Physics for Flerfs 4, "Motion Under the Action of Gravity"

By the time of Newton it was already known that the planets revolve around the sun, with measurements, and it was possible to predict where they would be in the future (flerfs just say "nuh-uh" but can't predict the location of planets, even if they are just "lights on the dome"). What Newton added was an explanation of why it works like that.

Starting with the First Law of Motion, since objects move in straight lines unless acted upon by a force, there must be a force acting on the planets, directed towards the Sun. The same is true of the Moon orbiting around the Earth. Newton tried various models for this force, the only one that could produce results consistent with observations was proportional to the masses of the two bodies and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The equation for this is F = Gm₁m₂/r², where the m's are the masses of the two object, r is the distance between them, and G is measured by experiment, not predicted.

As it's always been measured to be the same, it's known as the gravitational constant and was first measured by Henry Cavendish in 1798 in an experiment that is often discussed in this group. Since gravity is a very weak force, it's necessary to use heavy weights as the two masses and eliminate air movement and vibrations. The book gives a measurement of G from 1942 as 6.673E-11 N m² / kg². That N stands for newton, the measurement of force in the metric system

(You've really made it in science if they don't just name the law after you, but also one of the variables in that law is measured in you's. This reminds me of how in Jewish sources, authors are sometimes referred to by the name of their book, rather than their own name, and a story about a professor who said that you may use the textbook on the final name, but he said the name of the author instead of the textbook, so one student got help from the author. For example, I've got a copy of "Bueche" in front of me right now, but if someone said you could consult Bueche (before 2015, when he passed away) it could be understood to mean either his textbook or the agent, settler, or even the person. I couldn't find that story, but I did find one of a student who was allowed to bring notes on a 3x5 card, and he did, only it was measured in feet rather than inches. I had a roommate in college who was allowed a single piece of paper, so he used a piece cut from a roll of paper that was intended for a computer plotter, which may have displayed less ingenuity than the friend in highschool who owned a photo enlarger and would make really tiny cheat-sheets. I'm not going to name you, even though I think the statute of limitations has run out)

Back to physics, once we have measured G, we can calculate the mass of the Earth. Without putting it on a scale in front of your eyes. The other values we need are the acceleration of falling objects and the radius of the Earth (thanks Eratosthenes).

Next is a section on how the laws of motion apply on an incline, but that's just trigonometry so I'm going to skip it.

Finally, projectile motion. This is for trajectories short enough for the curve of the Earth not to be noticeable. I suppose we should be glad that flerfs aren't trying to lob projectiles many miles and see where they land ...

For example, a baseball player (this reminds me of an exam I was one involved with in college, the had set up one of those "Physics for Poets" (in this school it was probably pre-laws and pre-MBAs, as pre-meds had to take standard science courses, and I didn't get an A in inorganic chemistry and the associated lab just to mess with the curve, that was just lagniappe) and there was a probability question involving playing cards and some students who got the wrong answers tried to blame it on that they didn't know how many cards were in a deck or suit) throws a ball, it is accelerated downward, and travels horizontally at a constant speed (these calculations will be simpler if the wind isn't blowing, and we can ignore friction from the air over the distances baseballs can be thrown, and this is why Superman should umpire rather than play) until it hits something.

So we use linear horizontal motion to compute the horizontal motion, and uniformly accelerated motion for the vertical part and can compute things such as how fast the ball is moving at any point, where it hits the ground, and how much time it takes until that happens.

Fisking "Gleason Flat Earth Map-True!"

 So this video was posted to Official Flat Earth & Globe Discussion. 

It happened like this, a member posted this diagram, which points out that FE maps are not useful for navigation in the Southern Hemisphere.

  

And a flerf responded with that video, saying How to use Gleasons why it's correct. You gotta use that maths stuff and not the purple stuff.

So I watched the video. Here's my response.

One fisk, coming up So we've got a YTer who calls himself Immune2BS. On first thought, is he also an anti-vaxxer? Well looking at the rest of his channel it would seem no, he's a one-conspiracy guy. So let's hear what he has to say.

He says he will explain why the Gleason map is accurate. He compares Australia on Gleason and Google Earth, or the globe if you will. They look different (we noticed). But the features of Australia are the same on each map, and he points to something near the Tropic of Capricorn meets the west coast of Australia, and everything has the same coordinates (yes, Gleason has the same coordinates for everything, it wouldn't even be a map projection were that not true). And the same thing happens where the tropic "exits out" on the west coast (he sounds surprised). And this also works where 135°E meets the south coast. How can that be?
Gleason looks like a clock and there's that think in the center that moves and indicates latitude. He superimposes circles every 15° from the North Pole (but takes a lot longer to say that, because he mentions the value of every stop from 90°N to 60°S when there's a skidding sound) Whoa! What happened here? There's more Earth the further south you get, and "when somebody decided to create a globe out of the flat earth" they had to elongate and stretch to make it work because there's 15° missing of latitude.

(I really don't know what he's going on about, 75°S is on the Gleason map. I listened to that part twice to make sure he was saying it. The lines of latitude aren't marked around Australia, but they are along the line of longitude that runs thru Greenland, which Gleason labeled 2PM. 75°S passed thru Antarctica on both his map and on the globe as well as any other projection on a map., see image below, it's from a better image of the map, but the very same map with the Boston Public Library stamp on at 3PM it that I found online. And it's hard to see in the blurry image that YouTube displays, but HIS map also has the same numbers at 2PM, he just didn't notice them)

From what he can tell, and this is just conjecture (his word) they started from the top, the North Pole area and everything got stretched as they got down to the quote unquote South Pole. Everything about this map makes sense. It is a clock and so is the world because the day is 24 hours. Even time zones make sense. He shows an image of the actual time zones and asks which makes more sense, that or this (but fails to explain why he thinks Gleason makes more sense).

Here are two details of the Gleason map, found here. In the first image I added a red arrow pointing out where he can't find 75°S on it, the second is a bit further zoomed out to show the library stamp, this is the same map as in the video.

Now he switches to a map made by someone called Tiger Dan (this video was made in 2016 so perhaps people who followed this debate then knew what this was, all I can tell is it has some airport codes added to it and Mr. BS calls it a fiasco) but it looks like Dan tried to make landmasses from a globe or some other projection work on a Gleason map.

Then there's someone named Brian Clark who supposedly found a flat earth map from 1920 in the Library of Congress (supposedly? Here it is on the Library of Congress site and it has latitude lines all the way out to 90 (once again, so does Gleason, but what's he saying, the LoC map was faked?).

