so it's just about snubbing france?

i didn't know a country that wasn't a former british colony could do that. it makes me question the point of the whole commonwealth thing.

the bibi freeze

the UN, backed by all security council members, has demanded that iran immediately freeze its uranium enrichment program. i keep waiting for iran to respond by agreeing to the freeze, but add that its freeze will be netanyahu-style.

the israeli government recently announced a "freeze" in settlement construction that doesn't doesn't apply to whatever the israel's decides to call "east jerusalem", doesn't freeze the construction of 3,000 or so projects that were already approved (even though many were approved in anticipation of the current settlement freeze) and which doesn't apply to the construction of public buildings on settlements. (which is how they approved the construction of 28 new buildings at the same time they announced the freeze).

so why doesn't the iranian government announce a "freeze" of uranium production that doesn't apply to its main enrichment facility at natanz, doesn't apply to any processing that is already in progress and doesn't apply to any enrichment for public purposes? they could even call it a "bibi freeze." sure, it isn't everything the west wants, but it's progress, right? no doubt the west will understand the internal pressures the iranian government is facing and view a loophole-filled freeze as a welcome move.

40

woo-hoo! i'm now protected by the ADEA!!!

(39, 38, 37, 36, 35, 34)

out with it

i think at least 80% of my regular readers already know this. but in case you haven't heard it from me in real life or don't read arabic, it's time to end the embargo:

mrs. noz and i have been trying to adopt a baby for some time. but now it looks like it might actually work. barring something else going wrong (and believe me, there has already been plenty of that),it looks like we will go to kazakhstan fairly soon. we will then spend the next two months or so in aktobe (also spelled aqtobe), in the northwest bit of the country and then eventually come home with a baby.

so that's the deal with all those references to being fingerprinted, the two censored comments, the race (which i lost), my musings about pronunciation, the random references to aktobe scattered throughout my posts, that post i wrote the day we got our regional assignment (when we were told would start a 60 day wait before we get our letter of invitation and travel), and the post i scheduled to appear 60 days later, before i realized that the phrase "about 60 days" is kazakh for "165 days". (or something like that--inshallah i'll know the exact number soon). that's also the deal with my not exactly hypothetical question.

so there are big changes ahead, both for this blog and life in general. i cannot yet comprehend what the full extent on those changes will be on either. i guess we will find out eventually.

admitting my deep dark thanksgiving secret

i don't really like pumpkin pie.

there, i said it. i mean, it's okay. i don't hate it or anything. but it is, unquestionably, the least tasty pie in the universe. maybe i should try covering it with fudge.

reality TV is a menace 2 society

well not really. but it does make people try to do stupid things in public. (which i'm not necessarily against). first, we had balloon boy and now this (not to mention this).

i don't understand why anyone would want to be on reality TV. actually, i don't understand why anyone would want to watch it either. and yet a lot of people do and do. also there is this idea that doing something stupid and high profile is a way to get on a show. that idea seems to be right. more is coming.

i studied arabic for years, housewife

i was playing with google translate's new "type phonetically" feature to translate from arabic to english and, um, i think it needs a little work.

visually, it was pretty neat. each time that i hit the space bar after typing a phonetic arabic word, it turned my word into arabic script. but here's what it did to my last two words:




when i decided to try "8 years" instead, the sentence came out: "i studied the arabic language for years of ottoman."

this is the life

why we can't have a two and a-half day work week every week?

oops he did it again

doug hoffman un-unununconcedes the NY-23 congressional race.

(background)

the matrix (1905) [russian w/eng subtitles]

(via elayne)

lesser known? but i know who i am!

hey, it looks like i'm quoted in a philadelphia weekly column this week.

thanks brendan!

accidental geography

i can totally relate to this post. i am always seeing the shapes of countries and continents in the world around me. although i think #15 looks more like a backwards croatia than new zealand.

even weirder is when i start seeing the outlines of countries or continents in maps of other things. wisconsin sideways looks a little bit like australia (though i've never thought that australia sideways looks much like wisconsin). also, i've long thought that illinois looks a lot like sudan. when i lived in chicago i briefly considered telling people that i lived in port sudan. but i dropped the idea because no one would know what the hell i was talking about.