...from a microlight

I found this cool site while searching around for info on selling my little 'Sandpiper' sailboat. (I don't think they're doing this around the world sail in a boat as small as mine, because that would be crazy)

Tom and Amy have been sailing their boat, called 'S/V Sandpiper' from port to port, starting in California, then Mexico, followed by a short hop to Hawaii. They've seen Tonga and the coasts of the Sudan and Yemen. Right now they're off the coast of Turkey.

Follow their adventures at sandpiper38.blogspot.com - and buy them a beer!

Are you freaking out about the possibility of Wahhabis taking over an independent Kosovo?

Just breathe..and read this.

In City Journal, John Robb* describes the counter-fear factor

We can counter fear, however. The best method, FBI trainers say, is to get control of your breathing. “Combat breathing” is a simple variant on Lamaze or yoga training—breathe in four counts, hold four counts, exhale four counts, and repeat. It works because breathing is a combination of the somatic (which we control) and the autonomic (which we can’t easily control) nervous systems. Regulation of the autonomic system deescalates the biological-fear response and returns our higher-level brain functions to full capacity. So one of the best ways you can prepare yourself to overcome fear in a crisis is as simple as a meditation, Lamaze, or yoga class.

I’ve been in situations that appeared to be life-threatening yet I don’t panic if I feel that I have some control over the situation. All is not lost if you have a plan B, C or D. Plans B, C or D may not be good or effective plans, but they keep panic away.

However, if I feel that I have no control over any aspect of the situation, I do panic. I’d guess that that’s why the breathing tactic works - it gives the sense that something can be controlled.

Which is why AP 'News' articles like their recent "Everything seemingly is spinning out of control" are so annoying. The best way to make everything spin out of control is to induce panic. The media continually tries to generate their own self-fulfilling prophecy.

* Links and criticism of Chicken Littleism thanks to Alan Sullivan

Instead, they should try... neti pots?

Forget that this decongestant can be turned into methamphetamine. People with heart disease or hypertension should watch out for any legitimate drug that contains pseudoephedrine. See, pseudoephedrine doesn't just constrict the blood vessels in your nose and sinuses; it can also raise blood pressure and heart rate, setting the stage for vascular catastrophe. Over the years, pseudoephedrine has been linked to heart attacks and strokes. "Pseudoephedrine can also worsen symptoms of benign prostate disease and glaucoma," says Dr. Rodgers.

Your new strategy: Other OTC oral nasal decongestants can contain phenylephrine, which has a safety profile similar to pseudoephedrine's. A 2007 review didn't find enough evidence that phenylephrine was effective. Our advice: Avoid meds altogether and clear your nasal passages with a neti pot, the strangely named system that allows you to flush your sinuses with saline ($15, sinucleanse.com). University of Wisconsin researchers found that people who used a neti pot felt their congestion and head pain improve by as much as 57 percent. Granted, the flushing sensation is odd at first, but give it a chance. Dr. Roizen did: "I do it every day after I brush my teeth," he says.

Study: 70 Mph Safe As 65

Eat (Chocolate), Drink (Coffee) and be Merry

Michael Totten and Sean LaFreniere - On the Road to Kosovo

Dubrovnik is a spectacular walled city on the Croatian coast near the border with Montenegro. We booked a hotel room in Montenegro and needed to leave for Kosovo first thing the next morning, so there would be no time to go back to Dubrovnik if we missed it during daylight.

There was no time to stop for proper food in a restaurant, so we pulled into a gas station to stock up on road food. I hoped oranges, bananas, or anything that had some nutritional value would be available, but gas stations all over the world sell little other than junk food, it seems. They had peanuts and pistachios, but the rest of our stock was a pile of cookies, potato chips, chocolates, and croissants. And the croissants were really just Twinkies from Turkey in the shape of croissants.

Sean and I wanted to speed through Bosnia and get to Croatia as quickly as possible, but the Opel we rented in Belgrade drove like it was built with a moped engine. Step on the gas and nothing much happens unless you're at a dead stop on a flat road. Passing slow trucks was impossible if there was a bend in the road anywhere in the same time zone.

