Woo hoo; Now Cubans can legally have cell phones. Toasters are still, however, illegal

Yes. The US Trade Embargo is a sick anachronism. But so too is the regime.

From: Ninetymilesaway

Yes, boys and girls, your ordinary citizen can now ante up to the check-in at any hotel establishment on the island of Cuba, as long as he or she has the money to pay in hard currency. Ah, there's the rub.

A cursory search reveals at least one hotel in Varadero where a weekend stay costs about 120 dollars. Do a little simple math. Convert it to CUC's and then divide it by the average monthly salary of a average Cuban. Soon you realize that a weekend in Varadero would cost the equivalent of 5 and a half months complete take home pay. Now say you make 35 thousand a year, it would be like paying about 10 thousand dollars for your weekend.

...

If you look at the "reforms" that have made the latest splash in the media, they all have one thing in common. Cell phones, computers, appliances (except for the lowly toaster, they'll have to wait 'til 2010 for them), they are the appurtenances of modern life, the must haves of the global consumer society. Your average American hears, "Cubans will be allowed to buy microwaves," and immediately pictures them in addition to the Kraftmaid kitchen with the Kitchen Aid appliances, not as a replacement for the lone hot plate with the grease of twenty years and the fraying cord, the cost of which must be paid out for years. So to the uninformed, the impression made is that Cuba is joining the 21st century.

Now Cubans may be isolated, but they have a sense of how the other half lives. All they have to do is look at the tourists, the party apparatchiks, and the State stores, or look to their exiled kin. And in part, they realize how little likelihood there is that they will be able to afford these luxuries the rest of the world takes for granted. As usual with the regime, appearance is all.

Still among the banned, however, are the rights of free assembly, free speech, free elections. Call me a skeptic, but I'm looking for one tell, and that is the release of the political prisoners. The day that Dr. Oscar Biscet walks out of whatever hell hole they've transferred him to a free man; then I will believe change is truly on the way. Until then, I fear I have misjudged Raul, who may very well have been the brains behind keeping the throne all these many years.

And as Canadians are always wont to tell you: they have great literacy and more doctors per square mile or some such tripe. Well, they do have great literacy, but there's little to read. And Fidel (who now wears a shell suit) sold off many of his doctors to Chavez for US$27 a barrel Venezuelan oil. There is also the little medical issue plaguing the Cuban medical system: antiquated equipment and an acute shortage of drugs. Oh yeah, that's America's fault....

Addendum: Spoke with a Cuban Graduate Student (in Divinity no less) at Trinity College about the toasters. His comments were. Practically everyone he knows in Cuba already has a cell phone, albeit registered in a foreigner's name, and that Cuba is not ready for toasters as there is not enough electricity on the Island to support them. However, unlike the Dominincan Republic, they have no longer have the nightly blackouts that those toaster wielding Dominicans do.

Excellent Idea: Why Not Just Buy Out Mugabe (It would certainly be cheaper and might set a decent precedent for other dictators looking for an out).

Beautiful isn't it?

As the Zimbabwean electoral soap opera continues to unfurl, I am led more and more to wonder why "we" (Western governments and IFIs) don't simply buy out corrupt dictators? The World Bank has loaned a lot of money to Zimbabwe, all of it seemingly wasted judging by current conditions there. From the Bank's Zimbabwe page:

Between 1980, when Zimbabwe joined the Bretton Woods Institutions, and 2000 when the country fell behind in its payments on World Bank loans, the Bank funded a total of 33 projects worth US$1.6 billion. Bank support concentrated on infrastructure, agriculture, health support, and community and local government programs, financed from both International Development Association (IDA) Credits (42%) available to low-income countries, and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) loans (58%) available to middle-income countries. Zimbabwe’s arrears to the World Bank were estimated at US$521 million as of September 13, 2007. The arrears to the IMF stood at US$134 million at end-July 2007 and to the AfdB at US$359 million as of end-April 2007.

So why not "buy the rascals out"? Go to Mugabe in 2002 and offer him $500 million cash to go live in Canada. Is it that his expected profits from being in power are too large for us to afford the buyout? Is it because of moral hazard? Is it because of the moral outrage such a scheme would create?

Or is it because if the institutions of the country don't change, the new president will simply become the next Mugabe?

From Kids Prefer Cheese

I will say that this election has become that much more interesting. Mugabe, who often compared himself to Hitler as someone fighting for the rights of his people with the use of the white landowners as scapegoats, looks increasingly like he will jump. I don't know much about the opposition, but they certainly can't be any worse. It's a wonderful thing, cameras and democracy.

Good To See Old Habits Die Hard

Many Americans assume that China's internet users are both aware of and unhappy about their government's oversight and control of the internet. But in a new survey, most Chinese say they approve of internet control and management, especially when it comes from their government.

According to findings from the fourth and most recent of a series of surveys about internet use in China from 2000 to 2007,1 over 80% of respondents say they think the internet should be managed or controlled, and in 2007, almost 85% say they think the government should be responsible for doing it.

HT: AS
Original story here.

Isn't There Something Inherently Self-Negating or Even Oxymornic in Letting Ex-Behind the Curtain Countries Join Nato?

Harper Doesn't Seem to Think So.

PRIME MINISTER HARPER BACKS UKRAINE’S PROGRESS TOWARD NATO MEMBERSHIP

April 2, 2008
Bucharest

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today expressed Canada’s strong support for Ukraine to move towards membership in the NATO alliance.

“Ukraine has made great progress on democratization and in opening up its economy in recent years,” the Prime Minister said. “The country is on a path to a better future for its people, and I call upon our NATO partners to agree that we should keep Ukraine moving forward toward full membership in the alliance.”

...

The Prime Minister also indicated that Canada would join any NATO consensus to admit the Republic of Georgia to NATO’s Membership Action Plan.

Damn I Wish I Could Write Like This: Hitch on Hilary

(This concentration camp, Jasenovac,was set up by the Ustaša of Croatia in 1941, but you get the picture.)

The Tall Tale of Tuzla
Hillary Clinton's Bosnian misadventure should disqualify her from the presidency, but the airport landing is the least of it.
By Christopher Hitchens

The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia should be much heavier than it has yet been and should be exacted for much more than just the lying itself. There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the more serious, means that the liar in question has also attempted to bury or to obscure something that actually is true. Let us examine how Sen. Clinton has managed to commit both of these offenses to veracity and decency and how in doing so she has rivaled, if not indeed surpassed, the disbarred and perjured hack who is her husband and tutor.

I remember disembarking at the Sarajevo airport in the summer of 1992 after an agonizing flight on a U.N. relief plane that had had to "corkscrew" its downward approach in order to avoid Serbian flak and ground fire. As I hunched over to scuttle the distance to the terminal, a mortar shell fell as close to me as I ever want any mortar shell to fall. The vicious noise it made is with me still. And so is the shock I felt at seeing a civilized and multicultural European city bombarded round the clock by an ethno-religious militia under the command of fascistic barbarians. I didn't like the Clinton candidacy even then, but I have to report that many Bosnians were enthused by Bill Clinton's pledge, during that ghastly summer, to abandon the hypocritical and sordid neutrality of the George H.W. Bush/James Baker regime and to come to the defense of the victims of ethnic cleansing.

I am recalling these two things for a reason. First, and even though I admit that I did once later misidentify a building in Sarajevo from a set of photographs, I can tell you for an absolute certainty that it would be quite impossible to imagine that one had undergone that experience at the airport if one actually had not. Yet Sen. Clinton, given repeated chances to modify her absurd claim to have operated under fire while in the company of her then-16-year-old daughter and a USO entertainment troupe, kept up a stone-faced and self-loving insistence that, yes, she had exposed herself to sniper fire in the cause of gaining moral credit and, perhaps to be banked for the future, national-security "experience." This must mean either a) that she lies without conscience or reflection; or b) that she is subject to fantasies of an illusory past; or c) both of the above. Any of the foregoing would constitute a disqualification for the presidency of the United States.

