In the News

“Nice Jewish boy” Launches Playboy in Israel

March 8, 2013

When I was growing up, my father always kept a stack of Playboy magazines in the living room, next to the stereo. They were there for anyone to read, and despite the public potential for teenage titillation, I’m sure that my father really did intend that we read them. But just in case there were other reasons they were […]

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Glass Half Full – Better Place Transforms Station Error into Customer Service Case Study

February 20, 2013

Hey Better Place electric car aficionados: ever wonder what would happen if you pulled into one of the company’s fully automated battery swap stations and it didn’t work? Well, I’m here to tell the tale. It’s a classic glass half empty/half full situation. Half empty: the station broke down and we weren’t able to get […]

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Waze to go, GPS

January 9, 2013

I wrote last week on Israelity about some innovative ways that data from the Israeli traffic and mapping app Waze is being used by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Waze was in the news again this morning, but for less positive reason. When the intense rains that have hit Israel over the past three days flooded […]

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First Person Electric

January 7, 2013

When I was growing up in the 1960s, like many of my pseudo-hippie peers, I had a typically utopian vision of how the future would play out. There would be world peace, of course. We’d be able to instantaneously zip from one location to another by stepping into street corner teleportation devices that would take […]

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On Journalists Who Write Fiction

December 24, 2012

A who’s who of Anglo Jerusalem journalists and other well-wishers came out on a blustery winter night last week to cheer on one of their own. Ilene Prusher, a former international foreign correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and more recently working locally at The Jerusalem Report, The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, has just published her […]

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Comedy for Koby Mea Culpa

December 7, 2012

My post earlier this week about the Comedy for Koby show that recently toured Israel set off a storm of criticism. I was pilloried by readers who were shocked by my denunciation of two of the original comics on the program who backed out when Operation Pillar of Defense began. “I don’t expect people to risk their […]

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Politics and Electric Cars

November 21, 2012

Does electric car company Better Place discriminate against driving across the Green Line? Now, certainly, Better Place will be happy to sell you a shiny new 100% gasoline-free Renault Fluence, no matter where you live. But in our brief time driving our own Better Place car, OSCAR – the company’s personable if flaky GPS – […]

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OSCAR the Grouch

November 2, 2012

On Sunday, Better Place held their first ever customer event. A couple of hundred Better Place electric car owners – including us – descended on the company’s Herzliya showroom to hear from Better Place staff the inside scoop on where the company is headed. It was an electric gas to see so many petrol-free cars in one […]

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“Houses from Within” Returns to Jerusalem With More Trains

October 30, 2012

The annual “Houses from Within” weekend is one of my favorite Jerusalem adventures. The event opens tens of normally private homes and institutions to the public. Dwellings owned by artists like successful sculptor Giora Segal, who renovated a small house in Motza (not technically in Jerusalem) built on top of a Second Temple period cave, […]

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Electric Range Anxiety and Big Brother

October 17, 2012

We picked up our brand new 100% electric car from Better Place on Sunday. Being an early adopter has its perks – when we walked into Better Place’s showroom, the entire staff stood up and applauded. There was a big screen reading “Mazel Tov Brian and Jody Blum.” We were given our own special license […]

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