Go Maccabi Haifa!

It's a draw: Maccabi Haifa, the Green Machine, holds off Espanyol in a zero-zero draw. (I know that most Americans have trouble with a game that ends with no points scored, but it means that we are still alive for the UEFA cup, which would be a historic first.) I head down to Tel Aviv on an afternoon train and find myself riding in a car full of Maccabi Haifa fans. They sing, and proudly wear their team shirts, wave their scarves, and holler at each other. Green and white, all the way.

It's a drag: What's with the American Idol stylists? Did you see what they did to the guys on Wednesday? Sheesh! I haven't seen that much eyeliner and lipstick on a guy since Bowie. Or Rocky Horror. Or Aviv Gefen. Very scary.

It's a dump: Zurich may have been voted one of the world's top cities, but it is also one of the most expensive. Can you imagine paying over 120 Swiss Frances (over $100) a night for a room with a shared bathroom? I find a three star hotel for a fraction of the other prices, book a room, and then start to worry. When I find a site where travellers have rated the hotel 1 (out of ten), I decide that we need to find something a bit less scary. Revital, my local ever-cheerful travel agent, prints out one of their offerings. "Revital," I point out, "this is a gay hotel. With shared toilets." Clearly, those little details hadn't made it into the Hebrew translation. We have a bit of time to sort it out before my business trip there in April. Gill is tagging along for the fondue and chocolate.

It's a dingbat: Northern LS shares some samples from student math tests. I don't know where these originated, but having experienced more than my share of the technophobic and math-challenged, I ache with sympathy for the teachers.

(The student's explanation in the last example reads: "Its [sp] curvy, with a higher bit at the end and a rather aesthitically pleasing slope downwards towards a pretty flat straight bit. The actual graph itself consists of 2 strait [sp] lines meeting at the lower left hand corner of the graph and moving away at a 90 degree angle. Each line has an arrow head on the end.")

Where is my big pointy stick?