The destruction wrought from ethnic-cleansing, including mass graveyards as well as blown-up houses and villages scourged by artillery fire, stretched from one end of Bosnia to the other. It was horrible...

More...

Cool video of a first trip to Gambia by Tom Swindell

..from Mali - Tinariwen 'Cler Achel'

More about Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani and his fight for freedom at Armies of Liberation..

In his call for offshore drilling, President Bush also called for more oil refineries in the US:

The four-point plan proposed by Bush would:

* Increase access to the outer continental shelf...

* Encourage the extraction of oil from shale in the West...

* Permit drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge...

* Expand oil refineries in the U.S., where a refinery has not been built for three decades. Bush proposes regulatory reforms that could remove barriers to refinery construction — namely public opposition...

Some democrats have proposed that the government should take control of the issue by taking over the refineries

But do we really need new refineries? Big oil says no:

Yesterday, as part of a daylong seminar on the energy industry for reporters at the Chronicle's offices, Exxon Mobil Vice President Kenneth Cohen offered some insights on why the company doesn't build more new refineries in the U.S. Basically, Cohen said, building even a small refinery would require an investment of $2 billion to $3 billion.

"Once you've made that investment, what you're looking at is `what's the growth?' It's just like any other business," he said.

Exxon predicts U.S. oil demand may begin to fall by 2030, which means the company faces a limited window for return.

Even Exxon is willing to admit that demand for oil may begin to fall by 2030, and they're planning for a future in which alternates play a larger role.

If big oil doesn't want more refineries, who does want them?

Why, our friends in Saudi Arabia, of course. They've got lots of smelly crude to sell, and few current refineries want to buy it.

Some people don't know how to plan for the future...

..adjusted in photoshop to bring out the color, correct for overexposure.

More about the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

Against the better advice of critics and Instapundit, I saw M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" yesterday. Rotten tomatoes was right - like most 'cautionary' thrillers, it was a bit of a splat.

It bugged me for the same reason movies like "The Birds," "The Wild One" bugged me. I love Hitchcock, and Tippi Hedren makes a wonderful victim, but - flocks of nasty birds are attacking a fishing village in California, and nothing can stop them from flying into homes through windows and fireplaces? You people are in a village full of fishing nets - think!

And "The Wild One", about a town attacked by motorcycle-riding toughs. Didn't they sell clotheslines at the 5 & 10...?

Early on in "The Happening", it becomes obvious that people are being affected by airborne toxins, yet no one in the movie even tries to cover their mouths with a shirt or something. They sell safety masks at CVS and at Home Depot. Wouldn't that make a little more sense than trying to outrun the wind?

..and there are machines that can help us escape the bonds of earth and outrun the wind, called 'airplanes'.

These cautionary thrillers can't work unless they make the intended victims helpless prey, and in doing so they make people appear to be dumber than mice. Sure, these things would be a threat if people were that helpless, but they're not, so what is the point?

..the Zionist plot!!

Indian tribe responds to invasive do-gooders

Two weeks ago the media was thrilled and alarmed by a film of a “lost” tribe of naked, painted Indians, living somewhere on the Brazil-Peru border and firing arrows at a helicopter flying overhead. Some reports claimed that this tribe was previously uncontacted by the modern world. But some anthropologists admitted that “this group is one of many in the Amazon that have chosen isolation.”

The fact that this tribe chose isolation did not stop the activists from the Brazilian government’s National Indian Foundation from distributing these films worldwide. They deliberately violated this tribe’s privacy because they wanted to use these Indians to prove that logging can be harmful to indigenous people.

Of course, the film shows no proof that loggers have violated this indigenous group’s privacy. It only shows proof that environmentalists violated their privacy. It also shows how much the natives appreciated their presence. Writing for Haaretz, thousands of miles away from the Brazil-Peru border, environmentalist Dan Rabinowitz projects his own heartfelt feelings onto the Indians and their arrows:

The arrows fired at the helicopter, which could have been seen as an instinctive, boorish response to an unfamiliar entity, should perhaps be read by us as a piercing critique of modernity. … If the pictures cause the liberal public around the world to lean on governments and make them save primordial forests, those who fired arrows at the helicopters will have done a huge service for a modern civilization bent on self-destruction. Perhaps as a sign of gratitude for their participation in this crucial campaign, they could be granted the ultimate prize: to be left alone, free of contact with a civilization they clearly do not want.

