Saddam Hussein's hatred for Yezidis and Kurds was matched only by his desire to eradicate every last one of them from Iraq. Even though most Kurds are actually Sunni Muslims, as is the now imprisoned dictator, his hatred for them remained unabated, and was relentless. Hussein knew that a collision of religious beliefs carved fault lines between the Yezidis and the Kurds who surround them. He used his common point of reference with the Kurds to sharpen their divide from the Yezidis, by calling them "Devil Worshippers." But just because the Yezidis don't have a Satan figure in their holy book, doesn't mean they can't spot a devil when they see one. Together with the Kurds, they resisted Hussein's will. Today, while the real peacock sits in jail, the unvanquished Yezidis are rebuilding their homeland.

On Always On, Bernard Moon writes about a blogosphere lost in translation. Is the Web's lightning-fast transmission of ideas actually barred by lousy translation software? His thoughts range from French outrage over Google making libraries available online, to the real need to communicate with people who speak from another cultural and linguistic stance.

That, in turn, led me to think about other topics and issues from around the globe that people not only want but need to read about from the perspectives of the people who are on the ground experiencing them. What are Iraqis saying about the situation in their country? What would the people of Rwanda have written to make us understand the horrors that took place there? ... Other than what people like Mohammed and Omar from the Iraq the Model blog—who are writing in English—have to say, we're missing out on these voices because we don't understand their language.

Sometimes, losing something in translation is worthwhile, says Hack A Day [beta]. He recommends using the lossy translator of Babelfish, for example, to make it easier to create texts for steganography. The quote is as it appears on the blog.

There are a couple disadvantages to this method of steg: the low bitrate and the fact that you have to transmit the source and the translated text. There are also some attacks to expose this method. If the same sentence appears twice in a text and is translated two different ways it would set off a red flag. Also if the machine mistakes are inconsistent: using the word "foots" in one place and "feets" in the other. If someone developed a large statistical model of all MT systems it would be easy to see that the steg doesn't fit the mold, but the steg could also use this model to make sure it fits (an arms race).