What, are you suggesting she go to the wizard to get herself a brain? So that she could unravel ev’ry riddle, for any individ’le? So she would not be just a nuffin’, her head all full of stuffin’?
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure she does plenty of conferring with the flowers and consulting with the rain already…
Naaah; that just proves that the gubmint has modified your memory, making you part of the conspiracy. Oh, the horror! :eek:
If I were at home, I’d link to a Skittles commercial showing just how dangerous it can be to mess around with rainbows.
I’m somewhat appalled, but not completely. People don’t look up and notice things.
I’m constantly pointing out sundogs (parhelia)* to people. They’re about ten times as frequentl as (non-sprinkler-induced) rainbows in the sky, but people don’t notice them. In fact, sometimes they don’t notice them when they’re lookking right at them.
Just take that lack of awareness and combine with a bit of Conspiracy Theory mindset, and this is what you get.
*Sun dog - Wikipedia
While we’re on ridiculous theories fostered by ignorance, I once asked a neighbor of mine why she turned her TV to the wall when she wasn’t watching it. She said she had heard that the government was able to see into your room even when it was turned off.
And she was sane otherwise; the technical hurdles of such a thing happening 30 years ago just didn’t occur to her. And why would they? What does the average TV viewer know about such matters?
Or, the water is turning GAY!!! :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
You should post way more often!
It has a very strong scriptural base, one Rabbi Dr. Scharfman used to point out to me in the Hebrew bible while I followed along in the English one. From Genesis:
9:12 And God said [to Noah], This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
9:13 I do set my bow [rainbow] in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
9:14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud…
Dr. Scharfman is no longer with us, but when I used to work for his organization, he frequently would exclaim, “I love science!”, which I took as a cue to start a discussion about it, and he loved to debate anyone on the fine points of Jewish thought. Once, using Noah’s “first rainbow” story, I asked him, since the light from stars millions of lightyears away can now be split by a prism when it arrives on Earth, but if light before Noah could not be, then all light, from all stars, simultaneously changed its nature at the same time while in transit, a few thousand years ago.
After much thought, Dr. Scharfman said, “That must have been what happened. That’s what God tells us, so it must be so.”
And while I grant you that the [English version of the] biblical story might be nitpicked to say that it doesn’t claim that there never was a rainbow ever before the “covenant” event, that is indeed how Dr. Scharfman said it was interpreted by conventional Jewish thought, and I consider him a pretty high authority on such theological matters.
Why was she so uncurious she didn’t work out for herself why it couldn’t be the case? Why did she not think up ways it could be true and realize they were all impossible or borderline impossible? I’m always amazed at how lacking in curiosity some people are. What is their threshold? At what point do they say ‘This statement is so strange I have to verify it for myself, or at least think out the implications’?
I only see it saying that the rainbow is now the sign of the convenant, and no reference to weather they where previous rainbows or not, but I don’t speak or read Hebrew and can also see things can be lost in translation.
As I said, the passage can be nitpicked, so we will have to wait for our biblical scholars to address the matter, and I’m sure they’ll be along soon. But my protestant upbringing gave the same interpretation as the Rabbi – that the rainbow was invented by God so that everytime we saw one we would remember his promise to us. Makes no sense if the rainbow was always there and God just assigned a new meaning to it, does it?
Also remember the likely source of the story (to all but hard fundamentalists) is either folk legend or a fanciful, ancient storyteller. Whoever told it first probably didn’t have any knowledge of what a rainbow was, and it sounded logical to him. Or at least as logical as woman being created out of a man’s rib or the universe created in 6 days.
I think we must consider the difference between someone who has even a smattering of knowledge about technology and one who is 99% in the dark about how things work. To the abysmally ignorant who doesn’t know how a TV works, it’s not too much of a jump to say that it can act as a camera and transmitter. It’s only when you learn more about the process that you see how difficult and unlikely it would be, especially when cost is considered.
I’m with you here: “At what point do they say ‘This statement is so strange I have to verify it for myself, or at least think out the implications’?” – but that is a thought process that you & I find natural, but many don’t. Their mind just doesn’t work that way; it goes in a different direction, and maybe that explains the prevalence of so many conspiracy theories. Besides, you have to have a minimal knowledge of physics before it looks “strange”, and obviously this women doesn’t. (Or could she be whooshing us?)
I was only able to watch half of that. It was painful.
Oh. My. God. Just…what a flipping moron! However, she did give me a good laugh this morning!
“Sundog”… Has a good ring to it! My sister and I used to call them “snowbows” because it seemed a logical fit with “rainbows”.
I guess Bush still has barely enough time to initiate the “The No Adult Left Behind Program.”
Save her, Dubya.