The Debate Review - And Floggings!
I've been spending a lot of time writing the last few days. I have a few things to get done tonight, so I'm going to try to keep this brief. Gus, Mighty Mo, Chazza, and Father Time, who know me in person, know that any of my attempts at brevity are almost certainly destined to fail. I make the attempt, though - we'll see how I do. A few news items first, and then a recap of the debate from last night.
* * *
In this post from a couple of days ago, I mentioned the woman who was sacked by the London Underground for spoof messages. Her website is back up, and you can go listen to the full selection here. Very funny stuff.
Keeping in mind that this happened during the height of the Cold War, I think it's fascinating that the Jordanian government asked President Nixon to attack Syria, which was supported by the Soviet Union then and the Russian Federation now. I think it's sort of an interesting historical revelation.
Most of you probably won't remember General Jones. When I joined the Navy (which is tied very closely to the Marine Corps - particularly my unit, which had a lot of Marines in it), General Jones was the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Instead of retiring, he was assigned to the post of Supreme Allied Commander of NATO (lampooned as "Supreme Intergalatic Overlord" in the Marine Times' birthday list, referenced in this post). President Bush has announced that General Jones will now be assigned as a special envoy to the Middle East - I thought that Prime Minister Blair was doing that in his retirement, but I have no doubt that the Prime Minister and the Supreme Intergalactic Overlord will work well together.
The unemployment rate in Germany is at a fifteen year low - kudos to Chancellor Merkel, who is proving to be head and shoulders above her predecessor (under whom the German unemployment rate was as low as it was in the years directly following World War II).
Iran has announced that they have a new longer range missile capable of hitting both American and Israeli targets. While I doubt that the Iranian claim is credible, I'd like to point out a couple of things. First: when Iran makes a claim like this, doesn't it weaken their claims that their nuclear program is for peaceful civil energy production? Second: if Iran really does have a longer-range missile capability, aren't you glad we're working on a ballistic missile defense system?
* * *
In the past, I've followed trends in the blogging community and denounced the bizarre and unacceptable human rights abuses that we seem to see so regularly coming from the Middle East, and other areas that are dominated by Muslims. I've sort of abandoned that over the last couple of years for a number of reasons, but mostly because I have bigger fish to fry than to keep track of barbaric things that Muslims do. I could go further into it, but that's the bottom line.
These things having been said, there have been several events lately in the Middle East that are worth bringing to your attention. First, I'd like to bring your attention to this story about a young woman in Iran who was brutally prostituted, first by her mother starting at age nine and subsequently by her "husband" once she was a teenager. The Iranian authorities, in addition to sentencing her husband to five years in jail for "providing a house for illegal sex", sentenced her to death by hanging. Fortunately, or as Arabic speakers would say, "inshallah" ("by God's will"), she was acquitted following the work of a truly courageous female Iranian attorney. The article's about her current situation - very much worth the read.
One of the big stories in international news during the last two weeks is about a Shi'i rape victim in Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabia is overwhelmingly Sunni) who was sentenced to two hundred lashes for being in a car with a man who was not related to her. You can go read this article. In a nutshell, this young woman got married, she then met with a man she had been seeing prior to the marriage in order to retrieve a picture of herself in order to prevent her family from being dishonored through a non-relative having a photograph of her. Their car was commandeered by some thugs, who drove both the woman and the man elsewhere. Seven thugs (if I remember correctly, there were initially only two in the car) then proceeded to brutally and repeatedly rape both of them. The rapists were sentenced to jail, and the young woman was sentenced to ninety lashes. When she and her attorney appealed the decision and went to the media, the court doubled the rapists' sentences - and more than doubled the young woman's sentence, bringing it to two hundred lashes. Just to give some perspective, although the type of whipping that Jesus (and the Apostle Paul) received is somewhat different from the type of flogging practiced in Saudi Arabia, in the first century forty lashes was considered a likely death sentence; before being crucified, Christ received forty lashes before he was crucified. (By contrast, Paul received thirty-nine lashes on several occasions, considered to be just below the death penalty.) This type of treatment is beyond severe, and it will be quite unsettling if it is carried out in this circumstance. In fact, if it happens, it will border on being beyond belief. After initially defending the position, the Saudis are "reviewing the case" in light of widespread international condemnation.
