Not illegal aliens, mind you. Space aliens:

A video that purportedly shows a living, breathing space alien will be shown to the news media Friday in Denver.

But enough about Dennis Kucinich.

NASA’s latest Mars probe touched down successfully today.

The 3G iPhone will be released on June 9, according to Gizmodo. (This is, like, four-day-old news, but I just saw it on End User, via InstaPundit.)

Analysts believe it will be pretty similar to the current iPhones, with the exception of the faster speed. More dramatic changes to the phone — multiple models, multiple price points, etc. — may be coming early next year.

I’m still crossing my fingers for a phone-as-modem feature. (It’s possible to hack the current iPhones to have this feature, though of course it’s quite slow on the EDGE Network. I wonder if the new iPhones will support it natively, or if not, if the hack will still be possible.)

Last weekend, there was an interesting discussion in comments here on the blog about the merits of forcably bringing humanitarian aid to the people of Burma/Myanmar, the junta be damned. Now the New Yorker’s George Packer ponders the same question, asking, "Should Burma Be Saved from Itself?" He writes:

Forcing the regime to let the rest of the world save its people
would have a devastating effect on morale. Burma’s leaders are so
isolated and irrational that they actually believe their own propaganda
about being the only group that can hold the country together. It’s
possible that the junta would collapse out of sheer humiliation. It’s
also possible, though it seems unlikely to me, that Burmese military
units would be ordered to engage the foreigners. Shots might be fired,
people might be killed. No one knows what will happen if British
sailors and American airmen arrive on soggy Burmese soil. Hanging over
the question is, of course, Iraq. No one expects an intervention to go
smoothly anymore; now we expect it to go terribly wrong. I doubt the
American, British, French, Australian, and other governments, with or
without U.N. consent, will decide to invade Burma with boxes of oral
rehydration kits and high-energy biscuits. But if the fear of Baghdad
and Falluja is what keeps foreign powers from saving huge numbers of
Burmese from their own government’s callousness, that will be one more
tragic consequence of the Iraq war.

On the other hand, if it’s going to be done, it should be done
quickly. I know all the arguments why we shouldn’t. But there are at
least a million counterarguments why we should.

Andrew Sullivan links to Packer’s piece, and explicitly jumps on the bandwagon with the title, "Invade Burma, Please." He writes: "A brief, decisive international effort to reach the starving and sick
seems important to me. If it helps demystify this vile regime, great.
But in its demonstration of humanity, it is also a great way for the US
to enhance its soft power in the developing world."

Discuss.

P.S. Meanwhile, Dr. Jeff Masters notes that the seasonal monsoon rains are rapidly approaching the Irrawaddy Delta.

The Vatican says it’s OK to believe in aliens.

But not gay aliens, presumably. ;)

Every Day Should Be Saturday is running a contest that gives all you college sports fans an opportunity to help the victims of the recent spate of disasters — the Burma cyclone, the China earthquake, the Midwest tornadoes — while simultaneously showing your team pride. Here’s how it works:

1) Make a donation online to the American Red Cross, CARE, or the International Rescue Committee.

2) Email the donation confirmation to kevin@fanblogs.com and state your team affiliation by 8pm EDT on Wednesday, May 14th.

3) Results will be displayed at Every Day Should Be Saturday and Fanblogs throughout the week, with the final results shown by Thursday, May 15th.

4) The winning school will have its colors displayed at EDSBS and logo/mascot shown on every page at Fanblogs.

Things are looking dismal in the current standings for both USC and Notre Dame. Neither school shows up in the Top 10, and in fact, if EDSBS is counting ND as part of the "Big East" for purposes of their conference standings, it appears that zero dollars have been donated by fans of either school. (The Pac-10 and Big East are tied for last place with $0.)

So, pony up, Irish and Trojan fans! We can’t let freakin’ Michigan — in first place with $1,000 — win this thing.

As if Cyclone Nargis — which some fear could kill a million people if disease sets in — and Saturday’s devastating tornadoes in the U.S. heartland (the latest in what is becoming a historically bad year for tornadoes) weren’t enough, now a 7.8 magnitude earthquake has struck central China, causing an official, initial death toll of 107, which is expected to ultimately go much, much higher. There are reports of 5,000 dead in a single county, and 900 students buried at a collapsed school.

