Principled Compromise: The New iPad's Struggle Against Reality

In the two years since Apple released its original iPad, surprisingly little has changed in the tablet market. Many would-be competitors have come and gone, but Apple still owns the space. And while companies like Asus and Samsung struggle to gain a toehold, our friends in Cupertino have moved the goal posts once again with the introduction of the 3rd generation iPad. I've been using a new iPad now for a month now and these are my impressions.

Physical Characteristics

The first thing you notice when you hold a new iPad in your hand is that it is slightly heavier and thicker than its predecessor, the iPad 2. The iPad has always suffered from feeling a little too heavy. When I reviewed the original model in 2010, I speculated that this impression had to do with the fact that most of the objects in our life that are iPad-sized (paper, legal pads, magazines, etc.) aren't quite so heavy. Indeed, Steve Jobs placed a lot of emphasis on how much thinner and lighter the iPad 2 was than the original iPad when he introduced the 2nd generation in 2011. And while the iPad 3 is only marginally heavier than the iPad 2, the change is noticeable. The thinking behind this atypical compromise seems to have been that a much higher capacity battery was needed to maintain the iPad's legendary battery life, while accommodating an all new and vastly improved display technology.

The new iPad (top), is slightly thicker and heavier than the iPad 2(bottom).

Retina Display

The most touted feature of the new iPad is its 2048 by 1536 pixel Retina Display. Having read all of the early reviews, I must admit that my expectations were so high that I was a little disappointed when I first laid eyes on the screen. I held it side-by-side with my original iPad and I wasn't as impressed as I imagined I would be. Nevertheless, after a day of use, there was simply no going back. In fact, with the exception of the iPhone 4/4S, this is the best quality screen that I have ever seen. The new iPad renders text so crisply that unless you're holding it right up to your nose and squinting very hard, you can't see any pixels. This makes reading on the new iPad an absolute pleasure. Not only does text look ink-like, but the screen is also slightly less reflective for daytime reading. In addition, it's possible to dim the display further than was possible on previous models making for more comfortable nighttime reading.This is also the first iPad to have a true HD screen. The best the first two generations could manage was scaled-down 720P video. The new iPad’s screen has so many pixels, that not only can it display full 1080P content, but to do so, it actually has to scale the content up to the Retina Display’s native resolution.

A crop of the crisp, new Retina Display (bottom) makes the old iPad display(top) look like it's out of focus.

Blazingly Fast Wireless Connectivity

The second most touted feature of the new iPad is the speed of its cellular data connection. Apple still offers WiFi-only iPads, but if you choose to pay $130 extra for the option of wireless data, the new iPad can access the new, super-fast LTE networks in the United States.There are two models of cellular-enabled iPads available that can take advantage of these LTE speeds: The Verizon iPad and the AT&T iPad. There is no good reason at this time to buy the AT&T iPad. Not only is Verizon's LTE coverage vastly superior, but they also have enabled the personal hotspot feature which allows you to share your iPad's LTE data connection with other Wifi-enabled devices at no extra cost (AT&T doesn't allow this feature at any price).

 

But as fast as LTE speeds are(in my tests, up to 3X faster than my speedy Wifi connection at home), they pose a serious dilemma. The most natural thing to want to do with a fast internet connection is stream video. Indeed, the streaming services available for the iPad have made it into the most sought after portable entertainment system on the planet. But the carriers have not increased the monthly allowances on their data plans. This means that you could potentially eat through your data plan faster using the new LTE service than you would have on the slower 3G service. To make matters worse, different video streaming services deal with data in different ways, so there's no sure way to know in advance how much data you'll be burning through with a given app. To get a better understanding of how my favorite streaming apps use cellular data, I set up a series of tests. As a baseline, I tested four applications on my home Wifi network which clocked in at 16 MBits/second down at the time of the test.