Yet this is only to underline the YouTube version of events and the farcical or stupid or Howard Wolfson (take your pick) aspects of the story. But here is the historical rather than personal aspect, which is what you should keep your eye on. Note the date of Sen. Clinton's visit to Tuzla. She went there in March 1996. By that time, the critical and tragic phase of the Bosnia war was effectively over, as was the greater part of her husband's first term. What had happened in the interim? In particular, what had happened to the 1992 promise, four years earlier, that genocide in Bosnia would be opposed by a Clinton administration?

In the event, President Bill Clinton had not found it convenient to keep this promise. Let me quote from Sally Bedell Smith's admirable book on the happy couple, For Love of Politics:

Taking the advice of Al Gore and National Security Advisor Tony Lake, Bill agreed to a proposal to bomb Serbian military positions while helping the Muslims acquire weapons to defend themselves—the fulfillment of a pledge he had made during the 1992 campaign. But instead of pushing European leaders, he directed Secretary of State Warren Christopher merely to consult with them. When they balked at the plan, Bill quickly retreated, creating a "perception of drift." The key factor in Bill's policy reversal was Hillary, who was said to have "deep misgivings" and viewed the situation as "a Vietnam that would compromise health-care reform." The United States took no further action in Bosnia, and the "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs was to continue for four more years, resulting in the deaths of more than 250,000 people.

I can personally witness to the truth of this, too. I can remember, first, one of the Clintons' closest personal advisers—Sidney Blumenthal—referring with acid contempt to Warren Christopher as "a blend of Pontius Pilate with Ichabod Crane." I can remember, second, a meeting with Clinton's then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin at the British Embassy. When I challenged him on the sellout of the Bosnians, he drew me aside and told me that he had asked the White House for permission to land his own plane at Sarajevo airport, if only as a gesture of reassurance that the United States had not forgotten its commitments. The response from the happy couple was unambiguous: He was to do no such thing, lest it distract attention from the first lady's health care "initiative."

It's hardly necessary for me to point out that the United States did not receive national health care in return for its acquiescence in the murder of tens of thousands of European civilians. But perhaps that is the least of it. Were I to be asked if Sen. Clinton has ever lost any sleep over those heaps of casualties, I have the distinct feeling that I could guess the answer. She has no tears for anyone but herself. In the end, and over her strenuous objections, the United States and its allies did rescue our honor and did put an end to Slobodan Milosevic and his state-supported terrorism. Yet instead of preserving a polite reticence about this, or at least an appropriate reserve, Sen. Clinton now has the obscene urge to claim the raped and slaughtered people of Bosnia as if their misery and death were somehow to be credited to her account! Words begin to fail one at this point. Is there no such thing as shame? Is there no decency at last? Let the memory of the truth, and the exposure of the lie, at least make us resolve that no Clinton ever sees the inside of the White House again.

Just What The Women of America Ought to Do With The US$ in A Tail Spin

Oh, The Irony: Geothermal Probe Sinks German City

Geothermal probe sinks German city

By Bojan Pancevski in Vienna
Last Updated: 2:02am BST 31/03/2008

A German town is subsiding after authorities drilled underground in order to harness green energy.

Staufen, in the Black Forest, was proud of its innovative geothermal power plan that was supposed to provide environmentally-friendly heating.

But only two weeks after contractors drilled down 460ft to extract heat from below the earth, large cracks have appeared in buildings as the town centre subsided about a third of an inch (8mm).

The baroque Town Hall, the main church, two schools and over 64 other buildings in the historic centre were severely affected. Experts said buildings in the outer part of the town had risen by a similar amount.

...

A spokesman for Staufen council said: "The community was so proud of the environmentally-friendly geothermal energy project that it would be a painful irony if that was the cause for this incredible occurrence."

Hat Tip: Kids Love Cheese

You Could Too if the ONLY had a Beak and No Bones

HT: Netscrap

Earth Day and Sussex Avenue Part II

Could Harper not have put the lights out for an hour at 24 Sussex? How much would that have hurt? How many cheap shots could that have avoided? And what’s wrong with saving a bit of power anyway, less than 6% I understand for 1 hour of 1 day of 1 year. Well, a lot--and that is perhaps what Harper was thinking, Borat not! If, for arguments sake, 10% less power was used during the hour (which is high), if my sums are correct, we would have saved 0.114077116% energy for the year. Spreadsheet available on request. Now if we subtract that figure from the amount of energy spent on Earth day (some would say incalculable, others invaluable—and you know who you are) I am pretty sure we would seriously be in the red and it is no wonder that the power companies get behind such projects: they look good and sell more power! Nonetheless, the Grades 1s, under the auspices of that August apolitical institution the Toronto District School Board, are being made to write letters to Harper about his failure to flick the switch. Why give the TDSB such fun? Dumb.

And He Couldn't Be Bothered To Turn Out The Lights on Earth Day

STATEMENT BY THE PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA

March 31, 2008
Ottawa, Ontario

Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued the following statement today to congratulate Canada’s women’s curling team:

“On behalf of all Canadians, I would like to congratulate Canada’s women’s curling team on capturing the 2008 Ford World Women’s Curling Championship after defeating China 7-4 in Sunday’s final.

Along with all Canadians, I am extremely proud of the outstanding performance by our women’s curling team. Their exciting play throughout the tournament coupled with some close final end victories proved that Canadian players have the talent and grit to overcome adversity and emerge as champions.

Team Canada, comprised of skip Jennifer Jones, lead Dawn Askin, second Jill Officer, third Cathy Overton-Clapham, Fifth Jennifer Clark-Rouire, and coach Janet Arnott, became the first Canadian team to win the title on home ice since 1996.

We are proud that with this most recent victory, Canada has now won the Women’s World Curling Championships fifteen times, and has won medals 26 times in 30 tournaments."

Now This Was Unexpected (at least by me): Outcome of Zimbawe Election May Not Have Been Pre-Determined.

Yesterday, I made a joke (in rather poor taste I hasten to add) to the effect that no one in Vegas would take my bet on the outcome of yesterday's election in Zimbabwe. The election I assumed would be like the one posted in that great Onion story about the Diebold machines accidentally released the US Presidential Results prior to the election.I am sorry I didn't actually consult any bookies though. Woulda, shoulda,coulda, I suppose. But the great thing about Zimbabwe's recent election is not the outcome -- though it would be a wonderful thing if the true winners of the election were able to take office without bloodshed, I doubt it though -- but the election is not (yet) a pre-done deal. Whether or not Mugabe cedes his throne, for that is what we should call it, if he should have lost the election--which his party most likely has--but that the whole world will be reminded of just how nasty a son of a bitch old-school African tin pot dictator he really is.
In any event, he's stowed billions abroad and has a very nice villa in Cap Ferrat to retire gracefully from the scene. Grace, I do not think is much that we will, however, see.

Quote of the Day

“Wil Shipley, a Seattle software developer, uses his iPhone at the Whole Foods fish counter to check websites for updates on which seafood is the most environmentally correct to purchase. He quizzes the staff on where and how a fish was caught. Because he carries the Internet with him, “I can be super-picky,” he said.”

From: stuffwhitepeoplelike


Hat Tip: Dalton48 at Mockturle

Fitna: Those Tolerant Dutch!

Yeah. That movie.



I am not sure who this speaks worse about. The maker or the subject. Actually, I know: the maker.

Is There No Rest for the Wicked: Elisabeth Nietzsche and her Brother Friedrich Likely to be Disintered by Evil Mining Company

Two gravestones stand side by side in the churchyard of the little village of Röcken, south of Leipzig: one belongs to Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the greatest and most misunderstood philosophers; the other marks the grave of his sister Elisabeth, a lifelong anti-Semite who hijacked her brother's writings after his death and used them to serve the cause of Nazism, leaving a stain on his philosophy that has never been fully erased.

Today, bulldozers belonging to a power company are preparing to dig up the town where Nietzsche and his sister were born and buried, to get at the seam of coal that runs beneath. Nietzsche and his sister may have to move.

