Month: September 2012

The Cup that will Change Your Life

rafifarber Uncategorized ,

Why have I never heard of the menstrual cup?

Even though there may be better options out there, companies are always trying to make a profit and will push those products that make them the most  money. The menstrual cup does not fit into the category of profitable relative to the pads and tampons to which we are accustomed. Therefore, it disappeared leaving us women with disposable products that we were forced to buy over and over.

Why has it reappeared today?

1) The internet has allowed all sorts of alternative products to be marketed worldwide very easily

2) People are starting to be “greener”

3) People are looking for ways to be more frugal in today’s economy

4) People recognize this product as superior and tell their friends

What is the Menstrual Cup?

It’s a reusable silicone cup that collects menstrual flow as opposed to absorbing it.

How is it used?

Watch and learn how to insert and remove:

After removal, wipe with toilet paper and insert again. After the final removal, sterilize with soap/water/alcohol. Store in included bag. Sterilize again before using at the onset of the next cycle.

Sizes:

Small: for younger girls and women who haven’t given birth vaginally

Large: older women over 30 and/or women who have given birth vaginally

Why the cup is superior to conventional products:

1) It’s cleaner. It keeps the mess to a minimum. No leaking if inserted properly since it is suctioned in.

2) More convenient. No need to shop for more products all the time. No need to look through your bag and remember to bring something into the bathroom and make sure that you keep it hidden. Plus it collects more so you  will need to change it less often (I drain it 2-3 times a day)

3) More comfortable. No one likes sitting in their own blood. You can’t even feel it if it is inserted properly.

4) It’s safer. No risk of TSS. It’s silicone. Also there are no chemicals and bleach involved which there are in conventional products.

5) It can be used before flow starts. I hated waiting for it to start and not knowing if there was a huge stain. For observant Jews, you become niddah whenever you see it, so if you have it in already and choose not to see it until right before shkia, it can save you a few hours if that matters to you.

6) It saves money and better for environment. What will you do with the money you save?

7) May even shorten the cycle by a day. The last day when barely anything comes out but it isn’t quite clean, this is when it is essentially over but the walls are not completely clean yet. The cup keeps the walls clean meaning you won’t need to wait that extra day. For observant Jews, this may mean sheva neki’im could start earlier. For observant Jews who are having trouble conceiving due to a shorter cycle (halachic infertility), the cup could be your answer if you are just missing ovulation by a day.

What are the disadvantages?

Please let me know if you find one. I really can’t think of any. OK, maybe if you lose it and need to buy another one. Maybe if you are so fertile or not fertile at all that you never get a period again. You also can’t use the cup for post-partum bleeding.

Otherwise, the only thing stopping you from using it is that you have never used one before and you are skeptical of the unknown. Just relax, try it out, and enjoy this simple product, the cup that will change your life.

BUY NOW

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Forgive me for Disengaging

rafifarber Israeli Politics, Likud, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , ,

I have a confession to make. I supported the Disengagement. Not only did I support it, I supported it fully. I even called those advocating refusal of orders dangerous traitors, Zecharyah ben Avkilas types who would send away Emperor Nero’s sacrifice because of a flaw rather than sacrifice it and save Jerusalem.

It is critical that you understand exactly why I felt this way.

There are two distinct goals for the Jewish People at this point in history. One goal is to build a giant defensive wall and use it to protect the Jewish People as much as possible against the next wave of destruction, and in the meantime just wait for the Jewish People to be redeemed somehow. This is a negative goal, and as such, essentially has no direction. It’s just a beautifully paved road to nowhere. The other goal, which is mutually exclusive, is to actually redeem the Jewish People. This is the only possible positive goal, the only one that leads somewhere real.

The theory of Disengagement is that you hunker down, gather the Jews, make sure they’re all on our side of the fence, build a giant fortress wall, and hide behind it for as long as possible. This is the quintessential defensive tactic that looks appealing to those who have no positive goals other than defending the Jewish People.

This is why I supported the disengagement. Because in an environment where there simply was no leader who had any positive goals, it seemed like the best option for defense. I didn’t see any leader who was even trying to move along the process of redemption. So I wanted to separate populations, Jews and Arabs, put them on one side, put us on the other, build a giant wall – literally – and wait behind it for Moshiach. The Disengagement was one step towards that for me.

