DO YOU BELIEVE IN STUPID THEORIES? Part One                                     

        FLAT EARTH

         I am amused by the theory that says that our planet is really flat. The question of Earth's shape being a plane or disk goes back many centuries. Some of the  ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece that is until the classical period, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age  civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD), and China until the 17th century. Even some of the sailors on the sip navigated by Columbus were afraid that they would fall off the edge of Earth and disappear into space. Even today, there are fools who really believe that Earth is a disk and not a sphere.                                                                                                                                                           

      The original concept of a spherical Earth  had appeared in  Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), Aristotle provided evidence for the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds by around 330 BC. Parmenides in the 5th century stated that the Earth is spherical, and this view spread rapidly in the Greek world although most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC believed the flat Earth model. Knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on

      Early Christian beliefs mention a number of ideas about the shape of the Earth. Athenagoras, an eastern Christian writing around the year 175 AD said, "The world, being made spherical, is confined within the circles of heaven.”  If heaven doesn’t exist, then his theory isn’t valid.    

      Severian, the Bishop of Gabala who died in 498 AD wrote that the Earth is flat and the sun does not pass under it in the night, but "travels through the northern parts of Earth as if hidden by a wall. That belief is just as stupid as those other fools who believe that the world is flat.

      In the modern era, the pseudoscientific belief in a flat Earth has been expressed by a variety of individuals and groups.

       In 1956, Samuel Shenton set up the International Flat Earth Research better known as the Flat Earth Society from Dover, UK, as a direct descendant of the Universal Zetetic Society. This was just before the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik.  This fool responded, "Would sailing round the Isle of Wight prove that it were spherical? It is just the same for those satellites."

         His primary aim was to reach children before they were convinced that Earth was really spherical. Despite plenty of publicity, the space race naturally eroded Shenton's support in Britain.  

      In 1972 Shenton's role was taken over by Charles K. Johnson, a correspondent from California, US. He incorporated the Flat Earth Society and steadily built up the membership to about 3,000. He spent years examining the studies of flat and round Earth theories and proposed evidence of a conspiracy against flat Earth by stating that the idea of a spinning globe is only a conspiracy of error that Moses, Columbus, and FDR all fought" His article was published in the magazine Science Digest, 1980. It goes on to state, "If it is a sphere, then the surface of a large body of water must be curved. His followers claimed that they checked the surfaces of  Lake Tahoe  and the Salton Sea without detecting any curvature in any of them. That conclusion has to be one of the stupidest conclusions in history. The Society declined in membership in the 1990s following a fire at its headquarters in California and the death of Johnson in 2001

        Organizations skeptical of fringe beliefs have occasionally performed tests to demonstrate the local curvature of the Earth. One of these, conducted by members of the Independent Investigations Group, at the Salton Sea on June 10, 2018, was attended also by supporters of there being a flat Earth and the encounter between the two groups was recorded by the National Geographic Explorer. This experiment successfully demonstrated the curvature of the earth via the disappearance over distance of boat-based and shore-based targets.

         There is one sure way that modern-day Flat Earth believers can be shown  that Earth is a sphere is to fly from the equator in Brazil and head east in a straight line and arrive back in Brazil.  

         MOON LANDINGS

         Why do people persist in denying the moon landings? In the summer of 2009, the United States celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the first Moon landing by Apollo 11. Amidst all of the hoopla, virtually every news story, especially in the internet world, made some comment about a supposedly rising belief that humans have never really landed on the Moon.  Why do they have that belief? Here are some of their reasons.

         There is the belief that goes as follows: If the NASA moon lander really landed on the moon, there would be a blast crater underneath the lunar module to mark its landing. On any video footage or photograph of the landings, no crater is visible, almost as though the module was simply placed there by a crane. The deniers state that the surface of the moon is covered in fine lunar dust, and even this doesn’t seem to have been displaced in the photographic evidence.

         The surface of the moon itself is actually solid rock, so a blast crater obviously  wouldn’t occur anyway in the same way that an aeroplane doesn’t leave a crater when it touches down on a concrete airstrip.                                              

         In order to reach the moon, astronauts had to pass through what is known as the Van Allen radiation belt. The belt is held in place by Earth’s magnetic field and stays perpetually in the same place. The Apollo missions to the moon marked the first ever attempts to transport living humans through the belt. Conspiracy theorists contend that the sheer levels of radiation in the belt would have cooked the astronauts en-route to the moon, despite the layers of aluminum coating the interior and exterior of the spaceship.