Physics For Flerfs 3, Forces and Linear Motion

I split this up over several days, the only response I got from a flerf was "Falling in a circle.. lol", to which I responded that circular motion isn't until Chapter Eight

The Discovery of Physical Laws. No equations, just an essay. Physical laws are how we express how things behave. The purpose of research in physics is to discover them. We sometimes make mistakes, in which case we haven't discovered laws of nature, for example, Aristotle's belief that it was a law that heavier objects fall faster than light ones.

Even Galileo's law of falling bodies was incomplete, and doesn't work under conditions not available to him, but it was correct under the conditions under which he performed experiments. That's true of laws we discover, they well may be updated later on as we obtain new information.

But rarely is an accepted idea found to be entirely wrong (such as Aristotle's law of falling bodies), it usually needs to be modified to fit new discoveries, not entirely discarded. Newton was wrong about some things. So we don't accept a law because a famous scientist promoted it, but because it's been confirmed by experiment.

So Newton's first law of motion. A lab instructor may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Sorry about that, I'll try again.

OK, let's try the translation of Newton's words from Latin in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) that appears in the textbook: "Every body perseveres in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon". That might be a bit tightly packed, so let's take it apart.

"at rest" means not moving. If it's not moving, and nothing makes it move, it's not going to start. If it does so repeatedly, physicists will be all over it trying to figure out what made it move.

"uniform motion in a straight line" is the sort of motion described in the first two chapters. IRL things moving in straight lines will eventually slow down and stop due to friction (which will be covered later in this chapter), running into something (such as the walls of the lab room), falling off the table, hitting the ice wall (not really). But as we do an increasingly better job of reducing friction, objects travel for longer before they noticeably slow down.

What's not explained in the translated quote is "forces impressed thereon". Well since it wouldn't do to not have any equations, I went to Wikipedia and found this one, but it involves calculus, so I sneakily removed it.

Σ𝐅 = 0 ⟺ 𝐚 = 0 (the part to the left of the double-arrow was covered in my OP, it means that sum off all forces, expressed as vectors, is zero, or the forces all cancel out, there's no difference if there are no forces, or someone applies a force one one side and someone else applies an equal force on the other side, or there are dozens of forces at all different angles, but applying vector addition gives zero. The double arrow means that if the condition on the left is true, the right side will be observed, and also the other way around. The right side says that there will be no acceleration, if it's at rest it will stay at rest, if it's moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will go on doing that).

The book goes on to the Third Law (which isn't about lab assistants from protecting the lab from harm) before the Second (which isn't about lab assistants following orders of any tenured member of faculty) but I'm not having any of that. Wikipedia's expression of it in words is also easier to understand, "the rate of change of momentum of a body over time is directly proportional to the force applied, and occurs in the same direction as the applied force." Let's simplify matters and say the mass of the object isn't changing (it's not a melting ice cube or an airplane whose mass is reducing because fuel tanks are emptying) and the equation is

𝐅 = m 𝐚

It's necessary to explain the difference between weight and mass. mass is a more fundamental property of an object than weight. If you schlep (that's a technical term) an object to the top of a tall mountain, managing not to drop it along the way, it will weigh slightly less (why? the answer will astonish you!) but it will have the same mass, as can be demonstrated by trying to move it horizontally, it will take the same force to get it to accelerate by the same amount. This could also be demonstrated by a skydiver who had enough time to perform an experiment before it is time to pull the ripcord. To convert weight into mass, you just divide by the

The Third Law states that if object A exerts a force on object B, object B also exerts an equal and opposite force on object A.

Finishing up chapter 3, the force of friction is computed as f = μN where μ is the coefficient of friction (which varies according to the substances that are rubbing against one another, there's a chart that goes from wood over snow, about 0.06 to rubber over dry concrete, 0.7 to 1.0) and N is the normal force. "Normal" here isn't using the most common definition of the word but means perpendicular -the force exerted by the object on the surface on which it is traveling (and returned by the surface according to the Third Law of Motion) is at a right angle to the motion of the object across the surface. If the surface is level and the object is being pulled or pushed straight on (in the direction that it travels) the normal force is just its weight. But if it's being pulled at an angle, say a wagon that sits 8 inches off the ground pulled by a handle or string at an angle, or the surface is inclined, you'll have to use some trigonometry to calculate it.

It should be noted that there are two types of friction, kinetic, also called dynamic (when the object is moving) and static (just before it starts to move) which is higher, you may have noticed that it takes more force to start something sliding than to keep it moving. The examples of μ were for kinetic friction and the two coefficients of friction are labeled with subscripts, μₖ and μₛ.

Terminal velocity explains why Aristotle was wrong about light objects falling, the fall of objects is opposed by air resistance, which is greater for a light object and/or one with a large surface, and it also increases as the object moves faster, so eventually the two forces will have the same value (but in opposite directions) and the object will stop accelerating but fall at a constant velocity, known as terminal velocity The textbook doesn't explain how to calculate this velocity but gives some examples, a raindrop at 25 ft/sec, a person at 250 and points out that this will depend on the shape and orientation of the object, so if you're falling out of an airplane, how fast you'll be going before the sudden stop at the end depends on whether you are falling feet (or head) first or are prone and allowing you to try that yourself would violate the First Law of Lab Instructors as previously stated. But if you want to know how to compute terminal velocity for things other than yourself or your annoying roommate, see here

Physics For Flerfs 2, Uniformly Accelerated Motion.

Average speed is defined as distance traveled (or driven, if sovcits were around when this book was written neither the author nor I had heard of them yet and the book uses them both) divided by time. Symbolically, ū = d / t. The bar above the u means that it an average - if someone traveled ten feet (are we going to stay in English units throughout the book or switch to metric at some point?) in two seconds, they didn't necessarily at 5 feet/second for the entire two seconds, but that is their average speed.

Now to velocity, the average velocity vector 𝘃̄ which is the displacement vector divided by time (we covered displacement vectors in chapter 1, see "driving 30 miles east".

If we want to measure the speed or velocity at a particular instant, and we're not Zeno, we don't find it impossible to compute it. Since we're not allowed to divide by zero (they taught you that in math class, right? Don't do that, that's where black holes come from) what we do is *almost* divide by zero, we measure the distance traveled over increasingly smaller intervals, and as ∆t (the interval) *approaches* zero in the above equations we approach an instantaneous speed.

If you want to know more about this, you probably should be taking Physics with calculus, but this textbook is for Physics without calculus.