What you can see from the above results is that were the applications to treat the new LTE networks the way they treat Wifi, I would eat through a standard 3GB data plan in an absurdly short period of time. My next step was to test the same applications on AT&T's 3G network. To do this, I used my iPhone 4 in two separate locations. First, I tested it at home where I have terrible reception. For these tests, the iPhone was only able to manage a download speed of 1.2 MBits/second.

What is immediately apparent from this test, is that all of the applications are capable of dynamically changing the amount of data that they pull, based on the strength of the data connection that they detect. On a practical note, I wouldn't recommend streaming video on a 1.2 MBit 3G connection. The image was so pixelated in many cases, that it was simply not worth the hassle. For the next test, I took my iPhone 4 to a place where it had full reception and was pulling down 4.9 MBits/second.

As you can see, all of the applications sensed the higher data speeds and took advantage by pulling down more. The viewing experience was excellent, although you still wouldn't make it far on a standard data plan. So how did the applications react to my new Verizon iPad? When I set up the Verizon LTE tests, I was pulling 20 MBits/second. In the interests of full disclosure, the HBOGO app does not allow streaming of full episodes on LTE. To get around this limitation, I set up the aforementioned personal hotspot feature and tethered my original iPad to it to obtain the HBOGO result.

This test validated my fears about LTE. The image was beautiful and the video streamed flawlessly. But at these rates, it is simply not cost-effective to use the LTE connection to stream video. Now it is possible to disable the LTE on the new iPad. When you do so, the iPad will revert to the carrier's 3G network. In my case, that was Verizon's 3G network which managed to pull down 1.8 MBits/second. At that speed, these were my results:

Curiously, the applications were less conservative in their use of data on the slower Verizon 3G connection than they were on the faster AT&T 3G connection. The explanation could simply be that the applications sensed that in the latter case, the device was an iPhone and adjusted accordingly. Alternatively, it could be due to the fact that while the Verizon network is slower, it still provides more consistent data speeds. Either way, these were the results. I should mention that the video was perfectly acceptable, when using the 3G Verizon data connection, though not as nice as the video that I got over LTE.

There is no denying the speed advantages of LTE over previous generation wireless data technologies. But if you can't actually use those speeds, because the carriers make it cost-prohibitive, then the advantages remain theoretical. And while it does make surfing, email, and eBook downloads faster, the one thing you really want to use it for- streaming video-is just not possible at this time without spending an arm and a leg on overages.

Heat Issues

One of the most surprising things to me about the first iPad was that no matter what I did with it, the device never generated any heat. This was a welcome break from most modern consumer electronics, including laptops, which tend to heat up upon exertion. I'm afraid that the new iPad no longer defies the ordinary laws of consumer electronics. It must be said that for most tasks, the new iPad remained cool to the touch. However, when playing graphically intensive games, the iPad got very hot indeed. Many have dismissed this as a non-issue, but I beg to differ. As a result of the fact that the iPad is too heavy to hold in one hand, I often find myself leaning it against my belly, or on my legs. And having something that hot against your body for a few hours (playing, for example, the immersive Infinity Blade II) is simply not comfortable.

Epic Games' immersive Infinity Blade II. After an hour or so of this game, the iPad becomes very hot.

I would have dismissed my experience as non-representative, but Apple's official response to concerns about this issue reported in the media was that the new iPad operates "well within our thermal specifications."What this tells me is that heat is another one of the tradeoffs that Apple consciously made to deliver the Retina Display. It is remarkable that the new A5X processor can render four times the number of pixels required by its predecessor the A5 without any lag in performance. The tradeoff seems to be that when you push it, the A5X generates a lot of heat.

Cameras

The new iPad brings with it an updated rear-facing camera. It's a combination of the 5 megapixel sensor found in the iPhone 4 and the optics introduced in the iPhone 4S. In my tests I found that it produced still images that are a little bit better than the iPhone 4, but not quite as good as images I've seen from the iPhone 4S. Either way, I find it awkward to use the iPad as a still camera and despite the fact that it can shoot stabilized 1080P HD video, I think it's even more awkward to use it for video. The size and shape of the device just doesn't work for me when I'm shooting handheld. The screen is so large that you have to hold it at arms length to get a sense of what you're shooting and that makes it difficult to operate for longer periods of time. I almost wish that Apple had updated the front-facing camera instead, as that would make a huge difference in video conferencing apps like Skype and FaceTime. Alas, that camera remains a sub-1 megapixel dinosaur.

