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The Penn State scandal is not going away anytime soon and it’s given me a lot of time to think about about it and how it hit very close to home for me. What is interesting is how it hit close to home on multiple fronts. On the first front and the most personal, I was sexually abused as a kid. I won’t go into the gory details here but I believe that this is a major reason why I don’t remember a lot of my childhood. So of course my thoughts go out to the victims of this horrible crime.

On the second front and a little further from home is that a few years ago I wanted to get back in touch with my godfather. He and my dad went to high school together at a Catholic seminary in Indiana. Yeah, my dad wanted to be a Priest when he was growing up.  My dad decided not to follow that path but my godfather decided to continue that path and became a priest. While I was searching for my godfather on Google, I didn’t find a lot of information about him aside from criminal and civil cases against him for molesting kids. I was stunned and I couldn’t believe it since he was always so kind to me (for the record, I don’t think that my godfather was the one that molested me – that was a babysitter). After I made this discovery I was talking to my dad about it and he wasn’t surprised by this since this abuse seems to be somewhat of an institutional thing with elders always doing this to younger students. I’m not condoning what Sandusky did but there is a good chance that he was abused in the same way that he abused those poor kids.

The final front is that a very good friend of mine was also the victim of sexual abuse and it’s cast a long shadow over his life as well.

I only wish I knew when this cycle of abuse will stop.

The kid told me this week that she has landed a part in her school’s Chanukah play. They have already started rehearsing after school and from what the kid tells me, it’s a decent sized part. I’ve got to say that I’m proud of her and I think that she’ll do good. It also got me thinking about her first acting role back when she was in Pre 1A. Luckily I happen to have it to share:

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I’ve always had an interest in UFO theories and the other kinds of unexplained phenomena. It’s one of the things that I’ve shared with my grandfather over the years. Of late the one that I’ve been really following (mostly because of the TV show) is the Ancient Astronaut theory. I don’t believe the theory but I find it interesting.  Add to this the fact that I’ve always enjoyed books in the science fiction genre. When you combine the two and find a book that is in the science fiction genre about Ancient Astronauts and you’ve hit the sweet spot for me. Luckily I’ve found such a book, Vimana (also available for the Kindle).

I’m only a chapter into the book, but I’m really excited by the concept of this book. I hope to write a review of the book once I’m done.

I was talking with my mother this morning getting the latest news on how her husband is doing in the hospital. He’s been there for a while and doesn’t look like he is going to be getting out, while alive at any rate.

While talking to her she told me a story that I knew part of but didn’t know the rest. It’s pretty wild so I wanted to share it with everyone.

The story begins on Shabbos where a 12 year old boy went missing in Montecello, NY. There was a search that happened and the boy was finally found and he was unharmed. It was a very happy reunion. Now here is the rest of the story.

It turns out that it was my step-brother was the one who found the boy. Do you know where he was found? In my mother’s house across the street after he broke in and was living there for a day a half. He was using my mother’s computer and it looks like he even may have stolen some of my mother’s jewelry so that he can buy additional food and do who knows what else. It seems that the boy who’s family lives across from my mother had been unhappy at home and decided to use my mom’s place as a refuge since my mother has been at the hospital from over a month straight.

As the late great Paul Harvey used to say, now you know the rest of the story.

Here is an article about how us Gen Xers are tired on the entitlement that the millennium generation feels that they deserve. I’d say I agree with 98% of it, I’ll let you try and figure out which parts I don’t agree with.

Here is the full article from Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic

(The following is not an endorsement of any candidate or their policies. I’m just providing some analysis on the election that I haven’t seen elsewhere)

Thanks to the twittering of my former congressman, Anthony Weiner, we have a special election tomorrow to see who will complete the remainder of his term. The choice is between Bob Turner (Republican) and David Weprin (Democrat). Usually this wouldn’t be such big news since the Democrats usually romp in elections in NYC (the last two mayors are the only exceptions that I can think of). However this election is different since Turner is leading in the polls by about 6 or 7 percentage points. A lot of the national press that is following this race feel that it’s because of the public’s unhappiness with how the Democrats have handled the economy and the Obama Administration’s polices toward Israel. The latter is important since CD-9 is heavily Jewish and more specifically there are a lot of Orthodox Jews living in this congressional district.

Here is the twist, Weprin is an Orthodox Jew and I would assume that his record on Israel in the state senate is one that Jews in CD-9 would be OK with. Not to mentions that usually when you have someone running for office that has the same ethnicity as the district, the district will usually close ranks and vote for that candidate. So why isn’t that the case for Weprin?

I think that the reason is that being a heavily Orthodox Jewish district, it’s also highly conservative (make your own jokes here) and a few months ago Weprin did something in the state senate that ticked off a large number of people in this district. He voted for the bill that allowed gay marriage in New York State. From what I have seen and heard here on the ground that is the number one reason why people don’t want to vote for Weprin. They want to punish him for that vote. In my opinion that more than anything is why Weprin is losing what should be (and usually is) a slam dunk win for the Democrats.

Of all of the social networking services out there, I like twitter the most. It’s the only one that I constantly use. One of the annoying things about twitter is that when you use two different devices you always have to scroll up to the most recent tweets. Somehow this concept has escaped the folks at twitter. I don’t understand why but it has.

Now, a developer is looking to change this. Manton Reece of Riverfold Software has developed a service called Tweet Marker that will sync your twitter timeline and you’ll always be up to date no matter which device you’re on.

Right now only twitterific from Icon Factory is using the service. I seriously thought about buying the app for all of my devices so I would always be in sync. For the time being I have decided against that since I like the apps that I’m using and have purchased. However it will be interesting to see how many other developers of twitter apps out there will use Tweet Marker in their applications. I know that I’ve already made the suggestion to Tapbots, the maker of Tweetbot (my favorite twitter app for the iPhone). If you want to see this service (and independent twitter clients stay around) I’d suggest making support for Tweet Marker a feature request.