Story here:

It wouldn't be the first time that a dead white thinker's bones have been moved.
I also understand that Kant's bones were taken from a Church in Koenigsberg by a Soviet General to his Dacha on the Volga after the Second World War as a souvenir. Alas, the world never had the benefit of ridding itself of the view of Jeremy Bentham's ugly mug. I have been given to understand that the Swiss born Rousseau is safe in The Pantheon in France. What do they say about Austria? It's the country where Hitler was born in Germany and Mozart was a native son.

A Gas of a Read from 'The Dearborn Independent' as Published by Henry Ford

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville Beats the Anti-Semite Edison to the Recorded Sound Crunch

As many of you may know, I have a partiality to old recordings. Supposedly, they get no older than those of Thomas Edison's. (The fact that we share a birthday is purely coincidental. Another thing we share in common: neither of us invented the light bulb.) There are two interesting facts about Edison and his tin ear I want to bring up. The first is that Edison only ever thought of record and playback devices as a way to increase office efficiency. Second, when it was pointed out to Edison that people were using their phonographs to listen to music, Edison, never one to miss a business opportunity, set out to record the greatest opera singers of the time. Edison, as was his wont, made himself the ultimate judge of what a good singer sounded and summarily dismissed any singer who at all deviated from how Edison had already decided a singer should sound. Maria Callas, for example, would never have made the cut. And while people still give Edison credit for inventing recording, he didn't. Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville did. What's more, Edison's system used a roll, which you could only record on one side, and 'hill and dale' modulation, where the sound was recorded vertically rather than horizontally. Neither system gained much traction in the market but still, curiously, our winter neighbor of Henry Ford who printed at his own expense that anti-semitic rag The Dearborn Independent still managed to procure himself the credit.We also, outside of cars, do not use DC powered light bulbs either.



I won't even get to the fight wit Tesla over Direct Current. Fortunately, Edison lost the battle, but even more unfortunately Tesla was found dead and penniless in a New York Hotel room. Curiously, even though our favorite Serbian inventor supposedly committed suicide, Nikola's notebooks were never found.

You may hear Scott's original recording here.

Perpetually in Motion: A Terribly Sad Story Concerning Love

Latvia 1912: Ed Leedskalnin, 26 was jilted on the eve of his wedding by his 16- year-old fiancee, Agnes Scuffs. Broken-hearted, Ed wandered, visiting Canada and Europe before settling in Florida City, near Miami.

During his wandering in Europe, Ed noticed one outstanding feature-the land was covered with castles. This gave him a romantic notion to build a castle for Agnes and to send her pictures of it in hopes that she might come to Florida and marry him. Working only from midnight to sunrise so that no one could see how he moved the great coral stones weighing more than those of the Great Pyramid, Ed built Coral Castle for Agnes. When he finished it, he gave tours, telling his visitors that he was "Waiting For Agnes."

During the late tea-time of my insomnia last night, this story touched me. Next time I am down in sunny Florida, I hope to my best to visit this monument to Ed Leedskalnin's monument to his love Agnes. More info here.

Incidentally, I also learned that the Coral Castle (which was never called that while Mr. Leedskalnin built and lived in his home is not made out of Coral, but, rather, Oolitic Limestone.

The Truth Always Outs

Attention, Yet Another Film Review (two in fact): Goodbye Lenin (2003) and East of Bucharest (2006)

I saw with my father last night ‘Goodbye Lenin.’ If the term 'German Comedy' is not an oxymoron, I don't know what is. (I do know that some Bosch will object to my characterization though. A cute, sweet enough film, but the nostalgia for the former East Germany (which I can sort of understand) fell a little flat. The too often used voice over reminded me very much of that of Oskar the diminutive drummer in ‘The Tin Drum, a far better film. While the idea of having your mother missing the fall of the Berlin Wall as a result of a coma and convincing her that it was actually the 'Wessies' who were flooding into East Germany because they were tired of the ‘rat race’ was a clever enough conceit, but the film did not quite capture the horror of the state (for some at least). A much better, funnier film about the time, albeit in a different land, I thought was ‘East of Bucharest,’ a movie about a television talk show where people recount (and lie) as to where they were and what they were doing on December 23rd when the Securitate expelled and afterwards murdered Nicolae Ceauşescu, who knocked down central Bucharest to build a palace bigger than Versailles, and faked the revolution. What I particularly found fun was the absurd question that the Television host presented to his two guests, a drunken professor and a kindly old man: ‘Did our town have a Revolution or Not?’ Indeed, there was something very Ionesco about the film. Both films are worth watching, and both cover the same period, but I found the latter just that much better and that much more terrible.

Tonight, Das Boot: The Original Cut

Nice Flag

Now This is Not Something You See Every Day: King Makes Country A Democracy

Just look at those neighbours!


Story here.

The Cyclotron that Started it All is Being Retired

Gone Fission

And, still, Iraq wasn't able to whip one of these up?

Somehow Freedom and Capitalism were to be Inexorably Interwtined, Weren't They?

Horrible story about the Chinese crackdown here.

As You May Know, I am Quite a Big Fan of Pope Benedict

But making the centerpiece of Sunday's Service the baptism of a former Muslim into the Catholic faith may be taking it a bit far. Why am I such a big fan of our former member of the Hitlerjugend is that Pope Eggs Benedict (which I rather fancy right now) seems hell bent (and I choose this phrase deliberately) of doing everything in his considerable power to alienate his followers.
More here.
And for those of you who missed that great speech our Man in Roma gave at Auschwitz last year, here it is.

A correre e cagare ci si immerda i garretti

Also too Good to Keep to Myself

There is a rich, deep kind of irony that must be shared. I'm blogging this from the Apple store in the Mall of America, because I'm too amused to want to wait until I get back to my hotel room.

I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried … but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird — I was standing in line, hadn't even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn't going to cause any trouble.

I went back to my family and talked with them for a while, and then the officer came back with a theater manager, and I was told that not only wasn't I allowed in, but I had to leave the premises immediately. Like right that instant.

I complied.

I'm still laughing though. You don't know how hilarious this is. Not only is it the extreme hypocrisy of being expelled from their Expelled movie, but there's another layer of amusement. Deep, belly laugh funny. Yeah, I'd be rolling around on the floor right now, if I weren't so dang dignified.

You see … well, have you ever heard of a sabot? It's a kind of sleeve or lightweight carrier used to surround a piece of munition fired from a gun. It isn't the actually load intended to strike the target, but may even be discarded as it leaves the barrel.

I'm a kind of sabot right now.

They singled me out and evicted me, but they didn't notice my guest. They let him go in escorted by my wife and daughter. I guess they didn't recognize him. My guest was …

Richard Dawkins.

He's in the theater right now, watching their movie.

Tell me, are you laughing as hard as I am?

HT: AS

From http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php

Sabot is a new word for me too.

Too Good (and True) not to Share

HT: AS

Other (semi-successful) Claimants to the Throne

For the Record, the following have also applied:
(I still, though have a soft spot for the Emperor Halle Selassie. How could Bob have got it wrong?)

Jewish messiah claimants

The Jewish Messiah originally meant a divinely-appointed king; David, Cyrus the Great, and Alexander the Great[1] are examples of such. Later, especially after the failure of Bar Kokhba's revolt, it came to represent a figure who would deliver the Jews from oppression and usher in a new world.