         NASA have countered this argument by emphasizing the short amount of time it took the astronauts to traverse the belt which means that they received only very small doses of radiation whouldwould not harm them.

         In order to support claims that the moon landings were shot in a studio, conspiracy theorists had to account for the apparent low-gravity conditions, which according to them must have been mimicked by NASA. It has been suggested that if you take the moon landing footage and increase the speed of the film by times 2.5, the astronauts appear to be moving in Earth’s gravity. As for the astronaut’s impressive jump height, which would be impossible to perform in Earth’s gravity, hidden cables and wires have been suggested as giving the astronauts some extra height. In some screenshots outlines of alleged hidden cables can be seen (the photograph above supposedly shows a wire, though it is extremely vague).

         One compelling argument for the moon landing hoax is the total lack of stars in any of the photographic/video evidence. There are no clouds on the moon, so stars are perpetually visible and significantly brighter than what we see through the filter of Earth’s atmosphere.

         Some photographs are high-quality and yet still no stars are shown. Certainly eerie, considering you can take pictures of stars from Earth in much lower quality and still see them. If the camera was focused as close-ups, the stars wouldn’t show on the film.

         One of the most famous photos from the moon landings shows a rock in the foreground, with what appears to be the letter “C” engraved into it. The letter appears to be almost perfectly symmetrical, meaning it is unlikely to be a natural occurrence. It has been suggested that the rock is simply a prop, with the “C” used as a marker by an alleged film crew. A set designer could have turned the rock the wrong way, accidentally exposing the marking to the camera.

         NASA has given conflicting excuses for the letter, on the one hand blaming a photographic developer for adding the letter as a practical joke, while on the other hand saying that it may simply have been a stray hair which got tangled up somewhere in the developing process of the film.

         The cameras used by the astronauts during the moon landings had a multitude of cross-hairs to aid with scaling and direction. These are imprinted over the top surface of all photographs. Some of the images, however, clearly show the cross-hairs behind objects in the scene, implying that photographs may have been edited or doctored after being taken. The photographs shown are not an isolated occurrence. Many objects are shown to be in front of the cross-hairs, including the American flag in one picture and the lunar rover in another.

         Conspiracy theorists have suggested that NASA printed the man-made objects over a legitimate photograph of the moon to hoax the landings – although if they really planned on doing this, then why would they have used cross-hairs in the first place which is a mystery.

         The two photos from the Apollo 15 mission clearly have identical backdrops, despite being officially listed by NASA as having been taken miles apart. One photo even shows the lunar module. When all photographs were taken the module had already landed, so how can it possibly be there for one photo and disappear in another? Well, if you’re a hardcore conspiracy theorist, it may seem viable that NASA simply used the same backdrop when filming different scenes of their moon landing videos.

         NASA has suggested that since the moon is much smaller than Earth, horizons can appear significantly closer to the human eye. Despite this, to say that the two hills visible in the photographs are miles apart is incontrovertibly false.

        This loose extension of the popular conspiracy theory states that acclaimed film director Stanley Kubrick was approached by the US government to hoax the first three moon landings. There are two main branches of this somewhat implausible theory: one group of believers maintain that Kubrick was approached after he released 2001: A Space Odyssey that was released in 1968 which was one year before the first moon landing), after NASA came to appreciate the stunning realism of the film’s outer-space scenes at that time.  Another group of deniers contends that Kubrick was groomed by the government to film the moon landing long before   2001: A Space Odyssey was a staged practice run for him.

         So what evidence might support such claims? Apparently, if you watch the movie, The Shining (another Kubrick picture), you can pick up on some alleged messages hidden by Kubrick to subtly inform the world of his part in the conspiracy. The most obvious is the child’s Apollo 11 shirt worn in only one scene. Another supposed gem is the line written on Jack Nicholson’s character’s typewriter: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”, in which the word “all” can be interpreted as A11, (Apollo 11) Wow. That is a stretch. .

  

         If you aren’t convinced yet, consider that Kubrick made the mysterious hotel room in the film number 237. Guess how many miles it is from here to the moon: 238,000. So divide that by a thousand and minus one, and you’ve got one airtight theory right there. That stretch would make a small elastic band stretch into the length of a mile.

         China has become the third country to ever 'soft-land' on the Moon. Are we to believe that those landings were also hoaxes?  Give us a break.