Well now we can define acceleration (and with autocorrect we can even spell it), which happens when an object changes its velocity. It is that change in velocity divided by time, 𝗮̄ = (𝐯 - 𝐯₀) / t, where 𝐯₀ is the velocity at the start, and 𝐯 is the velocity at the end (of time t).

Since the velocities are vectors, so is acceleration. This chapter only deals with motion in a straight line, no curves or turns.

There's a long note about understanding equations instead of just memorizing them and one thing I want to mention is the suggesting there about examining the limiting form of equations, the example they give is that if acceleration is zero, 𝐯 - 𝐯₀ must also be zero, so 𝐯 = 𝐯₀. Yes, that should be obvious, and if the equations give a result that isn't, we have to reconsider whether the fault is with the equation, how we applied it, or with our sense of what is obvious.

(A joke, not in the book: A professor was notorious for leaving complicated demonstrations to the students, with no more than a remark that "It is obvious that..." One day a student interrupted. "Professor, is it really obvious that the second line follows from the first?" The professor looked at the board, wrinkled his brow, paced about the room for a few minutes, then, triumphantly said, "Why yes, it is obvious." In another version he goes back to his office for most of the class and appears breathlessly just before the class ends, with the same conclusion)

OK, now we get into dangerous territory, Galileo's observations about, um, things fall down go boom boom. (there is a hilarious video by a flerf who can't understand how gas gradients work and doesn't believe in gravity, that's something he kept shouting during the video. I think it was at a fellow flerf who was trying not to be quite as ignorant) While Aristotle thought that heavier things do that faster than lighter ones and for about two millennia that was accepted as fact (Aristotle lived 384 - 322 BCE, Galileo 1564 - 1642 CE), Galileo conducted experiments. He increased the time it takes objects to fall by rolling spheres down a slope, we reproduced this experiment in the course where I used this book, and to quote "it is not unlikely that in you laboratory work you will perform an experiment to check his results").

For whatever reason (scientists are baffled!) things fall down at close to 32.2 feet per second squared. Or 9.8 meters per second squared. So here's a sample problem, a stone is dropped from a bridge over water It takes 3 seconds for it to hit the water's self-seeking level So a (don't worry, I'm not calling it g) is 32 ft / sec², v₀ = 0, so the distance is ½at² or 0.5 * 32 * 3 * 3, or 144 seconds (see last equation below)

To sum up, here are all of the equations in scalar form (the same thing happens with vectors but the book wrote them as scalars and I'm tired of going to the site that turns text bold.

s = v̄t (displacement is average velocity multiplied by time, This is the definition of average velocity, rearranged to have displacement on the left side of the equation instead of velocity)

v̄ = ½(v + v₀) (average velocity is the sum of the starting and ending speed divided by two)

v = v₀ + at (final velocity is initial velocity plus acceleration multiplied by time. This is the definition of acceleration, rearranged)

v² = v₀² + 2as (this one is a bit more complicated, we take the definition of average velocity (v̄, two equations above) and plug them into the average velocity equation, the first one in this comment, to get s = ½(v + v₀)t, then replace t by its value from the definition of acceleration and get s = ½(v + v₀)(v + v₀)/a and rearrange that to get v² - v₀² = 2as and then move the v₀² to the right side. Wow, all that algebra we studied turns out to be good for something.

Next time, Forces and Linear Motion

Like

Comment

Share

Physics for Flerfs 1, Vectors and Balanced Forces

Because reasons, I'm a member of a group called Official Flat Earth & Globe Discussion, where flat-earthers (or people who think it's funny to pretend to be flat-earthers) post stupid things, get quickly refuted, but don't understand it, or people who've studied science write about science and the flerfs respond with laugh reactions, incomprehensible memes, quotes from Scriptue, and "nuh-uh". One of the things is that they don't just disbelieve that the Earth is a sphere (or a sphere that's slightly wider around the equator than around the poles, or even one that's slightly larger in the southern hemisphere than the northern), they also don't believe in gravity. So I decided to teach an introductory physics course there to see if they disagreed with anything else.

I only got one response to the first chapter, and it was questions about God, so I blocked the idiot. So anyway I'm going to post them on my wall too, because why not? I'll use the hashtag #PhysicsForFlerfs

So I went to find the simplest science textbook on my bookshelves, I picked Principles of Physics, F. Bueche, 2nd edition, 1972 which is for a general physics course without calculus. If I had taken physics at engineering school there would have been a higher-level course but I did my basic sciences at a liberal arts college where this is what they used.

So let's start in chapter 1, "Vectors and Balanced Forces".

An example of a vector is given as driving 30 miles east, it includes both magnitude (the 30 miles) and direction (east) as opposed to a scalar, e.g. driving 30 miles but not specifying which way. It gives several examples of vector addition, for example if someone goes 30 miles east and then 10 miles north, the Pythagorean theorem shows that they've gone the square root of 1000 miles, and drawing a scale diagram and using a protractor (not even trigonometry until a few pages later) shows the angle.

There are also examples of forces expressed as vectors. Let's leave out things we disagree about and do them on a table. If several forces are applied to an object, say it is being pulled on via strings from various directions, the total force can be computed by adding all the force vectors.

Quantities that are vectors appear in boldface, for example a force will be written as 𝐅

Now we get to to an object at rest. If all the forces on that object on a table are balanced, say one person applies a force of 10 pounds from one direction, and another does the same from exactly opposite the first, it won't move. This can be expressed in an equation, an object is at equilibrium if Σ𝐅 = 0, the Greek letter indicates "the sum of" so if all the forces add (via vector addition) to zero, the object won't move, or if it was already moving, it will continue to move as it would without those forces.

Fisking "The Lost History of Flat Earth"

A flerf (flat-earther) posted this video to Official Flat Earth & Globe Discussion.  It's 5 hours (!) long, but I'm listening to it at double-speed.  The channel it's on is called Flat Earth Sun, Moon & Zodiac Clock app and was made by "a guy named Ewaranon" who used to have a channel of his own on YouTube but it's now deleted.

15 seconds of silence because dead air is cool.  Actually better than "Greensleeves" which plays behind the drone of his voice and goes on for a while.  I.  Can't.  Listen.  At.  The.  Pace.  He.  Talks. At, so I'll be listening at double-speed.

Once you are awake it's hard to fall back asleep (but watch this video, maybe you'll get bored).  Cartoon of the snow globe. Blather about satanic scientific priests (pics of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, Stephen Hawking) not being reliable.  Drawing (not to scale) of Solar System.  The barbaric mining of Earth's once-majestic giant trees (pic of a geological formation, so we're going to cover all the crazy here)

If they lied about all of the above how can we trust them about anything?  (Well maybe first prove that they did?)