The second story comes out of the Sudan in East Africa, where a British primary school teacher has been sentenced to fifteen days incarceration and subsequent deportation for allowing her students to vote to name a teddy bear "Mohammed". She was convicted on one of three charges, that charge being "insulting religion" - had she been convicted on all three charges, the sentence could have included longer incarceration, fines, and forty lashes. That's right, ladies and gentlemen: forty lashes with a whip for allowing children to vote to name a stuffed animal "Mohammed".
Now, I think it's important to note that these stories are just the surface - people around the world tend to enjoy drawing conclusions on news stories based on less than a typed page of information on the issue. For example, Richard Miniter's excellent book Shadow War explains why the situation in Darfur that we keep hearing about is far more complicated than the media portrays in this age of sound bytes and news cycles; and that, for all of the issues with terrorism in East Africa (including the tiny fact that bin Laden was holed up there for a while in the 1990's), the Sudanese government has given some assistance to the United States in apprehending al Qaeda terrorists since 9/11. As I listened to the BBC news webcast tonight, someone brought up that this teddy bear story has only become an issue lately, suggesting that there's almost certainly some political issue that's pushing the Sudanese government to crack down on this British woman.
With respect to Saudi Arabia, while the news media and the so-called pundits flip out about the dangers of Wahhabism, the Saudi nationality of the majority of the 9/11 hijackers, and oil money continuing to support terrorism, they frequently ignore the fact that the Saudis are slowly and carefully introducing democratic reforms, attempting to pace them so that their citizens (who have no prior experience with any concept resembling representative democracy) can adjust to these changes. Many people also ignore the fact that Saudi Arabia has been the victim of numerous terrorist attacks itself, and may even have more to lose from ignoring and encouraging terrorism than the United States. I'm not willing to give the Saudis a free pass, but anyone who boils Saudi politics and foreign policy down to these lowest common denominators is ignoring history and the bigger international and domestic picture in the Kingdom.
That having been said, I absolutely think that these stories are troubling. What's more, these are exactly the kind of stories that should do two things: help us to understand the threat that we face from militant Islam (which would be stoning and cutting off heads like the Taliban did, not whipping and jailing like the Saudis and the Sudanese); and put our own "excesses" and "American sins" into perspective. There are moderate Muslims, particularly in the West (I learned Arabic from one in college and have a couple of them on speed dial); and I honestly believe that most of the world's Muslims are just like most of the world's Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus: they just want to live their lives, survive another year, and be left alone.
This section is a bit scattered, but these stories jumped out at me, and I think they're important for people to be aware of.
* * *
I'm really dragging, and have been for a few nights now, so I'm going to do a quick review of last night's CNN/YouTube debate and then go to bed (which is a bit of a misnomer, since this won't be posted until tomorrow morning - oh well).
First, a note about the format. I caught a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh early this afternoon, and listened to Michael Medved's entire review of the debate (he spent two hours on it today). Rush was disappointed and thinks that the format cheapens and reduces the level of the discourse between the candidates. Honestly, I tend to agree with him on that, with a caveat I'll mention shortly. I don't, however, think that the debate was a total disaster (apparently there are some conservatives who believe this); I think that, with a couple of exceptions, most of the candidates performed very well. Many of the questions were not only baited questions from liberals, but showed CNN's liberal bias - honestly, there are much bigger issues in this campaign than gays in the military, and there were several other topics that were bizarre in their inclusion. Rush pointed out that CNN intentionally left questions about Iraq and foreign policy until later in the broadcast because operations in Iraq have improved so drastically - this is also apparent in the shift in course among the Democrats, who have lately been bringing up the issue of Iran far more than they've been discussing Iraq because Iraq is quickly turning into a losing issue for them.
