The Way to Get People Over a Fear of Guns

I don’t think anyone will be opposed to guns after seeing this video:

I have never seen guns made to look so lame. I don’t see how anyone could be afraid of guns after seeing this. We get liberals to watch it, and it will take all the steam out of their gun control efforts. Of course, it might also make us feel gay the next time we’re at the range.

Frank on Science!: Dark Matter

If you wonder how Science! can know facts about distant objects likes black holes and quasars, it’s that we come at it from a number of different angles and make sure it all adds up. For instance, if we want to check the mass of a distant galaxy, we estimate it based on its brightness versus known masses of stars. Then we estimate the mass of the galaxy based on the galaxy rotation curve (orbital velocity of stars versus distance from the center of the galaxy). And those two should match.

Except they don’t. In fact, it’s not even close. Like we get a number around twenty times bigger looking at the galaxy’s rotation. So basically, the matter we can see only accounts for around 5% of the universe, and the rest is… well… invisible.

Yeah, I know what you laymen are thinking: “Silly scientists! You just forgot to carry to one and are making a big deal about it! It’s like me thinking there are invisible cheeseburgers because the amount of money in my register didn’t match sales at the end of my shift at Wendy’s.”

No, we’ve like checked this a million times. We’d love to say it’s just a math error, but the only conclusion we can come to is we can’t find most of the universe. This “dark matter” (transparent, really) is most of existence and we don’t have a friggin’ clue where it is. And most of it is nonbaryonic, which means it contains no atoms and does not interact with normal matter.

No! That does not mean it’s imaginary! It’s not Snuffaluffagus matter. It’s just invisible and can’t be felt, but it is totally there. Just look at galaxy rotation curves or galaxies’ velocity dispersion or apply the viral theorem; we’re missing a lot of mass, and it is very frustrating. I know Science! will make it clear eventually, but it’s hard to just push out of our minds right now.

Anyway, if you see any mass that’s unaccounted for, please go to your nearest Sciencetorium and report it. And, as I have to keep explaining to you laymen, be as descriptive as possible. Just saying, “It was big!” doesn’t help us.

Science!

War Is Too Serious For Liberals

My new column is up at Pajamas Media. Really, when have liberals contributed anything useful to a discussion of war?

Crowder in Detriot

Not a full video! Just a teaser! Full video Monday!

For what possible reason does anyone still live in Detroit?

Random Thoughts

If they could somehow make coffee filling, I would never need anything else.

All I hope is that after I die people look back on me and say, “You know, he really wasn’t that much of a pest.”

Iron Man is against government takeovers and for blowing stuff up. He should be the new Republican icon.

I think it would really promote Senate unity if they all organized their own flash mob YouTube stunt.

Hypocritical Harry Reid on Senate floor accused Republicans of being “disorganized” when he himself had forgotten his pants.