This is my second post linking to Dar Al Hayat, a major Arab newspaper. I have to say, it contains stuff that I just never expected, from my last post in which an article argued that Obama was being too weak and encouraging extremists in the Middle East, to this:

I have another suggestion to increase the number of Arab readers, since we are one of the most smoking-prone nations in the world despite the health risks involved, and perhaps we are indeed prone to smoking, because of our stubbornness to acknowledge these risks. I therefore suggest that we print on the cover of each book “Reading may be detrimental to your health”, or “reading causes heart disease”, and because half of our women are constantly pregnant, perhaps we should also print “reading may pose health risks to pregnant women and foetuses”. This is because I am almost sure that any Arab who will read such a warning, will immediately take up reading the book with the same greed, gluttony, recklessness and idiocy with which he would take up smoking a full packet of cigarettes.

I don't think I'm even going to try to comment on it. I will say however that I really wish that more Americans would read. I am constantly shocked at the extremely limited vocabulary of many of my students. How do you improve vocabulary? You read. You read anything. Just read. As an example, I'd be prepared to lay down money on a bet that more than half of my freshman students wouldn't be able to accurately define the words "detrimental" and "gluttony" from the above quotation, and I wouldn't be confident that they'd know "acknowledge" "prone" or "pose".