The search for Noah’s Ark

April 9, 2021

Recently I had the opportunity to look at a documentary about how it is believed that Noah’s ark might have been found on Mt Ararat.

According to the documentary, back in 1949 images were captured during a USAF aerial reconnaissance mission over the former Turkish and Soviet border during the Cold War. In the images, a strange object can be seen poking out of the ice, around 15,500ft up Mt Ararat.

Also, according to the documentary, the six images that were taken in 1949 were released under the Freedom of Information Act to University professor Porcher Taylor more than 50 years later.

Fair enough I suppose, as these kinds of stories kind of strikes a cord of sorts to the extremely uninformed masses, who, for the most part, might be fairly ignorant when it comes to ancient history. (Ancient Aliens comes to mind here)

The Roman Empire from start to finish lasted roughly 1480 years, give or take a day or two (includes the eastern empire).

We can still see the ruins of the mighty empire scattered about Europe in various places like Rome for instance, and even Hadrian’s Wall in Britain.

During the course of and even after the complete fall of the Roman Empire, cut stone facades and road foundations were reclaimed for use in later structures … large wooden timbers were also reclaimed and used for other structures or for wood cooking and heat. The glory and glamour of all of Rome’s magnificence was recycled into other, less than stellar uses. Today, only about 10% of what once was Rome exists in it’s most recognizable forms.

The influence of direct Roman rule in the world ended roughly 600 years ago. We know quite a bit about Rome because people back in the day wrote everything down. Our own government is fashioned to reflect the rule of Rome even today, both in design and practice, as a result.

Now back to the Ark —

So the Lord called upon Noah, the only righteous man on the planet, to build an Ark. A certain extinction level event (ELE) was about to occur and God wanted to save Noah and his family from it.

So Noah builds this Ark, collects and secures multiple species of animals into it, and rides out the deluge.

When the flood waters subsided, Noah comes out of the Ark and the whole business of repopulating the planet again begins. Imagine the total devastation that Noah might have encountered upon after leaving the Ark. All that might have been familiar to him has been erased.

We don’t know what sort of technology might have existed before the flood. But we can be fairly certain that it might have been much more advanced than anything we might have today. I mean, messing around with the gene pool and cross referencing the gene sequence of the animals was probably a pretty big deal back then … probably one of the reasons why the Lord decided to wipe the slate clean (all flesh was corrupt).

Now imagine, if you will, a wooden structure, positioned tenuously on a cliff side, 442 feet by 74 feet by 44 feet. Maybe it’s broken in half, or maybe into 3 pieces on the account of it’s over all weight. 14 thousand feet into the air.

As a society, we all presume to know so much about everything. I mean, we all know about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, so it would only stand to reason that we would know all about the Ark’s history too, right?

Anyone who might seriously believe in Christ, and reads the Bible on a daily basis, might notice that God is fairly light on providing info on the dates and times of these events happening. How long was Adam alive before he sinned? What year did the great flood occur? What date did Noah land in the “mountains of Ararat?”. Hasn’t anyone noticed that God is fairly quiet on various specifics for a reason? He only gives us the times for various certain things that might be relevant to our salvation or relevant to us learning about how He is.

The date that Adam sinned is irrelevant. The date for the flood is irrelevant. See how that works?

Humans might be intelligent enough to being able to provide a “best guess” for a time table with regard to the flood but that’s about it. (most of the best guesses that humans make are just that … best guesses)

Remember, human nature is a constant. When Noah left the Ark, the planet was devastated. I’m pretty sure that all of the milled timbers contained in the Ark provided all of the material needed to build him and his family a nice little house down in the valley.

When God gave Noah instructions on how to build the Ark, it was to be covered, inside and out, with pitch. Anyone who has ever been to hunting camp knows just how well pitch can burn. The Lord knew how devastated the planet would be, and via the Ark, provided Noah and his family with all of the needed materials to have shelter and to stay warm.

Not too unlike how the Roman Empire was repurposed after it’s fall, the Ark too was also very likely repurposed once it’s initial usefulness was completed. Even if the Ark wasn’t repurposed, which quite possibly it was, just how long do you think the Ark timbers would have lasted? 1,000 years? 4,000 years? Short of being buried in an English bog, how long does wooden objects last these days?

In spite of it all, I find it hard to imagine what with all of man’s presumed intelligence that he would go chasing after the shadows on the cliff faces of mountains, especially cliff faces of mountains that might not have even existed 8,000 years ago. Mount Ararat is a polygenic, compound stratovolcano.