UPDATE: Make that almost 9,000 dead:

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake devastated a
hilly region of small cities and towns. The official Xinhua News Agency
said 8,533 people died in Sichuan province and more than 200 others were killed in three other provinces and the mega-city of Chongqing.

When an earthquake kills almost 9,000 people (probably more, in the end), and it’s only the second-worst calamity of the month (by far), you know it’s been a bad month.

As the government of Burma/Myanmar continues to show more interest in chasing down CNN reporters than in trying to prevent a holocaust in the Irrawaddy Delta, meteorologist and weatherblogger Dr. Jeff Masters puts the junta’s despicable actions in historical context:

[T]he criminal indifference of the nation’s leaders towards the plight of the cyclone’s survivors will doom hundreds or thousands more to death or terrible suffering. One can only hope that the people of Myanmar will rise up and put an end to Myanmar’s dictatorship as a result of this awful tragedy.

There is historical precedent for this sort of occurrence. The deadliest tropical cyclone of all time, the Great Bhola Cyclone of 1970, killed upwards of 550,000 people is what was then called East Pakistan (and now called Bangladesh). A statement released by eleven political leaders in East Pakistan ten days after the cyclone hit charged the government with “gross neglect, callous indifference and utter indifference”. They also accused the president of playing down the news coverage. The dissatisfaction with the government response to the disaster boiled over into full-fledged civil war the next year, which ultimately led to the overthrow of the government and the establishment of the new nation of Bangladesh. As bad as the West Pakistani response to the Great Bhola Cyclone of 1970 was, the response of the Myanmar government to Nargis is far worse. The slowness of response to this tropical cyclone disaster is unprecedented in modern times.

It makes the U.S. and Louisiana governments’ response to Hurricane Katrina seems like a model of efficiency by comparison. Here’s an overview of what’s happening:

More aid is on the way to cyclone-ravaged Myanmar - but so is the heavy rain… [and] relief workers, including Americans, [are] still being barred entry. …

Officials have said only one out of 10 people who are homeless, injured or threatened by disease and hunger have received some kind of aid in the week since the cyclone hit.

The government, which wants full control of relief operations, has less than 40 helicopters, most of them small or old. It also has only about 15 transport planes, primarily small jets unable to carry hundreds of tons of supplies.

“Not only don’t they have the capacity to deliver assistance, they don’t have experience,” said Mark Farmaner, director of the pro-democracy Burma Campaign UK. “It’s already too late for many people. Every day of delays is costing thousands of lives.”

On Friday, Myanmar’s military rulers seized two planeloads containing enough high-energy biscuits to feed 95,000 people sent by the U.N. World Food Program, which briefly suspended help after the action. The U.N. later agreed to send two more planes to help survivors.

The government acknowledged taking control of the shipments and said it plans to distribute the aid itself to affected areas. …

The U.N. has grown increasingly critical of Myanmar’s refusal to let in foreign aid workers who could assess the extent of the disaster with the junta apparently overwhelmed. None of the 10 visa applications submitted by the WFP has been approved. …

Myanmar says it will accept aid from all countries, but prohibits the entry of foreign workers who would deliver and manage the operations. The junta is not ready to change that position, [Shari Villarosa, the U.S. charge d’affairs in Yangon] said she was told. …

The junta said it was grateful to the international community for its assistance but the best way to help was to send in material rather than personnel.

Relief workers have reached 220,000 cyclone victims, only a fraction of the number of people affected, the Red Cross said.

“Believe me, the government will not allow outsiders to go into the devastated area,” said Yangon food shop owner Joseph Kyaw. “The government only cares about its own stability. They don’t care about the plight of the people.”

Indeed. F***ing inhuman bastards. May they rot in hell. (And, more immediately, may their “stability” be undermined by their own obsession with it.)

Will Cyclone Nargis, the catastrophic storm that ravaged Burma/Myanmar, ultimately be worse than the 2004 tsunami? Christ almighty.

That fearful prediction comes from the Sun, so you may want to take it with a grain of salt. But it’s based on an estimate of what could happen "through disease and hunger
if the nation’s hardline army rulers continue to block aid for the
devastated lowlands of the Irrawaddy Delta."

