Sunday, July 23, 2006


40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS: RAINY SEASON THOUGHTS ON NOAH'S ARK


Well its been raining for 40 days and 40 nights or so (one loses track if not writing on a god's behalf, but such rain gives one much time to ponder), yet there's not a single ark in sight, nor any reported in the news.

In fact, though there have been some local floods and landslides here and there in Japan, most folks are still walking around on the ground, so I guess the old Noah story numbers weren't crunched quite enough and so were apocryphal if accurately translated, as I myself concluded early on in life, especially when as a young mind I realized after studying a few things that water enough to flood the world above the mountaintops would have to come from outside the weather system, which has no outside, the system being one big recycler (the god-scriveners thought maybe that particular deluge came all the way from a watery heaven and just augmented the water that was already here; they lived in the desert where it scarcely ever rained anyway, so: "'40 days and 40 nights' should just about cover it, don't you think, Ezekiel?"

To say nothing of the effect all that extra water would have on the earth's gravity, orbital balance, magnetism, temperature, vegetal biomass etc.-- but then if a god created the extra water he would also take care of all those other scientific anomalies and remove the extra water when it was all over, so that's no problem, if you're a believer. You can tell by the way I'm babbling that we've had a lot of rain.

A couple of decades ago a US astronaut thought he'd found Noah's ark on Mt. Ararat, and now some other accredited scientists believe they've found it too, or another one of it, I saw a photo of one of them smiling into the camera while fondling the actual rocks thereof and as I stare into my 41st day of rain or so I wonder if the sciences I studied are different from theirs...

But to be on the safe side, maybe I'd better start building...

I have a lot of big cedars on my land...

How long is a cubit, anyway?

Let me get my big umbrella...

7 comments:

Joy Des Jardins said...

Apparently Noah had a lot of leeway since a cubit was anywhere from 17 to 21 inches...I kinda call that cheating...but, hey back then I guess you could pretty much make up your own rules. How many big cedars do you have hanging around? I know they make nice chests.

Tabor said...

Animals...don't forget the animals. Plants? Did Noah gather plants?

Anonymous said...

A cubit is the distance from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow. A tall person would have a longer cubit than a short person, hence the allowed variation.

Chancy said...

Robert, How is your ark coming?

You could bottle some of that rainwater and sell it in parched areas of the US.

I could be the Southeastern distributor.

Eric Pyle said...

And don't forget that the first thing Noah did after the water receded was to brew up a big batch of home-made wine and get good and sloshed.

If it's good enough for Noah...

Robert Brady said...

My cubit is too long, so the ark would have to be too big for the few dozen trees I have; guess I'll just drink the wine till I have to start swimming.

Maya's Granny said...

Well, as a woman with a short cubit, perhaps we could arrange to average them? Particularly since it has been raining a lot on my mountainside, as well.