Oh how I cried when I realized what I had done. I cried not when the Disengagement happened. That was very painful – I remember watching it as it happened, but the tears of the people being torn from their homes could not inspire my own to flow. I cried, rather, when I saw that I had completely missed something essential. One night in late 2008 I read an article in the Jerusalem Post that some guy named Feiglin may get a Knesset seat on the Likud list and that Netanyahu was actually scared of this. I wondered what he could actually be scared of.

I got curious, and I went to Feiglin’s website. He had joined Likud because he actually wanted to lead the entire nation and declare victory on top of the Temple Mount. When I heard that, my soul, hardened by years of building defensive walls and buying time, began to melt. Feiglin wasn’t speaking to any Jewish sector at all, but to the entire Jewish nation. Something inside me cracked and I shed a tear. I understood. He wants to finish the process of Geulah. He has an actual positive goal.

Then the tears really came. I realized that what led me to support the bitter evil of the Disengagement was simply my desire to go on defense and just wait it out instead of move it forward. I cried because I understood I didn’t have to think that way anymore, ever again. I could move forward. That’s the Jewish concept of avoiding from evil and doing good. In order to avoid evil, you must do good, otherwise you get caught up in evil unwittingly, like I did. And those getting caught in the evil right now are all those stuck in the sectoral mentality.

Trying to unite the Religious Zionists is nothing but an insidious form of Disengagement. Less brutal, for sure, but insidious and wrong. Instead of disengaging from LAND and separating ARABS and Jews, those who even RECOGNIZE sectors are disengaging from the Jewish PEOPLE and separating JEWS and Jews.

You want to know why Religious Zionist parties keep shrinking? Because they’re boring. Because they lack any sort of positive goal. Because voters are tired of playing defense.

This is NOT a question of how we unite the Religious Zionists to build the next wall of defense. This is a question of what you think God really wants from the Jewish people. Does God want sector A to outvote sector B and then Moshiach comes? God wants us to simply buy enough time until His Divine egg timer goes off in the sky and it’s time for Moshiach to just show up by default? Is this just a silly game of chicken? Or does God want the Jews, all of us, to realize, together, as a nation, what the heck we’re doing here in Israel and why?

I believe God wants the second option. In order for us to realize what we’re doing here, we need a leader who speaks to every single Jew. If you’re in a sector, then talk and talk as much as you want about Jewish identity and any Jew out of your sector will simply ignore you, because you’ve disengaged yourself from them.

Manhigut Yehudit is not about defense, and it is not even about saving the settlements. Every Likud primary is about speaking to this stiff-necked people of ours, the Jewish People, who are confused and directionless, and telling them that we need to finish the process of Redemption and lead this world. No matter what the results are; whether Moshe Feiglin wins a victory or comes close or loses, one thing is absolutely certain. Every time he runs, Feiglin speaks, and Am Yisrael listens. Left and right, Dati Hiloni Haredi. EVERYONE hears him.

Would anyone care if Naftali Bennett came out supporting medical marijuana? No, because Bennett is disengaged from Am Yisrael. Nobody cares what he says. Just a fact. But when Moshe Feiglin supports medical marijuana, all of a sudden every station has to interview him immediately. That’s the nation listening.

Those in the “Jewish Home” – for the love of God, and I don’t use that phrase lightly, stop your disengagement from the Jewish People. Talk to them. All of them. You can help us talk to them. Join Likud and TALK to them. You may not win a seat, but for God’s sake they’ll hear you.

Moshe Feiglin will win because he’s the only one with a goal. Everything else is meaningless chatter about how best to do nothing. The path is not glorious. It is not easy. It is full of ridicule and naysayers. It is full of dirty political tricks that will drive you mad. But if you want to bring Jewish history to its climax, we need everyone in on it. You can all help.

Moshe Feiglin will keep speaking. You can either make his voice that much louder and be a part of Jewish history, or you can, yet again, go in Galut defensive mode, disengage from the rest of the Jews, and fight the next prime minister from your defensive wall of Knesset seats. And then watch it be torn down to dust.

The Fed OD’s on QE3 and bonds go down, the real crash is beginning

rafifarber Economics, Gold and Silver, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

The Fed today announced it would print money until the economy recovers. Ergo, it will print money forever, because printing money prevents economic recovery.

