There are tornado warnings up the wazoo here in central Virginia. I just heard some thunder rumbles, finally, and have been watching ABC track the storm street by street. It is currently over Heidi’s area, and heading north towards Richmond.

Then again, when I called Sarah and told her she was having heavy rain, she said, “No we’re not.” So perhaps the weather guy isn’t as accurate as he would like to think he is.

But they’re scaring the crap out of their viewing area, and there was a possible tornadoe at Kents Corner, which we’re pretty sure is where Superman was hiding out those six years he disappeared.

It’s moving northeast. Odds are high that it will miss the Richmond metro area. Whoops, more thunder. And off I go.

Supposedly, the storm is due here in 15 minutes. We shall see if it shows.

Update, 50 minutes later: Still waiting for the storm, and no, it didn’t call to say it was going to be late.

Actually, I’m watching the radar. It’s all heading northeast, so it’s going to miss me. Part of me is slightly disappointed, but the rest of me is quite happy not to see tornado-force winds and four inches of rain per hour.

So I make it through the worst of Virginia’s pollen season. We’re about done here, folks, and we’re like number seven in the nation (and not in a good way) for allergens.

And I’m going to NJ this weekend for a family thing, and what time of year is it?

Maximum pollen season.

Thank goodness for [brand name deleted out of fear of spamkilling software].

So Barry Bonds is on the verge of tying Babe Ruth for home runs in a career? Since when?
Sure, the Astros are playing, but they suck on the road and have handed over 6 in a row. Might as well keep an eye on Bonds through MLB.com …

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The right side of the blogosphere is awash with “So what?” attitudes when it comes to the story that the major phone companies have turned over millions of phone records since 2001.

I’ll tell you so what: Get an effing warrant if you want to track my phone habits. I am tired of conservatives gleefully giving up our civil rights in the fight against terrorism. I have been uncomfortable for quite some time now with the concept of the president being able to hold people without charge for years at a time. I understand that we’re fighting a different kind of war, but there’s something inherently wrong with refusing to apply the Geneva Conventions to these people, and then refusing to apply any laws at all to them. This is not a banana republic. Even the prisoners at Gitmo have rights. If they’re not covered by the Convention, figure out what does cover them, and use it.

(more…)

That according to JP.

A document composed by former Fatah-Tanzim head Marwan Barghouti from inside the Israeli prison where he is incarcerated, outlining the terms of an agreement to quell the tensions between Fatah and Hamas, was approved by Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday.

Together with heads of other Palestinian organizations inside the jail, Barghouti called on Hamas and Fatah to unify into one Palestinian movement, Israel Radio reported. The imprisoned leaders of the two movements, together with representatives of the Islamic Jihad, PFLP and the DFLP signed the document.

The initiative called for all Palestinian organizations to act towards the achievement of an independent Palestinian state based upon the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital. It was the first time a Hamas leader had unconditionally accepted the 1967 borders in a future Palestinian state.

That’s a first minuscule step in the right direction, but still far from being there.

The article carries a picture of Bargouti in jail.

Marwan looks definitely better than on the day of his capture after all these years in hiding. So, all things considered, the time in the nick is doing him some good in more than one sense.

Well, happy for you Marwan, and about that document: take your time for some new revisions, there is no hurry, really!

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Ynet published a story I cannot qualify as anything but scandalous:

Rabbis get woman-free flight

Two leading rabbis buy all first class tickets, ask El Al to only post male stewards on flight so they do not have to see women on way to America.

A modest first class flight: Two leading rabbis set to fly to the United States concluded an agreement with El Al that would see them enjoy a woman-free and movie-free flight.

The Gerrer Rebbe, a Hassidic leader who will fly abroad on Sunday, asked El Al that no air stewardesses be aboard the flight. El Al complied with the rabbi’s request and on Sunday’s flight to the United States only males will look after passengers.

The Gerrer Rebbe and Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman, 93, another leading rabbi, will fly in a historic journey to visit American Jewish communities.

During the visit the rabbis will seek to raise funds for married yeshiva students attending advanced Judaic studies programs.

The rabbis bought all first class tickets on the flight to make sure no businesswomen are on board. It was also decided that no films will be screened during the flight. Moreover, the backs of first class seats will be covered with plastic so that the rabbis won’t even have to see the television screens.

