Something interesting I read: the Arabic language has almost no etymological dictionaries. The theory is that because the language used in the Qur'an is considered to be a sort of "high" or "perfect" language (ie my mom pointing out that in 'perfect' Arabic the word for 'small' begins with an unvoiced 's,' but in Palestinian Arabic it starts with a voiced 'z') there is little reason to investigate its Semitic origins. I think this is kind of sad, because not only are the links with the ancient "vowel-less" languages not really known (even though it's still apparent in Arabic writing), but the formation of the tree-style word formation is also not as well studied. (that style being that say there is a word with three consonants in it, like k-t-b, all the words with those consonants in that order are similar in meaning, like book-bookshop-writing-writer &c)

Pleasure - photo essay ("Hear Me Roar" is totally hot)

the ending is the trippiest part