They will be left alone — until other “helpful” people decide that they can be a useful tool in a war against the logging companies. Then the helicopters will descend again, to take colorful pictures of the natives and their piercing critiques of modernity.

These films are just the latest, and least harmful, illustration of the fact that the environmentalist movement is a road to hell paved with good intentions. Yes, their goals sound noble — they want to preserve the wild spaces, clean up the oceans, save endangered species. But their actions often create more harm than good....

..more at Pajamas Media

Michael Totten and Sean LaFreniere in Sarajevo:

Sean and I met with Samir Beglerovic from the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo and asked him what he thought about it.

“What does the Muslim community of Bosnia think about the independence of Kosovo?” I said.

“I think everyone can support this independence,” he said. “Everyone who knows the situation in ex-Yugoslavia knows that Kosovo had maybe the worst position in ex-Yugoslavia before the 1990’s. So there is support for them. In the beginning all Kosovo wanted was to be a republic within Yugoslavia. They didn’t allow that, so then the problem began and they wanted independence, and finally they got it. People from Bosnia – Muslims and Croatian people – they are supporting this.”

“Does anyone here who isn't a Serb support the Serbian side?” I said.

“There was some talk,” he said, “[about whether or not] it was good for Bosnians for Kosovo to seek independence now. Some thought it would be better if they waited three, four, or five years because we don’t have a clear situation [in Bosnia]. They say that now, by giving Kosovo independence, Serbia is sending a clear sign to the Republica Srpska that they can do the same thing to Bosnia. And now Bosnian politicians think from this perspective it would be better for us if they didn’t do it now.”

...more

In a recent US State Department press release, Sean McCormack says of the recent conviction and sentencing of Yemeni journalist Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani:

The conviction and sentencing of Yemeni journalist Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani to six years in prison points to a distressing trend in Yemen of intimidation and prosecution of independent journalists in criminal and security courts. Al-Khaiwani’s sentence has been condemned by both Yemeni and international journalism and human rights NGOs.

Al-Khaiwani himself has been the victim of violence, intimidation, and kidnappings that the Government of Yemen has yet to fully investigate and prosecute those responsible.

We call upon the Government of Yemen to protect Yemeni journalists and their right to free expression in the pursuit of their profession. A free and independent media is a key component of a democratic society.

Jane Novak, who has been campaigning to spare al-Khaiwani from the death penalty and to free him says of McCormack's statement: "Good! It is distressing. And it is a trend."

I guess, in State Department lingo, that's a sign that someone is peeved..

From People vs. Dinosaurs

From outside, Israel looks as if it’s in turmoil, largely because the entire political leadership seems to be under investigation. But Israel is a weak state with a strong civil society. The economy is exploding from the bottom up. Israel’s currency, the shekel, has appreciated nearly 30 percent against the dollar since the start of 2007.

The reason? Israel is a country that is hard-wired to compete in a flat world. It has a population drawn from 100 different countries, speaking 100 different languages, with a business culture that strongly encourages individual imagination and adaptation and where being a nonconformist is the norm. While you were sleeping, Israel has gone from oranges to software, or as they say around here, from Jaffa to Java...

..that kind of hunger explains why, in the first quarter of 2008, the top four economies after America in attracting venture capital for start-ups were: Europe $1.53 billion, China $719 million, Israel $572 million and India $99 million, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Israel, with 7 million people, attracted almost as much as China, with 1.3 billion.

Boaz Golany, who heads engineering at the Technion, Israel’s M.I.T., told me: “In the last eight months, we have had delegations from I.B.M., General Motors, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart visiting our campus. They are all looking to develop R & D centers in Israel.”..

... Iran’s economic and military clout today is largely dependent on extracting oil from the ground. Israel’s economic and military power today is entirely dependent on extracting intelligence from its people. Israel’s economic power is endlessly renewable. Iran’s is a dwindling resource based on fossil fuels made from dead dinosaurs.

So who will be here in 20 years? I’m with Buffett: I’ll bet on the people who bet on their people — not the people who bet on dead dinosaurs.

