Hey, The Jews, Just Ask Yourselves 'What Would Sandy Koufax Do?'

Image via the documentary "Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story"

It is a day that ends in "y" (shut up, weekends don't count), so of course we have some news you can maybe use: a major league dilemma for Jewish baseball fans this year, watching football is still popular (sigh), everyone in the universe bought a new iTelecommunicationsGadget because (snort) SEXY, some other stuff that might be relevant to your interests, and of course SCIENCE!

• Are you a Hey-at-least-I-go-to-shul-on-the-High-Holidays Jew who likes baseball? You might want to check your calendar (it starts this week, in case your mother hasn't called to guilt you about coming for the holidays a million times already):  

  For Jewish fans of the Nationals, the Orioles and the Angels — the teams that have so far clinched spots — the elation of learning this week that their baseball team was in the playoffs quickly collided with religious reality. Negotiations are underway with parents and spouses. Rabbis are being consulted. Amid the pressure, some jokes are making the rounds, including this one:

  Man asks rabbi what to do about postseason baseball on Yom Kippur. Rabbi: “DVR it.” Man: “You can DVR Yom Kippur?” [...]

  These questions aren’t new. Tiger Hank Greenberg made Jewish American history 80 years ago Friday when the young slugger refused to play in the playoffs on Yom Kippur. In a period of intense anti-Semitism, Greenberg got a standing ovation when he walked into his synagogue that day. [...]

  Experts say Greenberg — and later Dodger Sandy Koufax, who wouldn’t pitch in the World Series in 1965 because of Yom Kippur — and other contemporary Jewish players have taken such stands more for symbolism than because they were devout.

• Sweet little sister Happy Nice Time People reports that despite the outrage at the NFL about ALL THE THINGS, people still like watching their sportsball. A lot :

  Thursday Night Footballtook home the trophy with a score of 11.8 million viewers. And yet, that’s just under Wednesday’s America’s Got Talent premiere, so advertisers may start wondering why they’re shelling out $500,000 per spot (the second highest rate behind Sunday Night Football).

  Go click on the HNTP link to see what else people were watching on their idiot boxes. The answers will AMAZE YOU!

• How do you make a high school physics class interesting? WithStar Wars :

  On an early autumn morning in 2009, Randall Munroe, a NASA physicist turned full-time cartoonist, was teaching a weekend physics class to high-school students in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The course was part of an M.I.T. program designed to introduce students to topics ranging from sculpture and ancient Greek to geoengineering. [...]

  The students reacted as, well, typical students. “They seemed pretty bored,” Munroe recalled. “I could tell, because I remembered being that bored student.” [...]

  On an early autumn morning in 2009, Randall Munroe, a NASA physicist turned full-time cartoonist, was teaching a weekend physics class to high-school students in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The course was part of an M.I.T. program designed to introduce students to topics ranging from sculpture and ancient Greek to geoengineering. Though Munroe’s lecture that day had the lively title “Solar Panels, Hand Grenades, and Blowing Up the Moon: How to Think About Energy,” for the first hour and a half he adhered to a fairly standard lecture format. What is energy? What can it do? How do you know how much you have?

  The students reacted as, well, typical students. “They seemed pretty bored,” Munroe recalled. “I could tell, because I remembered being that bored student.” Maybe, he joked, one of them had even begun doodling—his own preferred method for passing time when he was in school, and a habit that would later evolve into his popular online cartoon strip “xkcd.”

  Halfway through his lecture, Munroe decided to shift tactics. Veering away from the traditional classroom approach, he began illustrating concepts with zany examples. What if, for instance, the students had to sort out the energy dynamics of a scene in “Star Wars” or “The Lord of the Rings”? “Suddenly, the kids were excited and engaged,” he told me. “Before I knew it, they were running ahead of me, coming up with their own examples and solving their own equations.”

• How do you not want to read more with a lede like this? 

  You won't believe the size of the schnoz on a newly-discovered dinosaur.

• Every single person on the planet bought the new iPhone this weekend, apparently:

  In what has become a pop culture rite, Apple fans worldwide stood in line for hours, and days, to be among the first to snag the new phones Friday.

  "I can't resist it," said David Hearne, 27, of Seaford, Del. "It's amazing. It's gonna be sexy." He showed up at 11 p.m. Thursday with a blanket and cot to be first in line at a Verizon Wireless store in Salisbury, Md.

  Were you among the masses, camping out to get a SEXXXXY new phone? Go on, you can admit it. We won't make fun of you. Much.

• You all know the right way to use birth control pills, right? RIGHT?

Your turn to share your stories and make your jokes. And no, you don't have to fess up if you don't know how to use birth control pills, but in case you have any awkward questions, go ahead and ask. We're here to help.