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<\/a> <\/p>\nThe Book of Jonah ends<\/a> (rather perplexingly) with the phrase \u201cand also much cattle\u201d. The best suggestion I\u2019ve heard to explain this \u201copen-ended ending\u201d is that God is essentially asking Jonah, who may not be able to have compassion for human<\/em> inhabitants of Nineveh, to appreciate all the good hamburger meat<\/em> that will be destroyed if God wipes out Nineveh.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s face it: who wouldn\u2019t allow their enemies to be spared if it was the only way to make sure you didn\u2019t also wipe out the best hamburgers available in the process? <\/p><\/div>\n That doesn\u2019t seem to me implausible \u2013 in fact, we might define the intelligence of extraterrestrial civilizations in terms of the distance they are willing to travel in order to obtain the ingredients for making the best hamburgers.<\/p>\n Now for some links to the Bible (alas, mostly without burgers) around the blogosphere:<\/p>\n Bob Cornwall asks which Bible \u201cBible-believers\u201d believe<\/a>. In the process, he mentions one that renders \u201cPeter\u201d with its more precise English equivalent: Rocky.<\/p>\n Barry Taylor talks about the dark side of the Bible<\/a>.<\/p>\n Doug Mangum has a post on archaeology and the Exodus in the news<\/a> (and those who know the Exodus story will know that it does<\/em> involve the destruction of good hamburger meat\u2026sob).<\/p>\n Mentioning burgers in talking about the Bible makes it seem more fun, doesn\u2019t it? Today I got students to talk about movies they had seen \u201ctwice\u201d \u2013 the original and a remake \u2013 as a lead into talking about Chronicles. Fun can change our perspective, as Volkswagen found in its \u201cfun theory\u201d (HT Richard Beck<\/a>):<\/p>\n<\/a>On a related note, a friend of mine sent me a link to an article about belief in the paranormal, together with the picture on the left. In the process, he mentioned the idea that there might be supposedly intelligent beings who would travel 10,000 light years just to abduct farm animals.<\/p>\n