Amazing.The Earth is flat after all

Malbec said:
Absolutely brilliant .
I wonder if anybody has thought of that before ?
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Yes, lots of people. That's why it was never actually thought the earth was flat until it was relatively recently added to history books to make our ancestors look stupid.

And as it turns out, stupidity is something ageless, hence some people started believing it because they have some weird need to 'know the inside scoop'. Sad, but true.
 
Malbec said:
Better to be a General than a Jobsworth .
Better to think decisively and with a strong , broad brush than to be bogged down with detail .
There have always been and always will be the need for clerks and those who derive gratification from dotting and crossing .Probably because they are very dotty themselves and cross with life for making them so boring .
You see where I am going .
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Yes you are the person who cleans up after the person who cleans up after the clerks and the generals.

You keep trying to pretend you are something great but always fall so short.....
 
Lukraak_Sisser said:
Yes, lots of people. That's why it was never actually thought the earth was flat until it was relatively recently added to history books to make our ancestors look stupid.

And as it turns out, stupidity is something ageless, hence some people started believing it because they have some weird need to 'know the inside scoop'. Sad, but true.
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In most cases yes that is true but some cultures didn't develop the idea of a spherical world until quite late, some not until they encountered Europeans.
 
NoahFence said:
When we fly at altitude, we're high enough to see the curve of the earth.

/thread
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I see someone has never been to the flat earth society forum. The sun shines a circle of light on the earth and you are looking at the curved edge of the illuminated part.
 
Malbec said:
Better to be a General than a Jobsworth .
Better to think decisively and with a strong , broad brush than to be bogged down with detail .
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Better still to get your facts right and be correct.

Malbec said:
There have always been and always will be the need for clerks and those who derive gratification from dotting and crossing .Probably because they are very dotty themselves and cross with life for making them so boring .
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And yet there is no need for those who make "strong and decisive" statements that are so clearly wrong.

Malbec said:
You see where I am going .
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Down the garden path.
 
Malbec said:
Better to be a General than a Jobsworth .
Better to think decisively and with a strong , broad brush than to be bogged down with detail .
There have always been and always will be the need for clerks and those who derive gratification from dotting and crossing .Probably because they are very dotty themselves and cross with life for making them so boring .
You see where I am going .
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I do see. Certainly rebelling against the draconian rules of punctuation sets one apart as a great maverick challenging the very tenets that we have been spoon-fed since we were children.

But then you spouted that flat-earth drivel, and I'm sorry to say that--extra spaces or no--you're talking ignorant bull ****.
 
Malbec said:
Absolutely brilliant .
I wonder if anybody has thought of that before ?
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Oooooh. I see what you did there.

But now you have a problem. After being so...er... "pithy" about how this problem has been acknowledged since ancient Greece, you should probably have an answer for it.

Can you reconcile a flat Earth with this observable evidence?

(Little hint. If you expensive "private" school gave you a Classical Education that was boast worthy, you might have had an answer for this, instead of a hollow pithy remark. Just saying....)
 
Malbec said:
Absolutely brilliant .
I wonder if anybody has thought of that before ?
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You clearly didn't, General. Your broadbrush strategy and decisive thinking missed the boring little detail that any fool can look out of a plane window and actually see that the earth isn't flat. You haven't the time for such nitpicking little details, but you've plenty of time for self aggrandisement and to sneer.
 
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AdMan said:
I do see. Certainly rebelling against the draconian rules of punctuation sets one apart as a great maverick challenging the very tenets that we have been spoon-fed since we were children.

But then you spouted that flat-earth drivel, and I'm sorry to say that--extra spaces or no--you're talking ignorant bull ****.
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"I don't look at the details. I let other people look at the details. That way I don't have to know how wrong I am..."
 
Malbec said:
Better to be a General than a Jobsworth .
Better to think decisively and with a strong , broad brush than to be bogged down with detail .
There have always been and always will be the need for clerks and those who derive gratification from dotting and crossing .Probably because they are very dotty themselves and cross with life for making them so boring .
You see where I am going .
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I do, but I don't know what it's called in english...
 
Rincewind said:
The Earth is clearly flat - just like discworld! :)

After all, if it was spherical, all the antipodeans would fall off!

(assuming, of course, that Australasia actually exists...)
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Perhaps if I sent you some of our faster spiders, that might convince you?
 
Malbec said:
Better to be a General than a Jobsworth .
Better to think decisively and with a strong , broad brush than to be bogged down with detail .
There have always been and always will be the need for clerks and those who derive gratification from dotting and crossing .Probably because they are very dotty themselves and cross with life for making them so boring .
You see where I am going .
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General Page Fault?
 
Lukraak_Sisser said:
Yes, lots of people. That's why it was never actually thought the earth was flat until it was relatively recently added to history books to make our ancestors look stupid.

