Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

It’s refreshing to see that Greek Orthodoxy in America is going strong; with 6 million Orthodox Christians in the US, young and old Americans of Greek heritage support their community through their local churches.

In Orlando, the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church of greater Orlando offers a variety of information through its web site.

Having attended several Greek festivals through the years, I can say that they get better and better. The food is home-made and delicious, giving that of restaurants a real run for the money. Orlando Greek Fest 2011 was definitely a success.

But not everything is authentic by Greek standards. Many things deemed as Greek are tweaked outside of Greece. To a Greek transplant, this seems odd at first but I can only say that after a while one chooses to ignore the “oddities”.

No, dear friends; hummus is not Greek. But try melitzanosalata or taramosalata instead when ordering food at your favorite Greek restaurant.

The concept of  flambeed “saganaki” cheese is unknown in the Greek mainland; the same goes for the chanting of “Opa!” when serving such delicacies at various Greek tavernas and restaurants in the US.

When dancing, and we aren’t talking about the “Zorba dance” devised for the sake of the movie ‘Zorba the Greek” in 1964, it is appropriate to cry out “Opa!” to encourage a dancer who’s performing on the dance floor. Definitely not appropriate when serving your grandma’s stuffed grape leaves, also known as dolmades.

While some attempt to deliver the essence of the Greek psyche, you need to live in Greece – and not drop by as a tourist – in order to understand and appreciate the culture, the food and the joys of being Greek.

Matt Barrett is a prolific producer of one such guide, at GreeceFoods.com and provides authentic and factual information for English speakers.

In a nutshell, those that condemn Greece and the Greeks for living life and enjoying its moments need to take a deep breath, step away from their electronic world and smell the roses.

I will now close with “kalo brady” - for “good night” – thus saving the “opa!” for when I dance.

English is the number one language used in International commerce, regardless of the actual number of native speakers: The number of Chinese Mandarin speakers surpasses that of native speakers of English around the world – a staggering 845 million versus 345 million for English.

Several dozen other languages are spoken worldwide, one of which is Greek.

Despite its important role in introducing literature, philosophy, science and arts to the so-called Western Civilization, Greek is only spoken by roughly 14 million people worldwide; most of them in Greece, Cyprus and the Greek diaspora around the world.

The use of a non-Latin alphabet by the Greeks has proven to be a challenge throughout the proliferation of computers and the Internet. Although the ISO 639-1 standard now describes the particulars of the Greek language so that Greeks can utilize every major operating system, such as Windows, Linux or OS X the fact remains that quite often Greeks online resort to the use of ‘greeklish’ for communicating with eachother.

Essentially, typing Greek words with their phonetic corresponding combination – or even visual substitute – is the definition of ‘greeklish’. For example, a simple Greek word such as “Αθήνα” for “Athens” can be written as “Athina” in greeklish. Due to the Latin alphabet lacking the letter theta, a visual substitution is often used: the number “8″ – closely resembling a Greek theta – would render “A8ina” as a valid greeklish word.

Things get even more complex due to the lack of a standard for the greeklish use; for example, if we were to utilize visual substitution versus phonetic, “Αθήνα” could easily be written as “A8nva” – using “n” as a Greek eta and “v” as the letter ni (Note: the name of the letter “N” or “ni” is inexplicably scribed as “nu” by the English lexicons.)

Confused yet?

This introduction about how Greeks type words is related to a whole separate issue: when written in greeklish, certain Greek words match other words written in English which have a whole different meaning.

And that’s where the fun begins.

The shorthand of “Muni” for “municipal” is a commonly used word in English. It’s also guaranteed to bring a chuckle to a Greek speaker, simply because it means “pussy” – and not of the feline kind.

In a similar manner, references to “colos” for “co-location services” are bound to be negatively received by a Greek speaker: the word means “ass” – the very one you’re sitting on right now. The same word can be written with a “K” as “kolos” – I am certain that the company behind Kolos.com – a bookstore from Ukraine – would never want to open a department in downtown Athens, Greece.

Finally, I remember walking around Wal-Mart, only to find a fine specimen of failed marketing research. The Kavli brand includes some really tasty crackers but I doubt they’d be bringing them to Greece, where the word is a crude reference to “cock” – not of the rooster kind, mind you.

Since January, a game of massive proportions has been launched against the euro and the European economy, by American banks – led by Goldman Sachs.

The very bank that is currently under scrutiny at the US Senate, has been known for years to play dirty games not just against institutions but also against entire countries. For an eye opener, I suggest visiting GoldmanSachs666.com

Late last year, Goldman Sachs offered a loan to Greece, then went around and bet against it. It’d be as if your bank that gives you a mortgage speculated that you won’t be able to pay your monthly dues and bought insurance against you.

This is what sports bookies do: they don’t care if they bid for or against a result.

This unethical practice is being currently uncovered by the US senate, at the same time as a war against the Greek economy has been launched. Those outside of the political arena are quick to speculate that an orgy of mismanagement is to blame.

The truth is very different.

Every country has a national debt, including major western powers such as Germany, France, the UK and Russia. Why did I leave out the US?

Because California alone has a debt matching that of Greece.

Imagine having a car loan and the bank increased the rates every month. Imagine that at the same time, they lowered your credit score, each month so that you could not refinance the loan.

That’s exactly what is happening right now with the Greek economy.

Now, all this definitely makes excellent cannon fodder for the news media. Instead of focusing on Wall Street, the mortgage crisis, the failing US economy and the 10% unemployment that President Obama has failed to manage – they are eager to bring the war overseas.

Some media have attempted to induce humor – albeit of the offensive kind – stating that in order to repay its debt, Greece must sell important national monuments or several of its islands in the Aegean.

Humor can go that much far though.

I’d love to see the faces of Americans, if they were asked to privatize the Capitol, or to give the Statue of Liberty back to France. Perhaps, if the Grand Canyon were about to be sold to Mexican investors to turn it into a mega mall, then it’d become apparent what Greece is being asked to do.

The Parthenon is not for sale, dear Westerners.

If anything else, the stolen marbles of its frieze, on display at the British Museum – after being ‘treated’ with storage, molding and vulgar scraping of their Pentelic marble – are being demanded back.

Visit BringThemBack.org to understand that there will be war long before Greece surrenders its heritage and national monuments to the predatory bankers of Wall Street.

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Revenue is severely down across the domain parking industry, as PPC companies slowly but surely pass the “benefits” of trickle-down economics to the domainers.

Meanwhile, the main advertising providers, Google and Yahoo post record revenue while they’re reducing ad revenue paid to domain holders. Time to develop your domains.

Click on the image below and enjoy your Friday!

Traveling domainers carry with them the “domain virus” and often attempt to apply it to real life events.

Rick Schwartz’s recent trip to Greece and neighboring Turkey inspired the following Friday Funny