Guess I'm pretty safe

I've just taken three "rate your risk" surveys and found that I have a minimal chance of being burgled (or "burglarized", as they put it), murdered, raped, mugged or beaten up. Surprisingly, though, there isn't a question along the lines of "have you recently been threatened with death or violence?" That might have swung the score a little.

Other than that, I'm pretty safe, unless the Iraqis or the Americans drop a bomb on me, of course. The Iraqis have so far not implemented their threatened attack on Turkey, largely because they have more important things to worry about than needlessly antagonising the possessors of the worlds fourth (?) largest army. The Americans did manage to drop a bomb on a Turkish village today (fortunately with no casualties) but that was an accident, like that unfortunate business with the Tornado.

Deadlines

"Turkey never fully appreciated how important deadlines were for us," the senior American official said. "They did not give priority to Washington's timeline."

How droll. This is Turkey, for God's sake. As anyone who has taught a class here knows, "deadline" means "the date when you start thinking about doing something."

Variation on a corny old linguists' joke ...

At an international sociolinguistics conference, a Spanish professor presented a paper on the word "manana" as a discourse strategy. At the end, he asked the audience if there was an equivalent word in their own language. The Turkish delegate stood up and said, "Yes, there is, but it doesn't carry quite the same sense of urgency"