The first Friday roundup

When I started this blog with Apus almost a year ago, I planned to write one post every weekday but was afraid I’d struggle to find sufficient material. As it turned out, that wasn’t a problem – and nowadays my main concern is lack of time rather than lack of subject matter. Often I would love to blog about a particular topic but time constraints mean I have to let it go.

To address this, today I’m introducing a regular Friday round-up of everything that has interested me in the preceding week but that I haven’t had time to blog about in depth. Let me know what you think...

• Here's an interesting BBC article on how the names for police operations are selected.

• I recently wrote about cameraman Sami al-Hajj, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay. Shortly afterwards, MobLogic sent me a link to their rather more in-depth blog post on the same topic.

• I also wrote about the longest URL in the world – Gingerous pointed me to a site with information on long URLs (and other long things, if that’s your bag). Oh and since then, I found an even longer URL, this time with 370 characters. Unsurprisingly, it was on the same government website.

• Ridger, FCD is a regular commenter on this blog so I’d just like to give a plug to her own blog, The Greenbelt. Nothing to do with the music festival, there’s some good stuff about language, evolution, politics and, er, birds. You can even find out what FCD stands for (well, I didn't know).
  

• And just out of interest, the Engine Room has had mentions on the Visual Thesaurus and the blog Words at Work. I've added the latter to our blogroll, along with Fritinancy, which I believe used to be called Away With Words. Anyway, they're both worth checking out.

Guantanamo Bay: Sami Al-Hajj

Is it just me, or is anyone else a little confused as to why the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba is referred to as Gitmo? Shouldn't it be Gutmo, Gatmo or even Gtomo? I woke up this morning with this question on my mind so I have evidently been blogging/subbing too much recently.

Anyway, I can only assume that Gitmo is a play on the word 'git', considering some of the stories that have emerged regarding the treatment of prisoners.

Not wanting to make (too much) light of a serious issue, I'd like to direct you to to the website Prisoner 345. This focuses on the plight of Al Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Hajj (pictured), who is being held as an 'enemy combatant' at Guantanamo and who has been on hunger strike for more than a year now.

He is the only journalist currently 'detained' at Gitmo but that is still one too many, and I find his story shocking.