A thing I made, because reasons

(Click for larger)

I was playing the lovely game FTL and as my hopes and dreams were being sucked into the void through a horrifying number of hull breaches I remarked to a friend, "Space is full of jerks."

His fantastic reply was simply "- Carl Sagan." This led to us modifying a bunch of Sagan's quotes. Billions and billions of jerks, jerks making apple pies from scratch, and of course, "Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group... of jerks."

The above picture was a parting shot of sorts. I giggled all the way through making it, and while I'll admit it's not quite the same comedy gold now that I've had adequate sleep, I'm still quite fond of it. And now it's my gift to you, internet.

The humor (as it were) comes from the fact that Sagan was of course an immensely positive person. And so that I don't feel like I'm entirely besmirching the man's memory, I've included a positive alternative below the fold.

Gods forgive us

A friend asked me to help her with the visuals for a school assignment that involved making a Facebook page for Socrates, and here's what we came up with:

 

See the rest of it after the jump.

Meteor over Russia

Obviously this story has been covered pretty much all over the place today, and given that I'm no astronomy expert I don't really have anything new to contribute, but there's also pretty much no way I could let this pass without mentioning it.

I first heard about it this morning, when my friend Tim—an enthusiast of both astronomy and Russia, so this thing was basically made for him—awoke me with a text about it. When I was finally able to drag myself out of bed the first thing I did was check Bad Astronomy to see what Phil Plait had to say on the subject. He was of course right on top of things and his initial post included several amazing videos, including this one showing the contrail of the meteor forming:

And this one in which the shockwave from the sonic boom and/or explosion of the meteor reaches the ground and shatters nearby windows (the wave hits at around 12 seconds and it's loud, so for the sake of your eardrums make sure your volume isn't up too high):

And here's a hole in a lake that may be where one of the fragments made landfall:

The whole thing is stunning, and thanks to the insanity of Russia's roads we have plenty of dashcam footage of it happening. For an expert's analysis of the meteor head over to Bad Astronomy: here's his original post, and here's his follow-up.

"Masculism": The joke that writes itself

If you're not aware, there's a group of men out there who refer to themselves as Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) who appear to be genuinely under the impression that men are the oppressed sex in our society. If your immediate reaction is to laugh and shake your head in disbelief, that's because it's warranted. Their evidence for their oppression seems to come down to a bitterness over the fact that the tradition of men paying for dates still lingers in our society, resentment over their alimony payments, and a delusional paranoia that all women are really succubi that are after men's semen for some nefarious purpose. Of course what it really comes down to is a bunch of man-children who miss the "good old days" when sex was mandatory, beatings were expected, and women "respected" their man... it's just a bunch of assholes who think of women as objects and are upset that their objects are done taking their shit. And I assume it also involves a large dose of being convinced that that bitch told all her friends and now the whole world is laughing behind your back about your tiny penis. You're the only one obsessing over your penis, tiny or not, so get the hell over it; it's your tiny, bitter brain and dearth of personality that people find repulsive.

Now, it wasn't my intention to make this a Valentine's Day post but I'm fine that it turned out that way, since I imagine that today is a sort of anti-holy day for those in the MRA mindset. (I think Valentine's Day is a bit moronic myself because of the way it equates spending money with showing affection, which I see as a result of our petty and superficial society, and not indicative of an evil matriarchy.) Anyway, a couple days ago I came across this article on Jezebel. It's about the effort of MRAs to get a Twitter topic trending around the concept of "masculism," and how it immediately blew up in their faces. The MRA position is so hopeless that it's pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel, but I got a kick out of the responses from reasonable human beings anyway. Here are two of my favorites, and you can see some more great ones over at Jezebel, or you can browse the topic yourself on Twitter.

Moonrise

Here's a beautiful video of the moon rising with people silhouetted against it:

It's a little hard to believe at first, but the video is realtime and the moon really does move that quickly across the sky. It's a little deceiving, though, since the video was shot through a telephoto lens from 2 km out, so you're seeing a smaller portion of the sky than you might at first assume. That's also why the people seem so small against it: the moon is distant and large enough that it's going to appear about the same size no matter where you are on the surface of the Earth, but 2 km is very relevant to objects the size of human beings, so they seem quite small against the moon. Phil Plait explains that and more over at Bad Astronomy.

The music is lovely (I'm a total sucker for a pairing of strings and piano) and of course the view is amazing. There's something enchanting about watching the people mill about on the hill in silhouette; knowing nothing about who they are, but still feeling a bit of a connection because they're so readily recognizable as human. There's a young couple sitting closely side-by-side, children clambering on top of things. And while the people went up to that observation area to enjoy nature just as we are, they have no idea about the stunning image they've become a part of. All in all, it just really makes me smile.

Swim like an eagle

Human preconceptions of you are irrelevant when there's a tasty hunk of meat to be had.

(via 22 Words)

The Life of Brian and Closed Systems of Thought

In a recent post on Pharyngula, PZ Myers reminded me of this frustrating but intriguing interview and debate from 1979 that members of Monty Python did about their film Life of Brian, which came out that same year. Two of the Pythons, John Cleese and Michael Palin, discussed the film with journalist Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark. The segment in its entirety includes an interview of the Pythons by the host and opening statements from Mr. Muggeridge and the Bishop and can be watched starting with this video (first of four parts, the rest of which you should be able to access through the sidebar on YouTube), and I do recommend it. The videos I'm going to embed below are an alternate copy (the same that PZ used) which skip to meat of the debate.

While Mr. Muggeridge and the Bishop's harangues can be quite tedious to get through at times, the whole thing is interesting because of how well they obliviously make Cleese and Palin's point for them. As Cleese futilely tries to tell them, the point of the movie isn't to ridicule the figure of Christ, it's to ridicule "closed systems of thought." The film is meant to encourage people to think for themselves, to approach matters—including religion—with an open mind and critical thinking. Mr. Muggeridge and the Bishop do an excellent job of showing the pitfalls of such closed systems by clearly having had their opinions of the movie set in stone before they ever saw it and by stubbornly brushing off all of the Pythons' attempts to explain to them how they'd misinterpreted the film.

You can find the second part of the video and the rest of my thoughts below the fold. (By the way, ignore the titles of the embedded videos. :P They were clearly uploaded by another person who isn't keen on listening to what the Pythons were actually saying.)