Monday Links

Some things going on out there:

From the Sporting News, Major League Baseball hands out 50-games suspensions to 12 players, and a much longer one to Alex Rodriguez.

From the Washington Post, a 15 million-year-old whale skull has been found on the banks of the Potomac, near the birthplace of Robert E. Lee.

Speaking of the Washington Post, it will soon be sold to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com.

From Bare Naked Islam, Egypt has banned Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan from entering Gaza.  (via Barracuda Brigade)

From Frontpage Mag, the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir admits their belief that Sharia law is imposed on Christians.

From the Washington Free Beacon, the new Iranian president Hassan Rowhani has appointed a holocaust denier as his country's foreign minister.  This, of course, makes his no worse than Rowhani's predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  (via Pat Dollard)

From the Daily Caller, a conservative group has given their support to the Justice Safety Valve Act.

The American Thinker presents "The Dependably Unfaithful Colin Powell".

From Fox News, the U.S. military is spending $772 million on aircraft for Afghanistan, for which the Afghan military does not have the capacity "to operate or maintain".

From Reuters, a unit of the Drug Enforcement Agency is funneling information to authorities across the United States to help them start criminal investigations.

From the New York Post, the new owner of the Drake's Cakes brands has announced that Coffee Cakes, Devil Dogs, Ring Dings and Yodels will return next month.

And to finish with some humor, my blogosphere buddy Holger Awakens presents the Dem's poster boy.

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Yom HaShoah

This evening was the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day.  It will end at sunset tomorrow, following the Jewish and Biblical tradition of reckoning a day from one sunset to the next.  Yom HaShoah is observed on the Jewish Calendar date of 27 Nissan, which was chosen because the date fell after the Passover, but within the time of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.  The corresponding date on the Gregorian Calendar can vary quite a bit, due to the Jewish Calendar being based on lunar cycles and sometimes adding a "leap month".

Read more at About(dot)com and Monkey In The Middle, written by Findalis, one of my friends in the blogosphere.

In 2000, I had the somber privilege of visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau, both located near the Polish town of Oświęcim.  (Birkenau and another unit named Monowitz, used to supply German chemical plants with slave labor, started out as sub-camps of Auschwitz.)  One of the barracks at Auschwitz has been converted into a museum, full of exhibits containing artifacts taken from the prisoners, similar to those at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, but much larger.  Auschwitz still includes the wire fences with posts with curved tops, a few ovens used for cremation, and the ominous sign "Arbeit macht frei".  Only a small fraction of the numerous wooden barracks remain at Birkenau, but the camp otherwise has largely been preserved.

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Vulcan And Cerberus Get Nominated

The SETI Institute contest to name the two most recently discovered moons of Pluto has produced its two winners, Vulcan (which garnered the most votes) and Cerberus (which got the second most votes).  Vulcan was the name of a planet thought to be located closer to the sun than Mercury, but is most famous as a world in the science fiction TV series Star Trek and its sequels and movies. In Roman mythology, Vulcan was the god of lava and smoke, and nephew of Pluto, god of the underworld.  Cerberus was the name of the underworld's three-headed guard dog.  Because there is an asteroid named Cerberus, its Greek equivalent Kerberos could possibly be used.  The final say in naming the moons will go to the International Astronomical Union.

Unfortunately, the Walt Disney connection was disqualified.  No moons will be named Mickey, Minnie or Goofy, or even Donald or Daisy, the last two suggested by Findalis of Monkey In The Middle when she commented on my previous post on this matter.

Read the story at the New York Post.

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Meteorite Hits Russia

Earlier today, while scientists awaited the flyby of near-earth asteroid 2012 DA14, a different space rock entered the earth's atmosphere and exploded above the Ural Mountains region near Chelyabinsk, Russia.  The resulting shockwave damaged several buildings and blew out thousands of windows.  About 1200 people have reported injuries, mostly minor.  So far, army units have found three sites where the meteorite's fragments have impacted on the earth's surface.  According to NASA, this meteorite is unrelated to 2012 DA14, which by now has passed the earth at a distance of about 17,200 miles.

Read more at Russia Today and Gawker, who both have pictures and videos.  One of my friends in the blogworld, Holger Awakens, also has posted some meteoric video.  Here's one from Russia Today, showing the light generated by the explosion:

This meteorite explosion is reminiscent of the Tunguska event, in which a huge explosion took place over Siberia in 1908, which is thought to have been caused by a meteor or a comet entering the earth's atmosphere.  No impact crater has ever been found, but the pattern of fallen trees would turn out to be eerily similar to that of fallen buildings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though there weren't any known nuclear weapons in 1908. Fox News has more on the Tunguska event.

UPDATE:  KCBS reports another meteor, seen over California.

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A Few Things Going On

Some recent developments in the news and in the blogosphere:

National Review claims out that if electoral votes were awarded by congressional district, Mitt Romney would have won.  The number of electoral votes each state gets is equal to their total representation in Congress.  For example, if a state has 8 Representatives in the House, it has 10 votes in the Electoral College, the other two corresponding to the two Senators.  In the system that NR contemplates, each district gets its own distinct vote, with the state retaining the two "senator" votes to be determined by the overall popular vote within the state.  Currently, Nebraska and Maine each assign their electors in this manner.

Life Site News takes us into a recently-closed abortion clinic in Michigan, and gives us "10 surprising quotes from abortionists".

From Breitbart's Big Government, Vice President Biden will be meeting with the NRA.

From Newsmax, Obamacare is helping to create a shortage of physicians.

From CNS News, a history of Senator and apparent Secretary of State-designate John Kerry's criticism of America's foreign policy.

From The Foundry, regulations from the Obama EPA continue to bring about coal power plant closings.

From CNN, Illinois lawmakers have passed a bill that would allow illegal aliens to receive "temporary" driver's licences.

Remember the rash of church-burnings during the 1990's, the churches mostly belonging to black congregations, and how then-President Clinton recalled how they reminded him of the burning of black churches during his childhood in Arkansas?  I wonder what he thinks of the burning of churches in Nigeria?  (from Truth Be Told)

From Yahoo News, several hundred people in Boulder, Colorado hold a vigil for the victim of a police shooting - an elk.

From ABC10 News, after a couple ties the knot thousands of feet in the air, their balloon comes crashing down.

And last but not least, after being off the web for over a year, the blog And Rightly So, where yours truly used to contribute, has been restarted.  Raven has once again asked me to join the crew, so I'll be posting over there from time to time, in addition to what I post here.

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