Reading Arabic Isn't Easy:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/mind_brain/language_acquisition/

Right now I'm reading The Informer by Craig Nova. A must!!!

“Craig Nova is a fine writer, one of our best,” writes Jonathan Yardley, book critic for the Washington Post. “If you haven’t read him, the loss is yours.”
http://www.craignova.com/books/informer.html

Happy Passover.... to all who celebrate the day (if you don't -- that's ok :) ; about Passover)

An excellent report:

A green education

Anderson Cooper, AC360°, CNN

Google and China: Breaking down the chess game

CNN

Not an easy week: The Simpsons vs. Castle :)

Don't forget to vote :)

Who's the Champion: April 5

The Case for Saturday School

Kids in China already attend school 41 days a year more than students in the U.S. Now, schools across the country are cutting back to four-day weeks. Chester E. Finn Jr. on how to build a smarter education system.

Wall Street Journal

Does Obama's Education Plan Make the Grade?

Time Magazine

OK. I see the new feature 'My buddylist'; and I see the 'Flag' -- what's the idea of that Flag?

New Microsoft commercial: Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld in a shoe shop....

Really Great!

New book by Georgetown University Press:

Sustaining Linguistic Diversity
Endangered and Minority Languages and Language Varieties
Edited by Kendall A. King, Natalie Schilling-Estes, Lyn Fogle, Jia Jackie Lou, Barbara Soukup

Georgetown University Press

The meteg (ga'ya) is one of the most common accents in the Hebrew Bible, and it serves two functions: phonetical & musical. It indicates a secondary accent. We said 'accent', but it is not really an accent.

The meteg is marked by a short vertical stroke under the word, and generally before the stress syllable. It resembles the siluk, but has different functions (both are uni05BD).

Grammatically(1) there are ten different kinds of metegs.

(1). If the phonetical & musical functions are under one umbrella.

The Cantillation on the Ten Commandments

Exodus 20:2
The Ten Commandments are unique since they are punctuated with two systems of cantillation: upper cantillation marks (ta’am elyon טעם עליון) and lower cantillation marks (ta’am tachton טעם תחתון). While the upper cantillation marks divide the passage into ten Commandments, the lower cantillation marks divide it into twelve verses. What is the reason for having upper and lower cantillation marks? How do we know which mark belongs to the lower cantillation marks and which belongs to the upper cantillation marks?