a glossary. Every user should be able to send words they don't know to the glossary, and the knowledgeable users can write a definition.
This way only words that are actually used on the site will appear in the glossary.
There would also be a way to link words, so that (for exam...
@shulem Don't withdraw the question. It's a perfectly good one, and as valid as any other asking about similar historical events. Just because some people are more focused on terminology than on answering the question, is not a reason to delete it. It's been edited, I think fairly, and, in my opinion, the edit invalidates the non-answer (not that I thought it was valid in the first place).
@DoubleAA @Daniel, The distinction isn't silly, and it's proper to point it out and/or correct it. However, any interpretation of the question other than that it actually meant the Expulsion was, IMO, silly. @SethJ is right that this is not a case of the question being based on an incorrect premise, such that undermining the premise is a valid answer.
... consider Q: "I aged my whiskey in casks that had previously stored wine for my local church. Is the whiskey traif now?" A: "No, the whiskey is not traif, since it never had a body that could be torn." No, this is not a valid answer.
@Daniel I don't know that there's a written policy about it, but the right thing to do is to help the question's words better express its meaning and answer the question as intended. If the actual meaning is truly ambiguous, then ask the author to clarify and possibly close in the mean time.
@IsaacMoses I think the problem is that for both this question about the Spanish Inquisition and this one that you have just brought up, it is so obvious what the questioner intended that perhaps nobody would even notice that something was wrong until someone else comes along and posts an answer for the wrong question
(... The "traif" case is not a perfect example, since the word actually means not-kosher, generally in Yiddish, so what I'd probably do in that case is just link the word to this definition, but you know what I mean.)
@Daniel in retrospect we probaby should have closed the question while awaiting clarification. I don't think there's a formal policy; it's all a judgment call. (Remember, anybody with 3K can vote to close, and closing is not permanent.) This case, and @IsaacMoses's example, are complicated by the fact that it might look like we know what's being asked...and we're wrong. Unfortunate, but it happens.
Thanks @IsaacMoses. I am sorry my knowledge of our tag set is still so deficient; you and msh210 do a lot of tag cleanup for us! Much appreciated.
@MonicaCellio I don't quite deserve to be in the same sentence with @msh210 wrt tag cleanup, but thanks! :) When I see a new question with only one or two tags on it, it tends to stick out to me as begging for more tags.
@IsaacMoses it does stick out, yes. And sometimes my reaction to seeing a tag cleanup is "we have a tag for that?". (Not so much in this case; the tags you picked make sense and I should have remembered them. But I know I've had this reaction with some of @msh210's retags; his memory for this is amazing.)
@msh210 You can go all the way to 100%. There's only one downvote, and it's mine, and it was due to the fact that the answer was based on incorrect reasoning.
Unfortunately, as a site mod, I'm not supposed to ignore people in the chat. For those who wish to, you click on the user's name or avatar on the left side of your screen and then click "ignore". (I don't know how to do it on mobile; sorry.)
@shulem This canard, as always, is inappropriate. You have no right to assume people are judging based on personality, especially when they are explaining their reasoning.
One of Maimonidies 13 principles of faith is believing in the resurrection of the dead wherein the dead will arise from their graves. My question is have chazal provided any guidelines for how we are to survive this zombie apocalypse?
This question is Purim Torah and is not intended to be take...
As proof Hebrew's treatment of articles differs from English's, consider the indefinite article, which English uses extensively and Hebrew does not even notate.
@msh210 I assume it. At the very least we can feel confident that he didn't use it in his analysis of the Bracha. I hold him to too high a standard for such an error.
@SethJ Just FYI only mods can undelete what a mod has deleted.
@IsaacMoses you're probably right, but I didn't mean to stomp on an active discussion. Fixed now, and if @shulem (or anybody else) wants to edit further, go for it. Shulem, if you want to delete a post, please use the "delete" link under it (next to "edit").
@Daniel We've had similar before. Mi Yodeya is not just about the content, it's also about the community. Some before have been good contributors, but not the greatest fit for the community. Usually they adapt, or leave. (Or leave and only pop in once in a while.)
