Cycle Canada's One Bike Challenge

I just got my subscription renewed to Cycle Canada by my grandson, who sold one to me through his grade 5 magazine subscription program. I had let my last subscription lapse after they printed the picture of a guy with a naked butt. Guess what is on page 14 of my first renewal issue? Hey, nothing wrong with that, but if I really wanted a magazine with naked butts, I'd want them to be female, and I don't see any of those in Cycle Canada.

Enough ranting, time to discuss an idea I got from one article, called "The One Bike Challenge". Four people each picked a bike as if they could only have one bike to ride. Me, I have three different ones in the garage, including Mary Ann's Burgman that I can ride whenever I want to. Actually the only time I can't ride it is when she is riding it. When we go out on a ride together, I can't ride it because Mary Ann has not yet learned how to ride a manual shift bike. My primary bike is the Kawasaki Vulcan 900 Classic LT (LT meaning with windshield and saddlebags). I also have a 1970 Honda CD175 which is fun to ride because it is like my first bike, and brings back memories.

I would go one step further than this challenge to choose only one bike. How about only one bike for 15 years? Now that gives you something to think about, instead of riding one for a few months then trading it in. Sorry, but you pick one and you're stuck with it.

There are certain qualities a bike has to have if you want to stick with only one bike and keep it for a long time. They are not the same qualities you look for if you can have a rotating stable of bikes, with four available on any given day. For one bike, I don't think that horsepower and outright performance are all that important. And neither is style. That's because you get bored with anything but classic styles pretty quickly, and fashions change. All you need is reasonable horsepower. Since power keeps going up in new bikes, no matter what you have today will be considered feeble in ten years. Forty years ago a Triumph Bonneville 650 was considered very powerful. Today that amount of power would barely qualify it to be a beginners bike. Next is cornering and braking ability. You need these, of course, but almost any bike today can do that adequately if you're not racing.

Versatility is important if you stick with one bike for the long haul. Not only should it be able to perform adequately in almost any riding situation, from gravel to freeways, but it should be easily modified to slightly different requirements, should they arise. For instance, you may need to add a backrest, a trunk or a luggage rack. Or maybe remove the windshield or change the handlebars or mirrors. Those are some things a versatile bike should be able to do.

If I'm stuck with one bike, I am likely to give up riding if I find it painful once the novelty wears off. A related issue is ease of use for the controls. The controls get used a lot, thousands of times each riding season, if not on each ride. The handlebars should not be stiff or require heavy effort. The gearshift should be positive, and not stick between, or miss gears. The brakes should be powerful, but not prone to sudden locking up, and easy to apply maximum braking power with no warning if an emergency arises. The throttle is used constantly, and should not require little adjustments every few seconds, and should not vibrate until your hand goes to sleep either. I also like a bike with a starter button that works every time, even if the bike has been sitting for months.

Reliability is never having to say hello to the dealer's mechanic, unless you are at a free hot dog roast put on by the dealer as a public relations event. I am willing to do a lot of fiddly work myself, but I do not enjoy disassembling modern engines or transmissions on expensive bikes. And to me reliability means that I don't have to worry that when the bike fails it is going to strand me beside the road without warning thousands of miles from home, and need to be trucked or pushed to the nearest dealer.

Here are some of the features that I would look for that make a bike more rider friendly. A big gas tank that doesn't keep running out and needing to be filled, 300 km per tank is OK. Fuel injection has been refined enough to be a feature I want. Otherwise the bike may not start easily after sitting for weeks. Tubeless tires mean you can use a patch kit and pump on the road, otherwise you may need to call for a truck. Modern tube tires are really hard to change beside the road.

I would avoid a bike that has a chain and no centre stand (e.g. Kawasaki Versys), because oiling the chain would be an annoying affair on a long trip. I had one of the low maintenance O-ring chains that might be OK, but I also had a centre stand on that bike. The Vulcan also has no centre stand, which I wish it had, but then it has a lube-free belt drive. I did meet a guy once on a motorcycle who took it to the dealer every time he needed to adjust the chain. That's not like me.

I still want a bike that can carry a passenger in comfort and safety, though I rarely do it any more.