As I said, I think that the overall format is sort of cheesy and trendy, and reduces the level of discourse. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, for all of the masturbatory statements from the partisan hacks and "vloggers" on YouTube who think that YouTube is going to revolutionize the election process, I'm here to tell you that YouTube is irrelevant. The Internet has and will continue to revolutionize the way we communicate and discuss all issues, but YouTube is nowhere near unique or revolutionary in and of itself; in fact, it's the opposite, because unlike even blogging (which, admittedly, can be done by almost anyone), posting a video on YouTube can be carried out by someone without any semblance of intelligence. This was apparent in some of the bizarre and poorly conceived questions that CNN presented last night. The reason why I don't think this was a totally bad thing is this: it gave us a chance to see how the candidates react to people who are so obviously beneath them with respect to intelligence and character. As much as I'd love to be able to speak highly of any of the Democrat candidates, the simple truth is that they are all (save possibly for Governor Richardson, who I don't really know much about) pandering. With a couple of exceptions, I didn't get that impression. I believe that the way someone treats others who are not as intelligent, or charismatic, or dignified, or eloquent as themself says a lot about that person. In particular, I think that Governor Huckabee truly shined in this respect; but really, the majority of the candidates did a very admirable job of remaining respectful, poised, and eloquent when answering some truly bizarre, combative, and intellectually weak questions.
For lack of time, or a better way to approach it, I'm going to go through candidate by candidate with a brief synopsis of what I thought of their showings at the debate.
Mayor Giuliani: I thought that Mayor Giuliani did quite poorly in the debate. I would still vote for him against any of the Democrat front-runners, but his attitude, his attacks against Governor Romney, and the answers he provided to a number of questions were simply a disappointment. I've built up respect for the Mayor, who I've had mixed feelings about for quite a while; a lot of that respect was wiped out by his performance last night. I could tolerate him as the Republican candidate, and I think he'd be a strong candidate against Senator Clinton, but I wasn't pleased or impressed.
Governor Huckabee: I think that if anyone won the debate last night, it was Governor Mike Huckabee. I haven't agreed with all of the positions Governor Huckabee took while he was governor of Arkansas, but he is undeniably genuine, with excellent ideas for how to approach a number of America's most pressing problems. Regarding my point above, Governor Huckabee remained positive, upbeat, and charismatic in the face of combative questions from YouTube folks and attacks from Governor Romney. Last night confirmed Governor Huckabee in my mind as my second choice in the contest for the Republican nomination.
Congressman Hunter: Until last night, I wouldn't have been able to identify Congressman Duncan Hunter in a lineup of the candidates - I would have had no idea whether he was Congressman Tancredo, or vice versa. No one is taking Congressman Hunter too seriously as a candidate, and in some ways I think that's unfortunate, but as much experience as he has in Congress, I don't think that the House of Representatives is sufficient qualification for the presidency. That having been said, I had no real issues with any of his responses - I wasn't thrilled when he said that he'd reserve the option of raising taxes in a national emergency, but I understand his logic and I'll give him credit for being straighforward about the issue. I thought his responses were strong, and I wouldn't be disappointed to see him get the vice presidential nomination.
Senator McCain: Aside from appearing agitated on several occasions, I thoroughly enjoyed Senator McCain's answers, and I think that many of them were both hard-hitting and serious. I've admitted that I'm supporting Senator McCain at this stage, but honestly, I think that Senator McCain's points about his support for the surge in Iraq, his denunciation of Governor Romney's stance on torture, his vocal disapproval of the squabbling between Governor Romney and Mayor Giuliani that kicked off the debate, and his review of his record on slashing wasteful spending were all spot-on. I think that he looked and sounded extremely presidential, and he did an excellent job of demonstrating that his positions are more than just talking points. With all of these highlights, I have to say that one of the best parts of the night was Senator McCain's aggressive chiding of Congressman Paul's naive and uninformed isolationist rants - Senator McCain was absolutely right to point out to Congressman Paul that those kinds of policies are what led to World War II, and I was glad to see someone put Congressman Paul in his place on this issue. I don't think Senator McCain came off as being as dynamic and warm as Governor Huckabee, but for the most part I thought he carried himself extremely well.
Congressman Paul: I've mentioned before that I think Congressman Paul is dangerous. I still think that, and I think that he showed himself several times last night to be naive and misinformed on a variety of issues. I'll give him credit for a couple of good answers, particularly those relating to federalism over big government bureacracy and laws. That having been said, Congressman Paul is barely credible as a Congressman, let alone as a presidential candidate, and his performance at last night's debate demonstrated that to me further. I give him credit for being transparent, for being honest and genuine, and for having some orthodox ideas, but mostly he's a fringe candidate who lacks credibility and substance, and he showed that last night.
