2009's Greatest Hits: The Top Five

As we end 2009 I' ve been playing with Google Analytics to see what my readers found the most interesting posts. For the first two months of this blog (until late March 2009) I had no metrics on it, so this is only dealing with the period since March. Since many readers read the whole post on the home page, it's also a little deceptive (unlike some blogs, you don't have to click through to read the whole text), but the five individual posts with the highest traffic are these:

1. The Marwa al-Sherbini case.
2. Those Qatari Coup Rumors. Posted, oddly enough, while I was on vacation, and purely derivative, but it still gets hits.
3. "She was a Splendid Beast": The Arabic Transliteration Problem. One of my own favorites; glad others agree.
4. More Mousavi Fever: Rafsanjani Attacks Ahmadinejad. Nothing brilliant here; just commenting on Iran, but at the height of the furor. Later addendum: and Gary Sick linked to this on the Gulf 2000 listserv, which is a real draw, and at his blog.
   
5. Fun with Google Earth: Middle Eastern Airbase Recon. I had fun doing this, and I'm glad many of you liked it.

I may post other greatest hits later, but here's a start. Only two of the top five (nunbers three and five above) are really my own work, but that's the way it goes.