As we reported yesterday (see Kentucky’s Governor Is a Flaming Idiot) Ken Ham, the promoter of Answers in Genesis (AIG) and the mind-boggling Creation Museum, is planning an expansion.
At AIG’s website they’ve posted what is described as a News Release (sent nationwide Wednesday morning): “Ark Encounter” expected to draw 1.6 million visitors in first year. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:
Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear today joined the Ark Encounter LLC to announce the planned construction of a full-scale Noah’s Ark tourist attraction in northern Kentucky. Partnering with the Ark Encounter is Answers in Genesis, which is most widely known for its high-tech and popular Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.
“We are excited to join with the Ark Encounter group as it seeks to provide this unique, family friendly tourist attraction to the Commonwealth,” said Gov. Beshear. “Bringing new jobs to Kentucky is my top priority, and with the estimated 900 jobs this project will create, I am happy about the economic impact this project will have on the Northern Kentucky region.”
Governor Beshear — although clearly a fool — has somehow blundered into a winning formula. If he stays on track, we can expect to see Kentucky announcing that in addition to Noah’s Ark, it’s going to be the home of the nation’s largest insane asylum. After that he can announce that Kentucky will be home to a world-class leprosarium. Then, Beshear can inform the world that he is the reincarnation of Napoleon, and Ken Ham is his Josephine. The possibilities are limitless! Let’s read on:
“We are very pleased to be a part of this new project,” said Ken Ham, president and founder of AiG and the Creation Museum. “AiG has been blessed to see the Creation Museum host over one million guests in three years. Based on our experience and success operating the large, state-of-the-art Creation Museum, our board believes the time is right to partner with the Ark Encounter in building a full-scale Noah’s Ark. We hope that this fun and educational complex called the Ark Encounter will become another popular tourist destination for the state.”
Perhaps we’re having a pessimistic day, but we see this as a symptom that the nation is in a very late-stage of collapse. We continue:
One of the factors in getting the Ark Encounter to launch the Ark project at this time was a November 2009 CBS News survey, which revealed that the remains of Noah’s Ark would be the greatest archaeological discovery of our day. CBS News stated: “CBS’ 60 Minutes news program, in conjunction with Vanity Fair magazine, recently conducted a web survey asking which archaeological discovery people would most want to see made next. The response: Noah’s Ark (43 percent); Atlantis (18 percent); Amelia Earhart’s plane (16 percent); Nixon’s lost tapes (13 percent); and Cleopatra’s barge (5 percent).”
The report continued: “Noah’s Ark continues to capture the imagination of the general public, and this interest spans all social, religious and economic segments. The Ark and the flood is one of the few historical events which are well known in the worldwide global circle.”
Definitely — complete and total civilizational collapse. It’s over, folks. Might as well live it up and enjoy yourselves. There won’t be any tomorrow worth worrying about.
Update: See Editorial Opposes Gov. Beshear & Noah’s Ark.
Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
I’ve been looking for an excuse to blow off a project. So, Noah’s flood is history, and Kentucky’s governor participates in such announcements.
The Enlightenment is over. Let’s get blitzed.
“CBS’ 60 Minutes news program, in conjunction with Vanity Fair magazine, recently conducted a web survey asking which archaeological discovery people would most want to see made next. The response: Noah’s Ark (43 percent); Atlantis (18 percent); Amelia Earhart’s plane (16 percent); Nixon’s lost tapes (13 percent); and Cleopatra’s barge (5 percent).”
Teh stupid, it burns!
In other news, the NYT is reporting than Roger Penrose thinks he’s found evidence that our universe is one in a series. Link. I mention it as I’m sure creationists will soon be coming out of the woodwork condemning it…multiple universes undercuts the anthropic argument, which is one of their favorites.
I’ve been attempting to find info on who “Ark Encounter, LLC” is, suspecting that they are more of the AiG crowd under a different name, but so far the internet is void of any mention of them except in the news reports for this event. The business directories and similar listings for Springfield, MO do not mention them, they do not appear to have a website, etc. Very odd. It must be a collection of investors – but it would be interesting to know who they are.
