Heineken tastes MUCH better in Amsterdam.\u00a0 Now I won’t be able to drink it States-side, which kind of sucks. Hopefully the memory will fade soon and I will be able to go back to my ignorant bliss.<\/p>\n
[On the flip side I had some Sam Adams while in Israel and near spit it out.]<\/p>\n
Israel:<\/strong><\/p>\n 1) In the 3 days I was in Jerusalem I wanted to figure out why everyone finds it to be the place<\/em> for religion.\u00a0 Here’s what I came up with:<\/p>\n These images were taken within the same minute at on Ben Yehuda Street, Jerusalem .\u00a0 However, my camera was set to New York time, so it is really 1:34 am (NY +7).\u00a0 I’ve put up two images because I want to give the best view of the street that I can to make my point: the top image was with flash, which only reaches so far, but does not make blurry images; the second image was long exposure and gives a more accurate view, but, try as I might, I can only hold myself so still.\u00a0 Hopefully you will be able to imagine how it looks between the two. (see this image<\/a> from Wikipedia too)<\/p>\n The second picture – this is the more accurate to life shot – shows the street to be very bright\u00a0and, in fact, unusually bright.\u00a0 Times Square-bright even but, as you can see, this street has normal stores and streetlights; no neon, no giant billboards.\u00a0 So how is this feat of lighting achieved?<\/p>\n Nearly everything in Jerusalem is made of the off-white Jerusalem stone<\/a>.\u00a0 Ben Yehuda street is an old, pedestrian only street with no asphalt and hence is white on 3 sides.\u00a0 This makes it reflect light incredibly well, as I hope you can divine from my shoddy photography.<\/p>\n Imagine the extra hours of usable time that people would have because they needed less fuel for their lamps, and multiply this by thousands of years.\u00a0\u00a0 I figure that a place with nice weather and well above average lighting conditions, such as Jerusalem, would be conducive to people sitting around reading and arguing about stuff, and hence religious studies.<\/p>\n 2) Gaza:<\/p>\n Israel on the whole seemed rather safe and so completely normal while I was there that it was hard to reconcile it with the place the media covers.\u00a0 Granted I didn’t go anywhere near where the fighting was, but I was in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and observed how people were living, and I thought it could have been San Diego.\u00a0 I’ve never been to San Diego, but I think it must be pretty with a friendly population that mostly speaks English and has nice weather, which was my experience in Israel.\u00a0 So what is going on?<\/p>\n Again, 2 pictures:<\/p>\n![\"Ben](\"http:\/\/noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/cimg1047.jpg\" "\\"Ben")
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