Somewhere or other I recently mentioned having heard that, because the Gregorian calendar cycle of 400 years is a multiple of 7 days, the 13th of the month is not evenly distributed and falls more often on Friday than on any other day of the week; but I had not done the math myself and did not have the numbers. Now I’ve done it but can’t remember where to post the followup!

Someone has snapped up my old unwanted domain to start a blog in (i think) Swedish.

Average illumination near the Moon’s south pole, showing which crater floors never (or almost never) see sunlight. Unfortunately the text doesn’t quantify what the whitest pixel means, i.e., how much time the most-illuminated point spends in shadow.

Wobbling time exposure of Regulus and Mars, showing ‘twinkle’ in a novel way.

This site had half as many visits in April as in March, presumably either because the old domain expired or because folks are busy getting ready for the end of the world.

Roderick Long: Corporations versus the Market; or, Whip Conflation Now. Read it.

Someone using my name wrote seven reviews on Yahoo Local. The last four, posted on the same day, praise services in New York, Kansas and Oklahoma. Hmm.

One (for a liposuction clinic) begins: “Being pregnant twice caused much fat to accumulate in my stomach area . . . .”

Reading some neglected mail from 2007, I happen to see a quotation from Prof Paz’s speech in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress:

“You might even consider installing the candidates who receive the least number of votes; unpopular men may be just the sort to save you from a new tyranny. Don’t reject the idea merely because it seems preposterous–think about it! In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.”

Of course, if everyone knows this is the rule, the candidate elected will not be the least popular but the least unpopular, the one who inspires the fewest voters to say “anyone else!”.

But this gives an inappropriate advantage to unknowns. There ought to be a qualifying round of positive voting before the negative vote.

Approval voting takes care of both phases at once, meseems.