Simon (ca. 4 BC), a former slave of Herod the Great who rebelled.
Athronges (ca. 3 BC)
Judas of Galilee (?), son of Hezekiah/Ezekias, a member of the Zealots faction who led a bloody revolt against a Roman census in AD 6. (JA18)
Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 4 BC - AD 30-?), a wandering prophet and teacher who was crucified by the Romans; Jews who believed him to be the Messiah were the first Christians, also known as Jewish Christians.
Theudas (? - 46), who attempted a short-lived revolt against the Romans before being slain. (JA20.5.1)
"Egyptian Prophet", c.55, (an allusion to Moses[citation needed]), with 30,000 unarmed Jews doing The Exodus reenactment massacred by Procurator Antonius Felix (JW2.13.5, JA20.8.6, Acts 21:38)[2]
Menahem ben Judah (?), allegedly son of Judas of Galilee, partook in a revolt against Agrippa II before being slain by a rival Zealot leader.
Vespasian, c.70, according to Josephus[3]
Simon bar Kokhba (?- ca. 135), founded a short-lived Jewish state before being defeated in the Second Jewish-Roman War.
Moses of Crete (?), who in about 440-470, convinced the Jews of Crete to attempt to walk into the sea to return to Israel; he disappeared after that disaster.
Ishak ben Ya'kub Obadiah Abu 'Isa al-Isfahani (684-705), who led a revolt in Persia against the Umayyad Caliph 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.
Yudghan (?), a disciple of Abu 'Isa who continued the faith after Isa was slain.
Serene (?), who around 720 claimed to be the Messiah and advocated expulsion of Muslims and relaxing various rabbinic laws before being arrested; he then recanted.
David Alroy (?), born in Kurdistan, who around 1160 agitated against the caliph before being assassinated.
Nissim ben Abraham (?), active around 1295.
Moses Botarel of Cisneros (?), active around 1413; claimed to be a sorcerer able to combine the names of God.
Asher Lemmlein (?), a German near Venice who proclaimed himself a forerunner of the Messiah in 1502.
David Reubeni (1490-1541?) and Solomon Molcho (1500-1532), adventurers who travelled in Portugal, Italy, and Turkey; Molcho was eventually burned at the stake by the Pope.
A mostly unknown Czech Jew from around the 1650s.[4]
Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676), an Ottoman Jew who claimed to be the Messiah, but then converted to Islam; still has followers today in the Donmeh.
Barukhia Russo (Osman Baba), successor of Sabbatai Zevi.
Jacob Querido (?-1690), claimed to be the new incarnation of Sabbatai; later converted to Islam and led the Donmeh.
Miguel Cardoso (1630-1706), another successor of Sabbatai who claimed to be the "Messiah ben Ephraim."
Mordecai Mokia (1650-1729), "the Rebuker," another person who proclaimed himself Messiah after Sabbatai's death.
Löbele Prossnitz (?-1750), a proven fraud who nevertheless attained some following amongst former followers of Sabbatai, calling himself the "Messiah ben Joseph."
Jacob Joseph Frank (1726-1791), who claimed to be the reincarnation of King David and preached a synthesis of Christianity and Judaism.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), a Chabad Rabbi who tried to "prepare the way" for the Messiah; some followers believe him to be the Messiah.

Christian messiah claimants
See also: Second Coming and List of people who have claimed to be Jesus
Verses in the Bible tell that Jesus will come again in some fashion; various people have claimed to, in fact, be the second coming of Jesus. Others have been styled a new Messiah still under the umbrella of Christianity.

Simon Magus and Dositheos the Samaritan[5], mid first century
Montanus, who claimed to be the promised Paraclete, mid second century
Adalbert, a bishop who claimed miraculous powers circa 744; he was excommunicated by the Pope.
Tanchelm of Antwerp (ca. 1110), who violently opposed the sacrament and the Eucharist.
Ann Lee (1736-1784), a central figure to the Shakers who thought she "embodied all the perfections of God" in female form.
John Nichols Thom (1799-1838), a Cornish tax rebel.
Hong Xiuquan of China (1812-1864), claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus.
Bahá'u'lláh (1817-1892), born Shiite, he claimed to be the promised one of all religions, and founded the Bahá'í Faith.
George Baker (c. 1880 – September 10, 1965), also known as Father Divine, was an African American spiritual leader from about 1907 until his death.
Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (1892-1975), Messiah of the Rastafari movement. Never claimed himself to be messiah, but was proclaimed by Leonard Howell, amongst others.
Georges-Emest Roux (1903-1981), the "Christ of Montfavet," founder of the Eglise Chrétienne Universelle.
Sun Myung Moon (b. 1920), founder of the Unification Church ("Moonies"). Claims he is the Second Coming of Christ.[6][7]
Yahweh ben Yahweh (1935-2007), born as Hulon Mitchell, Jr., a black nationalist and separatist who created the Nation of Yahweh and allegedly orchestrated the murder of dozens of persons.
Iesu Matayoshi (b. 1944), in 1997 he established the World Economic Community Party based on his conviction that he is God and the Christ.
Jung Myung Seok (b. 1945), claims to be the Second Coming of Christ, founder of Providence Church, and fugitive wanted for rape among other crimes
Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda (b. 1946), a Puerto Rican preacher who has claimed to be "the Man Jesus Christ", who is indwelled with the same spirit that dwelled in Jesus. Founder of the Growing in grace" ministries.
Inri Cristo (b. 1948) of Curitiba, Brazil, a claimant to be the second Jesus.
Apollo C. Quiboloy (b. 1950) Claims that Jesus Christ is the Almighty Father. He is the Appointed Son (Rev. 21:7), Says salvation is now completed. He is called "His Appointed Son" by thousands in the Philippines and now in other countries.
David Icke (b. 1952), of Great Britain, has described himself as "the son of God," and a "channel for the Christ spirit."
David Koresh (Vernon Wayne Howell) (1959-1993), leader of the Branch Davidians.
Maria Devi Christos (b. 1960), founder of the Great White Brotherhood.
Sergei Torop (b. 1961) who started to call himself "Vissarion," founder of the Church of the Last Testament and the spiritual community Ecopolis Tiberkul in Southern Siberia.
David Shayler (b. 1965) ("Righteous Chav") who declared himself the Messiah in 2007.

Muslim messiah claimants
People claiming to be the Mahdi
Islamic tradition has a prophecy of the Mahdi, who will come alongside the return of Isa (Jesus).

Syed Mohammad Jaunpuri (1443-1505), who travelled Northeastern India; he influenced the Mahdavia and the Zikris.
Báb (1819-1850), who declared himself to be the promised Mahdi in Shiraz, Iran in 1844.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908) of Qadian, 'the Promised Messiah' return of Jesus as well as the 'Mahdi', founder of the Ahmadiyya religious movement. He preached that Jesus christ had survived crucifixion and died a natural death. Interestingly he was the only person to have claimed to be both, the promised return of Jesus as well as the promised Mahdi.
Muhammad Ahmad ("The Mad Mahdi") (1844-1885), who declared himself the Mahdi in 1881, defeated the Ottomans, and founded a short-lived empire in Sudan.
Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan (1864-1920) of Somaliland, who engaged in military conflicts from 1900 to 1920.
Rashad Khalifa (1935-1990), a numerologist who analyzed the Qu'ran; claimed to be the "Messenger of the Covenant" and founded the "Submitters International" movement before being murdered.
Juhayman al-Otaibi (1936-1980), who seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979 and declared his son-in-law the Mahdi.

Other/combination messiah claimants
This list features people who are said, either by themselves or their followers, to be some form of a messiah that do not easily fit into only Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

André Matsoua (1899-1942), Congolese founder of Amicale, proponents of which subsequently adopted him as Messiah.
World Teacher (unknown), claims to be the Maitreya and promised one of all religions; promoted by New Age activist Benjamin Creme and his organization, Share International.
Rael, leader of the Raelian Movement (born 30 September 1946); Rael took on his mission as Messiah in 1973 after a claimed meeting with an extraterrestrial being.
Nirmala Srivastava, guru and goddess of Sahaja Yoga, has proclaimed herself to be the Comforter promised by Jesus ie the incarnation of the Holy Ghost (Adi Shakti).[8][9]

How to Calculate Easter, In Case You Needed to Know (Shamelessly plagiarized from Wikipedia)

Personally, I am still waiting on Mashiach. Rabbi Sneerson, as was the Sabbatai_Zevi, not to mention Mohammed, were all great personal dissapointments.

Computus

Computus (Latin for computation) is the calculation of the date of Easter in the Christian calendar. The name has been used for this procedure since the early Middle Ages, as it was one of the most important computations of the age.

The canonical rule is that Easter day is the first Sunday after the 14th day of the lunar month (the nominal full moon) that falls on or after 21 March (nominally the day of the vernal equinox). For determining the feast, Christian churches settled on a method to define a reckoned "ecclesiastical" full moon, rather than observations of the true Moon as the Jews did at the time. Eastern Orthodox Christians calculate the fixed date of 21 March according to the Julian Calendar rather than the modern Gregorian Calendar, and observe the additional rule that Easter may not precede or coincide with the first day of the Jewish Passover.

