When
· Naughties
· · 2003
· · · March
· · · · 14 (2 entries)

Kurds · I spent most of my youth (ages 7-18) in Beirut, Lebanon, and might have stayed were it not for war. Kurds there were a vivid part of the human landscape. Many of the men had jobs in the Suq (bazaar) as porters; mostly wiry and compact, they carried astounding loads on their backs, for example full-size refrigerators, using a sort of harness with a forehead strap. This looked kind of medieval, but in some of these alleys there was hardly room to turn around let alone bring in a truck, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's still going on. The Kurdish women stood out in the crowd in their beautiful dresses in many bright colours, their heads sparkling with silver coin-spangled jewelry. Historically, the Kurds have got a raw deal for some centuries - just possibly they may benefit from the current crisis ...
 
Mosaic Plus Ten · Slashdot has reported it, but it's worth echoing - ten years ago today Mosaic 0.10 shipped. It had the basically good underlying architecture due in large part to TimBL, and Andreessen's magic extra: the IMG tag - Web pages with pictures! Web purists sneered then, and maybe some still do, but the arrival of pictures was (and remains) huge. The world in general and I in particular both owe these guys considerable thanks, because the Web is better than what came before, and, for the moment, better than the alternatives ...
 
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