The first power tool was invented in 1895.  So how were ancient buildings constructed without power tools?  (I am not making this up).  Step wells (cool pics, but what's the problem?  yeah, takes longer using hand tools, but that's all, guy who most certainly could not have created the app he's selling).  Giant canal networks   So I looked up the Erie Canal, that predated 1895, but while I was doing that, he said it was allegedly built in 1825 and then he starts reading from Wikipedia about how the engineers were novices and not trained as civil engineers. (So he's claiming it was built by aliens or ancient humans and no one noticed it was already there when they went to build it?)

Same claim about castles.  Did you know most were built without plumbing or heat?  (do you even have a point?)  And the impossible pyramids, and apparently slavery never happened (scholars now believe that the pyramids were not built by slaves).  And air shafts align with stars.(so?).  And he's got some problem with bastion forts (the geometry is better than he can draw freehand?)  They couldn't see them from above, and we couldn't do this today (he couldn't).  This is as silly as the heliocentric model (oh right, didn't I start watching a flerf video?)

So on to his explanation for all the thing he can't understand.  Ancient civilizations used flat-earth (henceforth FE) to do all this, and our history is only 200 years old.  Does he sound mad?  (yes, why did you even need to ask).  So you have to swallow this load of unsupported assertions to understand FE.  We cannot waste time (which is why this goes on for FIVE HOURS) and he can't tell the truf in a linear fashion.  A lot of history is guesswork (what then would be the right label for this?  Historical dadaism?).  A quote from "a so-called Napoleon" about history being agreed-upon lies.

Oh, good, he's run out of Greensleeves.  Now he's got some chord progression in a loop.

1860 in St. Petersburg.  500,000 people lived there but where are they?  (maybe because photos took a long time to expose then so they either took the photos when the streets were empty or kept people out, to avoid blurs as people moved during the shot?).  A shadow shows it's early morning or late afternoon, and he thinks this means the streets should be full (well it's June 18, that's pretty close to the Summer Solstice, so when is sunrise there today?  3:35 AM and 22:24 PM.  I'm not often one of them, but a lot of people are asleep at those times.  Just this morning I took at taxi home at 5:30 AM, there weren't a lot of people on the streets then.)  Same thing in Moscow.  Edinburgh and Copenhagen in the 1840's.  Dresden, Rio, Toronto, Athens, 1860's.  Then street scenes with people from London and Paris.

The first photo, we are told was in 1822 (well 1826, close enough) and the art of photography uses juxtaposition, comparison and contrast but they're not in these early photos and I think he's trying to say that the contrast in the photos from Russia are that the cities are large enough to hold millions of residents (just an assertion) but only had half a million residents.  Population data shows linear increase since 1764 and many of the building in the photo were older than the photos (you don't say!).  Did the Russians build these buildings for people who didn't live here yet (we don't have any photos between 1764 and 1860, so we have no information as to the capacity of the cities over the span of a century).

Another contrast between the population and the environment. Leap of illogic to the impossibility of the architecture, no evidence of impossibility.  During indoctrination in school we rarely see old photos of cities because when we marinate (did he say that?  sounds like that and auto-caption thinks so, too) on those images and see promotive Victorian people looking tiny in comparison to the buildings we (if we are idiots) have doubts.  Amount and weight of limestone in the Arc de Triomphe.  How did they do it? 

Don't settle for less

How do we do it
How do we do it
Volume! volume!
Turn up the volume! - Tom Waits, "Step Right Up"

Photos of sculptures and the geometric patterns on the arch. And he's back to power tools again.  He doesn't believe people can do things by hand.  More features he couldn't do himself with a 3D printer let alone a chisel.  More contemporary photos from Paris, some other grand structures and some less so as he thinks should be all that exists in a horse-and-cart civilization. A photo of the arch from 40 years after it was build "suggests" that it is much older because he knows how fast limestone weathers.

In late 19th century Moscow people are shown in a photo of "the infamous Red Square".  More blather about how they couldn't have possibly built this, and why are the roads in bad shape if they had technology?   The Crystal Palace of London predates automatic glass manufacture. Why did they spend more money on buildings than on mud-free roads?

OK, I'm going to skip more of the same argument with examples from other parts of the world.  

We're up to Episode III, "Inheritors of Mud and Magnificence".  Nope, I didn't record the previous section titles. OK, they were Volume I, "Buried in Plain Sight", Episode I, "Questioning His-Story", and Episode II, "A Lens into the Past"

2011 earthquake in New Zealand.  Soil liquefaction occurred  (yes, it did).  Other examples.  So his claim is the muddy roads (but no collapsed buildings as happened in his earthquake examples) are the result of similar earthquakes which no one recorded because reasons. Bu he's mot done, there are also windows close to the ground or partially below (why?  to get light into the basement).  He has no idea why someone would install a basement before there were power tools let alone use columns.

He claims there was a global event.  Dickens opened "Bleak House" with a mention of mud in the streets, as if a flood had just ended (as if, if it actually happened why didn't he say so, and if it was suppressed by "them", why did "they" let him print that?).  Photos of soil moving shows the soil or mud had only recently arrived and "they" are hiding the truf.  Back to literature of the time, that is concerned with marriage female chastity and orphans and adoption.  It seems that the orphans weren't actually orphaned, but separated from their mothers (no evidence) because they were born outside marriage.  Lots of photos of orphanages.  Lots of pics of orphans, real information about how they were mistreated, some photos of children working in factories.

And then amusement parks (wait, what was the point of all of that about orphans?) which used to have Infantoriums where premature babies were on display in incubators.  Yeah that was a thing, it seems that they were funding infant care thru admission fees.  But he's suspicious.  Why would people pay to see babies?  Maybe they'd never seen one before.  And how could they have had the tech (glass?  warmth?  what's the problem here?)  Did the US even have a large enough population to produce all those preemies?  And Martin A. Couney who was involved with the Infantoriums seems not to have had a medical degree and a silent film star may have had a child die and/or adopted a baby through one of these amusement parks but it's not in her official biography.

So what was this all about?  Repopulation.  Chastity was justification for stealing children.  The cities looked empty because no one lived there, and thirty years later they were populated by orphans who were sent to live in them.  (I'm really confused, if you had empty cities, why not encourage families to move there instead of taking away children?  And if you had a population shortage, why insist on chastity?  If you can invent chastity out of thin air, do they opposite and convince women to have babies nonstop, married or not)

What does this have to do with FE, he asks, assures us it will make sense.  He's been yammering for an hour, good thing YouTube will play it at 2X.  Once again we don't have much time (only four hours left) and I have stuff to do, too, so I think I'll stop here. and pick it up later with Episode IV.