I think I could actually make do with any one of the bikes in the garage, but the Honda CD175 is forty years old, and has tube tires. It starts reasonably well without fuel injection, with the kick or electric start, but that's because it came along before clean air requirements. The biggest downfall of the CD175 is the engine that I feel bad for flogging at top speed for any length of time. So I try to keep it to 80 kph, which is really slow for the big roads and no good for the freeway. I have been on the freeway for short stretches, where I lean down and hammer it, but I feel guilty.

The Burgman 400 is fantastic around town, and I think it would do just as well going to the west coast. Its' top speed is 140 kph! It has great weather protection, carries luggage easily, except that if you strap a duffel bag to the passenger seat it is awkward getting at the under seat compartment. My only real problem is understanding how to get all the body panels off to do the maintenance. It's not impossible, but very different from working on a typical open engined motorcycle.

The Vulcan is a bike that is very middle of the road, and I could do almost anything with it. In 30,000 km I have had no trips to the mechanic, except to replace a rear tire that was worn out. And then I went to an independent shop. The only worry is getting a flat with the tube tires, but I really have not had many flats in the last 30 years.

My old BMW K1100LT would also be considered, as I did actually have it for 15 years, and many of those years it was my only bike. I would not say it was as reliable as my Vulcan, though. The BMW needed some work in the first few years under warranty. After that it never had to go back to the dealer, but the ABS brakes stopped doing their thing, and I did need to troubleshoot some problems myself, plus do the regular maintenance as the bike got older and piled on the miles. It was fuel injected, with really good weather protection and luggage capacity. It was actually quite easy to work on, for example the rear wheel came off with just a few bolts. But the K1100LT was pricey, (in today's terms, a little over twice the cost of the Vulcan), and it vibrated annoyingly at times, and it ultimately failed suddenly, completely, and with little warning, on a part that lies buried too deep in the machine to be easily checked. I did ask the dealer and he wanted $1000 and several days just to look, so it must be complicated. It's also nice to buy from a local dealer that does not get shut down by the manufacturer a few years after you bought the bike.

So my "one bike challenge" winner is any bike I ride right now, which is just about the same conclusion that Cycle Canada came to.

Picture: Me getting ready to go for the first ride of the season on my BMW a few years ago. There is one thing I miss about that bike, it blew dozens of little donut sized smoke rings that floated over the driveway when I started it up first time in the spring. But not enough to keep for that reason alone.

Are Liberal Universities Brainwashing Students?

Most American universities are accused by the right wing conservatives of being too liberal. Certainly, polls of professors etc. substantiate the opinion. For example, only 5% of scientists claim to be Republican while about 40% claim to be Democrat. Similarly, fundamental religious groups feel excluded from power at Universities, where most professors, if they are religious at all, are not usually evangelical. The Christian religious fundamentalists have lately been strongly supporting the right wing agenda politically.

Extreme statements have been made about liberal universities brainwashing students, and not just in normal classroom lectures. As first year students arrive, orientation programs have been set up that also provide a liberal bias. "Affirmative Action Offices" are there to enforce liberal attitudes such as tolerance of non-Christian religions, and to prevent racial harassment.

There is a controversy about the non profit group "Foundation for Individual Rights in Education" or "FIRE". I first heard of FIRE in connection with two cases. The first case was at the University of Delaware. Freshman students were being subjected to an indoctrination program that promoted multiculturalism. FIRE tried to stop the program, citing in particular a sentence in the workbook stating "All white people in America are racists." and "Black people cannot be racist". The second case at Purdue in Indiana, where a student was reading a book about the KKK in a janitorial lunch room, and was accused of racism. An apology was made by the University after it was learned that the book was not racist, and actually came from the Purdue University library, and of course after FIRE (and the ACLU) defended the student.

After viewing the two videos about these cases, without knowing anything about FIRE, I simply concluded that FIRE was a right wing organization defending white students, Christians, or Republicans against harassment charges from minority groups, feminists, or liberals. Well it turned out to be far more complicated than that. So either they are hiding their agenda extremely well, or they are in fact an even handed and balanced organization.

