Two Quickies for Easter

First, a linkback to an old post.

Second, a picture in celebration of the day.

Whoa...

Amazing news on the astronomy front. Yesterday, March 19, a gamma ray burst was detected that peaked at +5.6 magnitude in visual light, making it the brightest ever seen and briefly visible to the naked eye. It was 7.5 billion light years away. For a brief time, anyone with a dark site and a view of the night sky could see, with their unaided eyes, an event that happened 3 billion years before our planet formed. Words cannot express how stunning this is. Nature never ceases to amaze and intruige me. As always, Phil Plait has lots more info over on Bad Astronomy.

The Workplace Analogy of Christianity

Imagine you were recruited for a new job by an employee of the company. You show up to work to find that there is no boss, only a work plan that provides vague and often contratictory directives on how to create an enormously complex product. This work plan, you're told, wasn't written by the boss, rather, it was written by former employees that swear that the boss told them all of this on the phone one day. For a while, this work plan was in a constant state of flux because subsequent employees were free to change it. They were even able to ignore or remove certain directives if they chose, or add new ones if they recieved them from the boss, even though he only gave each of these new directives to a single employee. Eventually, the boss was never heard from again. After a while, a group of employees got together and assembled the definitive version of work plan saying, "Although the boss isn't here, we know what he wants, and these are the directives he would want us to follow." Everyone at work has their own interpretation of the work plan, and everyone knows that their own personal interpretation of the work plan is the only correct way to interpret it.

You soon find out that you are not getting paid for this work, but everyone assures you that as soon as the work is done, the boss will make you so rich that you will no longer have to worry about working, because it says so right in the work plan, kind of. Once it's over, everything will be taken care of and you'll never have to worry about anything ever again. Skeptical, you ask if anyone has ever actually talked to the boss. They say, "Of course! Just call this special number and you can talk to him yourself!" You call the number and no one responds. You keep trying to ask the boss questions, but get nothing but dead air. Again you ask if anyone has actually spoken to the boss. Many say, "Yes, every single day. He never actually talks back, but I know he's there."

Would you continue to work at this company?

Cartoons are Evil!

Just for laughs, an old show (1980's based on the hair, clothes, and subject matter) about how cartoons are leading children to the occult and away from God. I don't have much else to say, they do a pretty good job of making asses of themselves without my help, but the quote of the day has to be "God isn't master of the universe, He-Man is!"