Fressed too much at the obligatory BBQ. Wasted half a day trying to delete a Trojan Horse from the laptop. Today's best moment was a conversation with a Vizhnitser who wants me to publish his article on certain symmetries in halacha. His approach actually solves some problems in the Rambam's notoriously difficult deoraisa/derabanan distinction. But he insists on tying this in with all manner of idea he picked up in his self-guided tour of books on mathematical logic and philosophy. Yesterday I rather imperiously told him to drop the whole sorry foray into mathematical logic -- the analogy is ill-conceived. Today he wanted to know if I could live with an analogy between symmetry in halacha and Newton's Third Law, since he has a very strong yetzer hara (his words) to discuss divrei chulin. I think we have a deal.

Speaking of ill-conceived ideas, tomorrow I think I'll take up Arik's hitnatkut plan. I'm going on record here as saying that Arik will find a way to make this referendum disappear. I can't wait to see how he pulls it off.