Ann Arbor, al-Qaeda, and Newport Beach

I will be flying out to Ann Arbor on Easter Sunday with my wife Betty, my daughter Mary Ann, and several others. We have an ambitious schedule laid out for us, including the dedication of the Bob and Betty Beyster Building on the University of Michigan campus, a tour of the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, and a visit to my boyhood home in Grosse Ile.

I am hoping that this time we will have the opportunity to take a look inside the house and see how it has changed in the more than 60 years since I lived there. I will post a detailed trip report when I return, hopefully with some photos.

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I was interested to read in the Washington Post that the al-Qaeda Internet forums are back online after they were blacked out for more than a week. Apparently the websites were the target of a cyberattack, although it is not clear who might have initiated this attack.

It’s amazing to me that al-Qaeda and its operatives are sophisticated enough to have a fully developed website to communicate their message of darkness to their fellow conspirators. I suspect that the U.S. has fully infiltrated their network, though I don’t have first-hand knowledge if this is the case or not.

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On Wednesday we went on a field trip to Newport Beach, where we had lunch on a beautiful lagoon on Balboa Island. We had to take a ferry to get there, which was an enjoyable adventure.

— Bob