And as it turns out, stupidity is something ageless, hence some people started believing it because they have some weird need to 'know the inside scoop'. Sad, but true.
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The idea that most people thought that the earth was flat until Columbus proved it a sphere is most certainly a giant load of crap. Pretty much everyone of any learning in the European world accepted that the earth was a round ball in the late 15th century, and had thought so for a couple of millennia. But it's true that ancient civilizations like the Babylonians, Sumerians and Egyptians had a cosmology that represented the earth as a flat plain. But even then it was far different from the zetetic model of the modern day gnostic cult of flat-earthers. Back when the stories that eventually became the Tanakh were being invented, the commonly accepted state of the universe looked like this.

Sorry, can't get images to post for some reason.

And it's not that they were dumber than us, they just didn't have the information that later generations had. They still made excellent observations of the sun, moon, planets and stars. That's why they never imagined that the sun and moon circle above the surface of the earth, because unlike modern flat-earthers, they could do geometry.
 
Malbec said:
Absolutely brilliant .
I wonder if anybody has thought of that before ?
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Since you've returned, Malbec, here is a multiple choice question for you: Do you believe, based on the video you linked, that the earth is flat?
A) Yes, the evidence on the video is convincing.
B) Not sure, but the evidence is interesting.
C) I did, but the responses in this thread have convinced me otherwise. (No shame in that!)
D) No, I just wanted to see how other posters here would react to it.
E) Other (please state).
 
Meadmaker said:
The flat Earth, all explained with mathematical constructs.

But....no actual math.
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No, they do use math, just the wrong math, and used very badly. You will regularly see them using the calculation 'height in inches=8*(distance in miles^2)' when calculating the curve of the so called ball earth, it's an approximation which is close enough for purpose for relatively short distances but they insist on using it even for larger distances. Not only that though, they don't seem to understand what it is it calculates and think it's the height the top of the curve reaches relative to the cord between 2 points on a circle rather than the drop from the tangent plane. They tend to steer clear of things like trigonometry and geometry, either it's too difficult for them or it doesn't give them the answers they want.
 
I don't know about the rest of you but I've been to the FES forum....an..and I saw stuff....stupid stuff, lots of it.

Its hard to pin down the FEer, I was curious, when I heard of the Flat earth society. I thought it was just a club where the main purpose was to get away from your spouse for a while, or something. Then I checked out the forum, it is very hard to tell if they actually believe what they are saying. It appears to be just an exercise in debating, where you just pick a side and do your best to make a case. It seems like the believers are believers just to accent their personality with a bit of qwerky, its fun when people think your crazy, it gives you a power over others.

I suspect Malbec might fall into that category, I think there are true believers but they are rare.
 
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Malbec said:
Absolutely brilliant .
I wonder if anybody has thought of that before ?
Click to expand...
Many, but apparently not the person who made the video you so admiringly cited.

I do wonder about this. If you saw something very clear and obvious, that made sense according to all the conventional wisdom, that fit with the ideas of mainstream science and with your own perception, why would you give credence to a person who says his math contradicts it, unless you yourself understand the math? You can go up in a plane, and, like millions of other people, you can see the curvature of the earth. Which agrees with physics, astronauts' observations, and various wise people from Eratosthenes on.

A stranger on the internet just told me everyone else is wrong, and he claims he has some math. Oh me oh my, whatever shall I do?
 
Nakani said:
I see someone has never been to the flat earth society forum. The sun shines a circle of light on the earth and you are looking at the curved edge of the illuminated part.
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I understand that the light's curvature is caused by the rapid revolution of William of Occam's corpse about its axis.
 
jimbob said:
I understand that the light's curvature is caused by the rapid revolution of William of Occam's corpse about its axis.
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Could be, could be. That is one of the things I find funny about their logic, the majority of the belief comes from a religious standpoint. This makes me wonder why, an omnipotent god would construct some kind of Rube Goldberg world that requires so much intervention. Surely, there was an easier way.
 
Trebuchet said:
Not to mention that stellar parallax CAN be seen and measured if you have a good enough setup. And has been since 1838!
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GlennB said:
That's right. Don't they measure the distance of nearby Cepheid variables that way, leading to getting a handle on much greater stellar distances? My astronomy studies were so long ago that the constellations have changed shape since then :)
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... and further to that, the satellite Hipparcos which was launched in 1989, had a primary mission of measuring the parallaxes and proper motions of nearby stars. It can measure stellar parallaxes for stars as far away as 1,500 light years. Since 2013, the ESA's Gaia mission increased the accuracy of stellar parallax measurements down to about 10µ arc-seconds, pushing the measurable range out to about 35,000 light years.

Of course, if you're one of the nutbars who think that rockets don't work in space and satellites are fake, then its pretty moot.
 
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We all know NASA and other space agencies are part of the conspiracy to hide the true nature of the Flat Earth.
 
jimbob said:
If you play around with physical laws enough* and make them vary sufficiently, you probably could build a complicated edifice which fits the observations

Varying refractive index would be an obvious one - and I can imagine if you vary other things in the same way it might work. Why one would want to I am not sure.