Easter controversy
Easter is the most important Christian feast. Accordingly, the proper date of its celebration has been a cause of much controversy, at least as early as the meeting (c. 154) of Anicetus, bishop of Rome, and Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. The problem for Christians using the Roman civil Julian calendar, which is a solar calendar, was that the passion and resurrection of Jesus occurred during the Jewish feast of Passover, which Jews celebrate according to the Hebrew lunisolar calendar, and fixing the date by the Roman calendar would lead to the celebration of Easter at times unrelated to the Jewish observance of Passover.

At the First Council of Nicaea in 325, it was agreed that the Christians should use a common method to establish the date, independent from the Jewish method.[1] It was also decided to celebrate it always on the dies Domini, Sunday, the day of the week on which Jesus was resurrected, which has been the Christian holy day of the week for this reason (the Quartodecimans wished to follow the Jews and always celebrate it on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan, whatever day of the week that might be).[2] However, they made few decisions that were of practical use as guidelines for the computation, and it took several centuries before a common method was accepted throughout Christianity.

The method from Alexandria became authoritative. It was based on the epacts of a reckoned moon according to the 19-year cycle. Such a cycle was first used by Bishop Anatolius of Laodicea (in present-day Syria), c. 277. The Alexandrians may have derived their method from a similar calendar, based on the Egyptian civil solar calendar, used by the Jewish community there; it survives in the Ethiopian computus. Alexandrian Easter tables were composed by Bishop Theophilus about 390 and within the bishopric of Cyril about 444. In Constantinople, several computists were active over the centuries after Anatolius (and after the Nicaean Council), but their Easter dates coincided with those of the Alexandrians. Churches on the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire deviated from the Alexandrians during the sixth century, and now celebrate Easter on different dates from Eastern Orthodox churches four times every 532 years. The Alexandrian computus was converted from the Alexandrian calendar into the Julian calendar in Rome by Dionysius Exiguus, though only for 95 years. Dionysius introduced the Christian Era (counting years from the Incarnation of Christ) when he published new Easter tables in 525.[3][4]

Dionysius's tables replaced earlier methods used by the Church of Rome. The earliest known Roman tables were devised in 222 by Hippolytus of Rome based on 8-year cycles. Then 84-year tables were introduced in Rome by Augustalis near the end of the third century. These old tables were used in the British Isles until 664, and by isolated monasteries as late as 931. A modified 84-year cycle was adopted in Rome during the first half of the fourth century. Victorius of Aquitaine tried to adapt the Alexandrian method to Roman rules in 457 in the form of a 532-year table, but he introduced serious errors.[5] These Victorian tables were used in Gaul (now France) and Spain until they were displaced by Dionysian tables at the end of the eighth century.

In the British Isles Dionysius's and Victorius's tables conflicted with older Roman tables based on an 84-year cycle. The Irish Synod of Mag Léne in 631 decided in favor of either the Dionysian or Victorian Easter and the British Synod of Whitby in 664 adopted the Dionysian tables. The Dionysian reckoning was fully described by Bede in 725.[6] They may have been adopted by Charlemagne for the Frankish Church as early as 782 from Alcuin, a follower of Bede. The Dionysian/Bedan computus remained in use in Western Europe until the Gregorian calendar reform, which was mostly designed by Aloysius Lilius.

The solar year is reckoned to always have 365 days (excluding a small remainder). A lunar year of 12 months is reckoned to have 354 days, meaning the average lunation is 29½ days (excluding another small remainder). The solar year is 11 days longer than the lunar year. Supposing a solar and lunar year start on the same day, with a crescent new moon indicating the beginning of a new lunar month on 1 January, then the lunar year will finish first, and 11 days of the new lunar year will have already passed by the time the new solar year starts. After two years, the difference will have accumulated to 22: the start of lunar months fall 11 days earlier in the solar calendar each year. These days in excess of the solar year over the lunar year are called epacts (Greek: epakta hèmerai). It is necessary to add them to the day of the solar year to obtain the correct day in the lunar year. Whenever the epact reaches or exceeds 30, an extra (so-called embolismic or intercalary) month has to be inserted into the lunar calendar; then 30 has to be subtracted from the epact.

Note that leap days are not counted in the schematic lunar calendar: they are a device to match the calendar year to the tropical year, and can be ignored when dealing with the relation between years and lunations. The nineteen-year cycle (Metonic cycle) assumes that 19 tropical years are as long as 235 synodic months. So after 19 years the lunations should fall the same way in the solar years, and the epacts should repeat. However, 19 × 11 = 209 ≡ 29 (mod 30), not 0 (mod 30); that is, 209 divided by 30 leaves a remainder of 29 instead of being an even multiple of 30. So after 19 years, the epact must be corrected by +1 day in order for the cycle to repeat. This is the so-called saltus lunae. The extra 209 days fill seven embolismic months, for a total of 19 × 12 + 7 = 235 lunations. The sequence number of the year in the 19-year cycle is called the "Golden Number", and is given by the formula

GN = Y mod 19 + 1
That is, the remainder of the year number Y in the Christian era when divided by 19, plus one.[7]

Tabular methods

Gregorian calendar
This method for the computation of the date of Easter was introduced with the Gregorian calendar reform in 1582.[8]

First determine the epact for the year. The epact can have a value from "*" (=0 or 30) to 29 days. The first day of a lunar month is considered the day of the new moon. The 14th day is considered the day of the full moon.

The epacts for the current Metonic cycle are:

Year 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Golden
Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Epact[9] 29 10 21 2 13 24 5 16 27 8 19 * 11 22 3 14 25 6 17
Paschal
full moon[10] 14A 3A 23M 11A 31M 18A 8A 28M 16A 5A 25M 13A 2A 22M 10A 30M 17A 7A 27M

(M=March, A=April)

This table can be extended for previous and following 19-year periods, and is valid from 1900 to 2199.

The epacts are used to find the dates of New Moon in the following way: Write down a table of all 365 days of the year (the leap day is ignored). Then label all dates with a Roman number counting downwards, from "*" (= 0 or 30), "xxix" (29), down to "i" (1), starting from January 1, and repeat this to the end of the year. However, in every second such period count only 29 days and label the date with xxv (25) also with xxiv (24). Treat the 13th period (last eleven days) as long, though, and assign the labels "xxv" and "xxiv" to sequential dates (December 26 and 27, respectively). Finally, in addition, add the label "25" to the dates that have "xxv" in the 30-day periods; but in 29-day periods (which have "xxiv" together with "xxv") add the label "25" to the date with "xxvi". The distribution of the lengths of the months and the length of the epact cycles is such that each month starts and ends with the same epact label, except for February and for the epact labels xxv and 25 in July and August. This table is called the calendarium. If the epact for the year is for instance 27, then there is an ecclesiastical New Moon on every date in that year that has the epact label xxvii (27).

Also label all the dates in the table with letters "A" to "G", starting from 1 January, and repeat to the end of the year. If, for instance, the first Sunday of the year is on 5 January, which has letter E, then every date with the letter "E" will be a Sunday that year. Then "E" is called the Dominical letter for that year (from Latin: dies domini, day of the Lord). The Dominical Letter cycles backward one position every year. However, in leap years after February 24 the Sundays will fall on the previous letter of the cycle, so leap years have 2 Dominical Letters: the first for before, the second for after the leap day.