Gold and silver went berzerk today. But bonds did not. They went down. You’d expect, after an announcement that the guys who print money are going to be buying bonds with it, that the value of bonds would go up. If a company is bought out by a bigger company, then the stock goes up, because said bigger company is buying a bunch of stock of the smaller company being bought out. This is what happens in normal markets.

Unless…unless nobody wants any of the shares of the smaller company to begin with and they all think the big company is insane to buy up the smaller company because all they sell is solar powered flashlights, so everyone sells all their shares to the bigger company and the stock actually goes down even though the big company is buying it up because EVERYONE ELSE is selling their shares to the bigger company too.

This is what happened today. The government is selling pieces of paper that promise to pay you dollars in the future. They are selling “stock” in dollars. But dollars in the future are worth a lot less than dollars in the present. Nobody wants dollars in the future. They’re like solar powered flashlights. So they’re all selling them to the fed. And bonds went down, even though the biggest buyer just stepped in and said we will buy bonds forever.

This is it folks. The real crash is starting right now. If bonds are going down today of all days, interest rates are on their way up That means the interest on the national debt is about to go through the roof. Every bailed out bank is going to fail. Again. And this time there won’t be any more bailouts.

Does public “investment” crowd out the private sector? OF COURSE IT DOES!

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

There is one rule of thumb I always use in trying to tell the difference between an econometrician and an economist. Or, in other words, a Keynesian versus an Austrian economist. That is, Keynesian arguments are generally devoid of any soul or feeling, and treat economics like a laboratory science where if you mix the right chemicals in the right proportions, you’ll have the desired effect. Often their arguments deny the most basic common sense principles using fancy econometric language and quite frankly make me feel like an idiot for even having to defend absolutely fundamental economic realities that even 5 year old children can grasp with ease.

It’s even worse than that actually. It pains me, a punk kid with no degree, to go up against a published PhD and claim that what he’s saying is below the level of a 5 year old with basic common sense, but say it I must, because it’s the truth. It scares me to no end, really, that when the SHTF, people will turn to these authoritarians for answers that will enslave us all.

In my very first economics class when I was a pisher little high school senior, my teacher Mrs. Holcman taught us that economics is, by definition, the study of “scarcity and choice”. Meaning, there is a limited amount of resources on the planet, and economics is the study of choosing between those scarce resources. Presumably, consumers should choose between them in the most efficient and productive way so as to produce the most possible wealth from those resources and raise the standard of living of the human race. What I’m saying here is not rocket science. If a five year old has one dollar and in front of him are a chocolate bar and a toy, and he can only choose one, he understands the reality of scarcity and choice.

Then came the Keynesians and claimed, first, that while economics is about scarcity and choice, it is not the goal of economics to figure out how to best use scarce resources. It doesn’t matter how efficiently they are used at all. They can simply be wasted and aggregate demand for them being equal, everything should turn out the same.

But they claim something even worse than that. They claim that, essentially, there is really no such thing as scarcity at all. The world is an endless pit of resources and we do not even have to choose.

See this article by Yanis Varoufakis. I’ve mentioned him before as a slippery Keynesian who is at first not recognizable as such, and today I’ve figured out why. It’s because he writes with such soul. He has real emotional conviction, and this does not fit into my rule of thumb in searching for a lack of soul to spot Keynesian reasoning. So I was fooled for a while.

The Keynesian Orwellian phraseology for “there is no such thing as scarcity” is “public investment does not crowd out private investment”. He calls the belief that public investment crowds out private investment childish. This is mindboggling and scary.

We are to believe that simply because money put somewhere is put there by government instead of a private person, that simply because the label of the money is different, it is therefore infinite? If public money does not crowd out the private sector, then an infinite amount of public money can be spent without any effect. Essentially, money does grows on trees, as long as it’s the government spending it instead of a private person.

It doesn’t matter what money is labeled and who spends it. If you spend it on one thing, you cannot spend it on the other. It doesn’t matter what sector you are in. Everything crowds out everything, because there is only a finite amount of money and wealth on this planet.

Economics is the study of SCARCITY and CHOICE. That means by definition that if you choose one resource, you cannot choose the other. Government is not a god that can override this human limitation. Varoufakis and other Keynesians want us to believe that government is a god that can provide manna from heaven.

The question is, do you want government choosing where to put resources, or do you want private people choosing where to put resources?