Thoughts about the last shuttle flight

At first I did not know what to think of the last shuttle flight.
On the one hand the Space Shuttle  was a cool project, that I followed from my childhood days, and pretty much the only thing going on in manned space flight recently (besides the international Space Station, but the two are interrelated).
On the other hand the Space Shuttle program had a pretty atrocious record of safety, with both the Challenger and the Columbia blowing up in under 200 flights. Amazingly, Israel can now note the death of one of its fighter pilots, Ilan Ramon, in a Space Shuttle flight: STS 107.
That's when I read the Economist leader from June 30th. According to this leader: "Inner space (UM: Earth's atmosphere) is useful. Outer space is history", they also say that this is: "The end of the Space Age".
On the other hand I listened to the guys from http://www.spacevidcast.com/ talk on Dr kiki's science hour. They were very cheerful, and said something along the lines of: "now that NASA and fat government is out of the way, the time for private space flight is here, and it is very exciting!"
I'm not sure who I'm going to believe in this debacle, but one thing is for sure: I want manned space flight to go on. And I'm willing to put my own time and effort into it, not that I know anything about the subject.
So to end all this, I just found out that one of Israel's SF guys wants to fly a computer into space. I'm following him, and you may too.
This is his Hebrew blog: http://nicecriticalmass.blogspot.com/

So I've been using Google Plus for a week now

Here are some of my thoughts regarding that.
I think my Google Plus story so far says more about me than about it. You see, I've come into Myspace as a fan of some alternative Arab Rock artists. From there I've joined Facebook, because many of my Montreal High school friends have been in it.

When I've joined Facebook in 2007 it was new in Israel, but hardly a new phenomenon in the US.
With Google Plus it was all different. I wanted to join the day it was founded, but they would not let me. Then last week one of my Gmail friends (someone who studied creative writing with me three years ago), asked if anyone wanted invitations.
Others said "why?"
I said: "Yesss!"

So here I am, a week later, 233 people I've added to my circles, 40 people have added me to theirs.
What does this say about me?
Dunno, probably not very good things.
Why did I become such an active socialite?
Also dunno, but I like my Google Plus feed wayyyy better than my Facebook feed.
Hope all my Facebook friends will join me, but realistically, that will take years, if ever...

Explaining this blog part III - General Issues

OK.
This took a while!
If any of you are reading my Hebrew blog, then you know that I also did not post there for quite a while, and when I did , recently, I apologized, said that this was partly because of my long period of Hebrew Literature studies at the Ben Gurion University in the Negev (actually in Beer Sheva to be more specific, but that's the name, what can I do?).
So same goes for this blog. It has been a long time when I had to both work and study, and this blog suffered. Now I only have work, and I promise to blog more regularly. Also, I promise to stop saying (after this post) what this blog is going to be about, and start actually blogging.
Truth of the matter?
It took me a long time to start to figure out what to write in this blog and what to write in the Hebrew one. For a long time it was some version of "I'll write the posts in one, and translate them (or some of them) to the other".
But gradually I figured that this blog needs to deal with more global or general Israeli issues (a look from the outside on Israel), while the Hebrew one is more local  / a look from the inside.
So, if you also want to read me Hebrew ramblings, but you can't understand the language, feel free to Google Translate!
Next time, which will be soon, I promise y'all a real post!

Explaining This Blog Part II: Not Hasbarah

Here is a quote from a Wikipedia article:

Israel's public diplomacy efforts are called hasbara in Hebrew, also spelt hasbarah, is a noun that literally means "explanation". The term has been used by the State of Israel and by supporters of Israel to describe their efforts to explain Israeli government policies, and to promote Israel to the world at large. Detractors view hasbara as a euphemism for propaganda.

So that's not what I want to do here. I do not intend to explain the actions of the Israeli government. One of the good reasons I am not going to do that, is that mostly I think the actions of the Israeli goverment are not very clever.
However, the life in southern Israel is interesting. At least I think it is. So I intend to report here about life in southern Israel, in a long and thoughful way.

Explaining This Blog Part I: Long and Thoughful

I have been reading blogs on the web for the past three years or so. I know, that makes me very outdated, because blogging has been around for at least a decade. There it is, I'm outdated.
Also, I notice that most blogs nowadays are short, almost twitter like. Some of the blogs I read are very personal, and some belong to the 'general good advice' category.
Most blogs I know by Israelis are in Hebrew. In fact, being a Hebrew speaking Israeli, makes writing an English blog a pretty unusual choice.
Also, most people blog every day.
So. what's my point?
The point is that I want a blog that is more thoughtful. I want to be not up to date. For example, I want to write books reviews about Alice in wonderland, or movie reviews about 'Hair', or music reviews about the Monkees.
I think it is possible to do it from where I'm sitting. Beer Sheva, my home town, has supposedly been around since at least 3,000 years ago (the days of Abraham the patriarch), and word has it that it has not changed much since...
So I'm not going to post every day, I'm not going to be up to date, I'm not going to tell you my personal thoughts about the lines at the post office (unless I'm really mad, because they can are insufferable here...), and I'm certainly not going to offer you advice about how to buy LCD TVs, or how to market your hand woven baskets.
Interested?
If so, next week I'll explain a few other things that I'm not going to do...

Rethinking This Blog

I've been a (very small and unsuccessful) Israeli publisher for a bit more than three years now.
It may be possible to earn money from old paper publishing, heck it may even be possible to make money from old paper publishing in Israel! However, it takes a lot of time (you have to find the right book, have the right connections, do the right marketing, which involves not very small amounts of cash...) and the chances are not that great.
Then you have the English Speaking World. It is a wonderful world in which (a very small precentage of)  writers make huge amounts of money, or at the very least, a decent number of people can make a decent living off of.
Supposedly this world is right at your doorstep, all you have to do is get an ISBN and put your book in Amazon, right?
Dunno, didn't try, some of my (fairly famous and anyway good writer) friends did try, and sold about ten copies in ten years. OK, they are now known all over the world, albeit by a very small number of people, but you can hardly call this a raging success.
So you got to go out there and introduce yourself. Living in Beer Sheva Israel means you can't just go to your local US TV network and do that. Your book will not be chosen by Oprah. So you got to try something else.
Maybe blogging?