Toilet Train Your Tyrannosaur

Millions drowned, but they deserved it. Be like Noah, and be saved.

It is easy to laugh at the idea of Noah’s Flood as a historical account, with all the animals (including, according to the main creationists organizations, extinct animals such as dinosaurs) on board the Ark. That would be a big mistake. In contemporary Young Earth creationist thought, the story has come to rival in importance belief in the creation account itself, while the Flood is seen as a foreshadowing of the approaching Final Days. As shown below, much ingenuity has been expended on making the story plausible. How were eight people able to manage so many animals?

Well, we know that Middle Eastern people were experts at animal husbandry, so perhaps Noah’s family had kept a pre-Flood menagerie to train them. Clearing out waste seems like an insuperable problem, but this could have been overcome by ingenious engineering, combined with training the animals to use chamber pots for their urine, and to defecate in designated areas (this according to a book praised in the Arc Encounter pocket guide). As to why the story is so important, it shows God dividing humanity into the Saved, and those who deserved to be drowned, and the entire Ark Encounter experience is an invitation for visitors to see themselves as among the Saved, then and in time to come.

According to the anthropologist James Bielo, such places as the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter provide sacred infotainment, in which visitors imagine that their own lived experience is Bible-based. This requires an illusion of authenticity, with no concern for biblical accuracy. Thus, when Bielo sat in on the planning stages of the Ark Encounter video trailer, he found much concern over the appearance of the pegs being used to hold the Ark’s planks together, which looked like something you could buy at a modern DIY store. That mattered because it didn’t fit the illusion. But no one really cared that Noah was incorrectly described as “righteous,” rather than the highly ambiguous “righteous in his generation,” which is what the Bible actually tells us. Ken Ham had okayed the script, so it must be fine theologically. Ken Ham, founder and at the time CEO of Answers in Genesis, owner of the Ark Encounter, is zealous in his support of one particular version of biblical literalism, but such zeal does not leave room for even the possibility of ambiguity.

Tactical voting 2024

Be kind to your canine companion; get a postal vote

In 2019, I advised voting tactically for whichever candidate with a winning chance in your constituency had the least bad policy on Brexit. In 2024, the stakes seem somewhat different. I assume at this point that an overall Labour majority is virtually certain, so priorities are rather different. In happier times, as those who know me will realise, I would be celebrating the collapse of the Tories, but as it is I see serious dangers in a situation where something like a quarter of the electorate changes its preferences within five years, and voting patterns in Europe reinforce my impression.

Voting intentions via Wikipedia (UK average). Click to enlarge; visit site to update

You can get advice on tactical voting here, and no doubt many other places closer to polling day. However, that may not be the most important consideration. (Of course, you need to register to vote. if not already registered, you must do this before midnight 18th June. The process is easy, and you can do it here. You will need to download a copy of your signature. To vote in person at a UK election, you need to show photo ID, but you do not need this for a postal vote.)

If the Faragist Party has any real chance of winning in your constituency, the leading priority is to shut them out, even if that means voting for a party that you would otherwise never consider.

In my own view, the best possible outcome of the election would be to see the LibDems outnumber the Conservatives, and find themselves the official opposition, but I fear that this is exceedingly unlikely. If, nevertheless, you agree with me that a strong LibDem presence is desirable, and if the LibDem candidate has a real chance in your constituency, vote for them.

Otherwise, since we know which party is going to be in power, I think the most important thing is to do what you can to get decent thoughtful individual MPs into Westminster, so take your pick on that basis among the leading individual candidates. In 2019, when I was living in Glasgow NE, I voted across party lines for the admirable Paul Sweeney, who narrowly lost, is now a Scottish Parliament list MSP for the Glasgow region, and is not standing in the General Election.

In the constituency where I now live, Stirling and Strathallan, the two leading candidates seem to me, because of the general collapse of the Conservative vote, to be be Alyn Smith (SNP) and Chris Kane (Labour Party); however, a statistician friend thinks that in this particular constituency, after boundary changes, the leading contenders are Alyn Smith and Neil Benny (Conservative). Alyn Smith was MP for Stirling in the 2019 – 2024 Parliament, and in correspondence I have found him attentive, and concerned with human rights. I have had no personal interaction with Chris Kane, but note that he is the leader of Stirling Council, having chosen to go into coalition with the Conservatives, rather than SNP, and in that capacity has overseen a reduction in the number of nursery school places, and a sell-off of public fishing rights. Neil Benny is the Conservative leader on the Council. Both Chris Kane and Neil Benny, in their election literature, claim to be the only candidate who could defeat Alyn Smith.