Frazz by Jef Mallett for August 10, 2021

What did it say in Gilgamesh?

Considering that there wasn’t such a person as Noah, or an ark, or a flood…

If Noah and his family were the only survivors of the big flood, humanity is based on incest. Twice.

There’s an ongoing argument between folks who study how we think — between the ones who think we have to have words with which to think and the ones who think we CREATE words for our concepts. I’m with the second camp, partly because I’ve thought about things using long phrases and then invented words to make the thoughts shorter to say…

Kierkegaard surmised in one of his works that it was preposterous to examine the mind with the mind. We just enjoy meta-leveling ourselves, I guess.

Just because it has a name doesn’t mean it exists (or existed). For some reason, that hasn’t occurred to him.

Frazz doesn’t often get snapped by Caulfield…

The short answer is “because it wasn’t real”.

Wow! Good philosophical comments!BTW, the flood story is one of the nastiest in the Bible.

Apparently there are a lot of flood myths. Noah’s in the bible is just one of them, and not the oldest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths

A reminder of the old, “What was the largest island before Australia was discovered?”

Simple… by never happening.

And an amazing vocabulary for an eight year old!

When a thing develops, is discovered, then given a name, denial does not reduce its impact on the ranks of skeptics.

Borrelia burgdorferi hitchhikes on Noah’s Ark in Ixodes scapularis, which rides on Odocoileus virginianus.

What is going on with the signing in today ?

Perhaps it should be spelled zoonautics. More likely norovirus from the ship’s buffet.

Even if it happened, “plague” was not a word.

I do think there was a giant local flood in the ancient Near East that gave rise to many stories, many of which were use to make a point.

Technically it wasn’t, though. The word “plague” didn’t appear in English until the 14th Century. Also not around at the time of the flood: English.

I’m in California. Can I have some of your rain?

I would guess it depends a good deal on the actual size of the arc and the number of critters actually aboard and how long they were waiting for the seas to recede. There have been farms with lots of critters on them for centuries, heck they still are out there across the globe.

ah yes. the story of Noah’s ark

and the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

and the story of Cinderella

and the story of Alice in Wonderland

and the story of (fill in any other fairy tale you can think of)

Some people actually take the Bible as literally true, word for word. I pity them.

And every animal was within walking distance of Noah’s house?

Jef Mallett’s Blog Posts

Frazz 14 hrs ·

When my younger brother was still my little brother, very little, our parents made him the most wonderful toy. My dad built a Noah’s Ark on wheels that could be pulled around the house on a tether. My mom sewed an ambitious number of stuffed animals, in pairs, of course. I don’t know if my brother’s fascination with and love of Noah’s Ark came before or after his was built, but I get the impression it continues to this day.

And I get it. It’s a terrific story. I have a fascination with it, too, obviously. My fascination tends to run toward the curious, and curiosity breeds questions. Two animals out of a whole species isn’t very much, and it’s a crucial number. How many species went bust because one of the pair didn’t survive the trip? Is that why there are no woolly mammoth today, or was there just not room for them on the boat in the first place? Or were they, or any number of other species no longer with us, simply not within herding distance of Noah’s boatyard? Did Noah have to bring on two albatross, or were they considered all set? How did Noah keep the predators fed if he was allowed exactly two of each species of prey and instructed to keep them alive? Casting aside the meteorological improbabilities of being able to flood an entire planet with a mere 40 days and nights of rain from a closed system, did it turn the oceans too brackish for marine life? Did Noah have to make space in the bilge for them? So many questions. And clearly, I am not done. I haven’t even gotten started on waste management.

Yup. That was one durable toy, and it didn’t even have to be my toy for me to play with it for the next 50 years.

Incest aka sibling revelry

Who convinced this kid Noah’s Ark was real?

There are linguistic arguments which attest that if there is no word for it, it doesn’t exist.