03.04.2002 || 13:48

Zheng He the discoverer (subtly changed for Mystie's benefit)

This morning
There's a cat on my shoulder, the Reggae Cowboys are rocking the CBC on the radio behind me, and the sun is glancing in through the windows of Maman's solarium. Last night's puerile Enterprise episode and the surprisingly non-excremental X-Files episode still fresh in my mind. Why does Hollywood always make Canada into a gothic land of alien-spawn, a hiding place for mysterious alien beekeepers and cabin-bound Smoking Men, and a land laid open for FBI officers with cartes-blanche to do their damndest in what is, for them, a foreign country?

It's -11 out. -29 with the wind-chill. It's Winter's last huzzah, I guess; her last stab at freezing someone before she gives in to Spring later this month. Yesterday had started off so nice and balmy that I dressed down, only to get caught in a downpour, then frozen as the temperature gradually dropped over the course of the evening. I should have frigging known.

This afternoon
If Gavin Menzies is correct, then the Chinese (specifically an admiral Zheng He) discovered North America 72 years before Columbus, and beat other great European explorers like Magellan and Cook to places like Australia and South America.

The former sub-mariner discovered a planisphere from 1459 that already showed the Cape of Good hope, even though it was from before da Gama found the place in 1497. Similarly, a note in Phoenician about a voyage round the cape in 1420 had a picture of a Chinese junk on it.

Menzies found a lot of proof on a lot of artefacts. He'll be presenting his findings to the Royal Geographical Society on 15 March. Good luck, Menzies.



||Gods save the Queen,
||cf

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older shite

One last little note... - 09.21.2006

de-stressing, biking and terrorism - 06.06.2006

Mildly stressed... - 05.29.2006

More crime stupidity - 05.28.2006

Scary stuff - 05.25.2006

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