Eclipse

Saw it! Was stupid, and somehow thought it started at 5:22 instead of 5:52; as it happens I woke up at 5:27, before my 5:30 alarm. So I saw it in partial first, then total. Good thing I didn't aim for the middle, because right now pre-dawn seems to have washed it out. Or maybe it's sunk further than I expected; moonset is at 7:15. Yes, I went back inside for a while rather than watching the whole thing through.

Tried taking photos of the partial, but think I got a bunch of blurs and one sliver of light.

Cheng I Sao

Now this is a pirate queen.

Googling "women pirates" also found Anne Bonny and Mary Read from this list.

More on Cheng I Sao or Ching Shih, and others. 1500 ships in the Red Flag Fleet.

If At First You Fail Miserably

Then Try, Try, Try Again!

Washington Post article
on the continuing failure of the War on Some Drugs, with the Taliban using the threat of Western poppy eradication to rally support in Afghanistan, pot being 6% of British Columbia's GDP and a bigger employer than mining + logging, and other such goodies.

Burning Man, Burning Groin

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/08/23/violetblue.DTL