Last night at dinner, my tentmate John (a UCLA grad student) had a good discussion with one of the Egyptians about Arabic versus English, specifically regarding the number of letters or signs needed to specify a sound in each language.

John pointed out that the older a language is, the harder it is to learn, which seems to be a truth. Older languages don't have their vowels written out and require a lot more learning to know well. English is an example of a lazy language, because it is so written out. English may require extra letters, but Arabic requires separate signs to show pronunciation (and therefore meaning), so neither is better than the other, they're just different.

Here's a second panorama of the Faiyoum (1.4 MB), also taken from the top of the base camp building, but from the other side, later in the day, so it's easier to see the lake and its far shore. These things take 15-20 minutes to upload and can be a pain to deal with if the modem connection breaks during the process, but they're fun to create and will be used on the official project web site so watch for more.