Governor Romney: Governor Romney has some great qualifications, and I'd be comfortable voting for him if he were the nominee, but I thought his performance last night was terrible. His squabbling with Mayor Giuliani, his attempts to attack Governor Huckabee's record on immigration (which, to his credit, Governor Huckabee adeptly and positively answered - and that on a subject that I'm not in full agreement with Governor Huckabee on), and that bizarre aside on the gun ownership question when he jumped in and said that there were two guns in his home that were owned by his son - what on Earth was that? - led me to lose considerable respect for Governor Romney. I'd be comfortable voting for him if he were the nominee, but I'm certainly not excited about him.
Congressman Tancredo: Congressman Tancredo performed well last night, I think. I disagree with him on a number of issues, several of which I think he's extreme on. I admit to not knowing much about him. One thing I'll give him credit for was his response on the issue of manned spaceflight - while Governor Huckabee had a great response about the utility and importance of the space program, Congressman Tancredo's statements about the other candidates' commitments to missions to Mars being unnecessary spending at a time when we have bigger fiscal priorities was well-received. I'm glad that Congressman Tancredo is not a credible candidate, but as far as the debate went last night, I'll give him credit for some great responses and for making some important points.
Senator Thompson: I think Senator Thompson performed very well last night, better than he's appeared in previous debates. His answers were excellent, he was funny and engaging, and after last night's presentation I would rank him third in my list of preferred candidates, after Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee.
As I get ready to go to bed, I'll just once again note that I believe that most of these guys, particularly Mayor Giuliani, Governors Romney and Huckabee, and Senators McCain and Thompson, are very high quality candidates. In most instances, they present themselves as statesmen, not politicians, and I think that's something that has been lacking from mainstream American politics for a while. I get the line from Michael Medved, but I honestly agree with it myself: the winner last night was the Republican party, which means that the winner was the United States. Despite the low-brow nature of the debate format, the fact that we have credible Republican candidates discussing important issues in a (relatively) civilized manner is of great value and import. I'd love to see another debate soon, especially if it's a real debate, vice an attempt for CNN to look trendy and technologically/culturally savvy.
* * *
I've had a real issue with productivity on non-writing projects this week. Next week will be better due in large part to some issues that I had with my schedule this week that I don't have to worry about next week; however, I'm going to make a concerted effort to concentrate on some other projects next week, such as finishing Imperial Grunts and finally completing a stack of note cards that have been awaiting conversion into Arabic flash cards for a solid month. So, expect some things next week (including that third anniversary extravaganza), but expect most of them to be lighter than the things I've had on the plate this week. Also, I have an article for my parallel writing endeavour due on Sunday, so expect that article on Monday morning, bright and early following the Fly Report.
Have a great weekend and be safe, folks!
In this post from a couple of days ago, I mentioned the woman who was sacked by the London Underground for spoof messages. Her website is back up, and you can go listen to the full selection here. Very funny stuff.
Keeping in mind that this happened during the height of the Cold War, I think it's fascinating that the Jordanian government asked President Nixon to attack Syria, which was supported by the Soviet Union then and the Russian Federation now. I think it's sort of an interesting historical revelation.
Most of you probably won't remember General Jones. When I joined the Navy (which is tied very closely to the Marine Corps - particularly my unit, which had a lot of Marines in it), General Jones was the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Instead of retiring, he was assigned to the post of Supreme Allied Commander of NATO (lampooned as "Supreme Intergalatic Overlord" in the Marine Times' birthday list, referenced in this post). President Bush has announced that General Jones will now be assigned as a special envoy to the Middle East - I thought that Prime Minister Blair was doing that in his retirement, but I have no doubt that the Prime Minister and the Supreme Intergalactic Overlord will work well together.
The unemployment rate in Germany is at a fifteen year low - kudos to Chancellor Merkel, who is proving to be head and shoulders above her predecessor (under whom the German unemployment rate was as low as it was in the years directly following World War II).
Iran has announced that they have a new longer range missile capable of hitting both American and Israeli targets. While I doubt that the Iranian claim is credible, I'd like to point out a couple of things. First: when Iran makes a claim like this, doesn't it weaken their claims that their nuclear program is for peaceful civil energy production? Second: if Iran really does have a longer-range missile capability, aren't you glad we're working on a ballistic missile defense system?