The New iPad as Personal Computer

With every passing year the gap between what you can do with an iPad and what you can do with a traditional personal computer shrinks. Over the past two years the iPad's operating system has matured to the point where you can do most computing tasks directly on the iPad. And for those special cases where you can't, there are 3rd party apps that fill in the gaps. Indeed, I would argue that most people can get by today with an iPad as their primary PC. With the new iPad, Apple has even included a system-wide dictation feature, which is surprisingly accurate and significantly speeds up the process of text entry(although I'd still recommend purchasing a bluetooth keyboard if you intend to make this your primary computer). There are, of course, still things that the iPad is not great at. For example, due to the immersive, full-screen experience, switching between apps has never been as simple or powerful as it is on a desktop operating system. Moreover, one of the structural elements that makes iOS such a secure platform is that it doesn't allow individual applications to communicate with each other, thereby limiting one's ability to engage in complex cross-application processes. But these are software limitations which will likely be resolved in the next update to the operating system. I ended my 2010 review with the observation that the iPad may be the future of personal computing. Looking at the landscape in 2012, I think it's safe to say that the future has arrived.

Wrap Up

In retrospect, it is clear that Apple had four goals in mind when they set about redesigning the iPad: First, to deliver the the world's greatest mobile display. Second, to keep the battery life near the 10 hour mark. Third, to maintain the same price points as previous generation iPads. And finally, to offer the option of 4G LTE speeds. In order to achieve these goals, Apple compromised in the following three ways: First, the new iPad is slightly thicker and heavier than its predecessor. Second, the A5X chip gets hotter than the A5 when pushed. Third, the storage capacities of the models have not changed, despite the fact that retina-class files take up more space. Did Apple make the right compromises? I think they did. No single element is more important to the tablet experience than the screen and the Retina Display has to be seen in person to be believed. Moreover, by compromising ever so slightly on thickness and weight, they were able to provide a battery that, in my tests, still lasts all day. Will future models be thinner and lighter than the current model? Undoubtedly. But the new iPad represents the best that Apple could achieve today without compromising on the principles that make the iPad experience so compelling.

The vexing LTE situation, on the other hand, is a little like having a Ferrari that you are only allowed to take on the highway for 30 miles every month. I've heard rumors that some of the streaming video services may actually start subsidizing the use of their apps by paying the carriers, so that the data streamed from them would not count against customers' data plans. This sounds great until you realize that it would compromise the neutrality of the internet. Independent producers who cannot afford to pay such subsidies would, under such an arrangement, be at a structural disadvantage. Whether or not this rumor proves true, I remain (irrationally?) optimistic that the carriers will come to their senses and increase data allowances once their networks are built out. The only question left, is whether anyone will have a real answer to the iPad before Apple crosses the inevitable 100,000,000 unit sales mark later this year. 

Note: Special thanks to Aryeh Cohen for the use of his iPad 2 during the composition of this review.

The Wandering Who? Gilad Atzmon and Jewish Identity

This piece was first published on Jewschool.

When Gilad Atzmon blew through Los Angeles to promote his latest book “The Wandering Who?,” I knew nothing about him. As I sat down to hear him speak I was handed a flyer by a nervous looking young woman. The flyer declared: “LEVANTINE CENTER HOSTS ANTI-SEMITE” and it furnished a series of Atzmon quotes to support its aspersion. The young woman and knit yarmulka-clad man who were handing these flyers out were politely asked to leave and they did so without protest. As I listened to Atzmon first speak and then perform a few musical numbers on his saxophone, it occurred to me that antisemite or not, I was genuinely interested in what this man had to say. 

