Archive for June 25th, 2008


I Have Seen The Face Of The Mantis God

June 25th, 2008 by Oskar Kennedy

The most recent picture in NASA’s Astronomy Picture Of The Day clearly shows the face of the Mantis God. His compound eyes gaze benevolently down upon us, his holy mandibles touch lightly as he showers his insecty love upon us.

Click for full size.

Of course, “Big Astronomy” has some half-assed nattering about a possible explanation.

Now known popularly as Hanny’s Voorwerp, subsequent observations have shown that the mysterious green blob has the same distance as neighboring galaxy IC 2497. Research is ongoing, but one leading hypothesis holds that Hanny’s Voorwerp is a small galaxy that acts like a large reflection nebula, showing the reflected light of a bright quasar event that happened in the center of IC 2497 about 100,000 years ago.

Fear not, brothers and sisters. The Mantis God loves us all. When he returns to us, he will eat all the flies from every backyard, even of those soulless astronomers who gaze upon his holy carapace and see only a “mysterious green blob.”

I have seen the bright green face of the Mantis God. All hail pareidolia.

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You Need to Read This

June 25th, 2008 by Oskar Kennedy

You. Yes, you. I don’t care how little (or how much) you know or care about politics. I don’t care how much you know or care about the Supreme Court, or the law in general. If you’re a citizen of the United States, or you know someone who is, you need to read The Supreme Court: A User’s Guide, by Dalia Lithwick of Slate. Why? Ms. Lithwick sums it up:

While the justices cannot bring down gas prices or bring home the troops, their decisions in the coming years will affect just about everything else: your rights regarding privacy, reproduction, speech and religion; how to count your vote and where your kids go to school; as well as your occupational and environmental protections. You name it, they’ll decide it. Or they’ll decide not to decide it (which may be even worse).

You need to know what’s happening in the Supreme Court, and the federal judiciary in general. You need to know that the Supreme Court is the only thing standing between you and the total abolition of your civil rights. If the Court abdicates its role of reviewing laws for constitutionality, Congress and the President will have free reign. (Free “reign.” Get it?) If they agree that it’s okay to start disenfranchising old people who don’t have a favorite bible verse and college students who’ve ever discussed having an abortion, shipping them abroad to be waterboarded with crude oil drilled in your local park, and paying female torturers half as much as male torturers, while tapping the phones of their relatives, nobody will be able to stop them.

I know this sounds alarmist, but sometimes a little bit of alarm is really goddam necessary. This is one of those times.

WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE?

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