{"id":1487,"date":"2007-04-24T20:39:32","date_gmt":"2007-04-24T23:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1487"},"modified":"2007-10-06T09:52:35","modified_gmt":"2007-10-06T12:52:35","slug":"off-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1487","title":{"rendered":"Off-Key"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">Y<\/span>o. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/2007\/0425\/p06s02-woeu.html?page=1\">Boris Yeltsin died<\/a>. <a href='http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?attachment_id=1488' rel='attachment wp-att-1488' title='The Tillman hearings'><img class=\"alignright\" src='http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/04\/ti_llman_hea_ring.thumbnail.jpg' alt='The Tillman hearings' \/><\/a>I can&#8217;t exactly remember how he became president of Russian Federation but I recall seeing video of Gorbachev&#8217;s last words as the official leader of the former CCCP. That was probably close after the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Soviet_coup_attempt_of_1991\">August Putsch<\/a> of 1991. Those were weird days.\n<\/p>\n<p>I was briefly following the Tillman hearings (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.crooksandliars.com\/2007\/04\/24\/kevin-tillman-testifies-about-pat-tillmans-death-fraud-deliberate-and-calculated-lies\/\">Crooks and Liars video<\/a>) and read up on several statements (<a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/photos\/sm\/events\/us\/032607pattillman\/p:6\">and more photos<\/a>).  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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/politics\/la-na-probe24apr24,0,3535547.story?page=1&#038;coll=la-home-headlines\">Office of Special Counsel<\/a> will investigate the political activities of the Bush administration. (Oh dear)<sup>100<\/sup>\n<\/p>\n<p>Closer to home, the CBC wants you to help find <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/soundslikecanada\/features.html?77\">the Seven Wonders of Canada<\/a>. You can nominate your favourite landmark right on that page too.\n<\/p>\n<p>And, I guess, the biggest news comes from Europe, where astronomers claim they&#8217;ve found a planet that most likely resembles Earth and is only <a href=\"http:\/\/www.france24.com\/france24Public\/en\/news\/world\/20070422-Astronomy-red-dwarf-mother-earth.html\">20 light-years away<\/a><sup>1<\/sup>. The discovery is, for sure, a milestone in planetary research and the search for extraterrestrial life.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"extra\"><small><sup>1<\/sup> A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year, which approximately is 9.45 trillion kms (9.45 x 10<sup>12<\/sup>) (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Light-year\">wikipedia<\/a>). There&#8217;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&#215;10<sup>15<\/sup> m, which we can convert to KMs by dividing that number by 1000 (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.ca\/search?hl=en&#038;q=299792458+*+366+*+24+*+60+*+60&#038;btnG=Search&#038;meta=\">Google calculator<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yo. Boris Yeltsin died. I can&#8217;t exactly remember how he became president of Russian Federation but I recall seeing video of Gorbachev&#8217;s last words as the official leader of the former CCCP. That was probably close after the August Putsch &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1487\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,11],"tags":[128,162,160],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}