Since 9/11, we've looked to politics and politicians to solve our problems. As a result, everything from the Weather Channel to Rachel Ray has become politicized. We're looking for solutions in all the wrong places. Innovators in IT and communications created successful revolutions without choosing between Obama and Hillary, global warming and global cooling, or Zionism and paisley scarves.

Although the media tries to sell the idea that politicians can be innovators, like most media marketing campaigns, it's all fluff. Politicians are bureaucrats, and bureaucracies thrive on rules and routine. "Creative" politics is about as helpful as creative accounting. Politics creates a better society when it gets out if the way.

Like most successful nations, Israel thrives despite their politicians, not because of them.

Jane Novak's fantastic interview with Fox News*, discussing her blog and the Yemeni government's efforts to execute democracy advocate and journalist Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani

* LInk thanks to Jane

This morning I turned on the TV news and saw Jane Novak on Fox! She was just finishing up the interview, so all I got to hear were the thank-you's but hopefully there will be a video up on Fox News soon.

Congratulations Jane!

I ate some kielbasa last night that was spiced with lots of onions and hickory pepper, and had a dream that Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton were sitting on a couch on a beach talking about climate and energy policy.

I woke up this morning and found out that it wasn't a dream. It was a commercial I saw after Jon Stewart.

How bizarre. Since both of these guys are on the far-loon edges of their respective parties, is this another moronic convergence or is it an attempt at an intelligent bipartisan solution?

Or is this post just another dream?

Michael Totten and Sean LaFreniere in Belgrade

The karaoke bar on a corner might not have been our first choice during the early evening, but it was one of the few places still open after midnight on a holiday weekend. We stepped inside. Beautiful and fashionably dressed young Serbian women and men sang songs in their native language with their arms around each other, empty shot glasses and crumpled packages of cigarettes before them on the tables. Except for the bartender whom we spoke to in English, no one in the establishment could tell we weren't Serbs. The atmosphere in the bar was one of energetic and joyous camaraderie. I was happy to be there. Serbia didn't feel remotely sinister, and I chuckled to myself as I remembered our taxi driver's warning.

“I could live here,” Sean said. I was tempted to agree as I took a swallow of my locally brewed Serbian beer. Belgrade was my kind of place – intriguing and troubled, yet attractive, cultured, and fun...

Michael interviewed one of Belgrade's most famous writers, Filip David. David's opinion on local propaganda:

“There is very messy propaganda, you know. Here there is no private opinion, only public opinion. During Milosevic they said for four years that there was no alternative to war. And after Dayton, the next day, they said that peace has no alternative. Everyone changed their mind overnight. The influence of the media is very very strong. And now they say Americans are our enemies.”

“They actually use the word enemies?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “You also have some kind of stereotypes. The first is that there is an international conspiracy against Serbia, and that behind that are Americans and Jews with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

“Oh, you're kidding,” Sean said. He spent six months in Denmark while I was in Lebanon, and he never heard that kind of thing there.

“Really,” David said. “They say Jews control America.”

Sean couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity.

“And the second,” David said, “is that all independent journalists and non-government members are traitors who are paid by the West. These two stereotypes exist now, in this moment. I am against this, you know, because I am Jewish.”

“Is that a problem for you here?” I said.

“It's an attack on international Jews,” he said, “not Jews here, because, you know, in Serbia there are only 2,000 Jews. A lot of people who attack Jews and are anti-Semites, they have never seen in their lives any Jews. In this moment, we have over 100 anti-Semitic books. A lot of them are reprinted books that were written during the Nazi occupation of Serbia during the Second World War. They are trying to explain how it's possible that Serbia lost all its wars. They are saying that it's an international conspiracy. And people believe it. You know, the bombing of Belgrade. It's true that in the American administration you have lots of Jews. But they are Americans, they act like Americans, not like Jews. I think so.”

“And the honest truth,” Sean said, “is there aren't that many.”

“Most are Christians,” I said.

“Henry Kissinger,” David said. “Hal Holbrook, Wesley Clark.”

“Wesley Clark isn't Jewish,” I said. “He's Christian.”

“He's not a Jew,” Sean said.

