Merit-bound Alley

The Age brings us some news that is some fucked-up concoction of funny, stupid, and sad. Seems like some Americans, fed up with the rising price of gasoline have begun prayer circles around the ol’ gas pump.

“Lord, come down in a mighty way and strengthen us so that we can bring down these high gas prices,” Twyman said to a chorus of “amens”.

“Prayer is the answer to every problem in life. We call on God to intervene in the lives of the selfish, greedy people who are keeping these prices high,” Twyman said on the forecourt of the petrol station in a neighbourhood of Washington that, like many of its residents, has seen better days.

“Lord, the prices at this pump have gone up since last week. We know that you are able, that you have all the power in the world,” he prayed, before former beauty queen Rashida Jolley led the group in a modified version of the spiritual, We Shall Overcome.

“We’ll have lower gas prices, we’ll have lower gas prices,” they sang.

In a time where there are wars going on, massacres in Darfur, tsunamis and earthquakes killing thousands, poverty, hunger, and disease, do these people really think that their god is going to prioritize their wallets while millions suffer needlessly? Isn’t this just the most arrogant and thoughtless thing you’ve ever heard?

I would like to hear some commentary on why this may not be supremely ignorant behavior, because for the life of me, I can’t get past it.

As I said, I have been reading voraciously. As it turns out, the past month has had some huge scientific goings-on that I will summarize:

• Astronomers have discovered a new type of variable white dwarf star. This new type is one that has shed it’s hydrogen and helium shells to expose the carbon shell underneath earning them the name “hot carbon white dwarf”. Only the addition of “carbon” to the name kept that from being a porn title. This is the first new type of variable white dwarf to have been discovered in 25 years. h/t goes to the MacDonald Observatory for the find, and to Tom’s Astronomy Blog for the story.
• You may not know this, but less than 5% (4.6% to be exact) of the universe is normal matter. What is normal matter? The screen you’re looking at, the chair your sitting in, the brain interpreting this post, the stars, galaxies, etc. are normal matter. The other type, dark matter, has only recently been detecetd. Of that 4.6% of normal matter, we have only been able to find half of it up until now, when scientists found evidence of the rest in filaments of super hot, diffuse gas in between galaxy clusters. From this, scientists are able to guess the amount of the rest of the matter out there in this state, but as Phil Plait says, the current data set is exactly one, so stay tuned.
• Now, we all know that the platypus evolved somehow, but this ridiculous-looking animal has been used in the past by creationists as evidence again evolution because of it’s freakish mix of apparently unrelated parts and systems. Well, I guess the creationists that were still foolish enough to use this as evidence against have to abandon it, like their brethren with a better ability to learn did years ago. Study of the monotreme’s gene structure (I always read that as metronome) is starting to paint the picture of how this bizarre venomous, duck-billed, lizard/marsupial, nipple-less lactator came to be the horrid little monster that it is. No offense, platypi. h/t to Pharyngula for reigniting the nightmare
• If the platypus doesn’t disgust you, this will. They finally dissected that giant squid. The pictures are vomitous. Enjoy them before your eyes leap out of your head in self-defense! This also brought to you via Pharyngula, winner of the Gross Science Twofer, a new award from MB-A the trophy for which is a bust of my middle finger.
• Speaking of eyes, the good folks at Expelled Exposed have released a video of how the eye evolved (it’s the bottom video). I think you’ll find it fun and educational! Also, it flies in the face of ID proponents who classify the eye in their list of “irreducibly complex” systems.

I was going to do a politics summary of the same type as this, but I can easily summarize it as “a crop of assholes have acted like children”.

Yes, I’m okay, the family is okay, and nothing has been going wrong any more than usual. So, then, what the fuck?

Well, this is the fuck…

I’ve been thinking lately. Doing far more reading than writing opens the door for more concentrated, critical thought rather than reactionary posting to things that have just pissed me off. See, it’s been bothering me that the tone of M-BA has had been “getting pissed at the stupidity of this country”, so I wanted to take a short hiatus and collect my thoughts and figure out a path forward for my writing. Now, after almost, what, six weeks, I think I’m about where I was when I took the hiatus, but I think I have a better understanding of how I write, why I pick the topics I write about, and how that needs to change.

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