         Of course, from almost the point of the first Apollo missions, a small group of Americans have denied that it had really taken place. This group seems to be expanding as the events of Apollo recede into history. Aided by a youth movement that does not remember what went down in the Apollo era and for whom distrust of government runs high, it is among that cadre of Americans where those who are skeptical have proliferated. Jaded by so many other government scandals, these younger members of society whose recollection of Apollo was distant to begin with, finds it easy to believe the questioning they see on myriad Moon hoax web sites. Lack of understanding of science and failure to employ critical analytical skills mad them more susceptible to this type of hucksterism. There has been considerable research on the parts of society that embrace conspiracy theories of all types. A fundamental part of the political system, legal scholar Mark Fenster          claims in Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture (Minnesota, 2008), that such conspiracies represent “a polarization so profound that people end up with an unshakable belief that those in power, such as President Trump ‘simply can’t be trusted’.” At the time of the first landings, opinion polls showed that overall less than five percent “doubted the moon voyage had taken place.” Fueled by conspiracy theorists of all stripes, this number has grown over time. In a 2004 poll, while overall numbers remained about the same, among Americans between 18 and 24 years old “27% expressed doubts that NASA went to the Moon,” according to pollster Mary Lynne Dittmar. Doubt is different from denial, but this represents a trend that seemed to be growing over time among those who did not witness the events. Perhaps this issue should not surprise anyone.

         One fool said that the so-called "lunar lander" was made from paper mache, coat hangers, curtain rods, scotch tape & aluminum foil. Does that apply to the men also?

         Someone raised an interesting observation. This is what he claimed. “he American flag is flapping away in the wind. The problem is, there's no atmosphere on the moon, hence no wind. So why was the flag waving?” 

         Actually the whole "flapping in the wind" conspiracy has been explained many times. The flag has a rod inside the outer edges, to give it the appearance of flying in the wind, since the moon has no atmosphere. Otherwise, the flag would sag just like a flag on a  pole without wind. What was happening was that the flag is swinging because of inertia.  It only moved because the astronaut was trying to plant it in the ground. The lack of wind resistance also let the flag swing longer than it would on Earth.

         I hope this part of my article in my blog convinces you that two men really did walk on the moon back in 1969.         

         BIG FOOT

         In North American folklore, Bigfoot or Sasquatch are said to be hairy, upright-walking, ape-like creatures that dwell in the wilderness and leave footprints. They are strongly associated with the Pacific Northwest, and individuals claim to see the creatures across North America. Over the years, these creatures have inspired numerous commercial ventures and hoaxes. The plural nouns 'Bigfoots' and 'Bigfeet' are both acceptable. Folklorists trace the figure of Bigfoot to a combination of factors.

         People assume that Bigfoot crossed the road to get to the other side, as the old joke goes, but with the enigmatic hominid, nobody knows for sure. Here's what we do know: On June 22, 2009, at around 6:30 p.m., a 19-year-old college student was driving on a curvy back road near Rhinebeck, New York  on the way to a rehearsal at a nearby performing arts center, according to a report. As he swerved to miss an object on the road a shopping bag containing, oddly, an open cereal box and a small log.  He glanced in his rearview mirror and saw someone or something darting behind his car, apparently to retrieve the bag.

         A moment later, the student stopped and turned his car around, and got a three-to-four second glimpse of "something walking on two feet" about 50 feet (15.24 meters) away. He described the creature, which he saw from the rear and side profile, as being between 7 and 7.5 feet (2.1 and 2.2 meters) tall, covered with black hair, and possessing broad, muscular shoulders with arms that swung in an exaggerated fashion and palms that faced upwards. The witness recalled that he felt "nervous, confused, and excited at the same time" during his brief encounter.

      There is no evidence at all that any Bigfoot exists. It has been proven that foot castings have been faked. It has also been proven that video has been faked. There are not hair samples that have been properly identified, no skat (feces) no There has been no carcass found, and also no offsprings of the Big Foots. Anyone that says they exist without proof is a fool. It is highly doubtful that they exists however, does not mean they do not.

         For decades, people around the world have been fascinated with the legend of bigfoot, sasquatch, yeti, or whatever you choose to call it. Sightings of a furry, upright biped (walks on two feet) and reports of beastly footprints have been reported from as far afield as the Himalayas. There is no evidence that anyone has actually captured one of these so-called creatures.

        

       In the future I will tell you about other conspiracies.