Secure Timestamp

I enjoyed watching the moon race past some bright planet a little above the sunrise last week. I guess it was Jupiter -- a bit too far along the ecliptic to be Venus.

Over the weekend, there was a news feature about the Mahdi army in Iraq. At one point the camera zoomed in on the moon to show this conjunction closer than I ever saw it. For me, that dated the report better than any digital means -- no encryption, no secure timestamp -- just very hard to fake.