General Wesley Clark was NATO's Supreme Allied Commander of Europe when the U.S. went to war against Yugoslavia – which was really just a war against Serbia since what was left of Yugoslavia at the time might be better described as the Serbian Empire. (Yugoslavia was derisively described by many of its citizens as Serboslavia even long before the rise of Milosevic.) It wouldn't be reasonable to expect many Serbs to admire Wesley Clark, but accusing him of being a Jew seemed a bit much.

“Yes,” David said, “but he was born a Jew and adopted by some family. It's not important whether it's true or not. People here say someone is a Jew when they don't like him.”

David on the power of emotions, rather than facts:

Many Serbian Nationalists are fixated on the battle near Kosovo Polje when Tsar Lasar's forces were defeated by the Turks on the Field of Blackbirds in 1389. But Kosovo was mostly Albanian then, as it is now...

..“And when you have myths,” David continued, “they are based on emotions, not on facts. Hitler has in Mein Kampf one very important sentence. He said his National Socialist movement was not based on facts, but on emotions, and that no facts can destroy it. And if you base your power on emotion, people will stay there and it will be forever.

More proof of Saudi support of terrorism, from a series of reports in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

A former al Qaeda fighter accuses a Saudi charity

DOBOJ, Bosnia - For years, Saudi Arabia flatly denied it had provided money and logistical support for Islamist militant groups that attacked Western targets.

But that assertion is disputed by a former al-Qaeda commander who testified in a United Nations war-crimes trial that his unit was funded by the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina. ...

...Hamad admits having done "bad things" as an al-Qaeda fighter, and he is serving a 10-year sentence in a Bosnian jail for his role in a 1997 Mostar bombing.

Yet Hamad's account of his time in the Balkans went largely uncontroverted during the U.N. trial, where he was a prosecution witness.

He contends that the Saudi High Commission, an agency of the Saudi government, and other Islamist charities supported al-Qaeda-led units that committed atrocities. Mujaheddin units, he said, recruited fighters, prepared for battle, and financed their operations in the Balkans.

He said the Saudi High Commission had poured tens of millions of dollars into mujaheddin units led by al-Qaeda operatives who fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Money intended for humanitarian relief bought weapons and other military supplies.

The charities also provided false identification, employment papers, diplomatic plates and vehicles that permitted Islamist fighters to enter the country and pass easily through military checkpoints, Hamad said.

Several charity offices, including those of the Saudi High Commission, were led by former mujaheddin or al-Qaeda members, at least one of whom trained with Hamad in an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, he said.

Like other al-Qaeda fighters, Hamad said, he was an employee of the Saudi High Commission for a time and traveled through the war zone in commission vehicles with diplomatic plates.

A Phila. law firm wages an epic legal battle to win billions from Saudi Arabia.

Among the suit's key assertions:

Senior Saudi officials and members of the royal family or their representatives served as executives or board members of the suspect charities when they were financing al-Qaeda operations. Overall, the Saudi government substantially controlled and financed the charities, the lawsuit alleges.

The charities laundered millions of dollars, some from the Saudi government, into al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and provided weapons, false travel and employment documents, and safe houses.

Regional offices of the charities employed, in senior positions, al-Qaeda operatives who helped coordinate support for terror cells.

Although the lawsuit argues that the Saudi government "intended" the 9/11 attacks to happen, the public record supporting that allegation is thin, and lawyers suing the kingdom have yet to generate direct evidence that any senior Saudi official conspired with al-Qaeda to attack the United States.

Instead, the lawsuit compiles hundreds of incremental disclosures from U.S government and other sources and weaves them together to form one basic assertion: Al-Qaeda's development from ragtag regional terrorists into a global threat was fueled by Saudi money, some of it from the government.

And the charities, the lawsuit contends, were the money's conduit.

With the help of charities affiliated with the Saudi government, the lawsuit contends, al-Qaeda spread to the vicious 1990s Balkans war, which pitted indigenous Muslims, their al-Qaeda allies, and other mujaheddin against Serbs and Croats.

