Wasting time..

A huge cyclone is about to hit the North Eastern coast of Australia, it's a very big storm and there are a lot of people in its path I hope they have made their preparations well and will be OK. I visited Cairns a few years ago it's a beautiful part of the world, with the forests and the reefs it's a veritable feast of natural wonders, however combinations of big oceans, warm water and a spinning planet means that from time to time there will be storms and particularly now that our climate is changing we can expect this kind of thing more often than previous generations experienced. Fortunately our predictive powers are significantly better than they used to be, as the satellite image above shows we can model these systems in computers and watch them forming and moving from above, all this technology helps to warn people of their approach sometimes days in advance, the fruits of rational minds and science saving lives. However, there are still those people out there who advocate less reliable survival strategies.

An organisation called "Operation Safe" put this piece out recently, it's titled "How to pray when disaster strikes" an eight point plan that lays out what magic words to mumble in the event that a category 5 storm is bearing down on you, one particularly stupid sentence summed up their delusions for me,

"Prayer always comes first – before we can even attempt to do our “little bit” we should make sure that we have called in the big guns"

If you find yourself in such a situation there are many strategies you can take that may increase your chances of surviving, I can safely say that praying isn't one of them. Run away, board up, get in your cellar, hoard fresh clean water, buy canned food, get medical supplies but please, please, please don't waste time mumbling to yourself, it may make you feel better but if you think it's going to help then natural selection will certainly chew you up and spit you out. Air molecules carrying Toyota pick-up trucks and coconut trees moving at 140mph couldn't care less that god is love.