The Wandering Who? seeks to answer the seemingly simple question: “What do people mean when they call themselves Jews?” Near the beginning of the book, Atzmon makes a foundational tripartite distinction between three kinds of Jews. In the first category are people who follow the Jewish religion. The second contain those who were accidentally born to Jewish parents, but see themselves as human beings. And the third category is “Those who put their Jewish-ness over and above all of their other traits.”  

The obvious problem with these categories is that real Jewish people seldom fall into only one of them. I know as many religious Jews who fall into categories 1 and 2 as I do secular Jews who fall into categories 2 and 3. Do their identities contain logical contradictions? Surely they do. But these contradictions do not emerge as a consequence of their Jewish-ness, rather they come from the nature of identity itself. To his credit, Atzmon points out that similar contradictions emerge within feminist and gay identity politics and it could be argued that his categorical distinctions are there for conceptual clarity. Nevertheless, Atzmon includes both ardent Zionists and self-identified Jewish Leftists in his third category, arguing that they belong to the same identity continuum:

“If we redefine Zionism as a modern form of Jewish activism that aims to halt assimilation, we can then reassess all Jewish tribal activity as an internal debate within a diverse Zionist political movement...The Israel lobby and the Alan Dershowitzes of the world are the voices of Zionism; the third-category socialists are there to stop proud, self-hating Jews from blowing the whistle.”

There’s a sense in which he’s on to something here. It is true that many Jewish Zionists and Jewish Leftists place their identity at the center of their activism. And in so far as no one has yet articulated a coherent and substantive post-religious Jewish identity, this emphasis contains contradictions for secular Jews. But accepting this premise is a far cry from accepting that Leftist Jews put their Jewishness above all of their other traits. Predictably, this part of Atzmon’s argument attracted vehement attacks from prominent Liberal Jews. What was not so predictable, was that the US Palestinian Community Network would write a letter condemning Atzmon as an antisemite. In their statement, which was signed by a who’s who list of Palestinian activists, the USPCN stated:

“Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist. We could not disagree more. Indeed, we believe Atzmon’s argument is itself Zionist because it agrees with the ideology of Zionism and Israel that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.”

This statement is remarkable for a number of reasons. First, it demonstrates a level of discipline among the Palestinian Solidarity Movement that is encouraging. Second, it demonstrates that signatories like Ali Abunimah and Omar Barghouti, are not the antisemites that their opponents claim them to be. But the letter also proffers an interpretation of Atzmon’s position. And as much as I appreciate the motivation behind the statement, I think that the USPCN misinterprets Atzmon on this point. He doesn’t argue that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist. This is an oversimplification of his position. Atzmon argues that neither the Jewish Zionists, nor the Jewish anti-Zionists, have solved the “Jewish problem”. And until the Jewish problem is solved, they are all essentially playing the same Jewish identity game. The issue is not that Atzmon conflates Zionism with Judaism. The issue is Atzmon’s understanding of “the Jewish problem.”

The Jewish problem for Atzmon is that of Athens vs. Jerusalem and Gilad Atzmon is on Team Athens. In this worldview, there are only two legitimate ways to be Jewish: You can either be a religious Jew and a Jerusalemite, or you can be an accidental Jew and a whistle-blowing Athenian. The problem is that this is a caricature of both Jewish history and Jewish identity. The Jewish tradition is full of conflicting voices on the issue of universalism vs. particularism and Jewish history can, from a certain perspective, be seen as a tug of war between these two poles.

I sympathize with Gilad Atzmon. I really do. We both come from an oppressive and nationalistic culture in which particularism always seems to trump universalism. We also both found refuge in art. But here we part ways. One of the key lessons that I learned from immersing myself in the world of art was that the only way to really achieve universal expression is to speak boldly from your own particular experience. In a way, I believe that this book is Atzmon’s attempt to do just that. In what is perhaps the most insightful passage, he resurrects the long forgotten Otto Weininger to shed light on his own identity issues. Weininger was a 19th century German-Jewish thinker who wrote a controversial bestselling book called “Sex and Character”. He hated both women and Jews, but one of the key concepts in his book is that we can only understand in the other that which exists in ourselves. Armed with this insight, Atzmon writes: 

“I am not looking at the Jews, or at Jewish identity, I am looking at Israelis. I am actually looking in the mirror. With contempt, I am actually elaborating on the Jew in me.” 