And blocking aid is exactly what these evil rulers are doing. They’ve seized all food supplies and are preventing it from being distributed to the victims, forcing the U.N. to suspend its relief efforts. Meanwhile, according to Nyo Ohn Myint, leader of an exiled opposition party:

"The bodies need to be collected and burnt as soon as possible or
disease will claim many more lives. But the government has organised nothing
and its 400,000 soldiers are doing nothing while undistributed aid piles up.

"They are hoping bodies will be washed out to sea so the final count
is smaller – but it could kill half a million people within a
matter of weeks. The world must know what is going on."

There is a special circle of Hell for these junta bastards.

Incidentally, a death toll of 500,000 would place Nargis on the Top 5 list of deadliest natural disasters in history (excluding famines and diseases). Although, the term "natural disaster" may not be entirely appropriate, as Myint pointed out: "Much of this will be a
man-made disaster, caused by the military regime."

P.S. The deadliest tropical cyclone in world history was the 1970 Bhola cyclone in India and Bangladesh, which killed between 300,000 and 500,000 people.

The worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami keeps getting worse:

Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser, said
100,000 people had probably been killed, with a large number of others
unaccounted for, in a “humanitarian disaster of enormous proportions”.
He said that Burma’s junta would “compound the disaster” by denying
access to relief groups.

“This is not about politics, this is
about helping people in need. And the junta should please open its
doors and let the international community provide humanitarian
assistance to the people in Burma because they need it desperately.”

Dr. Jeff Masters has more, noting that Cyclone Nargis "took the worst possible track, passing directly over the densely populated and low lying Irrawaddy River delta," and also "came at the worst time possible, during the winter bora rice crop harvest." So the storm’s toll will be compounded by further food shortages at a time when the price of rice is already sky-high.

Masters also writes:

In one city alone–Bogalay, about 50 miles southwest of the capital of
Yangon–10,000 people are thought to have died. Bogalay is a decrepit
city of 100,000 that lies at the head of a estuary that leads to the
sea. No doubt this narrow waterway served to funnel a storm surge over
ten feet high into the city.

Yikes.

Cyclone Nargis has produced a major humanitarian catastrophe in Myanmar (a.k.a. Burma), with perhaps 13,000 dead and the nation’s capital — which suffered a direct hit from the storm — plunged into a “primitive existence.”

Dr. Jeff Masters has a detailed post on the cyclone and its impact.

I don’t know if this is actually brand new, or if I just missed it until now, but Google Maps now has a public transit feature. SWEET!

I freaking love Google Maps.

Turn out Barack Obama is just as indefensibly ignorant as John McCain of the science surrounding vaccines and autism. Ugh. He should read Mike’s comment from a few weeks back. Or, you know, anything written by anyone with the remotest idea of what they’re talking about — which would not include Jenny McCarthy, CNN’s unfortunate editorial judgment to the contrary.

P.S. I sympathize with McCarthy’s parental plight, and I’m sure she genuinely believes the provably false (indeed, proven false) things that she says. The same is probably true, in most cases, of 9/11 Truthers, Flat Earth Society members, etc. But genuine emotional grief and honest-but-discredited beliefs are no excuse for using a national platform to ignorantly spout nonsense.

And as for Obama and McCain? They have even less of an excuse.

UPDATE: Clinton, too!

(Hat tip: Aaron, who quips, "all tremble before the mighty Israel gun union defense autism lobby." Indeed. *sigh*)

Via Brian Neudorff, here’s a YouTube clip of an Evansville meteorologist live on the air during the earthquake this morning:

Heh. Cool.

He remains calm, but you can tell he was flustered by the quake from the way he just reads the numbers without in any way indicating what they mean: "We’re at 73 and 50, 68 and 44 here, 87 and 26." Huh? I also like how he keeps saying the word "here." Sort of like Wolf Blitzer, Wolf Blitzer, except with a better excuse. :) All in all, though, a pretty good job of keeping his cool.

Anyway, catching the earthquake live on camera reminds me of the time, freshman year at USC, when I was awakened around 3:00 AM by the Hector Mine Earthquake, whereupon I promptly jumped out of bed and called Hillary Clinton rushed over to my camcorder in hopes of getting it started while the room was still shaking. I didn’t quite succeed, but I did get footage of the lights flickering while I, looking rather wide-eyed, announced to the camera, "Earthquake! Earthquake!"

