If we look back in history, banking and retail outlets had armies of clerks helping you get your job done. Rather doing the job for you.The grocery clerk fetched the items for you, packed them up and ringed in the amount on the cash register.The banking clerk cashed your cheques, gave you the status and balance of your account and handed you the cash.As time went by, technology started making forays in those areas, and we saw Automated Teller Machines and self service at the supermarket.Initially, the motive for doing this was convenience for the customer: the ATM was open after hours, and the supermarket allowed you to pick the vegetables you wanted, not what the clerk handed you out.

Another alleged terror plot involving sensational sounding Red Mercury has come to a fizzle.Three suspects in London have been freed today after the trial. The culprit here is not the security apparatus of governments trying to boost their image and lobby for more budget, nor is it politicians trying to instill a sense of fear in the public.This time it is yellow journalism in the form of News of The World, a tabloid, and its 'investigations reporter" called Mazher Mahmood, known as the "fake sheikh".

On Google Video, there is a documentary called Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land.An interesting aspect of this documentary is that the interviewees include US Jews as well as Israeli academics, defense forces and others.Although it is 1 hour 19 minutes, it is worth watching carefully.

For years, the Egyptian Cuisine section on the Baheyeldin web site has been one of the most visited parts of the site. Visitors were asking for recipes and not just background information and history.

So, today, we launched the Egyptian Cuisine Recipes just as visitors requested, with more than 70 recipes ready for you to try.

Some time ago, I wrote an article about Wikimapia web site, the collaborative mapping of the world overlaying Google's Maps.Today, I got this email from someone in India.

A while back, I wrote on search engine optimization contests where meaningless words are chosen, and winners are those who score the highest for the search term on search engines. For example, here is a recent contest with the terms Seraphim Proudleduck. Today, I received a message from Mukesh K asking me to do search engine optimization for his site.It reads as follows:

Here is a humorous bit on the idiosyncracies of the English language.

What many people do not realize, is that language and alphabets are two different things. A language is mainly a spoken thing, while an alphabet is a way of approximating this spoken voices on paper (or stone, or keyboard).

English is notorious in being non-phonetic, and hence there has always been calls to reform/simplify the way it is spelled.

For example, Yahoo had an article on efforts for pushing simplified spelling, and how they persist.

This idea is not new of course. In 1779, Benjamin Franklin proposed a new phonetic spelling system. You can see the full details on that system in this article. Noah Webster proposed the same in 1789.

Two new reports have been added to the adsense module, in addition to the detailed report of each click, IP address/host, date/time and page.They are the top pages, which shows pages generating the most clicks, and another report for the number of clicks per day.

The top pages report will have surprises for you I am sure.

And according to June statistics, the adsense module for 4.7 has been downloaded 1,441 times, ahead of feedback 4.7 with 1,082 times.

I often get email mistking my web site for others. One of those is the EGC where I used to go to school as a kid, and have a few pages on it. Here is another instance of mistaking my web site for the EGC web site. Names withheld of course. 

Dear Mrs. Enaam [Eldafraway, headmistress],               I wrote to you on the first of June06 , about sending mydaughter [...] all document specially her 'BirthdayCertificat', and I have forward £10-00 Egyptian £ to pay for thecosts  that you can kindly sent all the Documents by post 'RecordedDeleviery'. Please note that I also the same time wrote to 'Alsassr[El Nassr = EBS] College', to Mr. [...], and he is kindlly have sent back allthe Documents belonging to my two Son's [...] And [...]. Please I willwait to hear from you , and sorry if I have caused any problemes?!.Yours truly[...]