Unfortunately, Atzmon’s inner Jew is little more than a Jewish supremacist. He was not raised on the complexities of the Talmud or the Midrash and nothing makes this clearer than his uninformed use of Biblical stories to support his superficial critique of the Jewish religion. Like many secular Israelis, Atzmon seems totally ignorant of the dynamic interplay between the Oral and Written traditions and completely unaware of the sophistication of Rabbinic hermeneutics. In contrast to Atzmon, my own early exposure to the Jewish Tradition, has allowed me to forge a space between Athens and Jerusalem that defies Atzmon’s categories. As it happens, I feel most Jewish when I place my humanity above my Jewish identity leshem shamayim, or for the right reasons.

Is Gilad Atzmon an antisemite? There are passages in this book which definitely qualify in my mind as antisemitic, but this is not cause for hysteria. I understand and appreciate why the USPCN distanced themselves from Atzmon, but in general, I’m not a big fan of policing discourse. This is a conversation that Jews desperately need to have and while I strongly disagree with Atzmon’s ideas, I think his questions are valid. As a suspiciously Athenian sounding Rabbi once said: “Who is wise? He who learns from all men.”

The Moral Case for the One State Solution

This piece was originally posted on Jewschool

For the past three years, my wife/producer Pennie and I have been working on a film about the moral and practical failings of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We believe that not only is the one-state solution inevitable at this point, but that it has the potential to yield a much more just and moral resolution to the conflict than the two-state solution. Objections to our vision usually come in two flavors: The theoretical and the practical. On the theoretical side, people argue that the one-state solution would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. They argue that demographic realities make it inevitable that very shortly after the creation of a single state, Jews would find themselves in the minority. The phrases that often pop up alongside these observations are: “Israel has a right to exist” and “Jews have a right to self-determination.”On the practical side, people usually argue that there is too much hatred for these peoples to coexist peacefully in a single state. The corollary to this argument is that a single state would quickly devolve into civil war, as was seen in Lebanon, or in the best case scenario end up as a failed state like Belgium.

It is true that the one-state solution would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority state. Indeed, when the Zionists came to Palestine they were a minority and the only way that they were able to achieve their coveted majority status was by ethnically cleansing the land of most of its inhabitants. But the new state could still be a homeland for the Jews. Ali Abunimah famously argued in his book “One Country” for the maintenance of the Law of Return, which grants Jews automatic citizenship, alongside the implementation of the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. Whether or not this concept is actualized in the new state, any one-state solution would obviously have to guarantee the rights of its sizable Jewish minority. But the key here is that Jews would be equals, not privileged ethnocratic masters. Israel doesn’t have a “right to exist as a Jewish state.” States are political constructions and as such they don’t have rights. Individuals, however, do have rights and when a state infringes on those rights, its legitimacy is correctly brought into question. Moreover, even if we accept that Jews have the right to self-determination as a nation (a somewhat controversial claim), this right does not entitle them to deny the self-determination of another people group. 

As in any ethnic conflict, an enormous amount of animosity has built up between the two sides and suspicions run deep. On the Palestinian side, 64 years of dispossession and oppression, along with two decades of insincere peace negotiations, have led to a total mistrust of Israeli intentions. On the Israeli side, a culture of Siege Mentality co-opts the history of Jewish suffering to perpetuate an unjust and immoral ethnocracy. But were we to look at Apartheid South Africa in the late 1980’s, we would also see deep mistrust and hatred between Blacks and Whites. Moreover, Germany in the 1940’s didn’t exactly look like a good place for Jews to live but today, it is one of the best countries in the world for Jews. Political realities change. And sometimes, when people of good will get together and work at it, political realities can change for the better. 

