Glenn Reynolds’s hyperactive sense of political correctness is blinding him to the threat robots pose!

For God’s sake, Glenn, think of the Insta-Mom!! When they grab her with those metal claws, she won’t be able to break free, because they’re made of metal, and robots are strong.

In the latest twist in my Comcast saga, I have another techie scheduled to come over tomorrow afternoon, due to the continuing intermittent speed and connectivity problems I’ve been having. The latest odd behavior has been a couple of instances where my connection has slowed to an inconsistent crawl, and when I’ve done a speed test, I’ve gotten a perfectly reasonable downstream speed but no upstream reading, like so:

Anyone have a clue what might cause that? I’m stumped. I just know that, when it happens, it seems to produce extremely erratic behavior: one minute, stuff is loading fine; the next, it’s not loading at all; the next, it’s crawling; then it’s suddenly fine again. Very frustrating.

In the last half hour, a spooky sort of here-come-the-storms feeling has definitely settled over Knoxville. Tornado warnings off to the west. I'm heading home, and should beat the storms.

UPDATE: I’m home, in case anyone was worried. :) No major storms yet here, though I think Jay’s hometown of Loudon got pounded. [UPDATE: Apparently not.]

Looks like we may get some action in 30-45 minutes, but overall, the line of storms appears to be weakening. Indeed, thankfully, there are no more tornado warnings at the moment.

LATER UPDATE: The line of storms kind of fell apart as it neared Knoxville proper, so we were largely spared. But one isolated storm cell did move over a while later, bringing some heavy rain for a few minutes and briefly turning the sky a weird shade of yellow — I’m not sure what that was all about. Here are the “before & after” shots, at 8:02 PM and 8:07 PM:

Hmm… upon further review, sunset was at 8:07, so maybe the sunlight at 8:02 was somehow shining through the clouds and rain at some weird angle, producing the yellowness.

It was a bit spooky, though, regardless.

The field is set for the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella in New York City next Saturday! The event will be held at the Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, the 2,738-seat venue where the New York Philharmonic plays.

As I mentioned previously, the USC SoCal VoCals advanced to the finals for the first time ever by earning the West Region championship on March 15. At the time I wrote that, however, the identities of most of their competitors were still to be determined.

Well, the last semifinal was held six days ago, so now the full field is known. The VoCals will compete against Oxford University Out of the Blue (Western Europe champion), Northwestern University Purple Haze (Midwest champion), Florida State University All-Night Yahtzee (South champion), New York University N’Harmonics (Northeast champion) and Ithaca College Ithacappella (Mid-Atlantic champion).

You hear that, Kristy? USC vs. Ithaca! Oh, it’s ON!!

Fight on, Trojans! Beat the Seminoles, Wildcats, Violets, Bombers and… um… Oxons?

P.S. Here’s the official ICCA website, including a link to buy tickets. I wish I could go! Alas, I don’t think a random trip to New York City is in the cards. But if any of y’all are in the area, I’d recommend it. I’m sure it’ll be an amazing show.

P.P.S. Newly discovered site: The A Cappella Blog. Cool.

Notre Dame’s men’s basketball assistant coach Gene Cross, credited by some with turning Mike Brey’s team around over the last two years, has been hired by Toledo as their new head coach. (Hat tip: Chris A.)

Whenever I’ve eaten crow and praised Brey — whose first name, for blog purposes, used to be "Fire" — over the last two years, Becky has countered that "he has an awesome assistant coach," choosing to credit Cross rather than Brey for the Irish’s improvement. I guess now we’ll find out who’s right.

(Well, maybe. There is, of course, a third person whose arrival between the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons was also rather a big deal: Luke Harangody.)

Becky e-mails that The Weather Channel "is telling people in western Nashville suburbs to take cover." That would be because of the tornado warning for central Cheatham County. And that line of storms is headed our way. "Methinks it’ll be one helluva night," Becky writes. Indeed.

UPDATE: The big Dogwood Arts Parade in downtown Knoxville, scheduled for 7pm tonight, has been postponed to next Friday April 25 due to the approaching line of storms.

From the Economist’s Election ‘08 blog:

The Clinton campaign would have us believe
that after all the resources Barack Obama has poured into Pennsylvania,
anything but a huge victory for him in that state’s primary should
raise grave doubts about his electability. But of course, Mr Obama has
always trailed Hillary Clinton by huge margins in the Keystone State,
which is precisely why he’s had to spend so much cash, in hopes of avoiding an embarassing rout.

Nevertheless,
what is the appropriate "expectations" benchmark with polls bouncing
erratically week to week? Does Mr Obama "beat expectations" if, as per
the most recent polls, he holds Mrs Clinton below the double-digit
leads she was showing in surveys
a month ago? Or are new expectations established by the polls conducted
this month? Or, rather, by whatever results are released in the next
few days? How long before we decide that a "benchmark" as fluid as
"expectations" is essentially meaningless, allowing both campaigns to
spin in their preferred direction by selecting their preferred
baseline?

Amen to that.

Alas, I’m afraid the media will probably fulfill the prediction of commenter "yea" last week:

who could have predicted this would happen? obama is trailing by a huge
amount in a state he’s never been to. he shows up in the state and the
margin starts to decrease slowly. all of a sudden he surges and even
takes the lead in a few polls. things stabilize as the election gets
closer, and then there is a natural drift back to hillary that allows
her to win the state. she wins the state be a smaller margin than
anyone thought possible 4-5 weeks ago, yet by a bigger margin than most
of the late polls indicated. hillary then claims the momentum.

*sigh*

Today’s edition, primarily because it will annoy Brendan.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions. I can think of two, neither of which cast St. Joe in a particularly elegant light.

It's a beautiful spring day here in Knoxville, with forecast highs in the upper 70s. But, better enjoy it while it lasts; a wintry blast is coming, and by Monday the high will be around 40. Yikes!