*Including distance
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Well a toroidal planet could exist...
 
JayUtah said:
Which of course has bugger all to do with the billions of dollars yearly spent on private spacefaring, so all those engineering and insurance companies must be in on it as well.
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Of course they are. It's all part of the hoax, anything you can come up with is part of the hoax if it's needed.
You know this.
 
RogueKitten said:
Someone who claims the earth is flat is only demonstrating that they've never traveled far from home. You can literally see the curvature of the earth from airplanes or boats.
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In 1987 I was very fortunate to have been a passenger on the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (a modified Lockheed C-141 Starlifter fitted with a 90 cm telescope) when it was on one of its flights out of Christchurch to observe the Supernova 1987a.

The KAO flew higher than most commercial airliners (often up to 45,000 feet*) and because it flew on clear, crisp nights over the Southern Ocean, the "seeing" was just extraordinary. With that altitude, and the panoramic view from the cockpit, the curvature of the Earth was very easy to see in the twilight before the observing runs actually started.

* plane spotters will notice that this is above the C141's service ceiling of 41,000ft. The KAO was a highly modified C-141, rated for the higher altitude

http://science.nasa.gov/missions/kao/
 
I stopped the video at six seconds to read the caption (which, as I discovered replaying it, doesn't match the spoken text). "[NASA and modern astronomy claim] Earth is ... suspended in infinite space."

No, there is no infinite space. One might argue the words were used metaphorically, but I don't think a scientist (unless he's changed careers to be a Public Guru of New Age Science, like Michio Kaku) would say that, because it's misleading, AND it's not true.

Double-checking, the video is 11 minutes - look how much time I've saved by not watching it!
 
benbradley said:
I stopped the video at six seconds to read the caption (which, as I discovered replaying it, doesn't match the spoken text). "[NASA and modern astronomy claim] Earth is ... suspended in infinite space."

No, there is no infinite space. One might argue the words were used metaphorically, but I don't think a scientist (unless he's changed careers to be a Public Guru of New Age Science, like Michio Kaku) would say that, because it's misleading, AND it's not true.

Double-checking, the video is 11 minutes - look how much time I've saved by not watching it!
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You missed great opportunity to educate yourself.
 
Oh my that film was a serious example of stupid. Wish I could get that time back.
 
Malbec said:
Better to be a General than a Jobsworth .
Better to think decisively and with a strong , broad brush than to be bogged down with detail .
There have always been and always will be the need for clerks and those who derive gratification from dotting and crossing .Probably because they are very dotty themselves and cross with life for making them so boring .
You see where I am going .
Click to expand...

Ozzy Osbourne a wrote a song about going there..
Mental wounds not healing
Who and what's to blame
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train
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Hans said:
Oh my that film was a serious example of stupid. Wish I could get that time back.
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Yep, froot-loopery of the worse kind. There are three enormous holes in his explanation.

1. The vanishing point. If the Earth really is flat, the vanishing point of the observer's point of view is at the observer's eye height above the ground. If the observer is six feet tall, the vanishing point is six feet above ground level. If the observer is on top of a 10,000 foot mountain, the vanishing point is 10,000 feet above ground level. The video shows the sun BELOW his vanishing point (6pm), something that he himself implies is impossible, then he ignores the fact that his diagram shows exactly that.

2. The apparent diameter of the Sun. If the Earth really is flat, and the sun really is 3,000 miles above the surface and travels parallel to the Earth's surface, then it would appear to get smaller as it got further away from the observer. The difference would be dramatic - at twice the distance, the Sun would be half the apparent size it is overhead. By the time the Sun reached the horizon, it would appear little more than a small spot of bright light.

3. Relative angular velocity of the Sun. The Sun tracks across the sky at a rate of 1° every 4 min (15°/hr). This is an undeniable, observable fact. Taking the starting point as the Sun overhead the observer, if the Sun was travelling at a constant speed on a flat Earth, it would appear to get slower and slower as it approached the horizon. The only way to reconcile this with the ob served facts is for the Sun to accelerate as it approaches the horizon.... and it would never get there because in order to do so, it speed would need to reach infinity.
 
I don't think those videos needs any debunking. They need praise, if anything, and you guys just don't follow. You are hopelessly locked in your debunking paradigms, unable to just enjoy nice things.
 
Dr.Sid said:
I don't think those videos needs any debunking. They need praise, if anything, and you guys just don't follow. You are hopelessly locked in your debunking paradigms, unable to just enjoy nice things.
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So Dr. Sid your suggestion is we should praise bad science, incredibility bad logic and idiocy and mediocre presentation making?

Why - remember that crap isn't an 'art' piece like say Lord of Rings which is full of bad science but we appreciate it as ar &, fantasy. The video above is someone saying they believe that.
 
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