We need to move away from the discourse of partition and ethno-nationalism and towards a discourse of integration and human rights. The two-state solution is immoral, because it denies millions of Palestinians their right of return and it legitimizes the second-class citizenship of Palestinian-Israelis. Now it is possible to conceive of a two-state solution that respects the right of return and transforms Israel from an ethnocracy into a full democracy, but such a solution is not on anyone’s agenda. Indeed, an examination of the motivations behind the two-state solution reveals why such a conception was never in the cards. On the Israeli side, the motivation for partition comes from the will to maintain a Jewish-majority state in as much of historic Palestine as possible. On the Palestinian side, partition was only accepted by those who live in the West Bank and Gaza under the boot of the IDF, because they were so desperate to end the Occupation. And in their desperation, the Palestinian leadership came close to negotiating away the right of return which is and always has been the central issue of concern for a majority of Palestinians.

The only way to really solve the conflict is to respect all of the human beings involved as equals. The one-state solution, therefore, is the most logical and practical way to achieve a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Much work still needs to be done on what the precise contours of the new state will look like. But in the meantime, we are trying to articulate and facilitate a paradigm shift that will help set the groundwork for a peaceful political transformation of Israel/Palestine.

When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People

When I encounter the argument often made by the new Atheists that religion makes otherwise moral people do immoral things, I typically respond by pointing out that this is an oversimplification. Complex systems of thought like religion are at least as much a reflection of human nature as they are constitutive of it. Nevertheless, when I read articles like Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz’s, A Moral Case for Brit Milah, I am forced to concede that there may be some truth to the argument.

In the interests of full disclosure, Rabbi Yanklowitz is a member of one of the Jewish communities that I belong to here in Los Angeles and I have a cordial relationship with him. He is the founder of Uri L’Tzedek, a wonderful Jewish group that is devoted to social justice issues. This is remarkable in so far as Orthodox Jews have historically not been as involved with social justice as Jews from the more Liberal movements. Rabbi Yanklowitz’s commitment to both Orthodoxy and progressive causes makes him something of a rare bird, which demonstrates a moral courage and awareness that few Orthodox Rabbis can manage. And yet, here he is trying to defend the indefensible.

Yanklowitz begins his article by declaring that he is someone who believes that mitzvot, religious commandments, have an ethical foundation. Taken literally, this statement is obviously false. There are a number of commandments that historically required Jews to commit acts of genocide and there are many other ethical problems with the structure of Jewish law (the status of women comes to mind as an obvious example). But the rabbi should not be taken literally here. What he means by this statement is two things. First, that he is not a fundamentalist, because he believes that human agency is a necessary part of religious interpretation and practice. Second, in his personal hermeneutics, ethics play an important role in shaping religious interpretation and practice. The rub, of course, is how one deals with situations in which morality conflicts with the Jewish tradition. Circumcision is an apparent, and I argue actual, instance of such a conflict. Yanklowitz seems to be trying to argue here that circumcision is not such an instance. Let’s examine his argument point by point.

1. Health

“Is it fair to avoid giving a boy protection when it is available? It’s not only Jewish law to maintain one’s health but also Jews should serve as a model for this important health practice.”

The health case for circumcision is incredibly flimsy. It is true that many in the American sphere of influence believe that male circumcision reduces the risk of certain kinds of diseases, but they are the exception in the world. Having extensively studied the literature and interviewed many experts on the subject, it is my opinion that male circumcision is a cultural practice masquerading as medicine. But even if I’m wrong and it turns out that there is incontrovertible evidence suggesting some health advantages to being circumcised, this is insufficient to recommend the practice. One could imagine all sorts of amputations that might confer “health benefits”. If we routinely amputated one breast from all women living in the United States, we could reduce the incidence of breast cancer in this country by a substantial amount. But it would be ludicrous to even suggest such a course of action. Merely demonstrating potential health benefits(which no one has yet done to my satisfaction with circumcision) is not sufficient in deciding whether or not to cut away healthy, functional body parts. Other factors must be weighed. All surgeries incur risks. And when we’re talking about an elective procedure on pre-autonomous individuals, the tolerance for risk should be very low. The UK dropped the practice of circumcision shortly after World War II when it was discovered that 16 out of every 100,000 boys circumcised were dying from related complications. 