@DoubleAA I remember an early 00's chatbot that would respond to that with "Please stop hitting your keyboard" or "Shall I put you in touch with Mavis Beacon?"
@HodofHod You don't need to be able to fit into the community as long as your contributions can fit into our format. Good contributions need to have both good content and fitting (in various ways) format.
@IsaacMoses "Need", no, you're right. But we've had some who could have been great contributors (and even started down that path) who left because of community mismatch.
Can anyone help me? I'm trying to think of a good word that means "what one learns/studies" (the particular bit of Torah that one studies). One word for it is "study" ("my study today is daf...") but that has more common meanings so will be confusing.
:9245132 That's a general course of study, not a particular piece of Torah.
@IsaacMoses "גירסא". In this passage:
> ואמר ר' יצחק אם יאמר לך אדם יגעתי ולא מצאתי אל תאמן לא יגעתי ומצאתי אל תאמן יגעתי ומצאתי תאמן הני מילי בדברי תורה אבל במשא ומתן סייעתא הוא מן שמיא ולדברי תורה לא אמרן אלא לחדודי אבל לאוקמי גירסא סייעתא מן שמיא היא
> This is true in respect of words of Torah, but in respect of business, all depends on the assistance of heaven. And even for words of Torah this is true only of penetrating to the meaning, but for remembering what one has learnt, all depends on the assistance of heaven.
@MonicaCellio I disagree. I don't think closure was warranted, either. I actually think @IsaacMoses' example of "treif" wine is a good one. That word is used colloquially, and nearly universally, to mean non-kosher; it is very similar to the usage of "The Spanish Inquisition".
Re: @Daniel's point that someone might have pointed out the technical incorrectness one day, I think that's what this answerer did, and I think that, had there been 4-5 answers from different Hashkafic approaches already in place, a year or longer before this answer had been posted, we would have all had the same reaction to the answer that we did, with the only difference I can think of being that there might have been a mini-edit war or at least a debate about rewording the question.
(I'm not sure it would have been reworded in that case, to be quite honest.)
@DoubleAA @HodofHod @MonicaCellio @ShmuelBrin @msh210 thanks for all the kind words. The baby y'all wished me mazel tov for is now 9 months old, and my other "baby" - the daily shiur I give - is also just as old; the two of them keep me busy enough that, regretfully, I can't come here very often anymore.
2
@HodofHod: the "unread notifications" maxes out at 99. I just read the last few ones, though.
@Alex I'll be very glad to see you when you can come. There have been quite a few times when I read a question and thought "this is something R'Alex would have a complete, well-sourced, and articulate answer to".
@msh210 Funny you should say that. As a matter of courtesy-chinuch, we've outlawed that exclamation in our home. (It's a lot more annoying out loud and with expected consequences than in text and without.)
@msh210 Well, I generally try to keep personal information offline, but I think I've historically divulged the information that may confirm or contradict that assumption. I'll allow my good friend @IsaacMoses to privately inform you one way or the other if he chooses to do so (ie., finds it relevant).
@SethJ You can comment on whether you're familiar with the concept of chinuch banim without confirming or denying anything about your personal circumstances :)
@msh210 So, the jinx-ee isn't expected to be silent until some unlocking event? Maybe all we really need is to outlaw that aspect.
I'm not sure how to read the chat above. Have we -- those who have been in chat -- decided that the top-voted 404 idea (something based on yaga'ti v'lo matzasi) is the way to go (because it's top-voted)?
@msh210 It may one day prove relevant to discuss these issues. This morning on my way to work, I was thinking of ways to implement this, possibly involving some medium-large scale Shabbath gathering.
@IsaacMoses We could have three shabbatons: midwest, east coast, and Israel. Then, the motzei shabbos activity is posting all of the questions that were discussed and having everybody from the other shabbatons try to answer
Those discussing meet-ups: while large scale meet-ups may be hard to arrange, those who are interested in such things should consider posting their location with an open invite to ping them if one is in their area.
One time, a user I had always wanted to meet was in my shul on a weeknight when I wasn't there, and he assumed I lived on the other side of town, which he wouldn't have time to get to, so he didn't bother to contect me until after he'd left town.
