Mouths to feed

Catfish will eat just about anything, including you, if they had the chance.

Mutation IS evolution

Adult MLP fans need to be rounded up and put into brainwashing camps, in order to cure them of this dread contagion. MLP!

What happens to MLP addicts. Don't let this happen to your kids. Stop the MLP.

A new humour

You couldn't make this very funny joke 10 years ago, or ever before.

You glimpse but a sliver of the Internet's power.

Mean streets

Out here on the streets, man, you gotta stand up for yourself. If someone wants to fight, you gotta fight. The trick though is figuring out how to never be that bird.

Fighting's for losers.

Euphoric

The Internet atheists of Reddit almost make me want to take up religion, they're that smug and sadly, usually terrible. This is Ralph - he's one of the "Fittest" (i.e. you religious sheep are not). Now, mind you, I agree with the gist of Ralph's points here, I just find the presentation ridiculous. But look at me, spreading memes!

Again, I understand the sentiment. I just question the fashion, specifically the hats and in general guys wearing Anime shirts. Also, "Selfie - Culture", which I document with this series of posts. The world where a camera(phone) and an internet connection is enough to spread your stupid teenage brayings across the world. And lo, the Internet is filled with teenage brayings. But also genius and a new world.

You realize there's a whole culture of these mostly guys out there? Internet atheists who wear "Fedoras" as a show of unity with other Internet atheists, and post constantly on the Internet about said subjects. Good for them for discussing, but guys. Guys....

Also, obesity is frequently present, as it is across ever larger percentages of the population. Maybe atheism is fattening?

Sex is protest

Sex - the having and the withholding - is the power that spins this world, ultimately. All other trends or impulses can be traced back to slightly NSFW

Another's Flag

I believe in these things, somewhat truly: The United Nations - shouldn't we all belong to the same nation? We're all the same people, let's organize and conquer Mars.

Control the water, control the planet.

Redshirt originals all, yeah.

Yesterday's sensation

Dinosaurs once ruled the Earth for millions of years. But look at them now - utterly defeated by mammals. There's life lessons here!

Dinolution

Science ruins everything, right? WRONG! Science makes everything awesome. Fur example, a large percentage (not all) of dinosaurs are now thought to have had feathers. Even the mighty T-Rex:

Stylish, fashionable, warm, and not remotely related to flight. Science thinks, for now, that feathers first evolved for warmth, and later evolved for use in flight. This evolution was carried forward by dinosaurs, who ultimately became birds.

Birds are the evolution of one branch of dinosaurs. All of them. Think of that the next time you feed the ducks.

QUACK!

Everything's Dinosaurs

Every bird you know is a dinosaur descendent. Turtles too. A shorter list would be "Who's not related to dinosaurs?"

Shit's dinotastic.

All life is precious

Did you know both the Republican party and major religious groups did not care about abortion until the late 70's? Concurrent with the Presidency of Democrat, Jimmy Carter. And then one St. Ronaldus Maximus Reaganus used this issue as a wedge (among many) and won huge victories. And now we live in the heights of abortion as a political issue.

My stand on abortion: I wish no one had to have one, but if a woman chooses to, that's her right and she's got final say.

The Republican Party doesn't really care about abortions (they like them too, personally, for their daughters and mistresses), but boy do they love it as a political hand grenade.

Also, it's cool mammals look pretty identical at a certain stage of development. Proof of common descent - Oh! Evolution. Something else Republicans pretend to care about for political purposes.

Pluto or Possibly (Likely) Bust

These are the Hubble gifs of the best shots we have of Pluto to date. Pluto, the demoted planet. But don't be sad!

Mankind has sent one of its precious crafts to the non-planet. New Horizons is the latest and perhaps the last deep space probe mankind has launched - since we are currently regressing, yay!

It will find rock and ice, how exciting. By the time it finds the next scientific discovery, some other Kuiper Belt object of ice and rock, we'll be in a Republican Theocracy and worshiping Ronald Reagan and the latest Republican Emperor.  We'll all agree this is the natural order of things.

Be sad - we're about to regress, zeig yay!

Eggs within Eggs

Eggs within eggs within eggs. How far down (and up) does it go?

Question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The answer is: Egg. The answer to everything is: Egg.

Wrath of an Angry God

Wicked cool map. I've got a thing for maps. This one shows every tornado in the USA over the past 56 years. Two things I conclude: Mountains create tornadoes, and two, mountains prevent tornadoes. Look at you, Appalachian Range, keeping them evil bastards at bay!

However, ironically, the region known as the Bible Belt is just a jam packed with twisters. Like, where's Oklahoma? Scary, and with Global Warming, far more likely and more powerful (more heat in atmosphere creating more and bigger storms).

But hey, here's what known Super Christian Pat Robertson has to say about tornadoes and storms:

“If enough people were praying He would’ve intervened, you could pray, Jesus stilled the storm, you can still storms.”

So you see, Christians of the Bible Belt, you're not praying hard enough, and thus the giant tornadoes of death and destruction.

Pray harder!

Or! Just an alternative theory, but maybe tornadoes are features of weather in this case created by the Rockies, the Gulf of Mexico, and the relatively flat spaces of central USA.  Given that they are only going to increase in size and frequency, be prepared.

Or move. Check out all those liberal areas, suspiciously free of tornadoes.

