Some things that might appeal to your pharyngular gland

Who knew that water droplets suspended in the air could could refract light and produce a rainbow? It can’t be. Why, it must be…a government conspiracy! This never happened before!

You might also enjoy this collection of real church signs. My favorite is “A 4 inch tongue can bring a 6 foot man to his knees.” Sometimes, there is truth in these aphorisms.

It’s 42 minutes after 7

Approximately 563 minutes ago, I noticed this peculiar analysis of language use on Pharyngula that suggested that we use the phrase “N minutes”, where N is 5 or 10, with a slightly greater frequency than the web population as a whole. This made me self-conscious for a whole 18 minutes, so I thought I’d better sleep on it for about 480 minutes before taking 4 minutes to make a short post about it. Go on and read the Language Log — it’s short and will probably take you only 2 minutes to skim through it.

Now I’m thinking, because I’m an evil and devious sort, that since this is already a low frequency event where we use that phrase, we can easily muck with people’s heads while demonstrating an observer effect. From now on, everyone try to remember that whenever you reference a short estimated interval of time, and you are about to use one of the common multiples of 5, add one to it. We don’t have to do it every time, nor does everyone have to participate, but by adding a little verbal tic on top of a tic we can skew this analysis.

The experiment began 11 minutes ago. Keep it up.

Funny, it doesn’t look like April First

Would you believe the NY Times published an op-ed today…calling for closer monitoring of UFOs? I think it’s intended seriously. It begins by suggesting that it — our neglect of will-o’-the-wisps and reflections of Venus — is a security loophole that terrorists might exploit, and then it gives several anecdotal accounts of unlikely events, such as this one:

On Dec. 26, 1980, for instance, several witnesses at two American Air Force bases in England reported seeing a U.F.O. land. An examination of the site turned up indentations in the ground and a level of radiation in the area that was significantly higher than ordinary. More witnesses at the same base reported the U.F.O. again on subsequent nights. The deputy base commander reported that the aircraft aimed light beams into the most highly sensitive area of the base — a clear security breach.

Apparently, we should be concerned that Al-Qaeda is piloting nuclear-powered flying saucers to fly through our defenses and peek into hangars.

I don’t think this is the message he wanted me to come away with

Christianity is like sticking a fork in your face and your rectum and plugging them into a wall socket. Your insides will smoke and sizzle, you’ll glow, sparks will shoot out of you, and you’ll become a cooked vegetable.

At the end, he says, “don’t try to do this at home, because it can be very dangerous”. That’s the honest part of his example. Kids, don’t do religion! It’s very, very bad for you!