My compliments regarding the counter with the flags. If you mouse over a flag, you get a little map showing where the country is. This feature is completely useless and yet undeniably cool!

i suggest encouraging lounsbury to be more abusive. it makes for more entertaining reading. plus, the objects of his textual thrashings usually deserve it.

I suggest encouraging all authors to be more abusive. There is too much undeserved tolerance and tongue biting in the real world as it is.

the objects of his textual thrashings usually deserve it.

Key word being "usually."

Signed,
Person With Short Memory And Absolutely No Baggage

Suggestion: have two "memorable" sections:

(i) Memorable (Learned)
(ii) Memorable (Juicy)

A "Memorable" section?

Hmmmm....

Are we dead already?

Well Anon, your little note came just as the free trial expired. I have now purchased the stupid-but-cool-flag-counter (that seems to be very poor at tracking statistics but is otherwise interesting).

Re: being abusive, on the record I think it poisons the blog environment, discourages participation and otherwise lowers the overall tone of discussion.

[Off the record, I really do enjoy watching L verbally disembowel utter morons (less so when he burns other contributors, of course). In fact, his creative insults are what drew me to his first journal. He's gotten a bit mellow lately, pity.]

SD - Hmm, a good idea.

Matthew - I am still laughing.

dear all,

i propose to change some categories as follows:

islamic fundamentalism -> islamism

islamic history -> EITHER "mena history" OR "history of islam" (as a religion)

islamic sects -> what's that???

if "islamic history" is renamed "mena history" i would like to move it out of the "islam general" heading, since it then would not belong there.

if there is a category "religious minorities", should there also be one for ethnic minorities?

re: flags - i do like the idea that hong kong is still its own country ...

cheers,

--raf*

I actually created the "religious minorities" article in the process of posting the article on Israeli marriage law, because it seemed more applicable for that specific purpose (but also, perhaps, for future articles which I would love to see others write - hint, hint!) But I'd be all for an ethnic minorities category as well. One of these days I wish someone would write an article or two on the Kurds, for that matter - don't have the knowledge base to do it myself.