To get a sense of the desperation behind the search for the wreck of Noah’s Ark, consider this:

It is wildly unlikely that Planet Earth was flooded, 4500 years ago, even up to, for instance, the 13,000 foot level of this most recently claimed discovery: “Evangelists claim Noah's Ark found - Mount Ararat explorers: 'We think it is 99.9 percent that this is it.'“

FLOOD

“We were better as a country when our leadership were alcoholics…when we had drunks running this country…they would go to the bars…chat each other up…and pass bills.” - Lewis Black, comedian

“Anytime there’s mass delusions, bad things happen.“ - Bill Maher, comedian

POLITICS OF THE BIBLICAL FLOOD -

“THERE’S NOTHING THERE” -

I’ll never forget my first exposure to a religious service. Out of curiosity I’d love to know what denomination it was. New York City in the 1940s…it could have been anything.

It was my first recollection of a religious gathering---what I was doing there I have no idea. I was about four years old (definitely preschool). I recall a door (beige) opening to a room where people were chanting and praying to or at something. I clearly remember my reaction:

‘There’s nothing there!’

Corona: SUN There is quite a disconnect between reality and the stated high principles, ideals and grandiose claims for holy books. While a small handful of us here on this blog site civilly “debate” the occurrences of “scientific facts” in the Bible and other holy books, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, told authorities that “U.S. wars were based on the Bible, ‘a cheap copy of the Koran’” (Anchorage Daily News, April 24, 2013).

Corona Talkeetna MountainsREVEALED SCIENCE -

Corona with Ice dogs Every moment of my life is mysterious. All of life and the Universe is mysterious. All “theories” about life---scientific, religious or personal---are also bizarre and mysterious to me (including my own).

Richard Dawkins, brilliant evolutionary biologist, loves to debate the existence of god and the nature of morality with religionists all over the World. His criticism of religion is withering and merciless. He has one good thing to say about biblical creationists, however. He says that the Christian right seems to understand---unlike most other faith-based, deity-based religions these days---that science is their mortal enemy. Something the Catholic Church once understood on a visceral level back when it employed more “proactive” methods to deal with scientists.

The current, populist interpretation of the old testament book of Genesis (either version) in the Judeo-Christian Bible is scientifically impossible. In consideration of all the laws of nature and the graphic array of evidence available today (“science”) the god to whom that act of creation was credited cannot logically have done the things claimed at the time or within the time-frame alleged.

Only twice have newspaper editors published any of my writings with a vindictive twist. Once, an Alaska print newspaper accompanied my letter to the editor with a reference to my name, saying I was “irked.” “Wittshirk!“ Get it? Clever but not a very becoming way for the editor of a newspaper to treat a contributor. He was not there very long.

I watched seven hours of television in the past nine months---it is a peace that passeth all understanding. And I have the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to thank for the bliss. Remember the months of glorious hype about the switch to digital, high-definition antenna TV in 2008/2009? When us antenna TV users were required to either get converter boxes or new digital TVs to take advantage of the wonders of broadcast high-definition television?

That was quick with lowering the cruise ship pollution standards. It’s like Governor Parnell and the Alaska State Legislature just couldn’t wait for that public initiative on cruise line pollution standards to end and were poised to strike.

You have to wonder what goes in Alaskan beanie brains when they read stuff like Shannyn Moore’s column, “Legislators' conflict-of-interest standards are a joke” (Anchorage Daily News print edition, 1-27-13). She says:

Only President Nixon had the anticommunist credentials to visit Red China and normalize relations.

Only the guns-hunting credentialed, conservative-Republican Alaska State Legislature can end the destruction of Alaska’s greatest renewable resource---wildlife. Democrats would be pilloried for suggesting we restrain “intensive predator control” and “control” motorized hunting. Only the “manly” conservative Republicans could get away with it. What are the sportsmen groups and NRA going to do---support Democrats?

The year 2012 went out with a whimper instead of a bang. This was by far the quietest New Year’s Eve in the 26 years I’ve lived up here on Hatcher Pass Road. Even 20 to 30-below temperatures never stopped the rockets from exploding in-air---locals just bundled up and set off boxes of fireworks. And this New year’s Eve it was quite warm!

I participate in an email forum with childhood acquaintances---politically left, right and undeclared. My old boyhood pal, Mike, is now an “independent conservative” who likes the Tea Party platform…but keeps throwing independent curves. Like when he said he would be working to elect Romney but would support Obama if he got reelected. So, after the election he said this about President Obama:

GOD -

A mentally-disturbed young man, bearing the name of the mythical first Human---and a weapon designed for the battlefield---shot his way into a Connecticut grade school and systemically killed 26 innocents…after first having shot the mother that bore him…right in the face while she slept.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) said that Friday’s Newtown, Conn. elementary school massacre was no surprise because we have "systematically removed God" from public schools.

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

ICE-GLACIERS -

During my 21st day-climb (and drive) into the Talkeetna Mountains in the past 6 weeks I concluded that the term “glaciation” accurately describes temporary ice formations directly shaped by flowing water sources. They are, indeed, “ice-glaciers.”

POST-ELECTION BLUES -

According to the Anchorage Daily news story, “On the day after, Republicans ask what went wrong” (November 7, 2012):

“Some of the party’s more conservative elements weren’t in a coalescing mood Wednesday as they stood with somber faces and spoke in dire tones as they addressed reporters at Washington’s National Press Club. They placed much of the blame for Tuesday night’s results on Romney.

MITT THE REDEEMER -

“The more agitated Mitt Romney gets the more cross-eyed he becomes. This is gonna be a problem when he gets into serious international negotiations and he starts looking over the other guy’s shoulder with one eye.”

- Todd Rundgren - “Unpredictable tour” 2012

Mitt Romney is already looking over the shoulder of the American people with one eye. He can move his eyes independently like a chameleon---one eyeball always on his rich corporate pals and the other, more wary eye, on the right-wing crazies…with maybe a sideways glance for the rest of us.