What's Really Tragic

I'm watching a Travel Channel show, "Jordan: The Royal Tour," on which the honest-to-goodness king of Jordan is, as the title might suggest, showing off all of the tourist-friendly features of his nation. The show began with the leather-clad king tearing down an empty road on his motorcycle, which was followed by him taking the American journalist he's guiding to the area featured in the movie Lawrence of Arabia -- and showing it off by piloting his own helicopter over the landscape. All the while, he bemoans his security detail, who refused to let him do all of the "really cool" things he wanted to do for the show -- like skydiving.

When the show came back from commercial break, a big blue band covered the bottom of the screen: "This show was taped before the tragic events of September 11."

Say what?

Or better, so what?

Maybe it's just me, but I thought the terrorist plot destroyed the Twin Towers was hatched by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Which was harbored by Afghanistan. And had connections to Saudi Arabia.

I don't remember Jordan being in contention for a spot in the Axis of Evil.

The British and American governments haven't even created or inflated evidence that King Abdullah has supported terrorism or is seeking to produce nuclear weapons. (Well, at least not yet. Iran's going to take a bit more work to obliterate than Iraq.)

So why the warning?

Didn't the king just say at the beginning of the show that just because Jordan's neighbors -- fun places like Syria, Israel, Iraq and Saudi Arabia -- are troubled and possibly dangerous to visit, that doesn't mean Jordan isn't a peaceful country?

I believe the king's analogy was, "If there's riots in Cincinnati, that doesn't mean you don't go visit Boston."

He said that in perfect English, by the way. He spent junior high and high school in American boarding schools. He then spent a few years in a prestigious British military academy.

His mother was British. His father, King Hussein, and his predecessors have maintained friendly relations with the West. Unlike many Arab countries (such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to name two extremes), Jordanians appear to have the freedom to dress either in Western-style or traditional clothing.

Lonely Planet's section on Jordan says this about the country's leader:

King Abdullah, the sort of monarch who enjoys dressing up as a taxi driver and talking with his subjects incognito, enjoys the growing support of the international community as well as most Jordanians, including the large and influential Palestinian community that appreciates his wife's Palestinian heritage. He says he will continue his father's mission to help stabalize the region, while working internally for a more democratic government, freer press and increased equality for women.

And about the country itself:

Where else could you leave your belongings on the street for hours at a time, safe in the knowledge they'll be there when you get back? Where else do total strangers invite you into their homes despite the fact they don't own a carpet shop?

Certainly not here. And note that this description was found after the tragic events of September 11.

There it is again. Blue band, cryptic warning.

Remind me never to visit the lost city of Petra. I could get blown up.

Dead Men Talk

In a surreal example of newspapers' tendency to keep obituaries of famous people on file and ready to go when needed, one dead man writes in honor of another:

Bob Hope, Comedic Master and Entertainer of Troops, Dies at 100

The Wonders of Spam

I just checked the free Netscape mailbox attached to one of my AIM accounts (it comes standard), and though, to my knowledge, I've never used that e-mail address, there were 87 spams sitting in the inbox.

Browser Wars

There are countless browsers available for Mac OS X. Since it's a whole new system to write applications for, everyone seems to have tried to get a foot in the door early to break the IE stranglehold on at least this platform. Of course, IE didn't give up so easily, and once it finally appeared for OS X, most people adopted it (except for those of us who were smart enough to use Chimera).

Now IE is effectively dead (on all platforms), and Safari is taking its place as the Mac standard (in large part through Apple's attempts to "integrate" it into the Mac experience). Where does that leave the other browsers?

Frankly, it doesn't matter much. Most of the Safari-alternatives really suck. (Sorry, third-party developers.) I'm afraid Opera, iCab (at least the free version) and OmniWeb simply don't cut the mustard, at least not according to my highly scientific study (having each render both the complicated International Herald Tribune site and my site).

Only the Mozilla family of browsers have a chance at the crown, as far as I'm concerned. That would include Mozilla, Firebird and Camino (which only works in OS X). However, each has its problems. Camino still has some bugs to work out in its password saving and script rendering (plus I'm still not sold on the buttons, even though Scott likes how it looks). Firebird is hot off the presses and still tends to crash.

As for Mozilla, it kind of smacks of Windows in its interface design (in that it is almost completely the same). It's not so bad now that I've switched from the default theme to the more modern one, even though it looks like nothing else on the Mac (or Windows). It's also kind of slow since it's Carbon instead of Cocoa (ignore that if you're not a Mac person). However, it's time I gave it a serious trial run. I'll let you know what I think.