2. Sexual Morality

“For centuries many have claimed that the removal of the foreskin reduces male sexual pleasure...Many empirical studies have put this into question...Perhaps circumcision can serve as a sacred reminder for men, in our over-sexualized world, to cultivate self control.”

Yanklowitz gets his facts wrong here. As it turns out, Maimonides and Philo had it right. The foreskin is the most erogenous part of the penis. It contains a higher concentration of nerve endings than any other part of the body and it provides a gliding mechanism that makes sex more comfortable for both partners. But beyond this empirical misstatement, the notion that circumcising an 8 day old baby reminds anyone of anything is absurd. If you’re thinking about sex while watching a Brit Milah, your problems may extend beyond self-control. Not to mention the fact that there is a deep form of sexism inherent in this understanding of the practice. If sexual restraint is something that we need to be reminded of at all (a dubious claim in and of itself), why is it that only men need to be reminded and not women?

 3. Utilitarian 

“If an uncircumcised man chooses to have the procedure done later in life, it will be much more painful (even with anesthesia) and dangerous than it would be for a newborn. It is the responsibility of parents to shield their children from unnecessary pain.” 

Once again, the facts are wrong. Circumcision is an excruciatingly painful experience for infants. The vast majority of ritual circumcisions are performed without any form of anesthetic during, or pain management after the procedure. Moreover, because the penis isn’t fully developed at infancy, the first step of circumcision is to tear apart the foreskin from the glans. Furthermore, the notion that circumcision is more dangerous for adults is patently false. Infants are much more susceptible to infectious disease than adults and they have much less tolerance for blood loss. On the other hand, I couldn’t agree more with the last sentence. It is the responsibility of parents to shield their children from unnecessary pain. And circumcision is the definition of unnecessary pain.

4. Parental Values & Social Acceptance

“Parents make health- and aesthetics-related value choices that affect their children’s bodies all the time. Should their child be vaccinated, receive orthodontia, get his or her ears pierced...Not circumcising a Jewish boy may hinder his social acceptance and his chances of finding a Jewish spouse.”

It is true that parents make many decisions for their children, but it does not follow that these decisions are immune from moral scrutiny. Some parenting decisions are morally neutral, some are right and some are wrong. Medically unnecessary permanent body-modifications are wrong, because they represent a failure to respect the future autonomy of the child. This includes ear piercing, although the pain, harm, and risk involved in that modification are far less severe than that of male circumcision. The second statement is the old argument from shame. As the philosopher Raja Halwani said so brilliantly in my film, Cut, arguments from shame turn on whether or not the shame is merited. Indeed, raising a child as an Orthodox Jew in the modern world may incur shame at some point in his or her life. The question is whether a person should feel shame for having an intact penis, or being an Orthodox Jew. I think it’s clear that the potential shame in either situation is unmerited and therefore not a moral argument for circumcision, or against Orthodox Judaism.

In the 5th and 6th points (“Modesty” and “Symbolic Reminder”) Yanklowitz is just rephrasing the point that he made in “Sexual Morality” so I will not address them here. But it is worth noting that Yanklowitz dips into more of the sexism that was hinted at in the sexual morality section. 

I believe that the motivation behind Rabbi Yanklowitz’s attempts to justify Brit Milah comes from a good place. Indeed, he has shown himself to be a man of courage in other areas of moral concern. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that he is proving the new Atheists right here. By allowing the weight of tradition to cloud his moral judgment on this issue, Yanklowitz, an otherwise morally courageous individual, is promoting an immoral practice. As I have shown in the above analysis, the arguments made here for circumcision are flimsy and confused. Brit Milah embodies a conflict between the Jewish tradition and ethics that is seen across many areas of Jewish interpretation and practice. How we negotiate these conflicts defines who we are both as Jews and as human beings. The first step towards recovery is realizing you have a problem. Shmuly, we have a problem.

