Posting will continue to be sparse. I'm back in Baltimore to pick up my computer, but will have less than 12 hours in town, so my follow-up to the Shropshire Challenge will have to wait even longer -- particularly because I won't have telephone service until the 19th or a cable modem until the 25th. Very frustrating.

There's lots more I would like to have blogged while it was still fresh, for example the recent flurry of shock and dismay in the Blogosphere at German companies using 'Zyklon' as a brand name. Some seemed to assume that the word could only be a spectacularly offensive allusion to the Nazis' Judeocidal gas, 'Zyklon B'. Of course, to English-speakers, 'Zyklon' looks like a made-up brand name -- like 'Prozac' or 'Zantac' or 'Mr. Pibb'. However, it is just the German word for 'cyclone' or 'hurricane'. Should Germans never mention cyclones or hurricanes again except in meteorological contexts? That seems a little strict.