Norlos

The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this awesome video of a solar flare on April 16, 2012.

Driving home on Friday, Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum came on the radio.  I cranked it up, since it is an awesome driving song.  Since it was just after a rain storm, I realized that between the wet road, heavy traffic, tire spray, and glare from the sun on pavement, it was kind of a dangerous commute.  Some things occurred to me:

1. If I was going to die in an auto crash, this would be an awesome song to go out on.

2. That’s a little over-dramatic, don’t you think?

3. If I was watching a movie of a guy driving and this song was playing and then he died, I would say, “man, that was really pretty lame”

4. Do you suppose there is some counter-acting force, a spirit in the sky, if you will, that might protect me from dying in a fiery auto crash while listening to this song, not because it’s about Jesus, but because that would just be too cheesy?

About that time, the song ended.  But meanwhile, I was also listening to the lyrics.  Apparently my irony-meter is tuned up a little better than it used to be, because it never occurred to me before that this might have not been entirely a song of praise, but rather a little dig at religion:

“Never been a sinner

I never sinned

I got a friend in Jesus

So you know that when I die

He’s gonna set me up with The spirit in the sky”

Seems kind of obvious now, though.  And actually makes the song even more awesome.  Especially since the guy that wrote it is Jewish.

In perhaps an unrelated matter, I pose the following question to the group that’s been bothering me lately:

Are “Fast Car” and “We are young” musical matter/anti-matter?  Would the universe implode if Tracy Chapman and Fun played a song together?

That’s a quote from Tagg Romney whose mom’s blind trust gave him $10 million to start a private equity firm. So, at least one investor said that…

When I was 7 or so, my family made a pilgrimage to KCI to see the Shuttle Orbiter Enterprise so I was very excited when I heard that OV-101 was going to be flying over NYC last Monday.

A strong spring storm, however, delayed the flight and I missed the fact that it was rescheduled for today! Oh well, at least I’ll get to see it everytime I ride down the west side bike path…

1) Regarding the photographs that US soldiers took with dead Afghan insurgents, a US veteran of Afghanistan says that it’s just something that soldiers do. I’m inclined to agree, since even the greatest generation did shit like that.

2) When the Swedish Minister of Culture cut into a cake shaped like a racist caricature of a black woman, it wasn’t an “OMG! what were those Swedes thinking?” moment but a bit of brilliant social commentary through performance art.

I think that a lot of the oppositionto Obama’s healthcare plan is due to two reasons: ideology and fear of change. That’s why I’m surprised that he’s not focusing solely on repealing the health care law, but advocating for more radical change by eliminating the link between employment and health insurance.

Let me say that I don’t think that healthcare should necessarily be provided by one’s employer, but it’s preferable to finding insurance on one’s own. As an individual consumer of health care, one’s health care costs would be driven be the state of one’s health. If you get sick, then your costs are going to go up.

At least in a health care program run through one’s employer, an employee is part of a pool where the lower health care costs of healthier workers help subsidize the higher costs of the more sickly employees not to mention that the individuals running my company’s plan are much more skilled at purchasing health care insurance than I am or even care to be.

Conservative ideologues and business owners may love Romeny’s proposal, but does he really want to risk alienating the hundreds of millions of Americans who rely on their jobs for their health insurance and prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t?

Curious what y’all think of this. Hellx, do you feel a twinge of jealousy/an edge of fear/a cackle of delight?

In case any of you happen to be planning on taking a tanker through the Gulf of Aden, here’s how you can pirate-proof your ship.

The Rangers have the best team in the east this year, but they waived Sean Avery earlier in the season so, if they do win the cup, we’ll never get to see what crazy shit he would do during his day with it. Even though Sean Avery isn’t spreading his brand of insanity on the ice for the Rangers any longer, it doesn’t mean that Rangers games no longer wander into the realm of the surreal.

On Saturday, the officials on the ice didn’t notice that there was a second puck in the netting of the Rangers’ goal when they put another puck into play. Naturally, hilarity ensued…

via xkcd