This article, was one of the first pieces I read about blogs, and one that really inspired me to get into blogging. I was interested to know how that story would end up, and now I know it is a happy ending. Meg Hourihan and Jason Kottke are getting married early next year. Congratulations.

I like Simplicity.

What song was No.1 on the day you were born?

Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, has acquired Cheron, an American pharmaceutical company known to be pioneer in the flu vaccine market.

Khlaed al-Ghanami writes a good column on the case of Mohammed al-Harbi, the chemistry teacher that was sentenced to three years and four months in jail, and 750 lashes after he was accused with some silly accusations such as mocking religion, posing a threat to students and their beliefs, and shutting the windows during the call for prayer. Gainan al-Ghamdi, another columnist, has asked King Abdullah to deal with this case personally, in the same way he did with the case of Dr. Hamza al-Mizeini. I hope the King will interfere to bring this to an end.

Arab News: “Pardoning killers in murder cases has become a multimillion-riyal business.” The interesting part to me is that there are families who publicly announce a killer is being pardoned for the sake of God, but what really happened is that there are millions of riyals paid under the table. What kind of hypocrisy is this?

More Saudi bloggers meetups. This time, three girls at Starbucks.