(Delaware video) I have to comment on the slick propaganda in this production. Using the phrase "diversity" of opinion to attack multiculturalism and it's "Diversity" of cultures is clever word transposing. And you would never imagine Delaware has a very low 5% black student population, from the random campus shot at 3:11. It's also offensive to have the students chuckling at 3:17 while discussing black women and "All the oppression". Maybe those students really needed this program in order to have their eyes opened.

(Purdue video) Keith is portrayed as the sweetest guy in the world. It is never really explained in the video why an illiterate black woman on the janitorial staff would have taken offense at his book.

Is FIRE a front organization set up to appear as neutral and independent while it actually is carrying out a right wing racist agenda?

FIRE has vigorously defended it's status as an independent organization whose only interest is to protect students exercising their freedom of speech. They point out that they have also defended Prof. Ward Churchill, who made derogatory statements about Jews. (He still got fired, though, but for plagiarism, not Jew hating) They were founded by, and still have as CEO, Harvey A. Silvergate, who defended students for protesting the Vietnam war back in the sixties. Some of FIRE's top people claim to be Democrats, and "classical liberals".

But the reality seems to be that FIRE is attracting a lot of support from the right. They say it is not their fault. Most of the universities are very liberal, so naturally most cases of students (and faculty) being reprimanded, will probably be for expressing points of view that are conservative, racist, homophobic, or Christian. Apparently students are rarely reprimanded for making anti-Republican, anti-Christian, or anti-white race comments. Although FIRE claims to have defended a student newspaper for printing a story with the headline "Fuck Bush".

FIRE's logic actually kind of makes sense, but mostly as good propaganda. Because I am a liberal myself, I see universities as being the natural place of liberal values. Any university that encourages freedom of thought is naturally going to be liberal, is going to favour broad mindedness over narrow patriotism, should favour multiculturalism over white privilege. A university is of course going to question stories like Noah, and Adam and Eve, and support the Theory of Evolution against Christian creationism. Some American freshmen arrive at university unaware that their country was stolen from the Indians, don't know the world is billions of years old, are not aware that America still has racism, believe America singlehandedly saved the world at least three times, in some cases don't even know that George Washington was the first president, and some can't find America on a world map.

So to millions of patriotic, racist and fundamentalist Americans, first year at university can be an experience like being "brainwashed" into hating their country. And some of these students are naturally going to complain, especially if organizations like FIRE are offering $5000 scholarships for any videos of them having their "freedom of speech" curbed.

The jury is still out on whether "Foundation for Individual Rights in Education" is a front group for the right wing or not. I think the larger point is that as American culture becomes more right wing in general, led by anti-intellectual organizations like Fox News, there is going to be a bigger disconnect between places of higher learning, and the general American public. FIRE's supporting donations are increasingly going to come from conservatives. And as that happens, I believe it is inevitable that FIRE will increasingly defend conservative students against liberal university values, while trying to maintain the cover of neutrality as long as they can.

Here is a typical (I guess) FIRE case being discussed in a blog, how the University of Minnesota is brainwashing K-12 teachers into hating America. All the people commenting seem to be conservative, and the rhetoric is all at a typical Fox News anti-intellectual level, including the original blog and the readers comments. Unfortunately, those are the people most likely to donate to FIRE. I sure wouldn't.

Picture: I photoshopped (Actually using Gimp in Linux, I just use photoshop as a generic word) a girl's head with soap in the hair to represent brainwashing on to a "property of liberal university" T-shirt. Too subtle?

Dealing with Propaganda

Is there any more frustrating activity on Earth than dealing with propaganda? You may think it is so simple, your friend or family member has just converted to a wacko cult and you think that just a few plain facts will straighten them out. Then everybody can be friends again.

It does not work like that. People who are brainwashed into wackodom are not just sitting there waiting for someone to "explain" to them that they are brainwashed. They are actually looking at you as though you are the brainwashed one, and need some sorting out. Does that sound more familiar?

Surely you have had the experience before. A friend or family member suddenly becomes a Mormon or a Scientologist or a Conservative, and they start to spoon feed you their best propaganda. You think "This is ridiculous!" And try to explain to them how the earth could not be 2000 years old, how faith healing is a scam, how Muslims are not going to take over the world, or how wind turbines or the second coming of Jesus are not going to destroy the environment, or how global warming will.