The park could conceivably backfire on AiG. If they build a huge ark, as they claim, then at least some visitors are likely to walk in the place and take one look at the enormous wooden structure and say “no way”. To be authentic, they should attempt to build it using only stone-age materials that would have been available to Noah – no steel/concrete reinforcement, water-proofing, climate control, etc. Obviously safety codes will not allow that, but even using modern techniques, whatever they put up will provide fodder for naval engineers everywhere to evaluate whether it could have been built and how it would have fared in a stormy sea. I predict a major embarrassment.
I’m baffled by “Cleopatra’s barge”. How many people actually know that Cleopatra had a special barge and care what happened to it. Did they present people with a list? In that case, it’s not a real reflection of what people think, but merely the prejudices of the questioner.
I’d put Noah’s Ark at the top too–finding it would radically adjust our notions of history. But I don’t expect that it will ever be found. Same for Atlantis, which I think was clearly invented by Plato–might as well find the cave with all the people chained up in it as find Atlantis.
But surely the Ark of the Covenant would have beat out Cleopatra’s barge, or the crashed saucer at Roswell, if you just asked people what they’d like to see discovered.
Gabriel Hanna says: “But surely the Ark of the Covenant …”
I’d prefer a backup copy of the Library of Alexandria.
I’d prefer a backup copy of the Library of Alexandria.
Not I. If anything in the Library of Alexandria was in the Quran, it was superfluous, and if anything in there contradicted the Quran we are better off without it.
In ancient Egypt a “barge” or “ba Rge” was a brassiere-like garment that provided both support and protection. Reportedly, Cleopatra’s “barge” was discovered by British archaeologists in the late 1800’s whereupon it was transported to London and presented to Queen Victoria who kept it a secret.
@Doc Bill:
Cleopatra had no use for such a garment. Would’ve shown through. For example, in this case
http://www.bild-art.de/artefact/artifact.htm
the figure IS clothed, but might as well not have been. (SFW, but the statue I was orignally thinking of might have been pushing it.)
I heard that Cleopatra was in complete de Nile about the alleged barge. She thought the whole story was a royal pain in the Asp.
Another example:
A Roman satirist characterized this sort of clothing as “naked draperies and transparent matrons”. I suppose it’s not too different from yoga pants.
I’m inclined to think there might be a smidgeon of truth to Atlantis, in the sense of an inhabited island in the eastern Mediterranean destroyed in a volcanic eruption in ancient times (I remember Charles Pellegrino wrote a reasonably sober book about one such island being excavated by archaeologists). Whether Plato was influenced by an actual event of that nature… harder to say. He certainly made up all the incidental details, and his intent was to describe an ideal society rather than an actual one. I think it was L. Sprague de Camp who pointed out that if Atlantis could be shown to be true, it wouldn’t be nearly as wonderful as the legend of the lost kingdom… more likely just one more dreary list of ancient kings for schoolchildren to memorize.
@Deklane:
You’re thinking of Thera and the Minoans. The eruption was a hundred years before the Minoan collapse, and 1500 years before Plato, so I doubt the legend is based in any way on that event.
The legend of Atlantis was never heard of before Plato. He claims his uncle learned of it from Egypt and related it to guests at a dinner. Whatever happened at Thera doesn’t change that–it’s like saying that the discovery of short hominids in Indonesia is evidence that The Hobbit is based on history, or that the story of Noah’s Flood is based on an ancient flood. (I don’t say YOU are saying that.) It’s not enough to show that something similar once happened; you have to show that the account of the event was transmitted to those who told the story.
An advanced society destroyed in the distant past by a cataclysm is a common enough idea that it needn’t have been based on any particular event.
Gabriel Hanna says:
We’re an advanced society being destroyed in the present. That will provide endless material for legends in centuries to come.
We’re an advanced society being destroyed in the present.
Well, it’s our own fault, and not a volcano or a meteor or some such.
We’re Americans and we don’t need no stinkin’ volcano. We can destroy ourselves on our own!
This isn’t worth a post of its own, but the proposed park now has its own website: Ark Encounter. I can’t wait to see how they handle the most important feature of the thing — the poop chute.
I think some of these guys should put their money where their mouth is and actually test a 450-foot wooden boat on the water to see if it’s seaworthy. I mean, engineers and shipwrights all say you can’t make a ship more than 300 feet long out of wood without it breaking up, but what do they know?