In the past, I've followed trends in the blogging community and denounced the bizarre and unacceptable human rights abuses that we seem to see so regularly coming from the Middle East, and other areas that are dominated by Muslims. I've sort of abandoned that over the last couple of years for a number of reasons, but mostly because I have bigger fish to fry than to keep track of barbaric things that Muslims do. I could go further into it, but that's the bottom line.
These things having been said, there have been several events lately in the Middle East that are worth bringing to your attention. First, I'd like to bring your attention to this story about a young woman in Iran who was brutally prostituted, first by her mother starting at age nine and subsequently by her "husband" once she was a teenager. The Iranian authorities, in addition to sentencing her husband to five years in jail for "providing a house for illegal sex", sentenced her to death by hanging. Fortunately, or as Arabic speakers would say, "inshallah" ("by God's will"), she was acquitted following the work of a truly courageous female Iranian attorney. The article's about her current situation - very much worth the read.
One of the big stories in international news during the last two weeks is about a Shi'i rape victim in Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabia is overwhelmingly Sunni) who was sentenced to two hundred lashes for being in a car with a man who was not related to her. You can go read this article. In a nutshell, this young woman got married, she then met with a man she had been seeing prior to the marriage in order to retrieve a picture of herself in order to prevent her family from being dishonored through a non-relative having a photograph of her. Their car was commandeered by some thugs, who drove both the woman and the man elsewhere. Seven thugs (if I remember correctly, there were initially only two in the car) then proceeded to brutally and repeatedly rape both of them. The rapists were sentenced to jail, and the young woman was sentenced to ninety lashes. When she and her attorney appealed the decision and went to the media, the court doubled the rapists' sentences - and more than doubled the young woman's sentence, bringing it to two hundred lashes. Just to give some perspective, although the type of whipping that Jesus (and the Apostle Paul) received is somewhat different from the type of flogging practiced in Saudi Arabia, in the first century forty lashes was considered a likely death sentence; before being crucified, Christ received forty lashes before he was crucified. (By contrast, Paul received thirty-nine lashes on several occasions, considered to be just below the death penalty.) This type of treatment is beyond severe, and it will be quite unsettling if it is carried out in this circumstance. In fact, if it happens, it will border on being beyond belief. After initially defending the position, the Saudis are "reviewing the case" in light of widespread international condemnation.
The second story comes out of the Sudan in East Africa, where a British primary school teacher has been sentenced to fifteen days incarceration and subsequent deportation for allowing her students to vote to name a teddy bear "Mohammed". She was convicted on one of three charges, that charge being "insulting religion" - had she been convicted on all three charges, the sentence could have included longer incarceration, fines, and forty lashes. That's right, ladies and gentlemen: forty lashes with a whip for allowing children to vote to name a stuffed animal "Mohammed".
Now, I think it's important to note that these stories are just the surface - people around the world tend to enjoy drawing conclusions on news stories based on less than a typed page of information on the issue. For example, Richard Miniter's excellent book Shadow War explains why the situation in Darfur that we keep hearing about is far more complicated than the media portrays in this age of sound bytes and news cycles; and that, for all of the issues with terrorism in East Africa (including the tiny fact that bin Laden was holed up there for a while in the 1990's), the Sudanese government has given some assistance to the United States in apprehending al Qaeda terrorists since 9/11. As I listened to the BBC news webcast tonight, someone brought up that this teddy bear story has only become an issue lately, suggesting that there's almost certainly some political issue that's pushing the Sudanese government to crack down on this British woman.
With respect to Saudi Arabia, while the news media and the so-called pundits flip out about the dangers of Wahhabism, the Saudi nationality of the majority of the 9/11 hijackers, and oil money continuing to support terrorism, they frequently ignore the fact that the Saudis are slowly and carefully introducing democratic reforms, attempting to pace them so that their citizens (who have no prior experience with any concept resembling representative democracy) can adjust to these changes. Many people also ignore the fact that Saudi Arabia has been the victim of numerous terrorist attacks itself, and may even have more to lose from ignoring and encouraging terrorism than the United States. I'm not willing to give the Saudis a free pass, but anyone who boils Saudi politics and foreign policy down to these lowest common denominators is ignoring history and the bigger international and domestic picture in the Kingdom.