So far I guess I have only presented examples from the liberal side, so to be fair, let's not assume only liberals are sane. Global warming may turn out to really be a hoax, and the Muslims may actually take over the world. However, allowing for the possibility of being wrong makes things even more complicated. But this only serves to emphasise how difficult it is to deal with propaganda, because in the end, you may be forced to admit that the real brainless zombie is you.

The frustration gets worse as people get abusive in their language, and become threatening. For example bringing loaded guns to make their point clear. And it does not help to know that one of the main aims of propaganda is to create and spread frustration/anger/confusion. Another main goal, of course, is to spread fear. And it is shockingly effective at doing both.

I am surprised at how even amateurish propaganda that you often find in chain emails can instantly get my blood pressure up to dangerous levels. Luckily I always seem to get it back down before a call to 911 is needed. It helps to remember that the goal of propaganda is to get you frustrated. That very frustration is the mechanism by which the human mind eventually surrenders itself to the control of the "greater good", be it a religion or ideology.

Does anything really work against propaganda? The delete key for email, the recycling bin for paper mail are two effective tools. I find that in personal conversations, things are not so bad, and I think this is similar for most people. If you feel you must respond to emails (like I often do), it's best to keep it polite, delete strong words, throw in lots of moderate words like "some" or "in my opinion" instead of extreme words like "never" and "always", and "only an idiot would think this" (even though it's true.) At least you have that luxury in emails that you don't have in real live conversations, so use it.

Humour helps, but is tricky to use. For example threatening physical violence is a tricky form of satire. Much better to use what is called "self deprecating humour" as it is not so likely to misfire and cause offence. Patience also helps. Remember that struggling against propaganda is one of the most frustrating and unrewarding tasks ever devised for the human mind. Unless of course, you succeed in the holy grail of getting the other person to admit they were a brainwashed zombie. But that has not happened for me yet. Luckily (or unluckily) I seem so far to have an almost infinite capacity for responding to propaganda. I would think of it almost as a gift from God, except ironically I don't believe in God.

Picture: Propaganda battle over health care, Canada 1946. I took it from this blog

Drivers Are Not All Blind

Ride like everyone is blind and out to get you. That's good advice, but with time you are obviously going to figure out this is not really true. And then you will need to refine your mental image.

First, lets assume the truth is most drivers are sighted, although sometimes there is a time lag before they "clue in" and recognize a motorcycle as another vehicle on the road. Until then they may see the motorcycle, but this unusual sight is placed mentally in the same class as unicorns or dragons. Once their brain responds correctly, after a lag of 1 to 5 seconds usually, they realize that this object obeys the same rules of the road, and laws of physics, as a car, and they react accordingly.

Does this knowledge have any implications for your driving strategy? More often than you think, you are in a situation where a car driver has less than a second to recognize your motorcycle. Let's say you are stopped in the middle of a road, waiting to make a left turn, a big SUV is approaching from behind. At the last second, the SUV swerves around you, but then you realize there was a smaller car tailgating that SUV. That tailgating driver has less than a second to recognize you as a vehicle on the road. Other situations will occur that are more difficult to predict, such as a driver who is fiddling with their collection of CD's, then looks up at the last minute to see where their car is. Of course this is stupid behaviour, but it happens. The reason it happens is because the stupid driver has pretty good reflexes or they would have had an accident a long time ago, and learned their lesson. The problem for you, the motorcyclist, is that the stupid driver's reflexes are only fast enough when cars are involved, but that extra second delay in responding to the sight of a motorcycle is too much, and a crash may happen.

So far, you might be wondering how this is different from driving as though everyone is blind? Actually, not too different, but there is one place where you could benefit from this knowledge. Sometimes you are in a situation where you have the right of way, where the car driver is looking straight at you, and you decide to move ahead. At this point, you have forgotten, or are ignoring just this once, the rule that everyone is blind. But then the driver pulls out in front of you anyway, as if they were deliberately trying to kill you. But no, it turns out there was no homicidal intent, it was just that 2 second delay in the recognition. They simply didn't see you early enough.

