To paraphrase Austin Powers paraphrasing Britney Spears, BGS said "Oops, I did it again, baaaby," and laid off seven more people from the San Diego office last Tuesday. Equinanimous to the last, they laid off three linguists, three engineers and the technical writer. All these people were friends, and I was sad to see this happen to them, though in my heart I knew it was coming. This is the strangest set of layoffs. BGS keeps managers and lays off employees. So now they have four managers in an office of about 10 people. Since each of those managers earns about $100K per year, that's $400k (not including benefits, which would double the amount) that BGS wastes. Why not dump the managers and keep the workers? They could save money and be more productive. The highest paid linguist makes about half what the salary of the linguistics manager. Plus, they killed the Miramar next-gen MT product, and have chosen to preserve Barcelona, under the rubric, Maestro. American business practices are unfathomable: golden parachutes to the big guys, a hangman's rope to the little ones. Oh, and a new name to add to the BGS Hall of Shame: Michael Wiesner. He should be deported back to his "Heimatsland" to lay off his own people.What else is going on? My nonfiction book class is over, and I learned a lot from it. The Arabic class is continuing till the end of the month. My first-ever story sale occured last month. My short story, "Probability," sold to "Would That It Were," a Web-based science fiction magazine. Check it out at www.wouldthatitwere.com