It’s amazing how powerfully predictive that little law is. I mentioned some similar activity a while back, but it’s still going on: kooks praying for lower gas prices.

For the past several weeks, Twyman has assembled a group at a soup kitchen in the Petworth neighborhood of Northwest Washington where he volunteers. They have driven to a gas station, locked hands, said a prayer, purchased gas and sung the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” with an added verse: “We’ll have lower gas prices.”

That’s ridiculous. Me, I’m humming the overture to Die Fledermaus and praying for dancing panda bears. I bet that will work before these clowns succeed in bringing down gas prices.

This game, Christian Versus Atheist, is one of those choose-your-own-adventure type text exercises. The good thing about it is that the atheist is particular fierce and monstrous and … hey, wait a minute…the picture they use resembles someone familiar…

Hmmm. Maybe it’s just the blood drooling out of one corner of his mouth. All the atheists I know look like that.

Are you worried about the Rapture? Of course you will be called up into heaven, but those hateful bastards among your family and friends will certainly be stuck here on earth for the tribulation. So yet another service has sprung up to help you help your stranded loved ones: You’ve Been Left Behind. Why do you need this service?

WHY?

We all have family and friends who have failed to receive the Good News of the Gospel.

The unsaved will be ‘left behind’ on earth to go through the “tribulation period” after the “Rapture”. You remember how, for a short time, after (9/11/01) people were open to spiritual things and answers. (We are still singing “God Bless America” at baseballs’ seventh inning stretch.) Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture. They will know it was true and that they have blown it. There will be a small window of time where they might be reached for the Kingdom of God. We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You will also be able to give them some help in living out their remaining time. In the encrypted portion of your account you can give them access to your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables, and powers of attorneys’ (you won’t be needing them any more, and the gift will drive home the message of love). There won’t be any bodies, so probate court will take 7 years to clear your assets to your next of Kin. 7 years of course is all the time that will be left. So, basically the Government of the AntiChrist gets your stuff, unless you make it available in another way. You can also send information based on scripture as to what will happen next. Each fulfilled prophecy will cause your letter and plea to be remembered and a decision to be made.

“WHY” is one last chance to bring them to Christ and snatch them from the flames!

They don’t mention the other reason why: so that the creators of this service can collect your $40/year for the indefinite future … for as long as you live, essentially, since the Rapture is nothing but a sick fantasy by apocalyptic wackos, and won’t ever happen.

I’m also suspicious. These guys may be cleverer than we think: “encrypted” access to your powers of attorney? Directions to hidden valuables? Bank account access? If I were duplicitous and evil, this is an opportunity for a really good scam.

Which should I be more worried about: this not-safe-for-work-but-flattering fantasy, or the fact that I was informed about it by Phil Plait, who must be searching the web for “PZ Myers tag team fantasy”.

My wife isn’t going to let me travel any more, either.

Uh-oh. The creationist expectation of an abrupt transformation from one species to another has been demonstrated: the picture below is of a chicken egg that was cracked open to make a meal, and inside … a dead gecko. A bird giving birth to a reptile?

Actually, no, sorry. A chicken giving birth to a lizard is the kind of thing creationists imagine that evolution predicts, but which would actually surprise and disturb scientists if it happened — we’d have to rethink a lot of genetics if a solid instance were documented.

In this case, there’s an alternative, if rather disgusting, explanation. The poor mother hen had a gecko crawl up her cloaca (probably in a pushy attempt to sell her insurance), die somewhere in the oviducts, and then got incorporated into the egg before the shell was laid down. The deposition of a calcium-containing shell is one of the last steps in egg production, so it’s possible…it would just take a very persistent suicidal gecko, or one that was profoundly lost.

Don’t tell Geoffrey Simmons — he’s been on a credulity junket lately, crowing about every functional adaptation, including the egg, as proof of purposeful design. I don’t know about you, but a system that muddles excretion with reproduction and that allows random lizards to crawl up your butt and squat in your oviduct doesn’t sound like great engineering to me.

Perhaps my fellow Americans feel a little dismayed at the news of all those young creationist school teachers…well, a recent poll in Britain showed that people have some awfully materialist opinions about god.

Only 1% of people think of God as female, with 62% considering God to be male, the online survey conducted earlier this month of 1,050 adults in Britain found.

Weird. So god has a penis, and a Y chromosome?

Some day, they’ve got to ask people some other details of god’s physical attributes. What shade is his skin color? What color eyes does he have? At his age, does he get regular prostate exams?

When you get bored of speculating on imponderable nonsensicals, you can take a second and crash their poll: do you believe in the supernatural? Yes is winning 60:40 right now.

Hank Fox is starting one of those memes: this one asks us to tell the story of a scar.

Tell the story of a (non-surgical) scar you have somewhere on your body. Answer and tag three other bloggers.

Alas, I am a pampered child of the middle class, and I don’t have much of a history of trauma and injury. I’ve got a couple of small slashes on my forehead from when I was a toddler, when I had a series of unfortunate accidents falling headfirst onto coffee tables. My knees were shredded in typical childhood accidents. I’ve got a massive appendectomy scar that gets admiring comments from doctors when I go in for checkups — most appendectomies nowadays involve teeny-tiny incisions and don’t demand a hemisection of the abdomen. That’s about it. Boring, I know.

There is one other hairline scar on my left hand, but I already described that. Does a self-inflicted incision with a scalpel count as non-surgical?

Now I’m supposed to tag three other people…wait, I’m supposed to ask some strangers to tell me about their scars? If you did that at a party it would be considered hopelessly rude. To reduce personal culpability, I just punched my magic blogroll randomizer and it spat up three urls: Neurodudes, Amygdala, and Unfogged. Surely somebody in that mob has a notable scar, but if you’d rather not talk about it, that’s fine. And please don’t feel obligated to show us any.

And in keeping with that fine circus tradition, the Duggar Family is about to have their 18th child.

You know, they have successfully turned their freakish excesses into a profitable enterprise, but it really isn’t at all sustainable — I think the superficial news market can only bear one amazing repeatedly distended vagina at a time, and if any of their children try a repeat performance it’s going to be ho-hum, and profligacy in child-rearing will be just another symptom & cause of poverty, neglect, and ignorance.