Update: why not watch some real physics lectures instead?  Here's a series of lectures by Richard Feynman.  

Jerusalem Municipal Election Debate, October 17

The debate was held at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.  Eight of the sixteen parties running were represented.  I did not hear if all 16 parties were invited and some declined to send a speaker, or some were not invited at all.  Two of the lists also represented candidates for mayor.  There's a third candidate for mayor, who I haven't heard anything about, his party wasn't there either.  On the stage was a moderator (whose name I did not write down), a stand-up comedian (why?) who told some jokes before the debate (why?), had a gong to let speakers know when their time was up (why a gong?), and interrupted speakers with remarks that were sometimes serious questions and sometimes jokes.

The candidates were mostly party heads, two lists sent people from lower down on the list.  First they got up and briefly introduced themselves, I didn't write what they said then because I was taking pictures, which are on Facebook.  In the order that they were called on to speak, they were (with the letters on their ballots next to their names)

נר Roi Folkman, #6 Yerushalayim Tatzliach (Nir Barkat's list) 
ץ Naomi Tzur, head of Ometz Lev
מחל Hila Yedid Barzilai, #7 Likud-Beiteinu (Moshe Leon's list)
ים Rachel Azaria, head of Yerushalmim (I'm voting for this list)
מרצ Pepe Alalú, head of Meretz Havoda 
ק Aryeh King, head of Yerushalyim Meuchedet
טב Dov Kalmanovitz, head of Habayit Hayehudi 
הת Ofer Berkovitz, head of Hitorrerut


The first part of the debate was about religious/secular issues.

The Likud speaker was asked whether the party is haredi or dati/secular.  She said that it supports the status quo, what is open will remain open.  Aryeh Deri (whose Shas party is supporting Leon) is not their spokesman.  Asked if Moshe Leon actually lives in Jerusalem she said he was selected by the primaries process and if he was not eligible to run for mayor he would have been disqualified then.

The Barkat speaker (I'm going to use that instead of Yerushalayim Tatzliach) was asked about Cinema City (which Barkat has supported not opening on Shabbat), and he didn't quite answer that question, instead he said that there will be no incursions of religious institutions into secular neighborhoods and entertainment on Shabbat will continue.  Why do some chassidic groups support Barkat?  He hopes the pluralistic parties will get more seats but Barkat needs a large party to resist haredi pressure (that wasn't exactly an answer either, so much as he needed to get that said).

The Hitorrerut speaker said that Barkat will be better able to resist haredi pressure if you vote for the pluralistic parties and said that his party had kept Ramat Sharet from going haredi.

The Yerushalmim speaker mentioned the fight against exclusion of women (a term which I've heard her credited for bringing from academic articles into political discussions), fight extremists, strengthen moderates.  As an example of strengthening haredi moderates she said she had helped with a haredi school that will prepare students for matriculation exams.

The Bayit Yehuda speaker said the party has a new message, it is inclusive, is a bridge between religion and secular parties.  Asked why religious voters should vote for him when all the lists have religious people he said this is a problem, they should be unified, which sounded to me like he was saying that all datiim ought to support his party.

Meretz: we opened the city on Shabbat, restaurants, movies, entertainment, the Karta parking lot.  There should be shared taxis on Shabbat but they will not put discos in haredi neighborhoods.  Cinema City should be open on Shabbat.

Ometz Lev: for 15 years haredi schools have been taking over dati/secular schools, we're a diverse list with datiim, a sefardi woman, and a woman rabbi.

King: Agrees with previous speaker that haredi takovers of schools is a problem but the reason is that they weren't given enough schools in their own neighborhoods.  Atarot airfield should have been turned into a Jewish neighborhood, but it wasn't, so they have to try to take over secular areas.


The next section was about employment and housing.

Berkovitz was asked: your list promised to work against ghost apartments (apartments bought by people who don't live in the country and keep them empty most of the time) but the number has increased.  He said that they're raising taxes on them and want to tax other unoccupied property (like uninhabited buildings which currently are exempt from tax) so the owners will renovate them and sell/rent them.

King asked Berkovitz about building in East Jerusalem, Berkovitz's answer was unclear (I wrote "waffle" in my notes).

Kalamovitz said he is an accountant, there is not enough money, the problems need help from the national government and his party holds the housing ministry and other useful ones

Alalú said build 5,000 units in the Talpiot Industrial Zone.

Folkman said he hopes the Bayit Yehudi ministers work for everyone and that this is not a banana republic.  There should be more places to work for Arabs and Haredim, small apartments and rentals should be built for young families, about 2,000 apartments were built but this is not enough, existing buildings should be expanded or demolished to make room for more units.

Azaria said that there are empty units in unattractive neighborhood like Talpiot Mizrach and Gonen, so she is working to improve things like schools so people will want to live there, sort of like New Yorkers can live in Brooklyn and commute to Manhattan.

Tzur: the problem is demand, not supply, the construction industry waits for demand before building, make people want to live here.  The railway park improves the quality of life.

Barzilai: Leon raised money when he was head of the Jerusalem Development Authority and will continue if he is mayor.


The next section was about transportation, property tax, and sanitation

Barzilai continued that Leon will raise money to increase the sanitation budget.  Asked about an election poster that says that Jerusalem has property taxes like Manhattan and services like Damascus, but isn't that because her (haredi) voters don't pay property taxes.  She said they are exempted according to law.  It should be easier to get building permits.

Berkovitz: create services to help small business.  Property taxes should be reduced for people who can't work, but not for the voluntarily poor.  At this point he left to go to another event.

Alalú: the Interior Ministry got in the way of reforms, such as updating property tax rates in changing neighborhoods.  People used to go to Tel Aviv for entertainment.  We need to help students find jobs so they will stay in the city.

Tzur: improve sanitation by fining litterers

King: train teenagers to not litter, dumpsters are more important that culture.

Kalamovitz: property taxes do not raise enough money to fund the city, collect it from more residents so we can clean the city.

Azaria spoke about the number two on the Likud list, Dudi Amsalem, who like Leon, does not live in Jerusalem.  He currently works in the municipality and she looks forward to how he'll have to leave that job to become a city councillor and will no longer be able to hold up programs approved by the council..  Bus lines should be rearranged so they don't mostly head into the center of town to make it easier to get crosstown faster.

