Faith in we trust

Of course u might walk away.

You can't win.

Know your Lord

Just in case you're confused, this friendly Tea Partier has a simple reminder. Of course, Jesus was the son of God and Allah is the Arabic word for God so in other words this Tea Partier is blaspheming.

And that's why it's great to be born again.

Temple of the Sun

Let our new temples be thermal solar collectors, generating clean electricity for a post-carbon world. Ramen.

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?

Equal Time

A Redshirt blurry original. Isn't it arty?! Click for big!

Dino War on Religion and other Pillars of Society

Behold this work of art! Encapsulating every 10 year old boy's internal storyspace. Dinosaurs at war, with aliens in the mix - somehow!

The dinosaur represents Freedom.

Obama's Goonsquad suffers calamitously in the Dino Uprising.

Also, Demand Full Atheism.

It's a Joke

Technically, in comic book logic, this makes perfect sense. A man of stone would be immune to Medusa's powers, and thus able to behead her with ease. Or, strike up a conversation - it's the 21st century, man. You don't necessarily have to kill every Gorgon you see.

Or? Here's real merchandise from the early 1900's South. Ain't it charming? And today of course, racist collectors ensure art like this goes for good money, relative to a redneck's perspective.

Isn't it funny?! Little babies left out on a log in alligator country, ready to be eaten like popcorn. Someone's darling children - and all children are darling.

Implied in the word "bait", of course, there is a fine Southern Gentleman somewhere offscreen with a gun pointed at the alligator. That was the whole point afterall, right?

It's a sick state of mind, and too prevalent still. Especially in "The South".

A Spire Christian Joint

Here's the comic they want you to read. Then. Not later, mind you.

Word up, Father Fucker!

The Olden Days

As always, click for big. I'm not sure exactly what year these panels come from, but I'm guessing in the early 40's. Regardless, behold the original Superman! An alien who fought corrupt industrialists, corrupt government officials, greedy capitalists, etc. In other words, he was a Socialist hero. The first hero. Check out the full backstory at the wiki.

As you'll learn, the very first story featuring the Super Man was in a short story in 1933, and he was a villain. Here's the cover:

Lex Luthoresque, yes?

Super Mensch

Have you seen Man of Steel? I loved it, but then, I am a nerd. But never a Superman fan, previously. But I really enjoyed this new take, as it presented Superman in a way he should always be portrayed in my mind: As an alien. An alien that mankind should be both suspicious of, and thankful for.

A God among men. He can hear whispers across the planet. He can see through walls. He cannot be stopped by any weapon - this is the ultimate hero? The Boy Scout from Kansas? If a being liked this walked among us, today, how do you think the world react?

Sometimes though, the old ways are better:

Kal-El's a dick.

Memes Obliterated

As I've said before, the swastika was widely used as a good luck symbol for thousands of years, prior to the NAZI's.

But due to horrors of the NAZIs, swastikas have been removed from all public use, save the fevered hatreds of Neo-NAZIs, Skinheads, and pissed off teens looking for attention. It's become verboten, like many other NAZI symbols (the Hitler stache, for example).

It's remarkable to consider - in the span of ten years or so, a symbol that was used worldwide for tens of thousands of years was removed from use. Obliterated. A meme created by ancient mankind - the swastika is one of the oldest human symbols, up there with the circle, square, the line, and the triangle - gone in the blink of an eye.

Consider this when looking at our culture, our society, our world. What might seem timeless can be changed in an instant. There's no such thing as permanence.  There's also no such thing as objective meaning.

Titanomachia

Titan (and Mimas - the Death Star moon)! Second biggest moon in the Solar System, and maybe first in our hearts (tough choices). It is one of two moons with an atmosphere, and a very thick one at that. Nitrogen based, like Earth's. However, Earth has no views like this:

An excellent art piece as well. For reference, Titan is bigger than Mercury, and far more interesting, though that's an opinion I suppose. What Titan tells us - and all the other cool moons, but especially Titan - is that moons can be quite diverse, and that large planets can have quite many of them, acting like mini "solar" systems. Saturn to date has a confirmed 62 moons, with more likely to come. More art:

I can't tell you all their names correctly, except Titan at center, occulted. Each moon can exert a gravitational influence on the other moons, and I'm sure one day we'll discover a moon with a moon. It will be cool. For now, appreciate Titan:

False color Titan pics showing the changing cloud formations. It rains on Titan. There's lakes:

More false color. "False color" means scientists have assigned colors to the image based on the data at hand. It's accurate for what it is, but also subjective to a degree, though also close enough. For the record, just about any cool color space shot you've seen is false color to some degree. Here's the real deal:

More lakes! The fishin' ain't so good though, one assumes. As the liquid on Titan is methane, and the mountains and valleys and boulders and rocks are ice. Wicked hard ice - the temp on the surface is around -200 degrees Celsius. Cold as heck. It is truly an alien world, but oh so familiar:

Titan seas, with islands. One day our robot children will vacation on the shores of Methane Sea.

