This week Merriam-Webster Inc, the company responsible for producing that venerable dictionary announced its top 10 "words of the year" list, with the immensely popular "blog" taking the number one place. The company compiles the list each year by taking the most researched words on its various Web sites, and of course, always omits such consistently favored profanities. Interestingly enough, eight of the entries on this year's list included words related to prominent news events, such as the words incumbent, partisan, and hurricane. Blogs were responsible for creating a decent online (and offline) "buzz" around various political machinations during this presidential election year, including the contention that U.S President George W. Bush wore a listening device during his first debate against Democrat candidate John Kerry. While a Merriam-Webster spokesman was unable to give exact numbers for how many times blog had been looked up on its websites, he remarked that from July onward, the word received tens of thousands of hits per month. The first link offered here leads to a news story from CNN International that gives some background into this year's list, as compiled by the Merriam-Webster company. The second link will take visitors to the official list as offered by the company, and visitors may also see the definition for each word in full. On a somewhat related note, the third link leads to Digital Chosunilbo (a daily news report about Korea) that notes that the Japanese diminutive "Yon-sama" (which means "a humble player") has been selected as the word of the year to celebrate the publication of an annual book of words. If some of our visitors don't yet have a blog of their own, they will want to take a look at the fourth link which will let them create their own free blog quite quickly. The fifth link leads to the World History blog, which as its mission statement suggests, "features all aspects of world history." The sixth link will take visitors to yet another blog, which is in fact primarily dedicated to some rather striking photography of London and New York. The final link is close to our heart here at the Scout Project, as it is our very own blog where we post various items of interest for you, gentle reader.