Folkman: transportation problems were inherited from previous administrations.  There should be more light rail lines (someone from the audience shouted out, and run by a different company, he said he agreed but didn't know if that would be possible), and sanitation should be privatized.


The next round was about who each list supports for mayor.

Barzilai was asked "why an accountant from Givatayim" (which is where Leon is from), she said look at his resume (someone from the audience shouted, also his criminal resume).

Folkman: Barkat kept a coalition together, engages in honest politics

Alalú: most of us (in his list) are for Barkat but he's not for either.  Palestinians are 37% of the population but get 13% of the budget, sanitation is much worse in Arab neighborhoods.

Tzur: I support Barkat, but no party endorsement.  Neither mayor's list has a woman before position six.  Half of the council should be women.

King: we had three parlor meetings in East Jerusalem, he doesn't trust Barkat who he calls a leftist.  The party isn't endorsing anyone, he will vote for Leon.

Kalamovitz: polls show the datiim support Barkat (which wasn't quite the question).  When asked who he'll vote for, said "what does it matter?"

Azaria: we had problems with Barkat, but given the choice, we support him.  She asked if she could add a word about East Jerusalem, when the moderator said "just one word", she said just "yes", which wasn't very clear.


After the debate, they showed All The King's Men (the 2006 version).  Critics generally preferred the 1949 version.

Rabbi David Stav at Beit Knesset Hanasi, April 3 2013

Rabbi David Stav (RDS from now on) is the rabbi of the city of Shoham and head of the Tzohar organization which might disagree with this, but functions as sort of an alternative to the official Israeli Rabbinate.  He's running for the next Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel.  Elections are supposed to happen this year, the law states that the committee is made up of rabbis and representatives of various political bodies but I haven't found the details.

I got there not too late, there were no seats on the main level so I went to the women's balcony, where you could only see anything if you sat at the seats immediately next to the edge of the balcony which also were full.  I had to stand in the aisle to take a photo.

RDS said that unlike what people are used to from where they came from, rather than having community rabbis who know their congregants, Israel has state rabbis.  It would be impossible for the Jerusalem municipal rabbis to get to know even a small part of the people in Jerusalem and that's why no one minded that the jobs have been empty for years.  Jews can only get married through the rabbanut within Israel (but can get married in other countries and it will be recognized here) and this didn't bother anyone when the state was founded.  In recent decades, immigrants from the former USSR, from North and South America, and secular Israelis have created dissatisfaction with this system.

Rabbis are political appointees, they are not selected by the communities they are responsible for.  Some don't even live where they are rabbis.  He told a story of a mayor who did not want the rabbi that the minister (presumably the Minister of Religious Affairs) wanted him to accept, the minister replied that he would pay his salary, and anyway, you'll never see him.  Rabbis represent parties, not the people.  Cities with secular or national-religious majorities get non-Zionist rabbis.

Examples of how the system fails to work and imposes inappropriate stringencies:

A city turned out to not have an eruv although it once had one.  The municipal rabbi said that there was no need for one, because a God-fearing Jew does not rely on an eruv.  The result is more people violating Shabbat.

OU dairy products were not allowed at establishments with kashrut supervision from the Rabbanut, because it's not Chalav Yisrael.  The basic level of supervision should allow that.

A story of a family of immigrants, the wife converted to Judaism before marriage, but she and her children were made to "redo" the conversion in Israel just to be safe.  Years later, one of the daughters is a komanarit (no one in the audience had an English translation for this) in Bnei Akiva (the point of this, I suppose, is to show their integration into the mainstream national-religious community) and wanted to marry a Cohen.  The same rabbi who had them do the re-conversion sent her to a religious court, that couldn't reach a decision but said, what's the big deal, let them marry other people.  That might be reasonable in a community with arranged marriages but the ruling shows a lack of consideration of how other people live their lives.  If we insist that everyone get married through the rabbis they can't act like this.  Tzohar wrote a ruling that the original conversion was valid, the re-conversions were unnecessary, and so the daughter could marry a Cohen.

Telling a woman who is already living with her partner before marriage that unless she starts to go to the mikveh it will lead to cancer (and to couples who wait until marriage, that's OK?)

Questions from the audience.

Heter Mechiria?  Yes.  The pressure to be stringent is not just halachic but also comes from financial interests, such as importers.  Rabbi Shlomo Auerbach said not to be stringent or restaurants will give up their kashrut supervision during Shmitah, and find they can get along with out it.  This is already  happening in Jerusalem.  The national Rabbinate left the decision on whether to accept the heter up to local Rabbinates, and farmers went to the Supreme Court which overturned the decision.  He also opposes buying Palestinian produce, says this supports murder (applause from the audience).

Why not let the Rabbinate go on as it has and have Tzohar as an alternative?  To prevent the people splitting into two nations who can't marry one another.

What about Agunot?  Judges can impose penalties against husbands who refuse to grant a Get but are reluctant.  Doing so would solve 90% of the cases.  He also supports prenuptial agreements but not conditional marriages or hafkaat kiddushin.

Religious pluralism?  He is orthodox, will not recognize non-orthodox conversions or divorces but will allow choice.  Shoham is 80% secular - really secular, Meretz voters (a suggestion to journalists - interview some of them) and he will support any request to set up a non-orthodox congregation with 40 signatures, which is also the rule for orthodox ones, but they haven't gotten that many.  If they do he'll compete by attending simchas when asked, gave an example of a secular family having a Zeved Habat he is attending.  This family, he says, will have Bar Mitzvahs for boys in a local orthodox shul instead of going to Beit Daniel in Tel Aviv.

Standards fro community rabbis including mentoring by community rabbis from outside Israel?  Yes, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

How to influence the election process for Chief Rabbi?  Lobby the members of the election committee  talk to Bennet or whoever else you voted for.  (I thought the answer was going to be about who would be on the committee, for example there's a discussion going on right now about whether to appoint women.)

A long speech/question, the speaker told how she cried when she found that gay marriages performed abroad were recognized in Israel, what can the Rabbinate do against this and against gay parades in holy Jerusalem?  Not a priority, he doesn't plan to address it during his first ten years (which is the length of the Chief Rabbi's term, and they currently aren't allowed to be re-appointed, although there is talk of changing that so the current CRs can continue)

Will RCA conversions be accepted?  Yes.

A comment - we have a Haredi CR where I live and we like him.  RDS replied that he isn't against Haredi rabbis, he wants rabbis who care about people.