Rivers of methane emptying into methane seas. It's like Earth, but will never be like Earth. Titan is highly inhospitable to us, and so it will be left to the robots. Check out this amazing pic:

The surface of Titan, as seen by Huygens - a probe shot from Cassini during its early years. Another feather in the cap of this amazing science mission. Those are little pebbles of ice. Rounded from some type of erosion, be it liquid or wind. Titan has all the weather we have on Earth, except it's methane raining down from the orange clouds. So cool.

Is there life? Seems hard to imagine, but every year we find life on Earth in the strangest of places - super heated volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean; 6 miles below ground deep in the bedrock; way, way high in the sky, floating bacteria living forever in the clouds. Life is everywhere on Earth, and it seems it has always been so - evidence of life now goes back to just a few hundred million years after the creation of Earth as we know it - which is not the original Earth, not by many iterations.

Perhaps some form of life similar to life on Earth exists on Titan. Or perhaps a life unlike life on Earth exists on Titan. Or, more likely, life does not exist on Titan, at least not on the surface. It is possible Titan has a vast underground ocean of warm liquid water, and imagine what kind of sealife might evolve there. Gnarly stuff, like everything in the ocean. One day we'll find out - we need to send out the bots in our name.

The Wanderers

From the front porch of Gondolin, late March 2012 - a cool occurrence where Venus is higher in the sky than Jupiter, the two bright lights you see here. The tight star group above Venus is the Pleiades, or, The Seven Sisters. The best constellation. But I'm not here to wax rhapsodic about the Pleiades, not tonight at least. Rather, I give you artsy shaky pictures of Venus and Jupiter, with Venus at the top:

All pictures about 90 second exposures, on a tripod, and I moved the tripod in the observed patterns to produce the triptastic trails.

Try it yourself! It's fun. I imagine you could get quite good at it, and draw a picture with the points of light. I shall endeavor to try again.

Jogging through the ruins

Imagine Greece or Rome at the height of their splendor. Musta been pretty dope, especially considering the alternative - "barbarian lands", IE, anything outside the Polis proper. But all cities fall, eventually, and so I give you redshirt's Thanksgiving 2008 trip to Delphi:

Funny story. I missed the 8 AM bus cuz I went to the wrong subway terminal because apparently with Greek written in English you can spell things any way you want, and so the travel book sent me to the wrong station and even after sprinting, I missed the 8 AM. No problem, I thought, Delphi is open till 5, according to the same travel book. Plenty of time to explore. I catch the 10 AM bus and arrive at Delphi at 1. O hai! Winter hours, we're closing at 3. And so commences redshirt's quick jog through Delphi.

Some columns and tumble down stone and brick. Hop-hop!

Bitchin' amphitheater dudes. Also, vertigo. Hop-hop!

Whoop-Whoop! Top of the hill, home to the Delphi Rams. Fun fact! This stadium was a late addition to the most Holy sacred site of Delphi, a Roman construction. Leave it to the Romans to bring football into the Vatican plus Mecca and Jerusalem combined, figuratively speaking. Savages.

This is it - the Oracle at Delphi. Her temple, at least. Imagine those pillars extending all the way around that central stone structure, with a kick ass roof too. And then imagine standing within such a temple, overlooking that view, on some stormy night in 450BC and a General and entourage arrive in the dead of darkness, seeking prophecy. And some lady would give it to them, high on gas, and thus history unfolds.

Fun fact about Delphi you may not know! The site was not only the location of the famous Oracle, but also served as the bank of ancient Greece. Each major city-state had a building on site dedicated towards storing their wealth. Athens, Sparta, Corinth, you name it - if you were a city-state of any shake, you had gold stored at Delphi. Twas Holy, after all. And who better to protect your money than God?

Librarian Laughs

Poor Uranus. It's a lovely planet - an Ice Giant with more water than all the water on Earth times 1000 or even more. And yet, forever a joke, because of its name. Do you think this joke will ever pass? Doesn't seem likely does it. As such, I propose we change Uranus's name to something cooler. How about Caelus?

Another sign that our times are progressive and getting better. Within my lifetime there were once banned books in America, land of Freedom. Ulysses, all of Henry Miller's work, Catch-22, The Grapes of Wrath, Naked Lunch, and let us not forget The Canterbury Tales. Yes, banned in America in the 1870's due to the awesome Comstock Law. But today, as far as I know, there are no banned books. We're free to read all the crap we want. But don't, because, really, who the hell reads anymore?

The Eternal Flame

The Zoroastrians bequeathed us many gifts, and damnations. Good v. Evil the chief among them in all regards. Before Zoroaster, everything was a more mellow shade of grey.

Here it is - a fire that has burned for over 4K years. Think of it - well before Jesus, Confucius, Buddha and L. Ron Hubbard - men have maintained this flame in the name of a God.

Word - Spring Break at the Eternal Flame.

Trip your mind in the flickering flames, yo.

Thousands and thousands of years old. Think of it - before writing existed, this flame burned...

In a sweet piece of real estate, of course.