For anyone who missed the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner last night, let me tell you, it rocked. You can read about it here if you didn't get to watch it, but this was my favorite moment:

Gently mocking himself and his absent would-be successors, President George W. Bush bade farewell to his antagonists in the press with a comic routine that ended with him conducting a US Marine Corps band.

None of the three presidential candidates attended the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, an annual gathering of the great and the good of the American media along with a smattering of Hollywood celebrities.

Mr Bush, who has the lowest approval rating of a president since polling began, joked about his sagging popularity, noting that even his daughter was deserting him. "I have to say I'm kind of surprised we don't have more presidential candidates here tonight. Like, any. Senator (John) McCain's not here, he probably wanted to distance himself from me a little bit. You know, he's not alone. Jenna's moving out too." He linked the absence of the Democrats to campaign controversies involving Hillary Clinton's fabrications about landing in Bosnia under sniper fire and Barack Obama's controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright.

"The two Democratic candidates aren't here either," he continued. "Senator (Hillary) Clinton couldn't get to the building because of sniper fire, and Senator (Barack) Obama's at church."
Mr Bush surveyed the dinner guests, who included stars such as Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Colin Firth and Martha Stewart as well as politicians like Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright.

Seeing the "Baywatch" actress Pamela Anderson and Mitt Romney, a Mormon former presidential candidate, he noted: "Pamela Anderson and Mitt Romney in the same room. Isn't that one of the signs of the apocalypse?"

So I'm back to not sleeping, which isn't much of a problem, because I've decided to learn a couple of new languages. I am also crocheting (and will soon be sewing some as well) sleep eye masks, so if you'd like one, let me know. The one I'm working on now has owl eyes ;)

I've started this great book called A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art and Science by Michael S. Schneider. It's all about the math of nature, and I highly recommend it to anyone. Well, geeks and nerds like myself, of course, but it's not a difficult math book; it's really quite fascinating.

It's interesting to note that Scheider doesn't come across as a "math atheist," but appears to show rather that math proves there is a "higher intelligence," that nature is far too elegant to be random. John Mitchell states in the introduction that "We cannot help being attracted by the religious veiew, that the world is a harmonious divinely ordered creation in which, as Plato promised the uninitiated, 'things are taken care of far better than you could possibly believe.'"