Final Cut Pro X: One Man's Journey from Denial to Acceptance

Note: This blog was originally posted on Philip Bloom's Website alongside the impression of 6 other professional editors.

When the Final Cut apocalypse hit, I was an independent filmmaker working in LA. Many friends and colleagues would soon jump ship and go over to Premiere, or Avid, but I was curious about Final Cut Pro X. It’s not that I was any less upset than the rest of the Final Cut Pro community. I too had seen the tools that I used for the better part of a decade killed in one fell swoop. But I was in denial and I ponied up the $300 to start exploring Apple’s latest non-linear editing application. What became immediately apparent to me was that our friends in Cupertino had decided to completely rethink non-linear video editing.

I liked what I saw and I decided to take FCPX out for a spin. For three years now, I’ve been working on a documentary film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As part of that project, we collected 500 street interviews: 250 in Israel and 250 in the Palestinian territories. During the summer of 2011, I tabulated the data from the Israeli side and wrote a 2200 word report based on the results. What I needed, at the time, was a video to accompany the written report. This seemed like the perfect project with which to test out the new Final Cut. I challenged myself to do everything from editing and sound mixing, to titles and color correction inside of FCPX.

At first, things seemed to be going really well. While I had to unlearn some old muscle memory (no more Shift-Delete!), the logic of the new paradigm made sense to me. Nevertheless, the overall performance of the application left something to be desired. I work on a 2.8 GHZ Quad Core i7 iMac with 8GB of RAM and for some reason, FCPX didn’t feel as snappy as FCP6 on the same system. When it came to subtitles, working in FCPX was actually a breath of fresh air. It was really nice to be able to work inside a unified interface without any round-tripping and it did save me time. But there was a glitch in the application and every time I closed FCPX, the tracking of the subtitles would get screwed up. I ended up finishing the video, but the process of making it was incredibly frustrating. I had moved to anger. 

It was clear what Apple was thinking. The concepts in the new paradigm definitely had the potential to make things faster and easier. But their implementation was so sloppy that it made me feel like I wasn’t in complete control of my own work. Moreover, the feature omissions that had caused so many to jump ship, were a problem for me as well. There was simply no way that I would edit a feature-length documentary in a system that couldn’t hand off files for professional sound work. So I left FCPX and went back to editing in FCP6.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I was getting ready to launch an IndieGoGo campaign to raise finishing funds for my film and I needed to produce a short appeal video. I figured I’d give FCPX another shot. After all, it had received two updates in the interim and I was interested to see whether things had improved. Nevertheless, I was nervous about working in FCPX , because of my previous experiences. So I made a rough assemblage in FCP6, exported it as a Quicktime, imported that Quicktime into FCPX, and finished it there. The updated application was much more stable than I remembered it and the editing process was reasonably smooth. I understood, of course, that this hybrid approach (bargaining?) was not a feasible editing strategy for my feature-length film, but at the same time, the siren call of background rendering, automatic audio syncing (all of my interviews are shot with two cameras), and quick subtitling was very seductive. Still, there was no efficient way to move all of my FCP6 work into FCPX.  That’s where I stood until about a week ago, when Apple released its third update to FCPX, 10.0.3.

 

With the latest release, not only have the vast majority of missing features been restored, but a new utility is now available on the Mac App Store which allows you to move legacy FCP projects and sequences into FCPX. I paid the $10, downloaded the application, and moved a sequence over. It wasn’t perfect, but I’d say that 98% of my work made the transition intact and after a little bit of cleanup, I was up and running in FCPX. So far, the experience has been good. The performance is much improved over the first few versions, although it’s still not as snappy as I’d like. Multicam works a charm as do all of the features that originally made the application attractive in theory. In sum, the benefits at this point in time far outweigh the remaining issues and I think that it’s a good time for my colleagues to reconsider Apple’s contender. Final Cut Pro X is a powerful tool that has finally come into its own and I, for one, am well on my way to acceptance.