Fear of Stuff

Two items that you might want to keep in mind if your travels take you to distant lands.  Kuwait has banned DSLR cameras (big, digital cameras with big lenses) for everyone other than professional journalists. Small digital cameras and cell phone cameras are still okay.

A village in India, Muzaffarnagar, has banned cell phones for unmarried girls to thwart them from eloping.

And in the District of Columbia, cameras are prohibited from being brought into the Superior Court Building, but "you may bring a mobile phone into the building; however, you are not permitted to use the phone's camera function on the premises." Never mind that a cell phone camera can take really good photos, as in this front page New York Times photograph.

DC Celebrates Diwali

In case you missed Sunday's delicious Diwali celebration at Indique Heights in Bethesda, here are a couple of snapshots.

Diwali, also called the Festival of Lights, is celebrated over five days in the fall by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. Part of the celebration involves the lighting of oil lamps and firing off fireworks to symbolize the victory of good over evil. It's a happy, uplifting, gift-giving holiday, steeped in mythology and history.

If you missed the festival at Indique Heights, you can still celebrate Diwali at other events in the Washington, DC area, including the Diwali Festival at the National Cathedral on October 28, and the Diwali Mela on October 30 at the Patriot Center.

Rejoice, It's Wednesday

When I was in school, I thought of Wednesday as my salvation day: Wednesday was the day before the day before the last day of the week, Friday. I always liked Wednesdays, and still do. Wednesday is also called "hump day," but nobody seems to be able to pin down the origin of that phrase.

Today's going to be in the lower 60's with a chance of rain, but tomorrow we're likely to see 70 degree weather again.

In case you've lost track of time, it's the year 2010. I mention that because linguists just discovered a new, spoken language in a remote part of India. We're not supposed to find any new, living languages in the year 2010. But we have. The language is called Koro, and is spoken by between 800 - 1,000 people.