Where did Noah get all those muscular, scantily-clad toilers to work on the Ark? I thought it was just him and Shem, Ham, and Japheth? I didn’t know the Ark’s home port was Fire Island.
I recall at least 2 times in my life time in which the Ark was “discovered.”
Robinson says:
Only two times? Hey, it was “found” as recently as this year: Noah’s Ark Discovery: Competition Among Kooks.
Did nobody get Victoria’s Secret?
I don’t know why I even try!
Did nobody get Victoria’s Secret?
Yeah, we got it, but it wasn’t that funny. Sorry, man.
Doc Bill asks: “Did nobody get Victoria’s Secret?”
I got it, I got it. Whatdaya want, a gold star?
Whatdaya want, a gold star?
He’s lucky he doesn’t get a punch in the face for making us picture Queen Victoria in lingerie.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.republic.org.nz/files/images/431px-Queen_Victoria_-Golden_Jubilee_-3a_cropped.JPG&imgrefurl=http://www.republic.org.nz/node/863&h=600&w=431&sz=96&tbnid=XzKe0UubfGH3GM:&tbnh=265&tbnw=190&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvictoria%2Bqueen%2Bimages&zoom=1&q=victoria+queen+images&usg=__EBG9EKXBetRlIHviSW4ZSF5_tqc=&sa=X&ei=NiL3TK76IIOgsQPM2L3mAQ&ved=0CBkQ9QEwAA
Thanks a lot, Doc Bill. I WAS going to let it pass by in silence, but you HAD to bring it back up.
*sigh*
Why, gawd? WHY???????????????
Ok that was a response to the silliness in the OP, but it may as well apply to the other silliness here.
😛
Gabriel Hanna says,
“Well, it’s our own fault, and not a volcano or a meteor or some such.”
Not yet, anyway.
LRA, after looking at your avatar, all I can say is, “What’s a girl like you doing in a joint like this?”
And Doc Bill, your Victoria’s secret gag was a little better than Ed’s joke about de Nile, but not much.
Ed, you should be ashamed of yourself. Better watch out — the SC may banish you from his blog.
“LRA, after looking at your avatar, all I can say is, “What’s a girl like you doing in a joint like this?””
Don’t you mean, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a joint like this?”
LOL!
Maybe I’m not nice enough…
😛
As there is no way of asking questions at AiG…….. Where will they get the Gopher wood? (Will they just gopher it?)
You cant build a Noahs Ark that would float, or withstand any form of wave, thanks to a little bit of wooden boat building maths called the Square Root Rule. That is a mathmatical relationship between a wooden boats length, width and thickness of the hull wall required to maintain structural integrity.
Atlantis is now widely accepted by archaeologists to be Santorini, and the Atlantean culture Platos take on what we call the Minoan culture, wiped out when Santorini erupted. So we have “found” and excavated it already.
As to the Ark of the Covenant…well as Israeli archaeologists have now conclusively proved that the stories in the Old Testament are all lies, there was no Exodus, no Joshua, etc etc then the answer is it doesnt and never did exist. That archaeology also serves to establish there was no Moses, no flood, and no Ark…..its a story plagarised from an earlier Assyrian one with extra added God and fire and brimstone.
Thats why I love archaeology…it not only explains where we come from, it also pisses in the face of religion on a regular basis.
LRA says:
The real question is: What’s a nice joint like this doing with a girl like you?
According to their website, the Ark Encounter will recreate the “life and times” of Noah in a period village with people in costumes etc. Since those people were so wicked that god flooded the world to kill them all, what sorts of activities will they be performing? What kinds of souvenirs will they be selling? What sorts of beverages will they be offering? What sorts of permits will this park need?
retiredsciguy – I have a difficult time resisting bad puns. The first step is to admit it, and not continue to be in …
“The real question is: What’s a nice joint like this doing with a girl like you?”
LOL! Yes, I suppose it is quite scandalous given my elitist-socialist-liberal-commie-pinko-joo-tree-hugging-godless-hippie-crap leanings and all…
ps. My college boyfriend used to call Victoria’s Secret “Victoria’s Story”. He said it wasn’t a secret if everyone knew about it.
😀
Ed, I’m so glad you put the ellipsis in there (“The first step is to admit it, and not continue to be in …”), especially after reading this from Adey: “Where will they get the Gopher wood? (Will they just gopher it?)”.