One highly tenuous theory, is by Professor Kamal Salibi of the American University in Beirut. In his 1985 book Bible Came from Arabia, he performs phonology and applies it to toponyms in western Arabia today, and concludes that Palestine had absolutely no historical Hebrew presence, and rather it is indded South Western Arabia is what the Bible refers to as Israel!

Here is rather an interesting dilemma. When new technologies or behaviors evolve, there is almost always someone that will abuse or misuse it, for example using it for illegal or criminal purposes, or just as an annoyance.

This misuse eventually reduces the usefulness of the new technology.

Our response to this misuse varies a lot, depending on our cultural and social upbringing, and outlook in life. This collective response is very important since it may shape the technology's future. It could either be limited, adjust to the change, or be abandoned altogether.

Here are various bits of Canadian humor, all of them about the weather. 

• The four seasons in Canada are June, July, August and Winter. 
• Tourists like to come to Ontario in the summer month.
• A bit north of Toronto, people consider themselves lucky if summer coincides with a weekend.
• Best way to fight the winter blues is to take up a winter sport. Complaining about winter is the most popular one. 
• In the praires, you can be sure that it does not snow in July and August.
• If you complain about weather in Canada, then move to Vancouver. Then you will complain about high real estate values and cost of living.

A while back, I wrote about Interrupting Interruptions, and Life Interrupted: Stressed by Distraction.This now seems to be on its way to be recognized as a 'condition', and even has some proposed names: from N.A.D.D.

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.