The 6 images taken back in 1949 were top secret because they belonged to the military and were taken during a top secret operation. The government didn’t keep them top secret to hide an Ark. The government kept it top secret because that’s what governments do when they don’t want others to know what they’ve been up to.

When we discuss things like Noah’s Ark for instance, it might be a wise thing to consider all of the other very relevant variables that might come into play … things like plate tectonics/continental drift, volcanism, weather/climate change, and other little inconvenient what-nots that are seemingly always left out because they’ll just get in the way of the narrative.

Noah’s Ark I’m afraid, has gone the way of the Ark of the Covenant, and the Holy Grail, because you see … We’re not real sure that the Lord is really into preserving the things that were made by the hands of men. I’m pretty sure that God would much rather have us worshiping Him instead of some piece of old rotten wood that was found on some obscure mountain top somewhere.

Geocities – The original social networking site

Alan

March 20, 2021

Geocities – The original social networking site. Every now and again I’ll take a trip down memory lane and look at all of the things on the internet that used to be but are no longer.

During today’s voyage through the 90’s internet I discovered GeoCities again for the first time via Restorativland.

Restorativland is in the process of bringing things like GeoCities back to life.

today we're launching https://t.co/TLBG38lJPi, a new and modernized geocities archive portal that's built for web surfing

– visual gallery of all sites, sorted by neighborhood
– 5.7 ~million~ pages from the early 1990s to 2009
– restored WAV/MIDI playback

enjoy pic.twitter.com/MPKKg3J920

— restorativland (@restorativland) January 22, 2020

So far the work they are doing is incredible — visit the GeoCities Gallery here: https://geocities.restorativland.org/

Since the sites were created by people from every walk of life, each site had its own down to earth hometown feel that reflected the personality of each author. In a way, it was so much better than the cookie cutter, narrative controlling, social networking sites that we have today. Social networking sites today, in their two dimensional and homogenized way, are seemingly more tasteless and bland.

GeoCities was active in the U.S. from 1994-2009 (until 2019 in Japan).

It gave everyone a good shot at presenting themselves to the world.

It hosted tens of millions of personal websites at its peak, and yes, quite literally everyone was there. From the housewife that lived down the street, to the vacation photos, to tutorials on how to fix things, to social clubs and organizations, and yes, even to the conspiracy theorists.

Everybody was there.

I don’t know about any of the rest of you, but I could easily spend hours poking around in the archive just looking at stuff.

GeoCities shows us all just how much fun the internet used to be.

Can you trust Generic Drugs?

Alan

March 7, 2021

Many people have come to accept generic drugs as a way to save on costs when their insurance won’t cover name brands. It seems like a reasonable alternative, but a whistleblower case a while back called into question whether the booming use of generics can be properly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.

Generic drug maker Ranbaxy plead guilty to federal drug safety violations and paid up to $500 million in fines to settle claims that it sold sub-par drugs and made false statements to the FDA about its two manufacturing plants in India. The United States contends that Ranbaxy manufactured, distributed, and sold drugs whose strength, purity, or quality differed from the drug’s specifications or that were not manufactured according to the FDA-approved formulation. The Justice Department said it was the largest drug safety settlement at the time with a generic drug manufacturer.

Many generic Drugs are made overseas

The global market for generics is estimated to be $242+ billion and growing. Fortune Magazine examined the dark side of the generics boom in an article back in 2013. In Dirty Medicine, Fortune reports more than 80% of active pharmaceutical ingredients for all U.S. drugs now come from overseas, as do 40% of finished pills and capsules.

When you consider just how much of America’s generic drug supply comes from factories outside of the U.S., the Ranbaxy case is cause for concern. It puts the FDA in a difficult position when it comes to policing facilities that produce the generic drugs Americans are increasingly ingesting.

Fortune reports, as our dependence on generic drugs from overseas has grown, so have questions about their oversight and safety. A report by the Government Accountability Office found that in 2009, regulators inspected only 11% of foreign drug manufacturing plants, while they inspected 40% of domestic ones.

Here is an excerpt of the Fortune report:

Fortune’s investigation yields the first comprehensive picture of how one under-policed and far-flung generics company operated. It is not a tale of cutting corners or lax manufacturing practices but one of outright fraud, in which the company knowingly sold substandard drugs around the world — including in the U.S. — while working to deceive regulators. The impact on patients will likely never be known. But it is clear that millions of people worldwide got medicine of dubious quality from Ranbaxy.

Click here to read more.

Why I don’t often buy Generic

Alan

March 6, 2021

It seems like an ages old back and forth about what might be best — Named Brands or Generic.