Still America

A life goal: Take anything and everything you are comfortable with and look at it from a completely different angle. Upside down, sideways, backwards, slanted, etc. Perspective is the most important lesson.

As far as I've read, there's some debate exactly when the Americas were founded by people. Remember that all people come from Africa, according to current theory, and thus traveled to Asia and on further to the Americas. Lots of walking! Perhaps boats were far better - two rival theories hold boat travel from Africa and Japan prior to land bridge via Alaska model. Who knows if we'll ever know for sure, but with better science and evidence, perhaps we'll get even closer to the truth.

In the meantime it doesn't matter as people will make up their own stories regardless. 

Pain for Sport

I'm not sure this awesome statement by the man, MT, is completely true. Other animals play with creatures before killing them - is that sport? Yeah, kinda. Regardless, this statement is true enough to tell the tale - we are Gods upon this Earth and we kill and torture for sport.

Cruel Gods.

And yet a bull fighter recants, and so proves maybe we can be more than the ultimate killing machines.

Twain loved kitties, and so further cements his Internet God-dom.

Super hunk Mark Twain, writer of words, lover of kitties. A meme machine for mankind for the next 1 to 2 hundred years.

Never an option

Magneto is one of the best mythic characters ever created, in my humble opinion. First, his power is the best - control over the power of magnetism. Think what an incredible power this is - all magnetic materials are at his command. He could rip apart the Earth if he wanted to.

Second, he's a villain, but his cause is debateably just: Mutant Power!

The Marvel comic universe is divided into two large, broad categories of super powered individuals: Mutants, and regular folk with powers. For example, Iron Man has technology. Spiderman was bitten by a radioactive spider and thus gained spider powers. The Hulk was made by gamma radiation. And so on - external events or external tools make the hero. Regular folk who obtained super powers and became heroes.

Mutants, on the other hand, have genetic mutations which give them their super powers. Creatively, this allows for a writer to create any kind of super power they'd dream up, with little concern for backstory/justification. It's a mutation - 'nuff said. It works too within the broader bounds of science - some mutation of the human gene allows for super strength, or super healing, or the ability to control other people's minds. Professor X, y'all, the Yin to Magneto's Yang. It's plausible, and the conflict which this creates is subtle and understandable - mutants versus "normals".

Magneto is for Mutant rights, to save this small group from the fear and hate of the larger Homo Sapien population. Professor X is all about enforcing the Homo Sapien agenda.

But you see here how Captain Picard really feels.

Our only hope

As I've said many times right here on this here blog, a large asteroid strike on Earth is inevitable, and when/if it hits, most life on Earth, including all human life, is done. It will be something like a 90-96% extinction rate of ALL life on the planet, including bugs and bacteria and slimy stuff swimming in the seas. Consider this danger deeply, for it's very real. Here's but a taste:

And these are just the ones very close, and none of them are very big, and we're missing many, many smaller ones - the 150 meter ones mentioned below, for example. Large enough to cause widespread chaos and death on Earth (though not an extinction event). Asteroids vary greatly in size:

Vesta is bigger than many moons of Jupiter and Saturn, but not the biggest asteroid (that's Ceres, where the Dawn spacecraft is heading as I type). However, asteroids the size of Steins and even smaller are our real threat. Look how tiny! But big enough to kill us all. All it would take is 5-10 mile wide asteroid to do us all in.

And what could we do about it today? Very little if on short notice. If with 20-30 years to prepare, we could probably save ourselves, starting from scratch. But why start from scratch THEN, when we all know the answer TODAY?!

Figuratively, of course. An armada of Asteroids fighters flying around space blasting rock is not very likely.

Sad, I know. Believe me! I'm the best Asteroids Ace you've ever seen. Go ahead and try your skills here.

But no, it won't be people in triangular spaceships that save us from the asteroids, but rather small robotic spacecraft that can attach to and then redirect these Earth impacting asteroids. Imagine 50 small bots flying to then landing on an asteroid on a direct impact course, each using its rocket to steer the asteroid in a different direction. It don't take much in space.

For your regular asteroids. If a Vesta like object were coming at us, better to move off planet. Here's a closeup from Dawn:

"The Snowman".

Once again, people of Earth! Rather than a'fuedin' and a'fightin' with each other, we should instead be building a space infrastructure that 1. Enriches all life on Earth, 2. Protects all life on Earth, and 3. Spreads life from Earth.

We're all Pro-Life, right? Let's get it together, humanity! As we're the only ones here who know better. We cannot count on the other monkeys.

Our Beautiful Apocalypse

A glacial whirlpool, beautiful but deadly. A living dagger to a glacier as its life force is drained away. Happening every day, across the planet.

Methane bubbles waiting to break the ice. Once we get a bit warmer, all sorts of gasses will be released and tipping points reached across the board. Our end will be collective.

Greenland and the clouds around her. Which will change every day it gets warmer and warmer, and more ice melts into the sea, until another tipping point is reached.

We walk on thin ice, loudly.

Here I sit

Graffiti from Pompeii. If you don't know about Pompeii, read the Wiki first. Here's how it looks today:

The volcano, Mount Vesuvius, in the background. Not my picture, and for that I am ashamed. The mountain plays a big part in Spartacus's revolt by the way. Anyways, the destruction of Pompeii and the manner of the destruction has been a blessing for humanity, as it gives us our best preserved example of Roman life from the period. Not so awesome for the poor folks who lived there at the time, of course: