Sanctity of Life

This note is not going to be popular with most people.
This posting is also being written whilst I am very tired.
Lets assume this note plays a bit of devil's advocate, whilst remaining somewhat realistic

Can you really say that Hezbollah don't appreciate life?
Can you really think that they don't value their soldiers ? their fighters ?
Their negotiators just managed to make Israel give back every single Hezbollah fighter for what was widely believed to be (but not confirmed until today) 2 captured soldiers who were sadly killed some time ago.
True, we see it as them not appreciating our soldiers lives, but why have we kept remains of Hezbollah here too ? We have caused suffering to families of Hezbollah fighters in the same way they caused us the same anguish.

I really don't see how we can claim the moral high ground on this release. I understand that they were terrorists, fanatics and other combatants, but unless i misunderstood the nature of who these people were, I don't understand why we kept their bodies, which, according to one report, needed 23 red cross trucks to return the bodies.

The images of their soldiers changing back into military uniforms, showing that whatever they may be able to persuade the rest of the world, they are still wanting to fight. They want to carry on the battle.

This is not step towards peace. This was not a step towards progress.

What will they hold out for next? What will we have to give back in order to get back the captured soldiers who we know are alive ?

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those who are missing and returned today.

Information overload

It used to be easy. You had an e-mail address, and ICQ number and all was easy.
Then you needed Hotmail and AIM name.
and then well you used yahoo chat rooms to talk to people on other subjects.

Then, you got second e-mail address to handle the junk from the other stuff.

Its now impossible to keep up.
I have 3 Gmail accounts, Facebook, The blog, AIM, ICQ, Hotmail, Yahoo Messenger (thank G-d for trillian so i can keep the number of open windows to a minimum) and a domain i do nothing with but the e-mail (which i have never given out) gets filled with junk mail constantly

I used to use Igoogle, now i started to use Netvibes to manage my home pages.

To let people know how i am feeling i have twitter, facebook and the status fields in hotmail

I get my news from hundreds of news sources thanks to sites like newsnow.co.uk and google reader.
I have more RSS feeds than i know what to do with now.

I am on so many computers and systems you need delicious or other similar programs just to keep in touch with the sites you use - in case one of them is not linked from another one you happen to like.

Social networking is good, but its getting to the point now where i am asking if i really want to know everything about my friends. Its a lot better to see on these sites which sites my mates are using enjoying, but it keeps me thinking that i used to hate mass e-mails with "check this out" and how closely it resembles it, but to a much wider audience.

On top of that, there is the frustration of not getting a reply - you are on-line, they got the message and it's been 20 mins and no reply - how rude !

Anyway - i am off to check my e-mails, news, and other blogs before bed.
Might get there just in time for my kid to wake up

Flocking onto the web

I recently started using the new social networking browser "flock"
This web browser was born out of the growing amount of presence and usage of social networking sites.
It lets you automatically log into your Facebook, Flikr, Youtube, twitter etc etc accounts.
It also has a blog add-in (similar to the firefox addition which i was using for a while but whose name escapes me at this time- all as standard.

I am not about to give a whole review of it now, but as i play with it some more, I'll let you know how i get on.  
(one thing that seems not so easy is to edit the html of the blog posting - am trying to put a link to the flock site (http://www.flock.com for more info) but not really managing very well

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Bill 892 stops you seeing this post - please try another website

Israel has made many huge advances in the field of hi-tech. We invented here many of the things the world takes for granted now, especially in the realm of the internet ( VoIP Telephony, ICQ, etc) so it comes as a great disappointment to me to see that the Internet Censorship Law has been brought up again.

In today's Haaretz, and Jerusalem Post, there is the news of the bill proposed by Amnon Cohen and backed by the Shas Party, talking about bill working its way through the Knesset to force ISPs to block all users from accessing adult orientated sites.

How can we allow it to happen ?

The original bill was aimed at stopping children accessing these sites,but adults would have a password or biometric verification method, but it seems that this is not the case in the report now.

The world news is full of stories of other countries which ban and block sites such as You Tube. It would be a sad day for personal freedom, the internet and israel as a pioneer in the field, if this bill passes.

For more reading on this, see:a great blog post on the globalvoicesonline site when the bill was proposed in May 2007 and another site which documents the history of the Bill 892

Buying a House

I am not entirely sure how the chain of events came about, but we started to think about a place to live. It's very different from in the UK, where our options are limited really to the main centres of Jewish life. Here, we have the whole country to consider.

We have decided, through a process of elimination, to try for the Gush Etzion area, specifically Efrat, partly as we are hoping Ruth will have a job in the area.

Ruth went to see it about a week and a half ago; I went to see it on Friday
Tonight we spoke to a lawyer about it, we are talking to banks tomorrow.
All of this seems to be going very fast!

I know there is much to do in order to get a house here (my sister went through the same thing last year-ish.

Anyway - I know that the style of post is not the usual ones, but every once in a while it happens.

Snow ?

As mentioned before, there is 1 thing at this time of year which makes all Israelis excited -- Snow.
They are forecasting snow again tomorrow night. This will mean another couple of days of chaos and fun for all.
Will it snow ? Well,I for one won't get the day off, but will try to take part in some of the fun, if only I can find my gloves

Browser Compatability

I have often been annoyed how some websites don't work properly in Firefox. One solution is to use the IE Tab plugin. This has a few flaws, but is generally excellent at emulating an IE window within Firefox. I am therefore very sad to have noticed that the Blog template I am using looks really bad within Internet Explorer( at least on my laptop).

I therefore apologise to all of you using Internet Explorer, who, as far as I can make out, see my blog as:


Those of you using Firefox (and even Safari) see the blog in this nicer template of


So, until I find a template which is better suited to all browsers, or am proven wrong, please use Firefox to maximise your viewing pleasure.