Merit-bound Alley

There are some things that are absolutely great about living in Delaware: the one-degree of separation we all experience, Deerhead Hot Dogs, Deer Park, the beach, but most importantly to me is the annual rite of spring when The Dairy Palace reopens.

On Thursday, March 27th, The Dairy Palace takes the plywood off its windows and starts making the best damn milkshake in Delaware for 51 years running. If you haven’t experience the soft ice cream milkshake plain or mixed with a candy of your choosing, you have not lived. Seriously, you haven’t.

This Thursday, after lunch, I will journey down to Basin Road in New Castle, mosey up to the counter and order my usual, a medium vanilla milkshake. I can’t wait. See you there.

Update

What the hell? Last night after dinner, I took the wife and boy down from North Wilmington to New Castle for a milkshake and the windows were still shuttered at The Dairy Palace. My wife saw a notice about the opening the News Journal and the mother-in-law heard that The Dairy Palace was on on JBR.

I just got off the phone with them and they are open now as of 1:20 PM on Friday.

This was covered in every science blog last week, but you see it now. Why? Don’t question me!

On March 19th, the most energetic sky event ever was observed by telescopes across the planet. This even is known as a gamma ray burst. GRBs are huge displays of gamma rays that originate from a star whose core has collapsed into a black hole. GRBs are detected fairly infrequently, mainly by orbiting satellites. The initial event is fairly quick, but it leaves an afterglow that can last for a couple minutes.

This GRB was special in that it exploded with a magnitude that was visible to the naked eye! This is the first to do that. What’s even more amazing is that the star that imploded was 7.5 billion light years away. In other words, this event happened 7.5 billion years ago, and the star was so far away that the light from the GRB didn’t reach us until last week. For some perspective, the universe is estimated to be only 13-15 billion years old, so this outburst occurred when the universe was half as old as it is now!

Now, a light year is equal to 5,878,625,373,183.61 miles. Multiply that number by 7.5 billion, and that’s how far away, in miles, this star was. And we saw it’s death with the naked eye. Holy shit.

The left photo is from the Swift X-ray ’scope, and the right is from an ultraviolet/optical light telescope. That huge-ass explosion was 44,089,690,298,877,080,000,000 miles away and we saw it here.

Update: Here’s another interesting perspective on the distance: our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across. So, if you line up 440,896,902,988,770,800 Milky Ways end-to-end, you’d finally reach that star.

Yes, I’ve had to section this one out due to length.

Hopefully in Part I, I’ve successfully imparted the fact that intelligent design is not science and therefore does not belong in the science classroom. Now, it is time to move on to discuss the Premise Media movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and how, before it has even been released, this most wretched propaganda piece has exemplified every aspect of the lies, ignorance, and misdirection that the ID leadership exhibits to further their cause.

Expelled is a pro-ID movie produced by Mark Mathis that purports to shed light on the active expulsion of pro-ID “scientists” by the monolithic and atheist (ooh, scary) “Big Science”. It presents multiple cases of people who have supposedly lost their jobs and standing in the scientific community due to their support of ID.

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Courtesy of Pharyngula, we have the link to a website of a man who thinks he’s found pre-Cambrian dragons!

For those not in the know, pareidolia is the mental ability to see recognizable shapes in random images. It lets us see the man in the moon, bunnies in clouds, and Jesus in cheese sandwiches. Yum! So, what does pareidolia have to do with dragons? Take a look at the pictures.

No, I’m no geologist, but those dragons look an awful lot like rocks. However, maybe in the Forgotten Realms, they may have been dragon remains. I may have to defer to MB-A consultant and D&D expert Ed T., who will be able to tell us if there are stone dragons in the Monster Manual.

Come out to the Deer Park tonight at 8PM for this month’s Drinking Liberally. I’ll be there, as will my lovely wife! You’ll also get the chance to check out Donviti’s new and improved handshake.

Hope to see you there!

A pair of Wisconsin parents let their daughter slowly die of diabetes while they declined to seek medical treatment in favor of prayer. The parents had this to say about their daughter’s condition:

“We just noticed a tiredness within the past two weeks,” she said. “And then just the day before and that day (she died), it suddenly just went to a more serious situation. We stayed fast in prayer then. We believed that she would recover. We saw signs that to us, it looked like she was recovering.”

