#11798: DarkSyde — 12/23  at  01:37 PM
Hell that's more depressing to me than the Dickensian thing I wrote. The Nat'l Geo reaches millions. Besides, a friend of mine who got back from Iraq this year told me that gentiles and visitors can easily find merchants on the streets of any busy Bahgdad market willing to sell them genuine peices of Noah's Ark. No climbing into the mountains or anything.

#11799: — 12/23  at  01:44 PM
Agreed, this is gross buffoonery, but ANY expedition, no matter how silly, is worth reporting—even if it's to say that "Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center is mounting an expedition to Mississippi to prove that every single plantation owner had children by his slaves." In my continuing crusade to find historical foundations for middle-eastern oral/written traditions, I think there was a dude on a boat during what was obviously a truly great flood. There is zero evidence that flood waters did anything more than cover floodplanes and fill in the Black Sea, but there could still be a vessel(s) of some sort, although wherever it landed it would have been scavenged for building materials or firewood.

#11800: paperwight — 12/23  at  01:45 PM
I imagine one can also buy fragments of the true cross. Or maybe they're finally out, given that all of the fragments of the true cross sold to pilgrims over the years probably stack up to enough wood to have built the ark.

#11801: Jan Theodore Galkowski — 12/23  at  01:45 PM
So, why wasn't Nat'l Geo interested enough to ask for machine readable copies of said satellite images, or at least geographic coordinates of where this supposedly was seen, along with time?

Did they miss the opportunity to ask why this was only found now? Or is that because of the effects of highly politicized glacier melt for which there is no evidence?

Does Nat'l Geo have a more sophisticated version of this in their full-up magazine? Or is this story destined to be a purely pediatric affliction?

#11802: — 12/23  at  01:48 PM
Recommended (good old-fashioned) reading: Ceram's "Gods, Graves and Scholars". Also, anything on Gilgamesh-based folk tales.

#11804: qubit — 12/23  at  01:56 PM

Agreed, this is gross buffoonery, but ANY expedition, no matter how silly, is worth reporting

Yes, it should be reported somewhere, but should every PR move by funamentalists be peddled to children as science? If the Flat Earth Society claimed to be mounting an expedition to the edge of the Earth, do you think National Geographic Kids should tell children that it's honest, credible research?

#11806: — 12/23  at  01:59 PM
How silly. The image is obviously that of Noah's lost B-58 Hustler. That's the one he used to drop the A-bomb on some guys who built their own ark, the one they loaded two of every dinosaur on.

#11807: qubit — 12/23  at  01:59 PM
That should read "fundamentalists"... I can't type.

#11808: — 12/23  at  02:02 PM
http://www.aviation-history.com/convair/b58.html
Just in case you doubt me. This is proof that Noah had a B-58 years before the US government revealed it to the world.

#11809: — 12/23  at  02:03 PM
google search: "ARTICLE_ID=38220"

<object," McGivern told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington.</em>

Yeah, I'll bet. I smell a scam, folks.

#11810: DarkSyde — 12/23  at  02:07 PM
Mark Only a true Wings Disc Channel buff would know that looks like a B-58 Hustler. You're busted!

#11811: — 12/23  at  02:07 PM
That should read: "These new photos unequivocally show a man made object," McGivern told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington.

Yeah, uh huh.

#11812: — 12/23  at  02:23 PM
DS, I'm just an old model builder. When I was a kid, you could predict my answer to the question "What do you want for your birthday/Christmas?" It was always, "A model." And how cool does a B-58 look? Especially for a half-century-old design. A half a century! It just beats the heck out of me how Convair managed to design one just like Noah built. Convergent evolution, or evidence for intelligent design?

#11814: Chloe — 12/23  at  03:18 PM
Hmmm, my uncle told me about the cheap DVDs of movies not yet released on DVD, that can be purchased on the streets of Baghdad. But he never mentioned Noah's Ark. haha. I'll have to ask him about that.

If the Flat Earth Society claimed to be mounting an expedition to the edge of the Earth, do you think National Geographic Kids should tell children that it’s honest, credible research?