In practice, for the purpose of calculating Easter, this need not be done for all 365 days of the year. For the epacts, you will find that March comes out exactly the same as January, so one need not calculate January or February. To also avoid the need to calculate the Dominical Letters for January and February, start with D for 1 March. You need the epacts only from 8 March to 5 April. This gives rise to the following table:


A table from Sweden to compute the date of Easter 1140-1671 according to the Julian calendar. Notice the runic writing.Label March DL April DL
* 1 D
xxix 2 E 1 G
xxviii 3 F 2 A
xxvii 4 G 3 B
xxvi 5 A 4 C
25 6 B 4 C
xxv 6 B 5 D
xxiv 7 C 5 D
xxiii 8 D 6 E
xxii 9 E 7 F
xxi 10 F 8 G
xx 11 G 9 A
xix 12 A 10 B
xviii 13 B 11 C
xvii 14 C 12 D
xvi 15 D 13 E
xv 16 E 14 F
xiv 17 F 15 G
xiii 18 G 16 A
xii 19 A 17 B
xi 20 B 18 C
x 21 C 19 D
ix 22 D 20 E
viii 23 E 21 F
vii 24 F 22 G
vi 25 G 23 A
v 26 A 24 B
iv 27 B 25 C
iii 28 C
ii 29 D
i 30 E
* 31 F

Example: If the epact is, for instance, 27 (Roman xxvii), then there will be an ecclesiastical new moon on every date that has the label "xxvii". The ecclesiastical full moon falls 13 days later. From the table above, this gives a new moon on 4 March and 3 April, and so a full moon on 17 March and 16 April.

Then Easter Day is the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon on or after 21 March.

In the example, this Paschal full moon is on 16 April. If the dominical letter is E, then Easter day is on 20 April.

The label 25 (as distinct from "xxv") is used as follows: Within a Metonic cycle, years that are 11 years apart have epacts that differ by 1 day. Now short months have the labels xxiv and xxv at the same date, so if the epacts 24 and 25 both occur within one Metonic cycle, then in the short months the new (and full) moons would fall on the same dates for these two years. This is not actually possible for the real Moon: the dates should repeat only after 19 years. To avoid this, in years that have epacts 25 and with a Golden Number larger than 11, the reckoned new moon will fall on the date with the label "25" rather than "xxv". In long months, these are the same; in short ones, this is the date which also has the label "xxvi". This does not move the problem to the pair "25" and "xxvi," because that would happen only in year 22 of the cycle, which lasts only 19 years: there is a saltus lunae in between that makes the new moons fall on separate dates.

The Gregorian calendar has a correction to the solar year by dropping three leap days in 400 years (always in a century year). This is a correction to the length of the solar year, but should have no effect on the Metonic relation between years and lunations. Therefore the epact is compensated for this (partially—see epact) by subtracting 1 in these century years. This is the so-called solar equation.

However, 19 uncorrected Julian years are a little longer than 235 lunations. The difference accumulates to one day in about 310 years. Therefore, in the Gregorian calendar, the epact gets corrected by adding one eight times in 2500 (Gregorian) years, always in a century year: this is the so-called lunar equation. The first one was applied in 1800, and it will be applied every 300 years except for an interval of 400 years between 3900 and 4300, which starts a new cycle.

The solar and lunar equations work in opposite directions, and in some century years (for example, 1800 and 2100) they cancel each other. However, it is a bad idea to combine them and make more evenly spread and less frequent epact corrections, as will be explained below. The result of the correct procedure is that the Gregorian lunar calendar uses an epact table that is valid for a period of from 100 to 300 years. The epact table listed above is valid for the period 1900 to 2199.


This method of computation has several subtleties:

Every second lunar month has only 29 days, so one day must have two (of the 30) epact labels assigned to it. The reason for moving around the epact label "xxv/25" rather than any other seems to be the following: According to Dionysius (in his introductory letter to Petronius), the Nicene council, on the authority of Eusebius, established that the first month of the ecclesiastical lunar year (the Paschal month) should start between 8 March and 5 April inclusive, and the 14th day fall between 21 March and 18 April inclusive, thus spanning a period of (only) 29 days. A new moon on 7 March, which has epact label xxiv, has its 14th day (full moon) on 20 March, which is too early (before the equinox date). So years with an epact of xxiv would have their Paschal new moon on 6 April, which is too late: the full moon would fall on 19 April, and Easter could be as late as 26 April. In the Julian calendar the latest date of Easter was 25 April, and the Gregorian reform maintained that limit. So the Paschal full moon must fall no later than 18 April and the new moon on 5 April, which has epact label xxv. The short month must therefore have its double epact labels on 5 April: xxiv and xxv. Then epact xxv has to be treated differently, as explained in the paragraph above.

As a consequence, 19 April is the date on which Easter falls most frequently in the Gregorian calendar: in about 3.87% of the years. 22 March is the least frequent, with 0.48%.


Distribution of the date of Easter for the complete 5,700,000 year cycle.The relation between lunar and solar calendar dates is made independent of the leap day scheme for the solar year. Basically the Gregorian calendar still uses the Julian calendar with a leap day every four years, so a Metonic cycle of 19 years has 6940 or 6939 days with five or four leap days. Now the lunar cycle counts only 19 × 354 + 19 × 11 = 6935 days. By not labeling and counting the leap day with an epact number, but having the next new moon fall on the same calendar date as without the leap day, the current lunation gets extended by a day, and the 235 lunations cover as many days as the 19 years. So the burden of synchronizing the calendar with the moon (intermediate-term accuracy) is shifted to the solar calendar, which may use any suitable intercalation scheme; all under the assumption that 19 solar years = 235 lunations (long-term inaccuracy). A consequence is that the reckoned age of the moon may be off by a day, and also that the lunations which contain the leap day may be 31 days long, which would never happen when the real Moon were followed (short-term inaccuracies). This is the price for a regular fit to the solar calendar.

However, there is some protection of the lunar calendar against the errors of the solar calendar. The leap days are not inserted in an optimal way to keep the calendar synchronized to the solar year. The corrections to the leap day scheme are limited to century years, and add two nested intercalation cycles (100 and 400 years) around the four-year cycle. Each cycle accumulates an error, and they add up to more than two days. So in the Gregorian calendar, the actual dates of the vernal equinox are scattered over a time window of about 53 hours around 20 March. This may be acceptable for a calendar period of a year, but is too much for a monthly period. By separating the "solar equation" from the "lunar equation", this jitter is not carried to the lunar calendar. If we were to combine the solar and lunar equations and spread the net 4×8 - 3×25= 43 epact subtractions in 10,000 years evenly, then the solar jitter would also affect the lunar calendar, which would be unsatisfactory.

Besides the jitter in the solar calendar, there are also some flaws in the Gregorian lunar calendar (also see D.Roegel 2004 [1]). However, they have no effect on the Paschal month and the date of Easter:

Lunations of 31 (and sometimes 28) days occur.
If a year with Golden Number 19 happens to have epact 19, then the last ecclesiastical new moon falls on 2 December; the next would be due on 1 January. However, at the start of the new year there is a saltus lunae which increases the epact by another unit, and the new moon should have occurred on the previous day. So a new moon is missed. The calendarium of the Missale Romanum takes account of this by assigning epact label "19" instead of "20" to 31 December of such a year. It happened every 19 years when the original Gregorian epact table was in effect (for the last time in AD 1690), and will not happen again until AD 8511.
If the epact of a year is "20", then there will be an ecclesiastical new moon on 31 December. If that year falls before a century year, then in most cases there will be a "solar equation" correction which reduces the epact for the new year by one: the resulting epact "*" means that another ecclesiastical new moon is counted on 1 January; so formally a lunation of one day has passed. This will happen around the beginning of AD 4200.
Other borderline cases occur (much) later, and if the rules are followed strictly and these cases are not specially treated, they will generate successive new moon dates that are 1, 28, 59, or (very rarely) 58 days apart.
A careful analysis shows that through the way they are used and corrected in the Gregorian calendar, the epacts are actually fractions of a lunation (1/30, also known as tithi) and not full days. See epact for a discussion.

The solar and lunar equations repeat after 4 × 25 = 100 centuries. In that period, the epact has changed by a total of −1 × (3/4) × 100 + 1 × (8/25) × 100 = −43 ≡ 17 mod 30. This is prime to the 30 possible epacts, so it takes 100 × 30 = 3000 centuries before the epacts repeat; and 3000 × 19 = 57,000 centuries before the epacts repeat at the same Golden Number. This period has (5,700,000/19) × 235 + (−43/30) × (57,000/100) = 70,499,183 lunations. So the Gregorian Easter dates repeat in exactly the same order only after 5,700,000 years = 70,499,183 lunations = 2,081,882,250 days. However, the calendar will already have to have been adjusted after some millennia because of changes in the length of the vernal equinox year, the synodic month, and the day.


