So now I’m German?

Blogger has been getting weird lately. When I was travelling and linking to the Web via satellite, I could not sign on: I could reach the login page, but Blogger wouldn’t display the login fields. That went on for days.

Occasionally it switches to a French keyboard and instead of angle brackets, slashes, or double quotes, gives me accented characters instead.

Lately, if I try to use the Insert Link button, the dialog box pops up and I can enter the link, but it doesn’t “take” — when click OK, the box closes but the link is not inserted.

And now it seems to think I need my instructions in German. What the hey?

Airline sacrifices goats to cure mechanical faults

Over at Tainted Ideals, Dogscratcher has a link to an article about the sacrifice of goats on the tarmac at Kathmandu airport in Nepal. Read “Let’s book a flight.” Would you fly on this airline?

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft Sunday at Nepal’s only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said.

“The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights,” said Raju K.C., a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been.

Homo floresiensis physiognomy

TV Ontario is showing a special about Homo floresiensis. Her physiognomy is not that of a modern human. The professional reconstruction first restored missing chips of bone and teeth inserted into the root-grooves. The resulting skull is clearly not modern: it has prominent eyebrow ridges and lacks a chin. The most similar skulls and brain casts are those of Homo erectus. And since Flores has been an island for a million years, if Homo got there, they travelled over the sea, if only by rafts.

A demonstration project has shown that plain, keel-less rafts and paddles can get humans to islands such as Komodo.