PBS recently aired a documentary titled Israel's Next War. It is about the little heard of extremist Jews in settlement outposts.This documentary is eye opening in that it makes one aware that religious literalism, extremism, militancy and terrorism are all not confined to one religion or one people. One could easily make comparisons between these militant Jewish settlers, and certain factions of Muslim extremist ideologues (e.g. Takfir wa al-Hijra, Al-Qaeda, ...etc). For example:

A common theme throughout the ages is that history is always written by the victor. Only the version of those who wins is heard, with the losers' version either lost, or relegated to the forgotten niches.Another theme is how nationalism impacts the point of view, with one nation's version of heroic history viewed as sheer propaganda and glorification of aggressiveness.These two themes can be seen today in how media coverage of the victor (USA) malignes rivals using organized propaganda to brain wash its citizens, or how one people's terrorist is another people's freedom fighter.

An extremely well researched and informative article on Canada's Flag, its design, and history. From Wikinerds, by Nik Karastathis.

Here is a good article with many useful links on how a contemporary Hindi speaker finds that it is similar to Welsh, after moving there.The article contains many useful links, and more importantly maps of how the family of Indo-European languages spread from the Indian subcontinent to the British Isles.The similarities of these languages are well known for more than two centuries. It all started in 1782 when William Jones, a British judge in India with a special gift for languages, noticed the similarities between Hindi and English. He wrote:

The other day, I got an email from a well known company that is looking for certain skills for positions it wants to fill. Since the job required relocation to another the United States, I politely declined, despite the big name of that company.What interested me is how recruiters check out potential candidates on the internet using Google search. From the logs of my web server, I could see exactly what this person searched on, and the sequence of events. I am publishing this mini-research because it is really interesting for geeks like me.From the IP address of the sender, I could tell that he indeed was from that particular company, despite the fact that his email address said otherwise.

Those who have been with NCR during the AT&T merger days, remember Jerre Stead, the CEO of AT&T Global Information Solutions, as NCR was renamed at the time.

I would like to write a bit about Jerre, since he left a bit of a scar on the collective psyche of NCR during his tenure there.

A recurring question on the Drupal.org forums is by people new to Drupal wanting to setup their site for Google AdSense. This quick guide should help with this topic.

Updates:

• A few weeks after I wrote this article, I wrote a new Drupal Google AdSense module. You can use that for a pre-packaged solution that may be easier to configure in some cases.
• Some of the details here (e.g. making blocks hidden for certain URL paths) are specific to Drupal 4.5. Things are easier in Drupal 4.6 and more.

Introduction

Drupal is an Open Source Content Management System that is gaining popularity fast. It is used to run lots of sites on the internet, and more and more people are using it. For more information visit the Drupal section on this web site for a quick overview.

A comprehensive article on WikiNerds on Canada's Flag and its history. It also has some informative links on Canada's history.

Many who are not familiar with Egypt's history and culture wonder why Egypt does not speak Egyptian today and not Arabic. This article tries to answer this question for those who ask it.

The New Kingdom: The Last Empire

Egypt's last purely Egyptian great empire, known as the New Kingdom, lasted from 1567 B.C. to 1085 B.C. During this period Egypt dominated a lot of its neighbors, such as Nubia, and Syria. This was achieved by various means, such as Thutmosis military campaigns, Ramses II's peace treaties, and Amenhotep III's diplomacy via marriage. The riches of Tut-Ankh-Amen are from this period, as well as the religious revolution of Akhnaten, the heretic monotheistic pharaoh.

Here are some conclusions that one can make from the previous examples:

• It is not easy to judge people and movements from a black and white absolutist view.
• Onesociety may view a person as a hero, while another view the same personas a villain. This is specially true when the two societies come intoconflict (straight out military confrontation, or small guerillawarefare). Prejudices come into play most of the time.
• Historyis written by the victor, only from the victorious point of view.Moreover, history is continually being reevaluated and rewritten as newfacts come to light, and old prejudices fade only to reveal new ones.