One of the very worst situations for a motorcyclist is the oncoming car, making a left turn. It happens because of two visual problems. Just a quick reminder, "seeing" involves light going into the eye and making an image on the inside of the eyeball, on a screen called the retina. The brain has sensors that pick up this image and interpret what is going on, including such calculated things as size and motion of the image. The brain does not "see" everything on the retina as equally important. Big things and moving things get transmitted to the brain first. Close stuff takes priority over faraway stuff. Familiar stuff is recognized quickly, unfamiliar stuff takes more time to figure out. Now lets continue with the car turning left.

The small size of the bike on the retina of the eye makes it look further away than a car at first glance, and there is also the 2 second delay in recognition. The reason this type of accident is so bad is that you have almost no reaction time, and the car is a solid object that will bring you to a sudden stop. Sudden stops on immovable objects are very hard to survive, compared to sliding along a horizontal surface.

What can you do about this situation? If you see an oncoming car with it's turn signal on, and you are all alone on the road, you could try a slight weaving motion. This has the effect of increasing your visibility to the car driver. It's a bit hard to understand at first, but think of it this way. If a motorcycle is coming directly toward you, it presents a still image on the retina. Although it is slowly getting bigger in the car driver's eye, it is just not moving enough to get attention. The eye is better at detecting motion across the field of view. Think for example you are looking for toad on a muddy path. If that toad moves you are going to see it, until then it is almost invisible. As a motorcyclist, you want to be that moving toad, and hope the car driver is not really trying to kill you, and trust me most of them they aren't.

Photo: I photoshopped this together from an Australian Cane Toad, a motorcycle accident picture from a left turning car, and a Rebel "doo rag" from this web site. I would recommend Mr. Toad get a helmet to go over that doo rag.

What, Exactly, Is Buddha's Golf Handicap?

I don't usually watch the Fox News Sunday, even though it is available in Canada. (Unlike the Fox News Network, which I can't get, and probably wouldn't watch unless I needed to raise my blood pressure for medical reasons)

But I saw this on the Huffington Post about today's Fox News Sunday, with Brit Hume advising Tiger Woods to become a Christian.

Apparently Tiger is only a Buddhist, and the upgrade to Christian would include the necessary forgiveness to get his life back together and his family, and provide a great example to the rest of the world, according to Fox TV commentator Brit Hume.

In the past I have written my immortal classic on a similar topic, titled "What Kind of Motorcycle Does God Ride?". Now I get to ask the question "What is Buddha's Golf Handicap, and why is it better than Jesus'?"

The first assumption is that without his superior golf ability, Tiger Woods is just another guy like me that nobody would care about. Brit Hume would not be talking about him. Nike wouldn't be sponsoring him. Nobody would watch him on TV. Cocktail waitresses would not be throwing themselves at him. He would not be making $100 million plus a year. For all I know, maybe his wife wouldn't have even married him.

Tiger has done really well with Buddhism up to now. With all those Christian golfers out there, you know some of them had to be praying to Jesus to get that long putt in the hole. Let's face it, Jesus couldn't get the job done as consistently as Buddha. And please, no excuses about "God is away protecting our troops in Iraq", because Tiger was winning long before that situation came up.

So no matter what bells and whistles Christianity has to offer, that Buddhism seems to lack, the biggest reason to not piss off Buddha is for the sake of his superior understanding of golf, compared to Jesus.

However, Brit may have a point about the forgiveness angle. As a Christian, you have not inconsiderable leeway for carousing and coming back on board later. It might be worth while for Tiger to consider a compromise that allows him to still retain Buddha's expertise at golf, but get more sponsors to replace the few he lost, and allow him to get his life back together.

I might suggest Tiger examines what he really wants out of life. Then choose the ones that don't conflict with each other (such as, apparently, wife and/or several cocktail waitresses). I would advise him to look into getting an endorsement from the Christian Broadcasting Network, but have a lawyer write up the contract in such a way that Buddha is not thrown off his game. The CBN may be reluctant to sponsor a part-time Buddhist to the tune of 4 million a year, but if it boosts their sales of miracle water by 20 million, then everybody's happy. I'm sure Tiger Woods can do a teary "genuine" Christian confession on CBN. Things like that have been done before. I would not be at all surprised to find out the dapper Brit Hume has a few women hiding in the shrubbery, and is already thinking about his own exit strategy.