Hector Mine was a strong but distant quake; it had a magnitude of 7.1, but was centered out in the desert and caused little damage, none to speak of in the Los Angeles area. My scarier earthquake experience came two years later, with a much smaller tremor that was much nearer by: a magnitude 4.2 quake centered in Beverly Hills on September 9, 2001. (Yeah - far worse things were less than 48 hours away.) It was a Sunday afternoon, the second week of the semester, and I was all alone in the library (!), two floors below ground level. To be precise, I was in the stacks of Doheny Library — which, coincidentally enough, had just reopened after being earthquake-retrofitted — sitting near the far wall, with several long, tall rows of books between me and the exit. All of a sudden, everything, including the overhead lights and the bookstacks, started to shake.

Having taken a geology class about earthquakes the previous semester, I knew this was either a) a weak (or distant) earthquake, or b) the weaker P-waves of a strong earthquake, whose destructive S-waves would arrive shortly thereafter. When the shaking stopped (after maybe 15 seconds), I was momentarily paralyzed by indecision: should I make a dash for the door, in hopes of escaping before the S-waves arrive and potentially knock the bookstacks over, but putting myself in greater danger if the S-waves hit while I’m running directly past the stacks? Or should I wait it out and hope those weren’t just P-waves (and/or that the building’s earthquake retrofit was really good)? I chose the latter course, and after a couple of minutes, I concluded correctly that there would be no more shaking. I then promptly got the hell out of there. Being alone in an underground room surrounded by heavy objects during an earthquake is creepy.

I’m pretty sure I never studied in the Doheny stacks again.

P.S. I also sorta kinda experienced the 1988 Saguenay earthquake. I was seven years old, bounding around the house — as was my wont at seven years old — on a Friday evening (~6:46 PM), while my mom was sitting on a chair in the living room. (My dad was, I think, at work. It was the day after Thanksgiving, but that had been a presidential election year, so he would have been super busy working on the Statement of Vote.) We were dog-sitting for my aunt and uncle’s old dog, Rusty, at the time, which is significant because Rusty was sleeping under or behind the chair that my mom was sitting on. Suddenly my mom felt a slight but distinct shaking. At first, she figured that Rusty must be shaking the chair somehow, but then she looked and saw that he was sound asleep. (So much for animals anticipating earthquakes!) A minute or two later, one of our neighbors knocked on the door to ask if we’d felt it, too. It was then that my mom realized it was probably an earthquake. 

Alas, the reason I say "my mom felt" and "my mom realized" is because I didn’t feel a darn thing. I was so busy bounding around the house, making a ground-shaking ruckus in my own right by being a rambunctious seven-year-old boy, that I didn’t even notice the slight shaking from the earthquake. Needless to say, I was sorely disappointed when I realized that I’d missed the earthquake. Harumph.

A 5.2-magnitude earthquake centered near the southern Illinois-Indiana border rattled several states this morning, including Tennessee. Becky and I didn’t feel anything; the quake happened at 5:37 AM EST, when we were still asleep, and it didn’t rouse us. But some East Tennesseeans were awakened by the distant tremor.

Here’s a map showing the epicenter, and another map showing where people have reported feeling the quake, and how strongly (close-up here):

If you’re a Californian wondering how on earth something a puny as a 5.2 quake (or "temblor," as you guys say out there) could be felt so strongly, and in places as far afield as Chicago and Knoxville, it’s because, as explained here, "seismic waves in the East travel farther and pack more destructive
punches." The exact reason for this phenomenon is a topic of much debate among scientists, but "one explanation is that eastern geology is older and simpler,
with fewer faults in the ground to slow the travel of quake waves." See also here:

Earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S., although less frequent than in the western
U.S., are typically felt over a much broader region. East of the Rockies, an earthquake
can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake
on the west coast.

That point is graphically illustrated here.

Of course, this morning’s mini-quake is nothing compared to the Big One that will someday destroy Memphis and cause massive devastation all across the region.

P.S. Brian Neudorff has more, and some history.

P.P.S. Ann Althouse felt it. (Hat tip: InstaPundit, who didn’t.)