That having been said, I absolutely think that these stories are troubling. What's more, these are exactly the kind of stories that should do two things: help us to understand the threat that we face from militant Islam (which would be stoning and cutting off heads like the Taliban did, not whipping and jailing like the Saudis and the Sudanese); and put our own "excesses" and "American sins" into perspective. There are moderate Muslims, particularly in the West (I learned Arabic from one in college and have a couple of them on speed dial); and I honestly believe that most of the world's Muslims are just like most of the world's Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus: they just want to live their lives, survive another year, and be left alone.
This section is a bit scattered, but these stories jumped out at me, and I think they're important for people to be aware of.
I'm really dragging, and have been for a few nights now, so I'm going to do a quick review of last night's CNN/YouTube debate and then go to bed (which is a bit of a misnomer, since this won't be posted until tomorrow morning - oh well).
First, a note about the format. I caught a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh early this afternoon, and listened to Michael Medved's entire review of the debate (he spent two hours on it today). Rush was disappointed and thinks that the format cheapens and reduces the level of the discourse between the candidates. Honestly, I tend to agree with him on that, with a caveat I'll mention shortly. I don't, however, think that the debate was a total disaster (apparently there are some conservatives who believe this); I think that, with a couple of exceptions, most of the candidates performed very well. Many of the questions were not only baited questions from liberals, but showed CNN's liberal bias - honestly, there are much bigger issues in this campaign than gays in the military, and there were several other topics that were bizarre in their inclusion. Rush pointed out that CNN intentionally left questions about Iraq and foreign policy until later in the broadcast because operations in Iraq have improved so drastically - this is also apparent in the shift in course among the Democrats, who have lately been bringing up the issue of Iran far more than they've been discussing Iraq because Iraq is quickly turning into a losing issue for them.
As I said, I think that the overall format is sort of cheesy and trendy, and reduces the level of discourse. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, for all of the masturbatory statements from the partisan hacks and "vloggers" on YouTube who think that YouTube is going to revolutionize the election process, I'm here to tell you that YouTube is irrelevant. The Internet has and will continue to revolutionize the way we communicate and discuss all issues, but YouTube is nowhere near unique or revolutionary in and of itself; in fact, it's the opposite, because unlike even blogging (which, admittedly, can be done by almost anyone), posting a video on YouTube can be carried out by someone without any semblance of intelligence. This was apparent in some of the bizarre and poorly conceived questions that CNN presented last night. The reason why I don't think this was a totally bad thing is this: it gave us a chance to see how the candidates react to people who are so obviously beneath them with respect to intelligence and character. As much as I'd love to be able to speak highly of any of the Democrat candidates, the simple truth is that they are all (save possibly for Governor Richardson, who I don't really know much about) pandering. With a couple of exceptions, I didn't get that impression. I believe that the way someone treats others who are not as intelligent, or charismatic, or dignified, or eloquent as themself says a lot about that person. In particular, I think that Governor Huckabee truly shined in this respect; but really, the majority of the candidates did a very admirable job of remaining respectful, poised, and eloquent when answering some truly bizarre, combative, and intellectually weak questions.
For lack of time, or a better way to approach it, I'm going to go through candidate by candidate with a brief synopsis of what I thought of their showings at the debate.
As I get ready to go to bed, I'll just once again note that I believe that most of these guys, particularly Mayor Giuliani, Governors Romney and Huckabee, and Senators McCain and Thompson, are very high quality candidates. In most instances, they present themselves as statesmen, not politicians, and I think that's something that has been lacking from mainstream American politics for a while. I get the line from Michael Medved, but I honestly agree with it myself: the winner last night was the Republican party, which means that the winner was the United States. Despite the low-brow nature of the debate format, the fact that we have credible Republican candidates discussing important issues in a (relatively) civilized manner is of great value and import. I'd love to see another debate soon, especially if it's a real debate, vice an attempt for CNN to look trendy and technologically/culturally savvy.
I've had a real issue with productivity on non-writing projects this week. Next week will be better due in large part to some issues that I had with my schedule this week that I don't have to worry about next week; however, I'm going to make a concerted effort to concentrate on some other projects next week, such as finishing Imperial Grunts and finally completing a stack of note cards that have been awaiting conversion into Arabic flash cards for a solid month. So, expect some things next week (including that third anniversary extravaganza), but expect most of them to be lighter than the things I've had on the plate this week. Also, I have an article for my parallel writing endeavour due on Sunday, so expect that article on Monday morning, bright and early following the Fly Report.
Have a great weekend and be safe, folks!
