You may have heard that we’ve had a gigantic oil spill here on Earth after the explosion of the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon. The resulting slick of oil is now larger than what resulted from the wreck of the Exxon Valdez.
I’m wondering if it’s still wise for Barack Obama to support the expansion of offshore drilling for oil along America’s coastline. Some people oppose it, while others continue to hold on to the idea of Drill Baby Drill.
What do you think, God? Should the USA continue to expand its offshore drilling operations?
- Edgar
Edgar,
On no account should offshore drilling for energy be stopped. I’m all for offshore drilling, just so long as it’s far, far offshore – something like 888 billion miles offshore.
Offshore drilling should take place in places like Titan, a moon of Saturn, with its many sources of energy such as frozen methane and hydrocarbon lakes. Titan is already uninhabitable for human beings, so little harm can be done there.
On Earth, it’s a different matter. Why people would want to drill for a vile, toxic fluid such as crude oil is beyond me. Is driving to the convenience store really so important? There’s a reason the stuff is called crude, you know.
- God
]]>Are you any good at algebra? I only ask because it is all about unknowns, and what with you being omniscient, I guess they must be pretty unfamiliar to you.
-Joe
Dear Joe,
Well Joe, has it ever occurred to you that if unknowns were unfamiliar to me, there would be something I didn’t know? Nothing is unknown to me, including unknowns.
This is what distinguishes me from, say, Donald Rumsfeld, who knows that there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns, but has no knowledge of unknown unknowns other than the fact that they lend themselves poorly to war propaganda, but lend themselves quite well to half-assed excuses for killing tens of thousands of people he didn’t know he didn’t know he didn’t have to kill.
I am very good at algebra. In fact, I am far better at algebra than a mere mortal mind like yours could possibly comprehend. Here’s an example:
Let X = an unknown integer between 5 and 10.
What is the value of X? Well, it’s unknown. But I happen to know it’s 7.
See? I’m a math whiz, yo.
-God
]]>What’s the difference between a Hi-Fi stereo and a stereo that’s not Hi-Fi?
- Francois
Francois,
Hi-Fi stands for “hint fish”. A stereo with Hi-Fi has a special computer processor in it that processes the sound to make it especially clear. The secret to this processor is that it has a little guppy in a small glass capsule hooked up to two electric circuits.
For every song that the stereo plays, the computer comes up with 15 different models for processing the sound. Then, the computer sends a signal to the glass capsule with the guppy in it, communicating these 15 models to the fish. The fish then gives the computer a hint about which model would sound the best. That’s the model that the Hi-Fi stereo uses to create its superior sound.
The next time you’re shopping for a stereo, make sure to ask for the one with the fish.
- God
]]>I walked out my front door to find a swarm of dying mayflies on the sidewalk. Why is it that you designed mayflies to live only for one day and then die? It seems awfully cruel to me.
- Rosemarie
Rosemarie,
It is a common misconception that mayflies live only for one day. The truth is that they live in their adult form for one day, but they live in their larval form for much longer – a few weeks.
There’s a clear reason for this arrangement that might just help you feel better about the whole thing. What you don’t know about mayflies is that they’re born terrorists.
Mayflies possess an unrivaled mental aptitude that makes their inherent terroristic nature particularly dangerous. You may think that human beings are the most intelligent species on the planet, but you’re wrong. It’s mayflies. They’re geniuses beyond human comprehension.
If mayflies were able to live more than one day, they would, in their malice, design, construct and explode a bomb capable of creating a crater the size of New Zealand.
Mayflies have a harsh political agenda which they seek to achieve by any means necessary. Their manifesto: Liberate the Omaha Seventeen! Nobody, not even I, know who the Omaha Seventeen are, much less how to liberate them, and that makes the mayflies such a terrible threat. You see, mayflies do not accept that ignorance is an excuse for inaction.
Every morning, during mayfly season, millions upon millions of mayflies emerge from their larval state, have group sex while flying in the air, and then set upon their dastardly mission of designing the ultimate superweapon. By nightfall, their plans are complete, and they go to bed with the agreement that they’ll build the weapon and detonate it before breakfast. Then, they all die.
You should be grateful, very grateful, to see your sidewalk littered with their carcasses, the little buggers.
- God
]]>It’s been a while now since the big object Sedna was discovered in its distant orbit around the Sun, way out past the planet Pluto. Some people say that Sedna is big enough to count as a planet, but other people say that it’s just a big hunk of rock and ice that’s more like a gigantic comet than anything else.
You’re the ultimate authority, God, so what do you say? Is Sedna a planet?
- Carlos
Carlos,
Let me settle this little misunderstanding. Sedna is not a planet. It’s a golf ball.
I was playing cosmic golf with Zeus a few hundred years ago, and he hit his ball into the rough, which is the Oort cloud. We thought we’d never find it, but now we can start our game up again. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll give you a bit of grace in return, okay?
- God
]]>I read just yesterday about how the Bush government has been demanding that search engines like Yahoo, MSN and Google turn over their databases of private information about what web sites Americans have been looking for and visiting. Apparently, President Bush decided that he needed to know what kinds of pornography Americans are looking at. Yahoo and MSN are said to have caved in to Bush’s demands, while Google did the right thing and said no to Bush.
On a legal level, this news disturbs me because it seems illegal for the President to go snooping into Americans’ private behavior just in order to find out what kind of pornography they like. On a more philosophical level, it makes me wonder about what Google really is. The Google database is many, many times bigger than the Holy Bible, or any human-compiled library, for that matter.
So, what I want to know is this: Is Google bigger than you, God?
- Irving Bonn
Irving
Google is bigger than me. In fact, Google is bigger than the universe.
It makes sense, if you think about it. After all, the universe is only the universe. Google, on the other hand, contains the direct records of the universe, plus a huge stream of comments about the universe.
So, if there’s a big rock outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming, Google will have the picture and measurements of the rock, a satellite photo of the rock from space, a map of the rock in relation to prominent roads, a web site about the rock, a blog chronicling developments related to the rock, and a discussion board debating the various qualities of the rock.
Medieval monks illuminating the Bible had nothing on the Googleverse.
Yet, I still have a leg up on Google. Google is bigger than me, but I speak through George W. Bush, the President of the United States. Can Google say that?
- God
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