Doctors, the people who could have actually saved 11-year-old Madeline Neumann, say that the girl had probably been showing signs of sickness for up to 30 days before she died. Said the murdering parents:

“our lives are in God’s hands. We know we did not do anything criminal. We know we did the best for our daughter we knew how to do.”

Any outright fool knows that you bring sick children to the doctor, or at least give the doctor a call when symptoms of sickness persist. The above statement not only shows that the parents have no understanding of the fatal mistake that they made, but that they take no responsibility for their child’s death and will probably kill again given the chance. The most horrible part of this whole thing is that they will probably get out of any charges because of the religious angle. NEWSFLASH: If you are directly responsible for the death of a child, you are a child murderer.

What gives a more sinister light to this pitiful event is:

Officers went to the home after a relative in California asked police to check on the girl. She was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.

A relative, obviously aware of the situation, didn’t feel that the parents were acting in a responsible way. Chances are that this relative had pleaded with the parents to seek medical attention for their dying daughter, advice that was ultimately ignored.

An hour at the doctors and one intital shot of insulin could have saved this poor girl’s life. A couple shots a day, and she could have led a normal life. Now, due to her parents superstition and failure as responsible guardians, she will never have that chance.

If footballers weren’t thugs, and all religious folk could refrain from using faith as apologetics for bad behavior.

The Steelers have had two incidents of domestic abuse in their team recently. One, Cedric Wilson, who plays… football, I guess , was arrested for punching his girlfriend in a bar last Wednesday. 11 days prior, James Harrison broke down a door, grabbed his gilfriend’s cell phone and broke it as she was trying to dial 911, and then slapped her. Why did he flip out and become a monster? He wanted to have his son baptized, and she didn’t. Pow! Bang! To the moon!

Wilson was released from the team, and Harrison remains. When asked about this apparent double-standard,  team charimn Dan Rooney was quoted to say:

“What Jimmy Harrison was doing and how the incident occurred, what he was trying to do was really well worth it,” Rooney said of Harrison’s initial intent with his son. “He was doing something that was good, wanted to take his son to get baptized where he lived and things like that. She said she didn’t want to do it.”

So, it’s okay to beat up on a woman if there’s religious intent involved. Got it. Good thing this is the first time religion was used to explain violence!

(h/t to skepchick)

Photo by M. T. Harmon

I’ll buy a beer at the next Drinking Liberally to the person who writes the best photo caption.

Brian with Delaware Libertarian will be tackling Around the Horn Friday this week. Send you submissions to pallikaros_at_yahoo_dot_com.

Assuming nothing horrible happens this week (I’m about due for that), I may even send in a submission!

Two events occured over the last week that pertained to Bush’s war. The first was Vice President Cheney’s cavalier answer when confronted with the fact that most Americans are not in favor of the war (video). The other event that occured was the fact the we reached 4,000 combat deaths in Iraq.

Well, Mr. Cheney, below are the men and women of Delaware who are my answer to your question.

	Lancee Cpl. Anthony P. Roberts Bear, DE Died: 06 April 2004 Age: 18
	Spec. Jarrett B. Thompson Dover, DE Died: 07 September 2003 Age: 27
	Lance Cpl. Richard C. Clifton Milford, DE Died: 03 February 2005 Age: 19
	Airman Elizabeth A. Loncki New Castle, DE Died: 07 January 2007 Age: 23
	Cpl. Stephen M. McGowan Newark, DE Died: 04 March 2005 Age: 26
	Sgt. 1st Class James S. “Shawn” Moudy Newark, DE Died: 11 December 2005 Age: 37
	Staff Sgt. Darren Harmon Newark, DE Died: 03 June 2006 Age: 44
	Staff Sgt. Joseph P. Garyantes Rehoboth, DE Died: 18 May 2004 Age: 34
	Spec. Ryan P. Long Seaford, DE Died: 03 April 2003 Age: 21
	Cpl. Cory L. Palmer Seaford, DE Died: 06 May 2006 Age: 21
	Lance Cpl. Richard Z. James Seaford, DE Died: 13 May 2006 Age: 20
	Sgt. Brian D. McGinnis Townsend, DE Died: 30 March 2003 Age: 23
	Sgt. Keith E. Fiscus Townsend, DE Died: 02 December 2006 Age: 26