Julian calendar
The method for computing the date of the ecclesiastical full moon that was standard for the Roman (Catholic) church before the Gregorian calendar reform, and is still used today by Eastern Christians, made use of an uncorrected repetition of the 19-year Metonic cycle in combination with the Julian calendar. In terms of the method of the epacts discussed above, it effectively used a single epact table starting with an epact of * (0), which was never corrected. In this case, the epact was counted on 22 March, the earliest acceptable date for Easter. This repeats every 19 years, so there were only 19 possible dates for the ecclesiastical full moons after 21 March.

The sequence number of a year in the 19-year cycle is called its Golden Number. This term was first used in the computistic poem Massa Compoti by Alexander de Villa Dei in 1200. A later scribe added it to tables originally composed by Abbo of Fleury in 988.

This is the table:

Golden Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Full moon 5A 25M 13A 2A 22M 10A 30M 18A 7A 27M 15A 4A 24M 12A 1A 21M 9A 29M 17A

(M=March, A=April)

Easter day is the first Sunday after these dates.

So for a given date of the ecclesiastical full moon, there are seven possible Easter dates. The cycle of Sunday letters, however, does not repeat in seven years: because of the interruptions of the leap day every 4 years, the full cycle in which weekdays recur in the calendar in the same way, is 4 × 7 = 28 years, the so-called solar cycle. So the Easter dates repeated in the same order after 4 × 7 × 19 = 532 years. This Paschal cycle is also called the Victorian cycle, after Victorius of Aquitaine, who introduced it in Rome in AD 457. It is first known to have been used by Annianus of Alexandria at the beginning of the fifth century. It has also sometimes erroneously been called the Dionysian cycle, after Dionysius Exiguus, who prepared Easter tables that started in AD 532; but he apparently did not realize that the Alexandrian computus which he described had a 532-year cycle, although he did realize that his 95-year table was not a true cycle. Venerable Bede (7th century) seems to have been the first to identify the solar cycle and explain the Paschal cycle from the Metonic cycle and the solar cycle.


Algorithms

Gauss's algorithm
This algorithm for calculating the date of Easter Sunday was first presented by the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss:

The number of the year is denoted by Y; mod denotes the remainder of integer division (e.g., 13 mod 5 ≡ 3; see modular arithmetic). Calculate first a, b, and c:

a = Y mod 19
b = Y mod 4
c = Y mod 7
Then calculate

d = (19a + M) mod 30
e = (2b + 4c + 6d + N) mod 7
For the Julian calendar (used in Eastern churches), M = 15 and N = 6, and for the Gregorian calendar (used in Western churches), M and N are from the following table:

Years M N
1583-1699 22 2
1700-1799 23 3
1800-1899 23 4
1900-2099 24 5
2100-2199 24 6
2200-2299 25 0

If d + e < 10 then Easter is on the (d + e + 22)th of March, and is otherwise on the (d + e − 9)th of April.

The following exceptions must be taken into account:

If the date given by the formula is 26 April, Easter is on 19 April.
If the date given by the formula is 25 April, with d = 28, e = 6, and a > 10, Easter is on 18 April.

Meeus/Jones/Butcher Gregorian algorithm
This algorithm for calculating the date of Easter Sunday is given by Jean Meeus in his book Astronomical Algorithms (1991), which in turn cites Spencer Jones in his book General Astronomy (1922) and also the Journal of the British Astronomical Association (1977). This algorithm also appears in The Old Farmer's Almanac (1977), p. 69. The JBAA cites Butcher's Ecclesiastical Calendar (1876).

The method is valid for all Gregorian years and has no exceptions and requires no tables.

Notation is as for the Gauss Algorithm above: all quotients are truncated to integers, thus 7 / 3 = floor(7 / 3) = 2 (not 2 1/3), and 7 mod 3 = 1.

Worked example
Year(Y) = 1961 Worked example
Year(Y) = 2008
a = Y mod 19 1961 mod 19 = 4 2008 mod 19 = 13
b = Y / 100 1961 / 100 = 19 2008 / 100 = 20
c = Y mod 100 1961 mod 100 = 61 2008 mod 100 = 8
d = b / 4 19 / 4 = 4 20 / 4 = 5
e = b mod 4 19 mod 4 = 3 20 mod 4 = 0
f = (b + 8) / 25 (19 + 8) / 25 = 1 (20 + 8) / 25 = 1
g = (b - f + 1) / 3 (19 - 1 + 1) / 3 = 6 (20 - 1 + 1) / 3 = 6
h = (19 × a + b - d - g + 15) mod 30 (19 × 4 + 19 - 4 - 6 + 15) mod 30 = 10 (19 × 13 + 20 - 5 - 6 + 15) mod 30 = 1
i = c / 4 61 / 4 = 15 8 / 4 = 2
k = c mod 4 61 mod 4 = 1 8 mod 4 = 0
L = (32 + 2 × e + 2 × i - h - k) mod 7 (32 + 2 × 3 + 2 × 15 - 10 - 1) mod 7 = 1 (32 + 2 × 0 + 2 × 2 - 1 - 0) mod 7 = 0
m = (a + 11 × h + 22 × L) / 451 (4 + 11 × 10 + 22 × 1) / 451 = 0 (13 + 11 × 1 + 22 × 0) / 451 = 0
month = (h + L - 7 × m + 114) / 31 (10 + 1 - 7 × 0 + 114) / 31 = 4 (April) (1 + 0 - 7 × 0 + 114) / 31 = 3 (March)
day = ((h + L - 7 × m + 114) mod 31) + 1 (10 + 1 - 7 × 0 + 114) mod 31 + 1 = 2 (1 + 0 - 7 × 0 + 114) mod 31 + 1 = 23
2 April 1961 23 March 2008


Meeus Julian algorithm
Jean Meeus, in his book Astronomical Algorithms (1991), also presents the following formula for calculating Easter Sunday in Julian years.

The method is valid for all Julian years and has no exceptions and requires no tables.

Notation is as for the Gauss Algorithm above: all values are integers, thus 7 / 3 = 2 (not 2 1/3), and 7 mod 3 = 1.

a = Y mod 4
b = Y mod 7
c = Y mod 19
d = (19 × c + 15) mod 30
e = (2 × a + 4 × b - d + 34) mod 7
month = (d + e + 114) / 31
day = ((d + e + 114) mod 31) + 1

Why Does Everything Have to Be Closed Today; How Can this be a Good Friday?

It's not often in this assimilated country -- a multi-cultural salad it was once explained to me -- I live in that I feel the outsider, but today is one of those days.

I can't pick up my wife's car from the shop or buy berries for my father at the local supermarket.I suppose I should be grateful that there are so few days like this in the calendar, but nonetheless, ungrateful heathen that I am, I am still annoyed. And all this over a crucifixion? At least the weather couldn't be better.

Die Fälscher: Must See

I had heard this story before as well as of the Nazi gold and printing presses lying at the bottom of the mysterious lake Toplitz in Austria. And while this was not a 'German' film about the holocaust, it was an Austrian one and the first I have seen by either Austria or Germany on the holocaust. (Did you know the joke that in Austria Hitler is a German and Mozart an Austrian.) That said, the Germans really do a far better job at examining their awful twentieth century in books and films than any of the victor nations. The Tin Drum, Das Boot, Sophie Scholl, and Downfall, to name a few, have not so far as I have experienced been matched. (Special mention should go to the Finnish The Winter War) and I have not seen enough Soviet Cinema to comment.)The scenes in Mauthausen in Die Fälscher were particularly poignant for me. I visited Mauthausen, along the Austrian/Slovenian border, many years ago and found myself simply unable to connect the atrocities committed there with the weather damaged make shift buildings and boarded walks that I tread on that beautiful Austrian summer day in the mountains. Afterwards, we descended the hill to a local tavern for bone soup and a plate of cold meats, fine potato salad and very good beer. And then it dawned on me, the tavern was far older than the camp and I was sitting at a table that Officers of the camp would have drank at in their off hours. After seeing Die Fälscher I poked around on the net a bit to see how true the film was. It was.

