6 November 2013

Pet care after the Rapture

Yesterday, I became aware of an organization called After the Rapture Pet Care. They state [underlining is mine]
As the Apostle Paul describes in Thessalonians [...], at some point in the future Jesus will come in the air, catch up the Church from the earth, and then return to heaven with the Church. This is known as the Rapture and it will be glorious. But what of our pets? Who will take care of our pets when we’re gone?
Carol began recruiting other non-Christian animal lovers nationwide to volunteer to take care of left-behind pets if the Rapture occurs.

I believe we’ve come up with a plan that is affordable, unique, Biblical and practical.

Our non-Christian administrators will activate our rescue plan.
I found it so hilarious, that I wrote a message for them on their site. It was immediately removed (this is called Free Speech as practiced by Christians). My message went like this:

This is funny from all points of view, and so typical of Christian Americans. As Christians (Christian fundamentalists, in fact), you believe that this Rapture will happen ... tomorrow. (It does not occur to you it may happen in 12 thousand years.) You also believe that you will go to heaven whereas the others, including your pets, will remain on the earth. (How stupid can that be?) As Americans, you believe that money will solve everything. (It doesn't occur to you that money may be worth nothing in 12 thousand years, not does it occur to you that, maybe, just maybe, the Rapture will destroy the monetary balance on the planet.) Oh, yes, you also believe that it is dollars that will be traded after the Rapture. But, as someone of your kin said, "blessed are the poor in spirit."

It takes a low intelligence person to believe in this literal intepretation of the Rapture. But it takes an abysmally low intelligence person to think that post-Rapture monetary system is inevitable. I don't know if these people think of god as the god of the bible or as this god.

P.S. They are not the only ones. Here are a couple of other post-rapture pet-care organizations:
eternal-earthbound-pets.com
postrapturepetcare.com/
 

14 comments:

  1. From what I understand, all of those were parody websites?

    However, I'm also not sure why taking the rapture literally is any more ridiculous from some "objective" perspective than any other part of main-line Christian doctrine.

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  2. Hm, those who pointed the sites to me, and from my quick look at them, I didn't spot the parody. Maybe I lack sense of humour (I'm often accused of it.)

    As for your second remark, I agree.

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  3. Yeah, I saw that service a few years ago. I think it is a joke too. But no matter. It certainly is a joke.

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  4. That was a lovely parody site on religion. If you want to contrast this by a parody on science, I feel I have to recommend this lunch restaurant:

    http://primaten.org/filosofi/
    http://primaten.org/filosofi/var-evolution/

    For 100 SEK, you get the most green salad you have ever seen, and it even contains olives, circles of onion and small cherry tomatoes. And the more you pay in the restaurant, the even less carbohydrates you get and the salad will be just like picked from the ground in the times before the invention of the wheel -- if you are lucky, not even washed!

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  5. Is the restaurant a parody too, or is it real? Also, I doubt they have olives in the salad. No restaurant in Uppsala serves olives. They serve canned, fake, olives.

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. You wrote something about getting diarrhoea after eating in that restaurant. But you didn't answer my quests. Why did you remove the comment?

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  8. Could it be that I removed the comments because I was spontaneous when writing it and one minute after concluded it was highly inappropriate to write something this frank on a blog? :)

    But answer is that their olives are amazing. So I went bought some similar ones in Ica Kvarnen. The restaurant is a real parody.

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  9. Do not worry about frankness. Frankness is the cornerstone of democracy. People who value freedom of expression and thought ought to be frank, provided their frankness is supported by evidence. Please read the last paragraph of my posting
    http://randomprocessed.blogspot.se/2011/03/why-are-people-afraid-to-ask.html
    regarding the Kantian dictum.

    As for olives, I doubt it that ICA has real olives. They heave canned ones, most likely pitted. If you think that canned or pitted olives are good, then you'd like the real thing much better. You can find real olives only in very few places in Sweden. One of them is Mykonos Livs, Hjalmar Brantingsgatan 1, 753 27 Uppsala. Try Kalamata type (cured in vinegar), or Thassos type (sundried in salt). The later are better, in my opinion. They need to be de-salted, lightly re-salted, and stored in a jar mixed with olive oil, oregano, a pinch of thyme, and crushed pepper. Pitted olives lose their flavour and are a poor substitute of the real thing.

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  10. Thank you for the olive address, I will try them!

    Interesting blog entry. On the two last conferences, I opposed to the need of a "discussion session" at the end of each day and suggested an alternative. Why? Well, in my field, these discussions happen as they invite e.g. two top researchers to the podium, who will get selected (relevant) questions from a third top researcher. Then they will answer these questions in front 50-500 people. What do we get in such case? Well, we let authorities influence our current views on scientific questions -- naturally, it's a hen and the egg question, whether the current view didn't create the authority, or the authority didn't create the current view. Young people rarely contribute to the discussion and usually are silent. If you are young and new and have a question that relates to the fundamental principles (*why* can we assume this or that, *why* are we so certain this is true or needed? what are the proofs that it isn't the other way around, no matter how mad it sounds?) you very often you feel too shy to ask.

    In order to make a person to open his/her mind, you must (often) let them hide behind a mask -- this is why in democratic voting we so often have anonymous voting processes. I suggested (with no success), that the questions for the discussion session should not be composed by a chairman, but be assembled during the conference by letting undergraduates, PhD students and postdocs writing all their secret questions and thoughts, and those that were not directly personally offending (but simply questions related to topic in science) should by random be selected on spot. *Then*, I think we would be able to fight scientific views imposed by authority and question the most fragile fundamental principles assumed in the topic.

    My idea got ignored.

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  11. Of course, this is called politics. Nobody said that expressing your opinion once will work. Both Academia and a Nation are governed by an elite, supposedly democratically elected, but cliques exist. Nobody stops you from expressing your views, as long as they are rational and are supported by evidence. But nobody guarantees they'll be taken into account immediately. This needs work. The larger the number of people who can think freely, the better it is. The biggest fear of people in power is educating free thinkers. This is why, for instance, in Sweden, most people read Expressen and Aftonbladet. They serve the interests of those who want to keep people's intellect low. At the same time, people who read those papers are convinced they are reading the news.

    Sapere Aude is the motto of the enlightenment. Ask around and find out how many people, nowadays, now this or understand its meaning, or have even contemplated about it. I bet you won't find many.

    [In Sweden, if you mention "Upplysning" (Enlightenment) most people hear "Belysning" and their mind goes to IKEA.]

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T H E B O T T O M L I N E

What measure theory is about

It's about counting, but when things get too large.
Put otherwise, it's about addition of positive numbers, but when these numbers are far too many.

The principle of dynamic programming

max_{x,y} [f(x) + g(x,y)] = max_x [f(x) + max_y g(x,y)]

The bottom line

Nuestras horas son minutos cuando esperamos saber y siglos cuando sabemos lo que se puede aprender.
(Our hours are minutes when we wait to learn and centuries when we know what is to be learnt.) --António Machado

Αγεωμέτρητος μηδείς εισίτω.
(Those who do not know geometry may not enter.) --Plato

Sapere Aude! Habe Muth, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!
(Dare to know! Have courage to use your own reason!) --Kant