Organ donation?  RDS has an ADI card, supports the procedure already approved by the Rabbanut.

Israeli Election Debate at Jerusalem Great Synagogue, Jan 9 2013

I wasn't planning on going to this, but there were no shows earlier in the evening that I wanted to see, so I went.  I had avoided other election events up to now, not because I can't understand a Hebrew debate, I just had more entertaining things to do.

I don't think I've been to the Jerusalem Great Synagogue since the Shabbat it opened, sometime in the 80's, when I stopped in to use the bathroom and stayed for their inaugural kiddush.  It was cold inside, I don't know if the heat wasn't on or it takes a long time to warm up, there's a very high ceiling.  Or at least where I was sitting.

Each of the speakers got five minutes, then there were questions from the audience, and then the speakers got two more minutes to conclude.  There wasn't any explanation (or I missed it) of how the parties that were invited were selected, whether any were excluded, or had been invited but declined to participate.  One of the people who introduced the debate, or maybe the moderator, said that debates in English had not been held in some other cities because parties hadn't agreed to participate.

I'm going to just say what candidates are doing now, not give their whole resume.

The Likud-Beitenu list sent Israel's Public Diplomacy (I'm not quite sure what that means, isn't that the Foreign Minister's job?) and Diaspora Minister, Yuli Edelstein, #18 on the list.  Although the Likud's campaign has mainly been "vote for us, we're going to win anyway" rather than their record, he spoke about accomplishments of the government and said that this was the most efficient government he has been in and how Israel's economy is in better shape than the UK or France (no figures were given to support this claim).  Netanyahu is the only candidate who can resist pressure from the US and UK and a strong "anchor party" will deal with issues.

Labor sent its #2, MK Yitzchak Herzog.  Not the former chief rabbi of Ireland and later the British Mandate and Israel, but that's his grandfather.  Labor established the state, is the only alternative to the Likud.  Social justice, close social gap, reduce burden on middle class.  The Labor campaign has been criticized for just speaking about social issues but Herzog also mentioned the two-state solution, to maintain a Jewish majority in a democracy.  A ten billion shekel deficit in the proposed next budget (I don't know where we are in the budget approval process right now) was hidden for months.  Netanyahu has failed disastrously leading to the UN vote (recognizing Palestine as a non-member state) and Hamas gains.

Naftali Bennet, #1 on the Bayit Hayehudi list (mainly what was once the National Religious Party, but they constantly splinter and recombine with splinters) spoke at this point to show how much he values Anglo voters.  The speaker who appeared on the program was Jeremy Gimpel, who Bennet pointed out is the only Anglo in a realistic spot on any party's slate.  (I'm not sure if this was a reason to vote for them or just a dig at some other Anglo candidates on the panel who are not expected to get in).  (Although Gimpel, at #14, is not a sure thing, either).  He told a story about Rabbi Aryeh Levine who said to a soldier that he couldn't see if he was wearing a kippah or not, all he could see from his height was his heart.  He wants to remove barriers including those between Jews and Arabs and Druze.  He agrees with 70% of what Herzog says (the social issues) but is the Palestinian issue the only one?  (Based on the rest of what he and later Gimpel talked about, it seems so).  He wants there to be a strong, secure Israel, the Jewish leader of the world, to bring the Haredim and Arabs into society.  He vehemently opposes a Palestinian state (applause at this point, his supporters think this, if not the only issue, is the most important one).  No one's going anywhere but they can work together and even shop in the same supermarkets.

Dov Limpan, #14 on the Yesh Atid said the Knesset is a place to pass legislation, not just for slogans.  50% of first graders are Arabs or Haredim, he's not against either group but the problem is that they aren't part of society, they need to do the army or national service and then participate in the workforce.  Netanyahu agrees with this.  The education system needs a complete overhaul to become one of the top ten in the word, Bennet agrees wit this.  Haredi schools need secular subjects, secular schools need more Zionism.  Soldiers and university students should get housing subsidies.  The threshold for getting into the Knesset should be raised.

Alon Tal, #13 on the Hatenua list (which the program listed as "The Tzippi Livni party")  spoke about the environment (he comes from the Israeli Green Party which ran together with Meimad in the last elections), not losing the chance for a two-state solution.  If you agree with Bennet's opposition to a Palestinian state don't vote for us.  Tzippi Livni comes from a Revisionist background (her parents were in the Irgun and she started out in the Likud) and believes we have a right to the West Bank but told of a tombstone in the US West of someone who "insisted on all his rights" or something like that, I didn't write down the exact quote.  Holding on to the West Bank will either lead to apartheid or a loss of the Jewish majority.  The economy depends on the peace process.  He's in favor of pluralism, he's a gabbai at at Conservative shul, his daughter was spit on as part of Women of the Wall.  The government has not spoken about segregated bus lines.  800 people die each year from air pollution,.

Laura Wharton, #11 on the Meretz list   Elections are for the Knesset, not the government, Meretz values legislation.  Agrees with Tal about the two-state solution, it's an illusion that the current situation can go on.  Bennet said that there are 1.8 million Palestinians in the territories, she says the number is around 3 million.  As Ehud Barak said, the solution is "we're here, they're there".  Soldiers should be on the border, not policing in the territories (some applause).  No Meretz member has been investigated for a crime.  Social justice - stop tax breaks for corporations, spend it on education.  A sane, safe country with recognized borders.

Aryeh Eldad, #1 on the Otzmah Leyisrael list and currently a National Union MK (some of the National Union went with the Bayit Yehudi list.  The next two candidates on his list are "former" Kach members, also from the National Union.)  As a doctor in the burn unit during the 2nd Intifada he decided that instead of treating victims he would move to politics to practice "preventative medicine" (which is probably vague enough to not get disqualified as a candidate).  He prevents the creation of a Palestinian state there, he says.  The land belongs to us and no one else.  Giving away land is based on a "misdiagnosis", the war is a religious war (enthusiastic applause, but two of the right-wing applauders were sitting directly in front of me and it was hard to tell how widespread the applause was.)  Jordan is Palestine.  Netanyahu favors a two-state solution and so his party will not join the government.

Menachem ShemTov from Shas (If he's a candidate, he's not in the top 16) says Shas is in favor of social justice and is a bridge between extremists from Meah Shearim and the secular because its voters have relatives among both groups.  It's not a start-up.  There already are two states, Caesarea (a rich town) and Jerusalem.  Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's daughter started a haredi college and Shemtov is involved in the Nachal Haredi.  (He has nothing to say about the Palestinian issue because he hasn't gotten instructions yet about that, I think.).

