Uh oh

Bad news from Thailand. The military just coup-d'etated the government.

Thailand's army commander ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a military coup Tuesday night while he was in New York, circling his offices with tanks, declaring martial law and revoking the constitution. A military spokesman said army Commander-in-Chief Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin would be acting prime minister.

Sondhi, a Muslim in this Buddhist-dominated country, is known to be close to Thailand's revered monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Thailand was one of the few improving democracies in the region. I hope they can get out of this mess.

If You're in Wa St, Vote Today!

Today is the primary election in Washington State, so you better stop by your polling place and cast your ballot.

I voted the Democratic ballot, just so I could cast votes against Cantwell and McDermott. In November, I certainly won't vote for any Democrat.

Primaries are a money-wasting venture, I know, but they're the best we have for now. Once we get IRV in place, we can do away with primaries.

Wallabies and Crocodiles and Pandas, oh my!

Apparently, Britain has quite a few non-indigenous animals wandering around in the wild. Never mind that every inch of that island has been settled for hundreds of years; there's still wilderness.

Enough wilderness, in fact, to host (as counted in the last six years) "51 wallabies, 13 spiders including a tarantula and a Black Widow, 13 racoons, 10 crocodiles, seven wolves, three pandas, two scorpions and one penguin." Not to mention monkeys in Scotland and "5,931 big cats, 332 wild boars and 3,389 sharks in British waters." I'll assume they mean just the sharks are in the water.

I can understand wallabies hopping around. Spiders, racoons, and wolves no problem. But pandas?! Are they all together in one area? Are they doing any better than the wild pandas in China? What do they eat? I thought pandas only ate bamboo. Is there a forest of invasive bamboo somewhere in England?

The article sadly doesn't mention what types of big cats they have, but it does say the cats are mainly in southwestern England. The boars are mainly in the southeast. The wallabies are mainly in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. So those three, at least, sound like viable populations.

I wonder if the others will survive and/or thrive.

Hey, look at me! I'm famous!

Or at least a group of college students in Singapore have read some of my writing and used it as an example in their paper.

What writing, you say? My Vophick calendar for Mars! I wrote it about seven years ago. It was one of many calendars for Mars that I designed back then.

Their paper is about what life on Mars would be like. One of the sections is on calendars. They discuss in depth four systems: Robert Zubrin's (the head of the Mars Society), Thomas Gangale's, Frans Blok's, and mine. Their write-up on mine starts on page 74.

Zubrin's calendar is twelve uneven-length months that fit the eccentric orbit of Mars so that there are exactly three months per season. The months vary in length between 46 and 66 days. Gangale's Darian calendar has 24 months of 27 or 28 days each. Blok's calendar is structurally similar to the Darian calendar (24 months of 27/28), but he invented a new naming system for the months so there would be no confusion between Earth and Mars.

My Vophick calendar has sixteen months of 41 or 42 days each. I was trying to strike a balance between the long months that only twelve would create and the large number of months that shorter months would cause. And this is precisely why they included it in their paper.

They also mention my leap-year system as being confusing, which it is. But there really isn't any great solution for that one. Instead of an extra 0.242 days, there's an extra 0.592 days. You try to solve it.

Personally, I settled on my Pavonian calendar, which has twenty months of 33 or 34 days. But I still keep track of the Vophick calendar, as well. FYI, today is August 11 on the Vophick calendar, Acidalia 1 on the Pavonian calendar, and Aries 11 on the Darian calendar. I don't keep track of Zubrin's silly thing.

Monday?!

Last Friday seems like ages ago. 'Twas a long weekend. I wish it were longer, though. I need a day of rest. I got home from backpacking at 4 p.m. yesterday and hosted a potluck party starting at 6:30. No one showed up till 6:50, thankfully, because I was still doing things like making my bed after 6:30. I'd think I was done, be sitting there watching Seinfeld, then remember something else and hop up and go do it.

A good weekend, but tiring.