IMDB entry here.

Small European World:

A German fighter ace has just learned that one of his 28 wartime 'kills' was his favourite author.

Messerschmidt pilot Horst Rippert, 88, said he would have held his fire if he had known the man flying the Lightning fighter was renowned French novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

The fliers clashed in the skies over southern France in July 1944.

I have heard of these stories before. I remember hearing about an WWII RAF Pilot visiting a family in Germany. Unusually, the topic of the war came up and what they did in the war. The head of the German family was also a pilot in the war. After retrieving his log books, they realized that they had first met in the air over the channel.

More here.

John Gray on the Atheism that I grew up With

Zealous atheism renews some of the worst features of Christianity and Islam. Just as much as these religions, it is a project of universal conversion. Evangelical atheists never doubt that human life can be transformed if everyone accepts their view of things, and they are certain that one way of living - their own, suitably embellished - is right for everybody. To be sure, atheism need not be a missionary creed of this kind. It is entirely reasonable to have no religious beliefs, and yet be friendly to religion. It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse that is peculiarly human. Yet that is what evangelical atheists do when they demonise religion.

The full article is here.

Did You Know That Arthur C. Clark Was the First Person to Propose Geostationary Sattelites? I didn't.

page 58 Wireless World February 1945

Letters to the Editor
Peacetime Uses for V2
V2 for Ionosphere Research?

ONE of the most important branches of radio physics is ionospheric research and until now all our knowledge of conditions in the ionosphere has been deduced from transmission and echo experiments. One of the more modest claims of the British Interplanetary Society was that rockets could be used for very high altitude investigations and it will not have escaped your readers' notice that the German long-range rocket projectile known as V2 passes through the E layer on its way from the Continent. If it were fired vertically without westward deviation it could reach the F1 and probably the F2 layer. The implications of this are obvious: we can now send instruments of all kinds into the ionosphere and by transmitting their readings back to ground stations obtain information which could not possibly be learned in any other way. Since the weight of instruments would only be a few pounds--as compared with V2's payload of 2,000 pounds--the rocket required would be quite a small one. Its probable take-off weight would be one or two tons, most of this being relatively cheap alcohol and liquid oxygen. A parachute device (besides being appreciated by the public!) would enable the rocket to be re-used.

This is an immediate post-war research project, but an even more interesting one lies a little farther ahead. A rocket which can reach a speed of 8 km/sec parallel to the earth's surface would continue to circle it for ever in a closed orbit; it would become an ``artificial satellite.'' V2 can only reach a third of this speed under the most favourable conditions, but if its payload consisted of a small one-ton rocket, this upper component could reach the required velocity with a payload of about 100 pounds. It would thus be possible to have a hundredweight. of instruments circling the earth perpetually outside the limits of the atmosphere and broadcasting information as long as the batteries lasted. Since the rocket would be in brilliant sunlight for half the time, the operating period might be indefinitely prolonged by the use of thermocouples and photo-electric elements.

Both of these developments demand nothing new in the way of technical resources; the first and probably the second should come within the next five or ten years. However, I would like to close by mentioning a possibility of the more remote future--perhaps half a century ahead.

An ``artificial satellite'' at the correct distance from the earth would make one revolution every 24 hours; i.e., it would remain stationary above the same spot and would be within optical range of nearly half the earth's surface. Three repeater stations, 120 degrees apart in the correct orbit, could give television and microwave coverage to the entire planet. I'm afraid this isn't going to be of the slightest use to our post-war planners, but I think it is the ultimate solution to the problem.

ARTHUR C.. CLARKE,
British Interplanetary Society

Kettle, Pot on Line 2: From The Tehran Times

Trying Israeli war criminals

Israel can commit no crime, and a criticism of the Jewish state’s policies amounts to anti-Semitism. This is the fundamental principle on which those who run today’s world operate. Thus to expect the world to try Israelis for war crimes, as demanded by the OIC secretary general, is to ask for the moon.

...

What the Zionists have been guilty of since the very founding of the state of Israel in 1948 and even under the ‘mandate’ amounts to ethnic cleansing, massacres, the flattening of Arab villages, confiscation of Palestinian property running into billions of dollars (which are still used to finance the Jews’ migration to Israel), destruction of Palestinian farms and orchards, and the diversion of water to Jewish settlements. Deir Yassin was just one of the massacres. Those involved in these crimes were such ‘holy’ names as Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Yitzhak Shamir, Rafael Eaton and many more.

The western world has no interest in trying them, because those who planted Israel in the heart of the Arab-Islamic world have a geopolitical and economic interest in its existence. If the Israeli war criminals are to be given justice to ease the anguish of the Palestinians, an OIC court set up for trying them may not achieve much. The OIC could do more by showing solidarity with the Palestinians and strengthening their hands politically, economically and strategically to resist Israeli oppression.

Borat was right after all....

Ron Paul (that Paleo-Liberal-Conservative) on the Ness Mess (worth reading)

"Madam Speaker, it has been said that 'he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.' And in the case of Eliot Spitzer, this couldn't be more true. In his case it's the political sword, as his enemies rejoice in his downfall. Most people, it seems, believe he got exactly what he deserved.

"The illegal tools of the state brought Spitzer down, but think of all the harm done by Spitzer in using the same tools against so many other innocent people. He practiced what could be termed 'economic McCarthyism,' using illegitimate government power to build his political career on the ruined lives of others.

"No matter how morally justified his comeuppance may be, his downfall demonstrates the worst of our society. The possibility of uncovering personal moral wrongdoing is never a justification for the government to spy on our every move and to participate in sting operations.

"For government to entice a citizen to break a law with a sting operation — that is, engaging in activities that a private citizen is prohibited by law from doing — is unconscionable and should clearly be illegal.

"Though Spitzer used the same tools to destroy individuals charged with economic crimes that ended up being used against him, gloating over his downfall should not divert our attention from the fact that the government spying on American citizens is unworthy of a country claiming respect for liberty and the Fourth Amendment.

"Two wrongs do not make a right. Two wrongs make it doubly wrong.

"Sacrifice of our personal privacy has been ongoing for decades but has rapidly accelerated since 9/11. Before 9/11, the unstated goal of collecting revenue was the real reason for the erosion of our financial privacy. When 19 suicidal maniacs attacked us on 9/11, our country became convinced that further sacrifice of personal and financial privacy was required for our security.

"The driving force behind this ongoing sacrifice of our privacy has been fear and the emotional effect of war rhetoric — war on drugs, war against terrorism and the war against Third World nations in the Middle East who are claimed to be the equivalent to Hitler and Nazi Germany.

"But the real reason for all this surveillance is to build the power of the state. It arises from a virulent dislike of free people running their own lives and spending their own money. Statists always demand control of the people and their money.

"Recently we've been told that this increase in the already intolerable invasion of our privacy was justified because the purpose was to apprehend terrorists. We were told that the massive amounts of information being collected on Americans would only be used to root out terrorists. But as we can see today, this monitoring of private activities can also be used for political reasons. We should always be concerned when the government accumulates information on innocent citizens.

"Spitzer was brought down because he legally withdrew cash from a bank — not because he committed a crime. This should prompt us to reassess and hopefully reverse this trend of pervasive government intrusion in our private lives.

"We need no more Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act! No more Violent Radicalization & Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Acts! No more torture! No more Military Commissions Act! No more secret prisons and extraordinary rendition! No more abuse of habeas corpus! No more Patriot Acts!

"What we need is more government transparency and more privacy for the individual!"

Great Moments in Financial Reporting: BS on Bear Stearns

Hat Tip: Someone who should know, Mr. Netscape

You Know Things Are Bad in Tibet When Monks Rebel

The awful story is here.

And just why did China go to all the trouble to build one of the longest, most expensive, and complicated railways (much of which will have Bombardier rolling stock running on it) to Tibet? For the very same reason that Hitler created the Autobahns and the US the Interstates: to get the army and its materiel to any part of the country fast. Thank God the Russians used a different sized rail gauge than the Deutsche Reichsbahn. Everything had to be bigger in Russia, including the casualties.

With Friends Like These Obama is Assured of the Nomination