Drapetomaniac

I think the internet is a great place to help learn languages.  Reading literature or news helps, but today we have social networks and blogs where you can get more immediate exposure to common language and easier gathering of topics.

With Arabic, you have to learn the alphabet to learn the language, but Yamli.com has introduced a search service which reduces the amount of time you have to spend switching between Arabic and English characters.  It also transliterates for you, so while you type the English Al Jazirah, below your typing space you can select from transliterated options like:
al-jazirah
It then does a Google search on the Arabic الجزيرة,.

Of course, you’ll notice Al Jazirah is different from Al Jazeera, which is how the company itself shows it’s name.  But Jazirah seems to be a more common transliteration for the arabic word for peninsula. Here are two more takes on the new site.“

Lifehacker has a tip regarding Gmail. They point out you can search gmail by language like:
lang:Portuguese
lang:Arabic

They mentioned you can’t search for English, but you can use two digit codes for the same languages and get results back.

I try to sort my blog and news reading by language, so it’s nice to be able to label or search my e-mails specifically by language as well.

I imagine I would have been one of those student radicals they worry so much about. We use to do “Falafel runs” to Mamoun’s Falafel after midnight in NYC when I was in college. If they’ve sifted through his receipts from a decade ago, I’m on the radar.

Let them go through my stomach, I have nothing to hide.

Beware though, some have pointed out that falafel is often called ” Israel’s national dish. So, of course, the Jews are behind it… the falafel sales that is.

I have worked with predictive data mining applications in retail. It still disturbs me at how good it worked – for determining what someone would by, not who they would attack, how or when. Sorry, but when you’re clustering your customer, I don’t think you’ll end up with a Terrorist Cluster.

If you’re in to being on the falafel watch list, this blog has caught my attention recently -Arabic Bites. I drool with every new post.