@msh210 True, but Daniel claims to be a student whereas neither of the St. Louisans do AFAICT, so he is more likely to be using that sort of transportation
A mathematician, a physicist and a statistician went hunting for deer. When they chanced upon one buck lounging about, the mathematician fired first, missing the buck's nose by a few inches. The physicist then tried his hand, and missed the tail by a wee bit. The statistician started jumping up a...
@DoubleAA @msh210, I actually do have a car available for use. I work full time 40 minutes away during the summers and every so often during an academic quarter
@DoubleAA heheh some of those are very funny! (I'm just going down the list in order of votes, haven't gotten far yet)
> I went to visit him while he was lying ill at the hospital. I had come in taxi cab number 14 and remarked that it was a rather dull number. "No" he replied, "it is a very interesting number. It's the smallest number expressible as the product of 7 and 2 in two different ways."
Who knows fourteen?
Please cite/link your sources, if possible. After about one business day, I will:
Upvote all interesting answers.
Accept the best answer.
Go on to the next number.
^ What does that remind me of, from the Jewish world? Some saying of some rabbi I think....
Here, lemme quote it instead of just linking:
> A young mathematician comes to present to a famous mathematician his conjecture and ideas. "You are absolutely wrong," the famous mathematician dismissed the young one. Next enters another young mathematician and presents precisely the opposite conjecture. "You are absolutely wrong" replies the famous mathematician. The famous mathematician's wife interferes. "How could you tell both of them that they are wrong," she sais. "They have made completely opposite claims, one of them must be right!"
> "You are also wrong," replied the famous mathematician.
> A Jewish congregation was arguing over whether one should stand or sit during the Shema Yisroel. Half of the congregation said one should sit, the other half insisted one should stand. Every time the Shema was recited they shouted at each other, “Sit down!” and “Stand up!” The fighting became so bad that the congregation was split in two, each half contending that they knew the tradition in that synagogue.
> Finally, the rabbi decided to visit a one hundred year old member of the synagogue who was living in a nursing home. He took a delegation from each of the arguing sides with him to see the oldest member of the “shul”. “Now, tell us,” said the rabbi, “what is our tradition?” “Should we stand during the Shema?” “No,” said the old man. “That is not our tradition.” “Well, then,” said the rabbi, “ should we sit during the Shema?” “No,” the old man, “that is not our tradition.”
> “But we need to know what to do,” said the rabbi, “because our congregation members are fighting among each other.” “That,” said the oldest member of the congregation, “that is our tradition.”
@IsaacMoses No, it was something else. Something about how two parties are right but the one who intervenes (or something) is wrong. Don't remember the context though.
@shulem, people can reverse their votes. New visitors can see the revised answer and ignore earlier downvotes. I don't know why you have such a negative view of the users of the site who are trying so hard to welcome you and help you contribute meaningfully. — Seth J1 min ago
I'm somehow getting exhausted from all of this.
@doubleAA, @IsaacMoses, @MonicaCellio, and yes, @shulem, care to opine on my most recent edit?
@SethJ Honestly, I'm just happy it exists. It's beautiful and ingenious. (I was a little surprised to see an etrog holder as something a converso would need)
(or a seder plate)
@DoubleAA @IsaacMoses ooh, nice. I got no bones with that mistake, them
Wow. OK, so try to follow my train of thought here: 1. He can't possibly think there's a difference based on the English translation of the Hebrew word. 2. I don't get what this lizman/lezman distinction is. 3. He seems to be mistranslating the word and assigning too much significance to the spelling in the question. 4. He must think the difference is conveying different vowels in Hebrew (easy enough to correct). But, oh look, everyone's arguing with him. 5. They must also be bothered by his lizman/lezman focus.
I got to point 5 because I'd already mentally ruled out the possibility in point 1.
So what I think is going on is a mistranslation (point 3).
Still a bad answer (of bad first half of an answer) because of the mistranslation.
I think he inserts a definite article in lizman and therefore assumes that there is an "extra", thus redundant, definite article in lazman.
@IsaacMoses Yep, that's true. The grammatical point that needs to be weighed is whether the first word needs to match up (having a definite article itself) or can rely on the article in the second word. Which is actually a confusing point to a lot of people.