  Just when you think it's safe to be nerdy, something comes along. This June, I'm spending a couple weeks in Portland, Oregon, for a seminar with the ever-groovy urlLink Erasmus Institute . And I was, and am, looking forward to it. Alas, apparently Oregon has some other...peculiar elements. Abu Hamza al-Masr, the mad cleric of London, urlLink has been indicted by the US. He is accused of having a role in a December 1998 hostage-taking attack in Yemen in which four people were killed and trying to help al Qaeda set up a "terrorist training camp" in Bly, Oregon, from October 1999 to early 2000. That is good to know, though. If I should be invited to a "more proactive kind of religious camp" while hanging out there, I'll be sure to think twice. 