The organization then leapfrogged to attack Western targets, including two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the U.S. destroyer Cole, and finally the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"In a lot of ways this case is very unique, and in a lot of ways it is very mundane," Cozen said in an interview. "It is unique in that it is grounded in one of the worst events in U.S. history. It is mundane in that we are not breaking new ground in tort [liability] law. The law has always recognized the liability of those who participate in a conspiracy and those who aid and abet."

Unless those conspirators are good and generous friends of Republicans and Democrats. But still, Cozen plows forward:

How Cozen took on a kingdom for 9/11 liability

Cozen lawyers argued that the Saudis not only had funded and controlled the charities, but had been warned that the charities helped launder money into al-Qaeda. The defense insisted that there was no evidence that the Saudi government had supported acts of terrorism, and that the kingdom itself had been a victim of extremist groups, including al-Qaeda.

In one particularly intense hearing, Casey pushed back hard against Saudi arguments. For a while, Cozen lawyers thought they had been able to convince him.

But only a few weeks later, in January, and then in September, Casey issued two hard-hitting and emphatic rulings. He found the Saudi government immune from being sued because its oversight and financial support for the charities constituted normal government activities.

And he discounted information that the Saudis had been warned about the charities' money-laundering, and cited a 9/11 Commission finding that it had "no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded" al-Qaeda.

Cozen and associates were outraged. They believed their investigation had gone considerably beyond the work of the 9/11 Commission, by showing that the Saudis had substantial control over the charities, had been warned repeatedly that the charities posed a problem, yet had had taken no actions.

Casey, Cozen felt, had profoundly misconstrued the case by failing to recognize Saudi responsibility.

Cozen lawyers began mapping their appeal.

The charities named as defendants were so tightly interwoven with the Saudi government that an appeal of Casey's ruling had a good chance of success, they believed. Their own investigation had uncovered facts missed by Congress and the 9/11 Commission, they thought.

Absent financial support from the charities, some of it Saudi government money, they argued, bin Laden would never have been able to pull off 9/11.

At the same time, they pushed forward on their investigation, combing through files and querying defendants. One of those was a major al-Qaeda operative, founder and financier named Wa'el Julaidan. The U.S. Treasury Department designated Julaidan a terrorism financier in 2002.

But Julaidan, responding to Cozen questioning, said the government of Saudi Arabia had subjected him to no penalties or sanctions.

His response mirrored statements by U.S. officials, most recently Stuart Levey, Treasury undersecretary for international terrorism, who said last year that he was unaware of any Saudi sanctions imposed on terrorism financiers living in Saudi Arabia.

Like many Americans, I was aware that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the 9/11 attacks since about October 2001. This news is no surprise at all.

But it is surprising that that the issue is being covered by the media. Well, one media source, anyway. According to my search of Google News, the Philadelphia Inquirer is the only newspaper covering this.

The media tends to put up a unified effort to ignore news like this, just as they united in the effort to chicken out on publishing the Danish cartoons. The effort to protest the cartoons was a Saudi effort, after all, and our elites want to show the proper respect for our moderate allies in the war against terrorism.

I just wonder - what strange circumstance of fate allowed the Philadelphia Inquirer to grow a pair, and how long will they be able to keep them?

A trip across Israel in real time:

Filmed by Judith Weiss
Concept, driving and narration by Steve Dzik
Backseat driving by Mary Madigan

During his trip to Israel last year, when the nation was celebrating its 59th birthday, Steve came up with the idea of filming the drive across the entire width of Israel from the West Bank wall to the Mediterranean Sea.

The drive took less than twenty minutes. The idea was to show how small and vulnerable Israel is.

.. a few rare readers may have noticed that my site disappeared yesterday.

Since I was jet lagged and out of sorts after a very late flight, I didn't notice till late yesterday afternoon. It's back up, but it's not clear how long it will stay this way.

I guess this is the disaster that will finally prompt me to fix up my work site and blog using MT from there..

UPDATE: I may blog using MT or I may blog using Wordpress. MT has better features, but it always pisses me off. Wordpress is cheaper, and it's not so hard to configure so far.

Any advice would be helpful. In the meantime, my Wordpress test site is at marypmadigan.wordpress.com

ANOTHER UPDATE: Since today is a day for reconfiguring, I'm also changing my flickr site to make it more of a photoblog. It's at www.flickr.com/photos/marypmadigan