Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

I like photographs involving water.

I like photographs involving reflections.

I like photographs involving the autumn light.

I like photographs involving the morning sun.

Here we have all four taken just last Thursday down in Sullivan's Cove!

I am currently enjoying Timothy Gaton Ash's excellent History of the Present. If you don't know his work, he's an academic/historian/author/journalist with a way with words. I will probably expand on my thoughts when I've finished it, but one brief comment struck me as I read it on the bus this morning.

It concerns a point early on in the siege of Sarajevo. There was a bombed-out post office with a common piece of graffiti/political comment, "This is Serbia!" Apparently someone had scrawled underneath the retort, "No, you idiot, it's a post office".

I like that. It pretty much captures the sort of inanity that drives people to war, ethnic cleansing and all of the kinds of atrocities within.

It's a post office. It collates and distributes letters. Get on with your life.