Buddies

There are some friendships where you look at the two people involved and say "I don't know how they became or are still friends." Then there are the ones where you say "Yeah, those two assholes deserve each other. I get it." This is a tale about the latter. This is a tale about Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-Il, and a crateload of baby animals that are probably dead already.

Two by two, they were caught and lined up as an extravagant gift from one despotic regime to another.

According to conservationists, the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, will send a modern-day ark – containing pairs of giraffes, zebras, baby elephants and other wild animals taken from a national park – to a zoo in North Korea.

That's right, in order to continue their decades long friendship, Mugabe looted his national parks to send baby animals -including rare and endangered rhinos- to the North Korean dictator/shriveled husk of beef jerky, unaware that this action would cause said animals to die. Or he may be completely aware that the animals would die. Mugabe is after all, and immensely crooked and evil prick.

This is not the first time Mugabe has done this.

Zoo conditions in North Korea, which is isolated by most world nations, did not meet international standards, he said. Two rhinos, a male called Zimbo and a female called Zimba, given to Kim by Mugabe in the 80s, died only a few months after their relocation.

What did Mugabe get from Kim for this first gift? A trained brigade of Zimbabwean soldiers equipped them with tanks and armored personnel carriers... who went on to quash an uprising and slaughter 20,000 civilians. I wonder if Kim will be able to spare a kill squad in return this time? Mugabe does have a free press to deal with now.

Who knows, maybe Kim Jong-Il just wants to eat the elephants and rhinos. That is what he did when he was sent 12 giant rabbits for breeding and farming purposes. He. Ate. Giant. Rabbits. Maybe Kimbo just wants a really exotic BBQ for the World Cup. It is North Korea's first appearance since 1966.

So let us take time out of our day to take note of the special animal killing, crazy ark sending, death squad training, insane friendship of Robert Mugabe and Kim Jong-Il. The worst pen pals ever.

Important science about the Bible

Noah's Ark has been found! Hold on. Some bits of old wood and rope on a mountain have been found! Isn't it obvious that it's related to a biblical story about a giant boat that held two of every animal on earth?

Noah's Ark has been found atop a mountain in Turkey, a team of Turkish and Chinese evangelical explorers said Monday, April 26.

The 15-person team claims to have recovered fragments of wood and pieces of rope from a structure on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey that carbon dating has put at 4,800 years old, roughly coinciding with the time the biblical flood was said to have been occurred.
...
Yeung Wing-Cheung, a member of the team, told AFP, "It's not 100 percent that it is Noah's Ark but we think it is 99.9 percent that this is it."

Obviously. You found some wood, but the real clincher was the rope. I mean doesn't that just cinch it? How could anyone deny it? Sure, the "ark" doesn't look big enough to hold two of every hamster, let alone two elephants... and every other species on earth, but I'm sure a little biblical interpretation allows for the divine gift of a shrink ray. Plus, if this ark was found way up on a mountain are we supposed to believe that two of every animal scaled 12,000 feet down a rocky precipice after it settled up there post-flood? Yes? Ok then.

I'm not sure about evangelicals using carbon dating to scan the wood though. Maybe Chinese and Turkish evangelicals are different than American evangelicals, but I'm fairly sure they would burst into flame when coming into contact with such a concentrated form of science as a carbon dating machine. Plus, evangelicals don't seem to like carbon dating when it says things like "the earth has been around for more than 10,000 years", so why would they use it on Noah's Ark? Or is 10,000 years right around the point where carbon dating gets wonky because it's... interfluxing... with the... God... barrier? Or does He tamper with all carbon dating machines to make them date beyond 10,000 years as part of His giant practical joke on humanity that involves Him burying dinosaur bones and making science seem so credible?

If only this article quoted an actual scientist...

Nicholas Purcell, a lecturer in Ancient History at Oxford University, called the claims "the usual nonsense," according to the Daily Mail.

"If floodwaters covered Eurasia 12,000 feet deep in 2,800 BC, how did the complex societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia, already many centuries old, keep right on regardless?" he said.

Oof, too scientific. Don't crush their hopes too hard there, Nick. Just say "It looks like that's pine wood, I'm fairly sure Noah would have made his ark out of teak" or something and tell them to "keep looking".