Can the Apocalypse be far off?
Buena Vista Games Inc. said on Friday it plans to release a PC video game based on the popular television show “Desperate Housewives” this fall.In the game, players take on the role of a new Wisteria Lane housewife, who can uncover or create new scandals on the seemingly idyllic street where the show takes place.
[tags]Signs of the Apocalypse,Bad Video Games[/tags]
Well, “gem” is perhaps not the right term. Perhaps I should start a new category: Gutenberg Coal.
I’ve been interested in (and have from time to time posted here about) the seemingly never ending conflict between science and creationism. I found this book to be an interesting glimpse 80 years into the past, to see how people argued against evolution even before the famous Scopes trial.
The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved by William A. Williams – Project Gutenberg
It contains gems like this exchange:
The population of the world, based upon the Berlin census reports of 1922, was found to be 1,804,187,000. The human race must double itself 30.75 times to make this number. This result may be approximately ascertained by the following computations:
At the beginning of the first period of doubling there would just be two human beings; the second, 4; the third, 8; the fourth, 16; the tenth, 1024; the twentieth 1,048,576, the thirtieth, 1,073,741,824; and the thirty-first, 2,147,483,648. In other words, if we raise two to the thirtieth power, we have 1,073,741,824; or to the thirty-first power, 2,147,483,648 Therefore, it is evident even to the school boy, that, to have the present population of the globe, the net population must be doubled more than thirty times and less than thirty-one times. By logarithms, we find it to be 30.75 times. After all allowances are made for natural deaths, wars, catastrophes, and losses of all kinds, if the human race would double its numbers 30.75 times, we would have the present population of the globe.
Now, according to the chronology of Hales, based on the Septuagint text, 5077 years have elapsed since the flood, and 5177 years since the ancestors of mankind numbered only two, Noah and his wife. By dividing 5177 by 30.75, we find it requires an average of 168.3 years for the human race to double its numbers, in order to make the present population. This is a reasonable average length of time.
Can you spot the problem? Let’s imagine that he’s right. 5077 years ago, there was only Noah and his wife. It takes them 168.3 years to produce two children, and double there numbers. If we allow for 3000 years to pass, bringing us roughly up to 2000 years ago, around the time of Christ, the world population would have almost 18 doublings, bringing the total world population to about 260,000. Worldwide.
Inappropriate extrapolation is one of the silly errors that creationists use to argue using mathematics. But as they say, creationists use mathematics like a drunk uses a lamp post: for support, rather than illumination.
Read the entire thing, it’s really quite astounding.
Can the apocalpypse be far away?
I had a brainstorm while picking up groceries at our local Raley’s grocery store. Sometimes, you encounter something so bizarre, so strange, so downright wrong that you just have to shake your head and wonder if the Apocalypse can be far off.
Today, I had one of those moments, and checked to see if signoftheapocalypse was an actual tag on Flickr. Nobody else seems to have tagged a photo with it (except, now me) so I hereby propose that anytime you see something that qualifies, snap a quick picture phone picture, upload it to flickr, and tag it with signoftheapocalypse to share it with others.
Today’s entry is of course Buck, the Singing Deer Head, a pricier expansion of the infamous Billy Bass meme. I embarrassingly admit: I have one of the basses in my office. In my defense, it was being liquidated at something like $3, long after the craze was dead. Here, we have the true bargain though: a lifesize deer head that sings Rawhide. The package apparently includes a Karaoke microphone, so your trophy can go all Ashley Simpson for you. And, of course Raley’s has them at the bargain price of $99.99.
Honestly, can the battle at Armageddon be far off?
What’s truly amazing to me is not that a store would actually carry such a thing, but that they would carry dozens of them. They had these things stacked up like they were cartons of milk.
What’s your sign of the oncoming apocalypse?