The Constant Rain Sucks

But we are seeing lots of rainbows off my deck this year.

Life Is Beautiful

atheism, atheist, rainbow, science,
This is what I saw from my deck yesterday. That picture is actually a pale imitation of how beautiful a sight the rainbow was. I could see the entire arc, the colors were vibrant, and at either end there was an echo of the rainbow, a second rainbow in reverse that only went up about one quarter of the way on either side. (See how dark the sky is to the right of the rainbow towards the bottom? That's caused by the second rainbow.)

It was amazing.

The science behind rainbows is amazing, too.

From Science & Discovery:

Rainbows are seen when raindrops, falling in the distance, bend and bounce sunlight back towards your eye.

Raindrops reflect sunlight, like a mirror. However raindrops also bend, or refract, light, like a lens. The reflection is spread into a cone of light. The edge of this cone is bright, because sunlight is concentrated at this angle (called the rainbow angle).

Each colour of sunlight is bent and bounced in a slightly different direction. The colours separate around the bright edge of the reflection.

The collection of raindrops that send the same bright colour towards your eye is curved. The centre of the curve is the shadow of your head (called the anti-solar point). The rainbow always appears at the same distance from this central point, at the rainbow angle.

That might be the essence of atheism- to look at a rainbow, be amazed by the beauty, and not need god at all. It doesn't have to be magic to be beautiful and amazing. It just is.

Rainbow Reclamation

homophobia, homosexual, gay, marriage, rainbow, stupid, asshat, dna, tradition, traditional,

Asshats in the traditional marriage "it's not marriage unless you're hetero and obeying gender stereotypes" bigotsphere keep trying to "take back" symbols from the LGBT community, specifically, in this instance*, rainbows.

I suppose you might want some explanation as to why your Ironymeter(tm) just imploded, leaving a small, unstable black hole hovering one inch above your desk. (Don't worry, Ironymeter(tm) tech support has a solution for that, but your desk will never be quite the same again.)

Rainbows naturally represent diversity, as they contain every color in the visible light spectrum. (Actually, they probably contain colours outside of the spectrum we can perceive, but obviously I wouldn't know about that.) The reason you now share desk space with a small, unstable black hole is that it is the height of irony- irony too powerful to be entirely contained in this universe- for a group of people that want everyone to be exactly the same to try and use the rainbow as their symbol.

Symbol fail.

I suggest asshats such as these adopt a more appropriate symbol for their cause: specifically a black square. It would be honest, informative and as ugly as their viewpoint.

*I would invite anyone with a basic knowledge of science to instruct dear Yours, Sincerely on the multitude of science fails contained within the initial two paragraphs. Do avoid being rude, please. Try to invoke Steven J's patience in explaining basic evolutionary theory to Ray Comfort ad nauseum.