Back in the 70’s, when generic products first started to gain market share, I thought to myself, “Sure, I’ll try it because it’s cheaper”.

Fast forward 40+ years and it’s a completely different story. Generic products have become somewhat of a boon these days with regard to low quality. It’s been said that “you get what you pay for”. If you don’t pay much, then chances are likely that you won’t be getting much either.

Generic products are limited in their effectiveness, and can only perform as their manufacturer intended. Your generic laundry detergent works great just as long as your pants and shirts aren’t really dirty. If you wore that pair of pants for only 6 hours sitting at your desk and tossed them into the hamper afterwards, then your generic laundry detergent will perform miracles. If you wore that pair of pants all day out doing yard work or gardening, then your generic laundry detergent is virtually worthless.

Tide laundry detergent is pretty expensive, but when you stack it’s cost up against all of the pre/rewashing you’ll do with generic laundry detergent, the price for Tide seems much more reasonable. After a hard day of yard work and gardening, you only have to wash that pair of pants once, as opposed to the two or three rewashes you’ll have to do with your generic equivalent. To make matters even worse when it comes to your laundry, they don’t make washing machines like they use to either, They don’t vigorously agitate like they used to, use less water to wash and rinse, and rinse in cold water, thus causing your dryer to use more energy just to warm your clothes up enough before they can start drying.

If you were raised on generic cereal for instance, and have been brainwashed into believing that low fat and sugar free is the end-all to life, then that pasty box of tasteless wafers are going to taste pretty darn good. If on the other hand you were raised eating real food, then that very same pasty box of tasteless wafers is either going to stay on the store shelf, or on your own shelf at home growing mold.

When it comes down to it, I don’t scrimp on certain products. Buying the named brand actually saves me money at the end of the day. Tide laundry detergent, Dawn dish washing liquid, Caress bar soap, and Folgers Coffee, to name just a few, are pretty much a given in this house. Hand lotion is another thing we don’t scrimp on … Curel hand lotion might cost more, but you use less of it in each instance to get the same effect that multiple instances of the generic brand gives you.

Economics is a concept that most people in this country seemingly always fail to grasp. That fact that something that might be more expensive doesn’t necessarily mean that advertising costs are so much or that the fancy package costs so much (Tide hasn’t changed their *fancy packaging in over 30 years and you very rarely see commercials on TV for it). The product might cost so much because it’s popular with the consumer. If a product is in high demand, it’s naturally going to cost more. Quality goes hand in hand with saving money. You’ll save more money by buying Tide laundry detergent than you would buying the generic brand simply because Tide lasts longer and it does a better job.

Generic, though advertised as the cheaper alternative, invariably costs you more at the end of the day due to it’s poor quality.

This is why I don’t often buy Generic.

Life on the Fairfield Bench

Alan

March 6, 2021

Great Falls is, in my opinion, a great place to raise kids. Outdoor activities along with a great school system are just a few of the many redeeming qualities of the area.

The surrounding communities are smaller and somewhat of a bit more unknown by the many who might travel through Great Falls, and they are no less interesting than Great Falls itself.

It’s these smaller surrounding communities that help influence the city of Great Falls, and the Fairfield Bench does it’s own fair share with regard to that influence.

Fairfield Bench Area (tap or click to enlarge image)

Recently, over the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity to work up on the Fairfield Bench. The Fairfield Bench is an area that’s not real known. It’s situated between Power and Fairfield, and extends from the Freezeout Lake area in the north, to the Ashuelot – Sun River area to the south. Depending on which direction you happen to be pointing on any given day on the Fairfield Bench, your wireless phone will give you a temperature reading from any one of 3 different locations — Fort Shaw, Power, or Fairfield (whichever cell phone tower your phone connects with first).

Though life on the Fairfield Bench might appear to be non-existent as you drive the area, it’s actually quite a bit of a hub of activity. Fairfield is the self-proclaimed “Malting Barley Capital of the World” with 83,000 acres of irrigated cropland and 56,000 acres of non-irrigated cropland in production for the purpose of raising malt barley in the vicinity. There are also multiple cattle ranches/farms dotted throughout the area as well. As you drive north from the bottom of the Fairfield Bench to the north you’ll find yourself in what once was Cascade County, turning into Teton County. The only real county marker up on the Fairfield Bench is County Line Road, but be careful, you might miss the signage as you ramble along between the cow farms and the vast expanse of grasslands.

Once in a while there can be quite a bit of excitement as an errant cow is gathered back to it’s pasture along the road, holding up traffic, for all of like maybe 2 minutes.