What’s the Matter with These People?

When I was a little boy, my aunts visited Yellowstone Park and brought back all these cool slides and souvenirs. But there are other souvenirs you can get that you can’t bring back with you… and you’d better not try.

In this video we see dudes from the East taking their toddlers to see Mr. Bison up close and personal. A same-day newscast reported a tourist from New Jersey getting gored because he got up too close to a bison and annoyed it. A 1,000-pound animal is not safely cheesed off.

Really, now–how close do you want to get to a wild bison who’s trying to eat? They’re not hyper-aggressive animals, but they do want their space. In fact, they injure many more tourists than grizzly bears, mountain lions, or other tourists do. That’s because people insist on bugging them.

Leave your toddler safely in the car.

 

Gloom and Doom Report: Yellowstone Volcano

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof: the world, and they that dwell therein…   –Psalm 24

Fortified by hymns and a bike ride, I return to my journalistic function. Wahoo.

Today we have scientists warning us that the volcano under Yellowstone Park, or some other big nasty, might blow sky-high in an eruption: “a major one that could kill millions and devastate the planet” ( http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/632054/Yellowstone-about-to-blow-1-in-10-chance-super-volcano-will-kill-millions ).

Global Warming gonna get us… no, it’s the ocean gonna get us… we’re all gonna die…

There have been some pretty terrible volcanic eruptions in the past–like Krakatoa, or the one that destroyed the Minoan civilization, and Vesuvius is always itching to wipe out a few more cities. But it is not in the nature of a volcanic eruption to “devastate the planet.” I mean, The Planet is pretty big, and even the biggest eruption, by comparison, is pretty small….

If Christians warn people that God’s wrath is nothing to trifle with, and that He just might order the land to spew us out, well, they all laugh at us, or even shake their fists and make faces at us.

But when “scientists” warn us that we’re doomed, we’re all supposed to take it seriously.

They’re always trying to scare us. I think it’s supposed to whip us into line. There’s absolutely nothing they can do to prevent the volcano under Yellowstone from erupting; but if this story gets repeated often enough, you can bet the house that somebody in Washington will move to set up a Dept. of Volcano Safety and demand we all pay higher taxes. Or it’s part of Climate Change, and we must all pay higher taxes.

Or, like, maybe we could stop provoking God’s wrath?

I dare any public figure to suggest that.