For a blog out of Baghdad see Bloghdad. It is unclear who this guy is and how much longer he will be able to post but for the moment it is interesting. Even with cruise missiles whipping around you still got to go out and buy a loaf of bread. I can just hear the wife hollering, “And get a liter of milk too! And don't stop at the tea house on the way back!" I wonder if they are stilll selling lottery tickets.

Back on February 28 (see post below) I consulted a Mongolian fortune teller who told me that the war would start on March 18. Well, the first attack on Baghdad was on the morning of March 19, so this person missed it by a day. But hey, even Mongolian fortune-tellers aren't perfect.

Well, it has finally arrived. No, not the war (of course that has arrived too). I mean Spring. Here in Mongolia Spring officially starts at 9:00 am sharp. It is just a coincidence that this year the spring equinox falls right on the hour. Also, for all of you who tried to balance eggs at the moment of the equinox, forget it. As Sky and Telescope, says, "Eggs do not balance on end more easily at the equinox than at other times! Actual tests have demolished this bit of New Age goofiness; the ability of eggs to balance depends on tiny irregularities on their shells (and the persistence of the would-be balancer!), not on what day it is. This perennial silly-season story has nothing to do with how eggs balance."

At 9:00 am here in Mongolia it is a balmy 24 degrees F. As far as I can tell that has been no reaction whatsoever here about the start of the war in Iraq. This is of course of Buddhist country so the religion factor doesn't much enter into the picture - no one is calling for either Crusades or Jihads - and the local media doesn't seem to be making a big deal out of it. Of course it is still early . . .