Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Title: “I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience

I have a friend who with her sister went on a trek on horse back from village to village in Mongolia last year. The pictures and her stories were fascinating to say the least. The NG film clip was quite interesting. In reality the Mongolian culture is not our culture. The Mongolian culture is much the same as it was 500 years ago. The Mongolian people are still semi-nomadic. The horse is still highly prized by the people and it is important for their survival.

I am not going to make any judgments on the "race across Mongolia" since I don't know enough to make such judgments. However, it may be that we are trying to impose our cultural values onto a society with a much different set of cultural values. Historically we Americans (and Europeans also) have been quite willing to do that - probably too much so.

I remember someone commenting about a picture of right after the US Special Forces went into Afghanistan of a Special Ops guy on horse back with a group of friendly Afghanistan mantilla riding across the desert looking for the bad guys.  The comment was I sure hope "they are not putting these horses at risk." Afghanistan had been a war zone since the Soviet invasion in the early '80. People had been getting killed from that point on by one war lord or another, foreign military or foreign intelligence service. Boys were getting kidnapped and put into forced labor or worse given a gun and trained to kill. Girls kidnapped and sold into sex slave trade, etc. All things - the plight of the humans and the plight of the horse, etc. - need to but in the proper perspective. Could that be the case in Mongolia?

Truman

Melissa Margetts wrote:

Here is a cool little National Geographic clip of the Naadam horses and child racers at the festival.The oldest riders are 10 years old and they race for 30 km.(18 miles) Imagine Mongol Rally riders six times heavier, many with a race-brain, riding over 1,000km. They certainly are TOUGH. I hope they're ALL TOUGH ENOUGH.

--

“I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.” Carl Sagan