Noah had 1 week and 7 helpers. KY's ark will be built by 900 who'll take at least 2 years.

[BurtWorm]

And scientists say we're evolving! :eyes:


http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/nBLHXHnuriw/hooo-weeee_look_what_the_state.php



Lookie there: the centerpiece will be a genuwine, life-sized, full scale copy of Noah's very own ark, all 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits of it, and they say it's gonna be built with materials and methods as close to possible as the ones in the Bible. Where they gettin' gopherwood? And are they really gonna build it with handsaws and mallets and wooden pegs? That's gotta be impressive, but it's gonna be tough to git'r done by 2014.

But wait a consarned minute: it ain't floatin'. And there's no talk of stockin' it with 8,000 pairs of animals, or however many they say there ought to be in there. I'll give 'em a pass on fillin' it with dinosaurs (well, maybe not…some say they're daid, but the folk at AiG say they're just hidin'), but I want elephants and hippos and giraffes and sheep and pigs and cassowaries and kangaroos and rhinoceroses and monkeys and squirrels and everythin' tucked in there, to give me the true and odoriferous varmint-rich Ark Experience.

They also claim this big ol' project is going to make 900 jobs in Kentucky. I don't believe it. Read your Bible. The original Ark did float, and it did carry a whole menagerie, and it only employed eight people. They're cuttin' corners here with their non-floatin' critter-free ark, so I'm expectin' they'll hire six, at most. And that's generous.

...

[aquart]

1. You said KY, I thought: Jelly.

[BurtWorm]

2. Same difference.

:patriot:

[Kerrytravelers]

3. And did you see the price tag the tax payers will be paying?

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/hooo-weeee_look_what_the_state.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogs%2Fpharyngula+%28Pharyngula%29

This ain't gonna be free: the state guvmint is kickin' in $37 million in tax incentives to help a gang of Bible-totin' theocrats build a fancy Disneyland for ignoramuses.

Why are they getting tax incentives for this???

[AnArmyVeteran]

4. We are being forced to pay 34 mil for a fable.

[Drale]

5. Well that is what happens when it's being built

by lazy free loading right wingers who have never done a lick of physical work in their lives.

[n2doc]

6. I like the huge rudder on the thing

Who's supposed to steer? Sampson?

[thereismore]

7. "The Bible Land" in the film For Richer or Poorer was meant to be a joke. Well... nt

[obxhead]

8. As long as they all get on it and sail away after it's built.

Hell, I'll be all for full taxpayer funding if they do that!

[FSogol]

9. I want them to fill it with 2 of each type of beetle. Good luck!

[EOTE]

21. There are around 350,000 types of beetles on Earth.

So that would be around 700,000 beetles altogether. I'm going to go with a conservative (large) estimate and say that the average size of a beetle is 1 cubic inch (I'm sure it's nowhere near that large, it's probably orders of magnitude smaller). It should also be known that there are more varieties of beetle on Earth than just about anything else. The bible will tell you that the interior volume of the ark is around 2.7 billion cubic inches, so that 700,000 cubic inches would be a drop in the bucket. The bible is a book of fairy tales and Noah's Ark is one of the more ridiculous fairy tales in that book, there's really no reason to spout off bad science to prove that it's a fairy tale.

[FSogol]

22. Bad science or was I just too lazy to add up my cubits properly? How about the effort

of finding two samples of every beetle? Would that be difficult enough for them? ;-)

[EOTE]

24. You'd think that would be enough.

But these are people who think that Jesus said nightly lullabies to baby velociraptors, so typical reason doesn't exactly work with them.

[RadiationTherapy]

10. I guarantee at least a third of these ark builders will speak spanish as a first language.

hyuckhyuckhyuck.

[Hosnon]

11. I'm an agnostic who was raised Southern Baptist. Oddly enough, not only do I not have a problem

with this (or its receiving tax dollars), but I'm looking forward to going to it.

A life-sized ark? That is cool.

[Gold Metal Flake]

12. And no power tools.

But the days were longer back then and God did such & such and blah and blah and blah. See?

[Chorophyll]

13. God? If you exist

will you please smite these idiots upside the head. KThxbai.

ETA: the Ark builders, not the people in this thread. Clarity! Whew...

[FSogol]

15. Would it be wrong to wish the ark was washed away in a slurry flood?

:shrug:

[Chorophyll]

27. Eh, not as far as I'm concerned. nt

[asdjrocky]

14. And he was able to do that because...

Noah is a bullshit fairy tale.

[ileus]

16. 98 years for the Ark to be built...

http://www.godspointofview.com/public/qanda/how_long_to_build_the_ark.htm

or so it sez here.

[snooper2]

17. It would make a great bonfire when done

:evilgrin:

[MellowDem]

18. Between that and the Creation Museum...

Kentucky doesn't look too bright. But the thing I have noticed, living in nearby Cincinatti with those ridiculous ads for the Creation museum featuring dinosaurs, is that is that those places seem to have the opposite intended effect. Sure, the true believers will enjoy it, but those places don't convince any doubters or non-literalists. If anything, they convince true believers to start doubting. If you've ever been to a real scientific museum, and then go there, you can't help but notice the amateur nature of it. And in trying to actually explain the crazy shit they have to in order to remain literalists, they just seem to prove that their literalist interpretation makes no sense. By actually making the ark to Bible standards, they will be funding an expensive example of why the literalist approach doesn't work, in a way, funding their own belief's destruction.

[geardaddy]

23. You forgot to add "electing Rand Paul"

to that description of KY.

[MellowDem]

19. Dupe

[old mark]

20. Yeah, but Noah's was built with

"Old World" Craftsmanship!
Rec
mark

[geardaddy]

25. I bet they won't have binturongs or orangutans on the ark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binturong



Or kangaroos, wombats, etc.

[PBS Poll-435]

26. Evan Baxter did it in a little under 2 hours.

:shrug:

[sarcasmo]

28. Tattoo and Fantasy Island could have made it happen quicker.

[geardaddy]

29. From the comments section the awesome Dr. Myers post:

Posted by: mepper | December 2, 2010 10:57 AM

Toys R Us has it right:

[progressoid]

30. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

:eyes:

[Freddie Stubbs]

31. One week? The Bible doesn't say how long it took Noah to build the ark

[BurtWorm]

34. God told me it took a little under a week.

Not counting shabbos.

[backscatter712]

32. Are they gonna make the gopher wood out of real gophers? n/t

[Xithras]

33. Cypress, probably

The "common" modern belief is that gopherwood was actually cyprus, but more recent looks into the question suggest that the cypress guess was based on a very unlikely mistranslation.

More likely:

It might be a mistranslation of the Babalonian "gushure", which meant cedar. Cedar would have been readily available and was a common boat building material.

-or-

It also might be a mistranslation of the Hebrew workd "kopher", which means pitched. Covering wood in pitch was a common way to waterproof it or to laminate it for strength.

-or-

Many people have pointed out the many similarities between the story of Noah and the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, suggesting that the story of Noah might actually be a retelling of the even older Sumerian myth. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the boat is made of reeds. There are some who believe that the term "gopher" may be a vestigial reminder of the earlier story, as the Sumerian word for "reed" is "gipar".

[XemaSab]

35. Best comment:

Huh, my eyes must be failing. I've scanned that picture for literally minutes and I can't spot the guy holding the "Get a Brain! Morans" sign. Is he inside the ark?