The Machinery of Night

Alt-Az Axis of Evil

(Ha! I make obscure joke!)

According to this article, Arab information ministers want to set up a "media observatory" to counteract the infidel notion that blowing yourself up and killing as many bystanders as possible constitutes "terrorism" (as Reuters might say).

What a splendid idea. I'd love to work in the "media observatory". I'd be eminently qualified:

"This object is actually an eruption of hot gas from an Arab information minister, flowing outward faster than the speed of sound. The bilious green color is given off by shocked (shocked!) oxygen atoms."

"Here is a suspected black hole, a region of such suckiness that no information can escape, much like an Arab Information Ministry."

Via Charles Johnson

And check this out: this page asserts that the red color of the Eskimo Nebula proves that the Koran is accurate. (This is probably theologically unsound; surely the Koran is its own proof.)

Dudes, 1) that's a color coding, chosen by the astronomers for maximum information transfer, or just to look pretty (although it's true that the nitrogen emission colored red would look red, if seen with the naked eye, but so would the hydrogen emission here colored green), and 2) there are a lot of other red things in the Universe.

(You! You Christians in the back! You can pipe right down now. Your religion has asserted equally goofy crap, so I don't want to hear any snickering from you.)

And Lo, the Lord decreed that the Universe shall be the color of latte, although He is displeased because He generally takes His latte with a bit of coffee in it.