By the time for questions, Gimpel is now there in place of Bennet.  The first questioner asks each partt to say what they mean by Jewish and democratic and who decides (I think he had more questions but the moderator cut him off, and said that future questions should be directed at only one candidate).  Answers: Shas - the Bible. Otzma Leyisrael - the Torah is the common denominator but obligations are important (sometimes speakers will shove their key points in where they don't answer the question, their campaign is about how Arabs, who don't serve in the army, don't deserve rights, without going into specifics, they are vague about how this would apply to Haredim or people who are obligated to serve but refuse, or at least I haven't seen their answer). Likud - quotes Yosef Burg that what's important in Religious-Zionism is the hyphen, all students should visit Jerusalem.  Labor - all citizens should be equal and there should be freedom of religion, what makes the state Jewish is symbols and holidays.  Social justice is Jewish.  Bayit Yehudi - restore Jewish pride.  50% of sodiers have never been to Jerusalem.  Yesh Atid - Gimpel would make a great leader in NCSY but don't force his Judaism on anyone.  We persecute Russian immigrants as non-Jews after they were persecuted in Russia for being Jews.  Meretz - Herzl write a book called "The State of the Jews", not "The Jewish State".  Supports culture, tolerance, something needs to be done for the 10,000 couples who marry abroad because they can't marry in Israel or don't want to get married through the Rabbinate.

The next questioner asked the Yesh Atid representative what his red line is about a nuclear Iran, he said we can't tolerate them having nukes but must act together with the US and EU.

Someone asked all the candidates about a personal problem which wasn't clearly explained, he described himself as a stateless person from Egypt, the moderator said this wasn't the right place for that and he walked out, came back in shouting, was shown to the door by a security person, this went on for a while.

For Labor: how to get Abbas to return to negotiations?   Herzog started by objecting to Eldad's support for Jordan as Palestine, Abbas strengthens Netanyahu by refusing to negotiate, start from the December 2000 Clinton parameters which would keep Gush Etzion where Gimpel lives before we lose that too.  Eldad responded that it was King Hussein who said that Jordan is Palestine.

To the Likud, why did VAT and gas prices rise and corporate tax decrease?  Edelstein said that gas recently went down but the press didn't report on that.  Socialist overtaxing is counterproductive, the government created 350,000 jobs and a strong Likud will continue economic reforms.

Also to the Likud, will Netanyahu capitulate to foreign pressure on housing starts in the territories, Edelstein cited a Peace Now report about construction during the last four years which he says will continue.

A question about energy policy, Alon (Hatenuah) is in favor of Israel being the first carbon-neutral energy-independent country with renewable energy, Edelstein says that the government created a committee, Yes Atid and Meretz have plans on their websites.

A woman who I had previously noticed reading a biography of Kahane asked why the Levy report (Report on the Legal Status of Building in Judea and Samaria) was not fully translated into English.  Edelstein said he would look into it, Gimpel that the real question is why it was not implemented, why did the people elect a right wing government and get a housing freeze?  His is the only real right wing party.

Will Bayit Yehudi commit to stay out of the government without a commitment to its principles?  Gimpel didn't answer the question but attacked Yair Lapd, head of Yesh Atid as a leftist.  Wharton of Meretz said that right wing prime ministers move to the left, perhaps they get wiser with time.  Shemtov (Shas) said the issue is bread and butter, not the Palestinians.

That was the end of the questions but the next person in the line to ask questions insisted on asking his, which he had written out in advance, he held up a piece of paper.  Throughout the summing-up period and afterwards he would continue to interrupt, a security person stood next to him but didn't show him to the door.

The final remarks were (leaving out what they repeated)

Shas: this was a great show.  Don't raise VAT or water prices.  1/3 of the populations is poor.  There is no peace and no security.

Otzma Leyisrael: Bilaam said "mah tovu" and Moshe said "am naval" because Bilaam saw from a distance but Moshe knew the people from up close.  We sound pessimistic but are not.  Netanyahu will be prime minister and Bayit Yehudi will join the government, and he will make them keep their promises from outside the government.

Hatenuah: Alon's daughter is in the army, we should do what we can for peace.  Condoleezza Rice said we were very close to an agreement.

Likud: appeasement won't work.

Bayit Yehudi: Netanyahu is great but vote for us to keep him strong.  All the leftist and centrist parties are identical.

Yesh Atid: when students were harassed in Beit Shemesh, no help came from Likud, Yisrael Beitenu, or the mayor who is from Shas.  They solved it themselves.  It's them or Shas in the government.

Meretz: what sort of a country do you want?  There are many more ministers here than in the US.  Corruption.  International backing.  The Bayit Yehudi list includes people who think Baruch Goldstein is holy.  Respond to the Saudi initiative (this was the only time I remember hearing boos).

Afterwards the guy with the page of questions complained that his question would have only taken 75 seconds to read and there were two minutes left until 10 PM, he read out the first verse of Sh'ma, said there was no democracy and a judicial dictatorship.


I picked up some flyers from parties outside.

Bayit Yehudi's said that if you light candles on Shabbat, not when there's a power outage, we're for you, and "there's room for everyone", including: secular, moshavniks, retirees, drivers (there's an anti-driver party?), graduates of religious high schools for girls, religious people, soldiers, army sergeants, university students (female), women who live in Tel Aviv, new immigrants, grandmothers, kibutzniks, and formerly religious people.  Why any of those should vote for them, they didn't say.

Otzma Leyisrael's flyer said that Arabs don't pay real estate tax in Sachnin, income tax in East Jerusalem, or get building permits in Taybeh but Eldad and Ben Ari will cause the law to be applied uniformly.  How they'll do that from outside the government they don't say.

Shas had a picture of Ovadia Yosef, saying "Our Master cries and you are asleep", one of his sons woke up at 3 AM and saw him praying and crying..  The other side says that he hardly eats and cries all the time because he knows the dangers to the world of Torah.  The Satan uses nice people to get you to not listen to the leader of the generation.  All the other parties are against the Torah and the will of God, just like Korach.  And it goes on like this for a whole page with not even a tiny bit of Shas' platform, but reveals that "our master" is head of a large (but unnamed) organization that has talked more than a thousand women out of having abortions and he personally has cured tens of thousands of fertility problems by blessing them.

Yesh Atid had a big picture of their leader, Yair Lapid on one side, and actual policies on the other, all of which were mentioned during the debate.

There were more parties outside when I arrived so I might have missed some flyers.