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Dear Reader,

Screenhunter_12On the occasion of our 1,000th post at 3QD I had written a short note to our readers. It is now my privilege to announce that in the less-than-three-years since that time we have done more than 9,000 more posts, and this happens to be the ten thousand and tenth post at 3QD. I had planned to do it as the 10,000th post, but forgot yesterday! 🙁

The actual 10,000th post was done early this morning by my sister Azra (on Elias Khoury’s new novel), whose record of consistency in posting two interesting items daily is truly remarkable. As far as I know she has never missed a single day, six days a week, in the last three years. She is the Cal Ripken, Jr. of 3QD. (He played in a record 2,632 straight baseball games spanning sixteen seasons.) My friend Morgan continues to scour the web for intellectually stimulating material and consistently manages to surprise and please me with his finds. My sister Sughra comes up with a fascinating art image, and links to more information to go along with it, every Monday without fail. And last, but by no means least, my friend and colleague, Robin Varghese, in addition to his usual erudite selection of links, has also taken over some of the other duties I used to perform at 3QD (and also stepped up his number of daily posts) so that I can have some time to do other work during my sabbatical in Italy. 3QD takes a lot of person-hours to do daily because we look at a very large number of sources before making our selections of what to post. I could not possibly do it on my own (at least while maintaining the current variety). So my heartfelt thanks go to Azra, Morgan, Sughra, and Robin.

A little more than two-and-a-half years ago I wrote the first Monday column at 3QD. Since that time, we and our guest columnists have published approximately 500 (yeah, count ’em!) original essays, making Mondays our most heavily trafficked day. (The champion is my prolific nephew Asad Raza who has written 46 excellent essays for 3QD so far, and shows no signs of slowing. Thanks, Asad!) But I would like to express my gratitude and my congratulations to all our guest contributors for making Mondays at 3QD so special.

And finally, I would like to thank you, Dear Reader, for visiting our site and engaging in such stimulating conversation with us through the comments section and in private emails. Please tell all your friends and colleagues about 3QD. And best wishes for a great 2008!

Yours,

Abbas