Off-Key

Yo. Boris Yeltsin died. I can’t exactly remember how he became president of Russian Federation but I recall seeing video of Gorbachev’s last words as the official leader of the former CCCP. That was probably close after the August Putsch of 1991. Those were weird days.

I was briefly following the Tillman hearings (Crooks and Liars video) and read up on several statements (and more photos). I picked out the photo above because normal Americans are expected to make a sworn testimony and US government employees are apparently not. And then the LA Times comes with a report that says that the Office of Special Counsel will investigate the political activities of the Bush administration. (Oh dear)¹⁰⁰

Closer to home, the CBC wants you to help find the Seven Wonders of Canada. You can nominate your favourite landmark right on that page too.

And, I guess, the biggest news comes from Europe, where astronomers claim they’ve found a planet that most likely resembles Earth and is only 20 light-years away¹. The discovery is, for sure, a milestone in planetary research and the search for extraterrestrial life.

¹ A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year, which approximately is 9.45 trillion kms (9.45 x 10¹²) (wikipedia). There’s nothing magic about this number: if you take the speed of light (in m/s) and multiply it with the amount of seconds in a year you get 299792458 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 = 9.45×10¹⁵ m, which we can convert to KMs by dividing that number by 1000 (Google calculator)