Apologies

So the Pope said some stuff about Mohammed that riled up Muslims around the world. And now he's apologized. Sort of. It depends who you ask.

The AP, for instance, says that Benedict stopped short of the full apology that the Muslims demanded.

Al Jazeera, however, acts as if it's a full apology.

Who's right? Well, both. Neither. To me, it sounds like one of those wishy-washy apologies: "I'm sorry you feel that way" as opposed to "I'm sorry I hurt you."

Here's what the Vatican said:

"[Pope Benedict XVI] sincerely regrets that certain passages of his address could have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim faithful and should have been interpreted in a manner that in no way corresponds to his intentions."

I don't know. Maybe something is lost in translation between German, Italian, English, and Arabic. I just wish he hadn't felt the need to apologize at all.

United Dictators

Quick! Who has a grenade?



It's three of your favorite dictators meeting together with all the rest of them in Havana. Left to right, that's Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Lukashenko of Belarus, and Chavez of Venezuela.

This one's an odd pairing, though:



That's India's Prime Minister Singh hugging Iran's President Ahmadinejad. I guess it's just proof that the Non-Aligned Movement isn't prejudiced against non-dicatorships.

Here, this one's more like it:



Musharraf of Pakistan and Raul Castro of Cuba, of course.

This next one must be photoshopped, because Fidel is dead, isn't he?

Handy Chinese Phrases

Hello...........Ni hao
How are you?....Ni hao ma
Good morning....Zao chen hao
Good night......Wan an
Goodbye.........Zai jian
Thanks..........Xie xie
You're welcome..Bu ke qi
Yes.............Hui
No..............Bu hui
Who?............Shei
What?...........Shen me
When?...........Shen me shi hou
Where?..........Na li
Why?............Wei shen me

But remember, you must have the right tones and pronuncation.

This all, of course, brings to mind the Monty Python song, "I Like Chinese," which includes the following line: "Ni hao ma, ni hao ma, ni hao ma, zai jian!"

Do You Believe in Magic?

In Nigeria, they do.

Found by the police with the bloody corpse of his brother, a man told the cops that he had killed a goat, not his brother. It was only after the goat's death did its body magically transform into his sibling.

Do any of you believe this his story is possible? Do any of you believe in magic and the supernatural and miracles and everything else that science says doesn't exist?

If you do, where do you draw the line? Do only Christian miracles count? Do only eerie coincidences occur?

If you don't believe in any of this stuff, why not? Do you really think that the universe is exactly as you see it? Cannot there be something greater, unseen?

Xena -> Eris

In case you hadn't heard, the IAU finally announced the new official name of 2003 UB₃₁₃, popularly known as "Xena." It's now Eris, named for the Greek goddess of strife and discord.

Eris's moon, once known as "Gabrielle," is now Dysnomia, named for the goddess of lawlessness (a deliberate reference to actress Lucy Lawless).

And the IAU also gave Eris and Pluto new minor-body numbers, just like all the asteroids. They also reiterated Pluto, Eris, and Ceres to be dwarf planets, along with a brief mention of "two other new potential dwarf-planet candidates." I'm guessing they're referring to two of the KBOs which are larger than Ceres, which are "Santa," "Easterbunny," Sedna, etc. etc. etc.

I still want to call it Rupert, though.

There's always room for improvement, but perfection is unattainable

so have another piece of chocolate.

and back to the mundane

I just went and bought a new toilet seat because my old one is so cheap that the cleaning solvents rub away at the white stuff and gradually expose more and more of the dark particle board beneath.

So I'm standing at Home Depot, staring at all these toilet seats hanging on the wall. They come in two sizes, round and elongated. The round ones looked too small for my memory of my toilet, so I bought one of the elongated ones.

I took it home and instantly realized that I, in fact, needed a round seat instead. So I'll have to go back and exchange it.

The moral of the story? Measure twice and buy once.

Never Forget

I'm proud to be an American,
Where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
Who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up next to you
And defend her still today,
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land.
God bless the USA.