The world’s most widely known and most enigmatic blogger Salam Pax has started blogging again… sorta.
The young cynical lad, who lives in a Baghdad burb, has been an object of speculative fascination months before the invasion of Iraq. Cynical and eloquent, readers and journalists alike were dying to find out if this guy is for real or not.

His blog abruptly broke off in the first few days of the invasion, late March. Last week, he’s started up again.

We sighed a puff of relief. But wait a sec… There’s something fishy here. It occurred to me 1) this guy almost never makes any grammatical or idiomatic errors in his writing. That is weird, because even when one apparently speaks near perfect (second language), writing is a whole different matter. He writes at least as well as I, and much better than many native speakers you and I read on the internet.

And
2) why the hell is this guy still blogging? He’s literally had millions of readers, coverage in CNN, BBC, etc. He could easily walk up to the first ratty tabloid he sees and sell his story for a cool mil. Bestseller, baby.

The latest Gates presentation
leaves the casual reader with the need to re-read the article once or twice more just to get exactly what was being presented.

Libertarians and privacy advocates and bucketfuls of my students have expressed some reservation to certain parts of this here new-fangled stuff.

We certainly have come a long way from this.

The brothers Chaps really outdid themselves in this week’s installment of Strongbad’s Email.

Happy Birthday to late Wunderkind-turned-big-fat-jerk Orson Welles. Among other great things attributed to him, he was the inspiration for the mad scientist mouse Brain from “Pinky and the Brain”.

From a whacky list of the
101 dumbest moves in business (2002), dumbness items 48-51: Gates et al feebly attempt to explain .Net to the hoi polloi.

Here is a cute little site I happened upon today. Called World Wide Words, it deals with the etymology of English words and colorful expressions. Quite interesting for gatherers of inane knowledge, such as myself.

I used to read another similar site with a similar reader-asks-I-answer format, but this one is different because the columnist is British this time, and his bank of expressions are not solely of his homeland.

I’ll put it on the links page sometime; for now I am all htmelled out.

Oh Boy!

Another article about my favorite classroom topic: Robot Soccer Dogs!

They’re good dogs.

who that rabbit contest

Any student o’ mine who can tell me the significance (meaning: gets the joke) of this space bunny’s name wins… um… a Haribo Gummi kleiner Preis.

Apparently these are the English instructions for a hot toy from Japan. Have it corrected by next class. Kidding.

This set is a special set for right spin.

Is since the beginning of recorded history most?s comeing at limit!

The Evolutionary from of the beygoma, power up for the 21st Century with supe speed!! Arrangin the old-fashioned beygoma to fit needs of today.

This is super coming at nucleus! Isin possession of having history think of most?s comeing at limit. It have two ply structure. Wing piece freeing to fields rotate!

This is engineered new anise model heavy plate, iscapable of keepping centrifugal force raise, at prolonged battle give play to his or its function

This is right rotate single-purpose system spares. Because placing metal acting gearing, comeing at force and defending force simultaneously raise!

With rotating cog wheel arrive receational in the past flat engineered main frame. Can high-speed move enemy with mughtiness come at.

What on earth are they talking about? Fighting top, based on this old fashioned game.

May Day was relaxing. Claudi and I went down to the streetfest in K?nigstrasse. We attended a wine tasting from a local vinyard, where the two wine expert hosts sang cute little wine songs and read literature, told anecdotes.

The Madonna remixes I made last Tuesday sure have led to a whole lotta traffic, i.e. 20 times more than usual. I sure hope I don’t run outta throughput.