Picture: I photoshopped a triumphant Buddha into a golf cup because I couldn't find any decent pics on the internet of Buddha putting or driving.

What Happened to Jerry Pournelle?

Back in the eighties, I used to read a computer magazine called Byte. In it was a column I also often read by Jerry Pournelle. I still remember his frequent use of the expression "Sigh.", as a complete sentence to indicate exasperation yet acceptance of computer glitches. I first heard of Jerry Pournelle as a science fiction writer, and one of his more famous science fiction novels was "A Mote in God's Eye" co-written with Larry Niven.

So what happened to Jerry since then? Byte magazine went under in 1997 and Jerry since then has been writing a blog.

Apparently, like a lot of people in the last decade he has become even more conservative. Back in the eighties, the term conservative had almost no meaning for me, when the political divide was much less distinct than it was today. The distinctions could be partly because I can recognize it easier now, and partly because people were not as polarized by inflammatory newspapers, TV and radio in the eighties. And the "War on Terror" had not yet begun with all its attendant propaganda.

The signs of Jerry being conservative were there to see in the eighties, if I had cared. The book "Mote in God's Eye" had a racist and colonial theme, with Earth colonizing a planet whose indigenous (and intelligent) species was called the Moties. In fact a similar theme to the recent movie "Avatar" about Earth colonizing the moon of Pandora.

However, Pournelle and Niven's book has a theme of racism, discussions of the need to exterminate the Moties, fear of the Moties' high birth rate, unlike the movie Avatar whose theme is more the preservation of nature, and the evils of greed-driven colonization.

Since the book came out in 1974, there have been a lot of changes in the world. So how has Jerry adapted his ideas to the realities of today? He has written recently in his blog about education, about the terrorist attack (the underwear bomber), about Afghanistan, and about global warming. In the first three, he seemed to be against racial integration in schools, and in favour of racial profiling in airports, and in favour of more troops for Afghanistan. That, in my mind confirmed that he was leaning heavily to the conservative side of the spectrum. And so when I came to read his take on global warming, I was not surprised that he came out as a denier . I wonder why so often people who are racist, also happen to be in favour of war, and to top it off also deny global warming? Just a coincidence. Or could it be a result of political propaganda rather than logical thought influencing their conclusions?

So in "Musings on Climate Change", January 2, 2010, we get the summary statement:

"And I am far more afraid of ice than a couple of degrees warming. I fear shorter growing seasons more than I fear longer growing seasons. If the climate must change -- and stasis is unlikely -- I'd rather be warmer than colder. I'd also rather be richer than poorer. Enough. It's bed time."

Every statement he makes in this summary, taken by itself is true, in fact nobody ever disputed them. He seems to have completely missed or ignored the points that are being made in the Global Warming issue. Considering the negative impacts that scientists have suggested such as flooding, massive human refugee populations, runaway temperature feedback, extreme weather effects, migrating diseases and pests, and species extinctions.

But to me this is intellectual dishonesty, as he should know that every scientist on Earth agrees with his final concluding points, I myself would prefer a couple of more degrees this fine January morning in Canada.

Not really changing the subject here, but it's a similar technique in his article " The Truth about Afghanistan, and its meaning for US policy" December 2, 2009.

Here is Jerry's version of truth:

"The obvious truth about Afghanistan is that there are two conditions for an American victory, assuming victory means building a democratic republic in the territory we call Afghanistan. One has to do with the number of troops. The other is the length of the commitment: how long will we stay?"

I think it's the same kind of conservative logic that we get from "Mote in God's Eye". He follows up his supposed military logic with a comment that Obama's policy will meet neither condition. But what Jerry is really talking about is his (incorrect) assumption that a victory is needed to establishing a democratic republic in Afghanistan. Which nobody in Washington is thinking about any more. What they are thinking about, in case Jerry has not noticed, is the stability of the neighbours, specifically Russia and Pakistan that are dealing currently with Muslim extremists uprisings. And planning for the withdrawal of US troops without creating total chaos. Obviously the war is hopeless with Jerry's assumption of victory. I think most people are long past caring about a democratic and corruption free Afghanistan where everybody can fly their kites and listen to Western music. They probably just want the killing to end, and recognize that genocide is not an option. Unlike "A Mote in God's Eye", where it was inevitable.

