man bites...panda?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5364058.stm

Gee, how astonishing that an animal would defend its terrority from an intruder. Too bad they don't have to test the gentleman in question for rabies (the way they have to test animals the bite people); that would ensure that at least one idiot didn't bother apanda again.

Jerusalem--there's no such city!

Jerusalem: Lost in Translation

Tourism officials in Israel did little to sell the city of Jerusalem as a must-see for visitors when a brochure suggested it did not exist.

The sightseeing pamphlet was translated from Hebrew and should have read: "Jerusalem - there's no city like it!".

But instead the slogan in English read: "Jerusalem - there's no such city!", reported the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

from the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5364192.stm

cross-posted to cranky_editors

and while I'm grummishing...

from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5362052.stm)

Reid Speech Disruped by Hecklers
...
During his time in Leytonstone, east London, which also involved a visit to a mosque, Mr Reid said community and religious leaders could play a key role in the fight against terrorism.

The home secretary said "our fight is not with Muslims generally". Instead, he said, there was a "struggle against extremism".

And, warning that terrorist fanatics sought to influence youngsters, he said: "There is no nice way of saying this. These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings, grooming them to kill themselves in order to murder others."

He stressed that by protecting families the community would protect itself.

The speech came after some Muslim leaders expressed concerns about the UK's foreign policy and called for it to be changed.

Mr Reid did not tell Muslim parents to report their concerns to the police but wants them to confront their children's behaviour and talk to them.
...
Massoud Shadjareh, who chairs the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said Mr Reid's demands were "unrealistic and not demanded from any other community".

Sorry, but this strikes me as totally ostrich-headed. It's unrealistic to ask parents to keep an eye on their kids, to try to keep them from getting recruited by terrorists? Why would that be?

And, yes, people in, say, the Welsh Methodist community are not being asked the same thing because the Home Sec is not speaking in Welsh Methodist communities because Welsh Methodists ahve not been setting off bombs and trying to kill people!

Obviously terrorism and the underlying tensions in the British Muslim community and between that community and the rest of society that lead to young people being recruited by terrorists are are something that all Britons are concerned about and that all Britons need to try to address. Ethnic and religious animosity and related economic and social problems are things that need to be solved by everyone coming together. But there's no point asking me to keep an eye on my kids--I haven't got any! In the same way, there's hardly much point in asking the parents of nonMuslim youth to look out for and try to intercept Muslim terrorist recruiters from suborning their kids--those kids are not the ones being recruited by Islamic extremists for bombing campaigns! Multiculturalism doesn't mean throwing common sense out the window.

photos!

I'm working my way towards getting my travels better recorded. I still have a lot of journaling to do (two Scotland trips in 2005 plus this year's trip to Cape Breton), but I have uploaded my photos from CB and reorganized my photos on Fotki.

Cape Breton photos

I also added one album of curious and amusing signs I've encountered (this will get added to once I have the rest of my Scotland photos up), some albums for bird and animal photos, and an album that has what I think are some of my better photos, regardless of genre.

Of course, I really need to annotate a lot of these, too...

Edit: And, for anyone who thinks I take way too many photogrpahs? You're probably right. That's 400-some, culled down from the 570-some that I actually took, not counting the several dozen I had to delete during the week so as to make room for the photos I took at Louisbourg...

experimental dinner

crab cakes, boiled asparagus, kohlrbai (diced and saueed in olive oil), accompanied by a nice piesporter

watching Syriana... what an amazing cast!

a nice, quiet evening :-)