That’s one historic journey indeed. A few questions (asked in a vacuum for sure):

1. The rabbis spent a 6-digits amount for a flight which goal, between others, is to raise funds. Kinda contradictory, isn’t it, unless they know in advance that this is a good investment?
2. That money for the tickets: who, exactly, coughed it up, if not the two usual groups of suckers: the marks in US and the taxpayers in Israel?
3. Do other passengers on this flight agree to the no movies proviso?
4. How does a national carrier like El-Al agree to conditions that are a) insulting to women b) discriminatory to other passengers and c) most probably are in violation of a lot of laws in this country (which is not yet, as far as I know, under Halachic regime)?

And a main question to El-AL and related miscellaneous bodies: how exactly does this act provide support to the claim, made by our politicians and assorted motormouths, that Israel is one of the very few enlightened democracies in the area? (As a case of the opposite usually pointing to Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.)

Feh.

Did you read the post I wrote yesterday, about Iran’s president not mentioning Jews when he mentioned the world’s three monotheistic religions, instead, calling them followers of “the teaching of Moses”? I asked what he meant by that.

Now we know.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Iran’s president on Thursday intensified his attacks against Israel, calling it a “regime based on evil,” but also said he was ready to negotiate with the United States and its allies over his country’s nuclear program.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has previously said Israel should be wiped off the map, also told a cheering crowd of students in Indonesia’s capital that the Jewish state “cannot continue and one day will vanish.”

But it isn’t anti-Semitism. It’s anti-Zionism. Right?

In the early 1930s, Hitler made speech after speech demonizing the Jews. There are people alive today who were alive then. They say they are feeling the breeze of 1938 blowing all over again.

Every time I have to help my mother with her computer, my pulse rate doubles. This is a woman who worked on the world’s most complicated computer reservation system at Eastern Airlines for 18 years, and then retrained on the Mac and was a secretary for another five years. And yet, when she is on the laptop I gave her, or the one that she subsequently bought, she becomes an absolute imbecile. I’m sorry, there’s no other word for the woman who once called and asked me, “Mer, does my computer have a hole for the thing?”

“A what for the what?”

“Does my computer have a hole for the thing. You know, the square thing.”

“Do you mean a disk drive? For a floppy disk?”

“Is that what it’s called?”

[Count to ten. Then count ten more.] “Yes. You have a floppy drive.”

“Okay. Where is it?”

[Count to a thousand.]

Anyway, I happened to mention to her during our phone conversation tonight that I’d tried to call earlier in the day. She asked me what time, I told her, and she said, “Oh, Aunt Judy was on the phone with HP because her computer has a burning smell coming from it.” Shocked, I told her to tell Aunt Judy to immediately unplug her computer. I had to argue with them to get her to do it. Then I remembered that HP is recalling laptop batteries, so I asked Mom to tell me her model number, and checked online. Sure enough, it’s a recall model. “Mom,” I said, “you need to take the battery out of the computer.”

“Well, if I take the battery out, how will I be able to use it?”

“You can plug it in.”

“But how will it work without the battery?”

[Count to twenty.] “Mom, it will work on electric power. You know, from plugging it into the wall.”

“Oh.”

To my utter astonishment, I got her to take out the battery with minimal effort and aggravation. (I ascribe this entirely to Hewlett-Packard, whose computers I already love, but whose reputation has just shot up a thousand percent with me due to my mother actually being able to remove her laptop battery.) I explained to her that it was likely that it wasn’t defective, but we weren’t going to take a chance. And that she needed to call HP tomorrow, because she probably never updated her contact info after she moved to Florida, which is why, I’m sure, she never got a recall notice.

“I can’t afford a new computer if this one burns up,” she said.

“Mom, if the battery burns up your computer, they have to give you a new one.”

“Oh. Okay.”

And that was the end of the tech support portion of our phone call. You know, after every session like this one, I really need a drink.

A big one.

This is why I can never work in tech support. I have zero patience over the phone. All I want to do is reach through and slap people for not knowing how to do the simplest tasks on their computer.

You know what sucks the most? My mother, my aunt, a cousin, and sometimes a brother call me for tech support. And of course, I can’t send them a bill. Okay, I could, but they’d never pay.