Then without reading more, I can see catchphrases in his titles that make me think Jerry is getting quite extreme in his Republican right wingism. Titles like "Big science strikes back" and "Breathtaking arrogance of the EPA". Words like "tyranny" (Google counted 168 uses) and phrases like "There is no better term for the ObamaCare Bill than Despotism. ."

So that's what happened to Jerry Pournelle. From being a respected science fiction writer to being a Teabagger. He has gone from writing a book titled "The Mote in God's Eye" to being the mote in God's eye. As Jerry used to say ... "Sigh."

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/index.html

Story of Noah's Ark Compared to Global Warming

I like a fairy tale as much as the next guy. But I don't actually believe that Cinderella is the literal truth. I draw the line at making an imaginary friend out of my Fairy Godmother. And no amount of therapy can help me if I start killing and torturing people based on what my Fairy Godmother tells me.

Of course I'm partly kidding, in that the good Fairy Godmother would not actually tell me to kill or torture someone. Realistically, my fairy Godmother would limit herself to telling me that something is mine, even though the law does not agree. Then when I try to regain the imaginary "rightful possession of my property", and the owner fights back, well then the Fairy Godmother cannot be held responsible for what I do.

These fairy tales I am referring to are Evangelical religion that believes in the literal truth of every word in the Bible, and believes global warming is a fairy tale. Let me explain with the story of Noah, why bible stories are like fairy tales to me.

It is apparent to me that the story of Noah was substantially made up by people who had no knowledge of the world as we know it today. They did not know how big the world was, no clue how many species of animals there were in the world, and probably also had little concept of the balance of nature. If there was an original true story of Noah, it could have been a local flood where Noah took a couple of goats, a pair of camels, maybe cows, his wife and kids, the dogs and cats and some food and floated around for a while till the water went down. But then, I think some religious fanatics got hold of this simple story and tried to make it into something bigger than it was. They exaggerated the story to the point where it included the whole world, all the animals and every living human. I'm sure those story tellers were thinking that no one will ever question them, as nobody will ever know how big the world is, nobody will ever know how many animals there are. But just to be on the safe side they didn't actually say which animals are on the boat, or how many, so that on the off chance that somebody finds a new animal, they could reply "Oh yeah, that one was on the ark too!"

In the artist's conceptions of Noah's ark , you regularly see elephants, tigers, giraffes, and hippos (and for the most extreme groups, dinosaurs too), we should remember that almost none of these animals were known to the writers of the story of the flood. They probably imagined no more than 20 pairs of animals on the boat. They also didn't know how high the highest mountain on earth was, when they innocently wrote that the flood would cover it. Nor were they aware that oxygen masks would be required at that height.

The problems with this fairy tale are almost too many to count. But while nobody really believes in Sleeping Beauty or Peter Pan, which are both more believable, many people are fanatically trying to prove the fairy tale of Noah's Arc is true, and that global warming is false.

If it were not bad enough that the Story of the Flood is so comical, the point being made by the writers is that everyone on Earth has to believe in their God, or they are condemned to hell and drowning. It stops being comical for me at that point.

It is discouraging that some highly educated people also believe the story of Noah as the literal truth. By educated I mean they apparently paid tuition, took notes and regurgitated facts. But if "educated" people cannot be convinced that the story of Noah is false, with it's unending array of comical impossibilities, how would you ever explain the importance of alternate energy sources to the world economy and environment?

Here is a fairly elaborate attempt at explaining all the myriad holes in the Ark story, just to give an idea of how much thought has gone into it.



Picture: Noah's ark scaled-down replica being built on Mt Ararat by Greenpeace activists, I'm pretty sure they don't believe in the literal truth of the story, but they are using it in a figurative way to warn of potential flooding from climate change.