Can I Get a Norwegian?

I love the Neocounter (below, right). It tells me where people are coming from to have a look at Metroblog. Unfortunately it's had an unavoidable side effect.

Mme Metro is also a fan, although she's had a few issues with it. And we find ourselves having conversations like this:

"Ooh! Ooh! I got one from [for example] China!"
"Wow--oh, hey. I got someone from Australia here!"

Which is very cool. But now ambition rears its ugly head. I want to collect a continent. Ideally I'd like to have one visitor from each nation in Africa.

But we have to do these things in steps and stages. So I'd like to start by collecting a region, in this case, Scandinavia. I've already got Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, so I need one Icelander and a Norwegian to complete the set.

It's sort of blog-risk, no?

Speaking of conflicts

... I know I wasn't going to blog on Israel and Lebanon for a bit. And I'm going to keep that promise.

But I thought I'd let the news do the talking.

Harper wants answers as to why the UN workers were put in harm's way by the UN.

He said he wants to find out why the UN post was attacked, but also why "it remained manned during what is now, more or less, a war."

Uh--Steve? Can I call you Steve? That's their £µ©λing JOB!

"More or less a war"?--What--this "measured and proportionate response" is a war? Glad to see you've been paying attention for the past two weeks, Steve.

Cynthia Hess-von Kruedener also wants answers, but to a slightly different question: why the £µ©λ did the Israelis shell the $#!7 out of what they knew to be a UN post, despite repeated desperate phone calls asking them not to?

Mrs. Hess-von-Kruedener believes her husband is still alive. I suspect that if he is he'd be better off turning for help to someone on the Lebanese side of the border. After all, they have nothing to hide ...

and after two weeks of Israeli bombing, nowhere to hide it.