That would be an incredibly long expedition, requiring years of coverage. haha!!! ;)

Anyway, I lost faith in National Geographic because of their Evolution article...
Not the one in the print magazine, the one on the web.
The problem best described here:
the nonist - ape shit:
"anyhow, i went to their website to post the story for my compatriots here (the issue was actually pretty good) only to find that their firm stance on the issue was in fact not very firm. below a snippet of the article they presented a bunch of links for related reading, over half of which are intelligent design / creationist dookie, or centered on “the controversy.” kind of undermines the giant “no” doesn’t it? add to this the fact that they have set up a forum specifically to debate evolution and the “set the record straight” nature of their issue is essentially nullified."

#11817: Wayne — 12/23  at  03:46 PM
The Face on Mars has landed.

#11819: John McKay — 12/23  at  04:07 PM
Hmmm. This is dated last May. Didn't You and I both blog about it at the time? By the way, looks like he never made the trip. The Turkish government refused his visa application (http://starbulletin.com/2004/09/03/news/story9.html). Ararat is at the confluence of the Turkish,Iranian, and Armenian borders and has been a closed military zone since the 50's. It would be nice if they would let some climbers and camera crews in to look at that rock formation and put an end to this nonsense once and for all.

#11820: — 12/23  at  04:14 PM
Come now, pz. Archaeologists use religious mythology all the time to identify and seek out lost civilizations and their artifacts, and it is scientifically irrelevant whether or not they personally subscribe to the mythology in question. If these particular archaeologists happen to be Christians, that's no reason to scream bloody murder and cancel your National Geographic subscription! After all, what kind of science periodical would knuckle under to someone who demands, on the strength of sheer personal prejudice, that they suppress reportage on the archeological investigations of religiously committed scientists, thus demonstrating to children and adults alike that science defers to mere opinion? Shame on you!

#11821: — 12/23  at  04:34 PM
This is not archaeology, unless it's very well camouflaged. Searching satellite imagery for evidence of Noah's ark is like searching imagery of Mars for evidence of alien civilizations (thanks, Wayne).

#11822: — 12/23  at  04:39 PM
Somewhat comparably irritating is this CNN article about the discovery of stone jars at Cana: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/12/21/jesus.miracle.ap/

The article contains this statement:

"Christian theologians attach great significance to the water-to-wine miracle at Cana.

The act was not only Jesus's first miracle, but it also came at a crucial point in the early days of his public ministry -- when his reputation was growing, he had just selected his disciples and was under pressure to demonstrate his divinity."

The description of miracles as if they actually happened (without even a caveat clause (e.g. "as devout Christians believe," or some such thing)) is acutely annoying to me. Also, the bland assumption that the historical Jesus claimed divinity--very doubtful, but treated as simple fact here. I really cannot stand journalists.

#11823: — 12/23  at  05:06 PM

Neurode wrote:
Archaeologists use religious mythology all the time to identify and seek out lost civilizations and their artifacts

Er... Are you sure you haven't confused understanding archaeology with an evening in watching Indiana Jones?

#11826: — 12/23  at  06:07 PM
"Er… Are you sure you haven’t confused understanding archaeology with an evening in watching Indiana Jones?"

Very well then. Tigerbear, no doubt an amateur or professional archaeologist with a deep understanding of archaeological methods, may be just the right person to explain to everybody why all real-life archaeologists, unlike Indiana Jones, roundly ignore religious mythology in their investigations. I know that I, for one, very much want to dispel my longstanding confusion on this point, of which suprisingly few archaeology buffs have so much as an inkling.

I hereby yield the podium to tigerbear.

#11827: — 12/23  at  06:31 PM
Those fools... Don't they know that Noah's Ark is in Wisconsin.

http://www.noahsarkwaterpark.com/

#11828: Ben — 12/23  at  06:36 PM
I imagine one can also buy fragments of the true cross.

I'm sure Ned Flanders will be more than happy to tell you where he got his bit which saved him from getting killed by Mafia assassins with poor aim.

Wasn't this expedition supposed to be completed, like, 6 months ago?

#11831: Richard Chappell — 12/23  at  07:00 PM
National Geographic later exposed the ark "expedition" as a publicity stunt.

BTW, the Church of Critical Thinking has been keeping an eye on this issue for some time.

#11836: Les Lane — 12/23  at  11:51 PM
What's the standard error on the "98%?"