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Tales Of A Flat Earth

Re: The Flat Earth Society Resources

AndroMan said:
There's a web page on the Flat Earth Society at talkorigins.org/faqs/flatearth.html


Our Society of Zetetics have existed for at least 6,000 years, the extent of recorded history. Extensive writing from 1492 b.c. We have been and are the Few, the Elite, the Elect, who use Logic Reason are Rational. Summed up, we are Sane and/ or have Common Sense as contrasted to the "herd" who is unthinking and uncaring.
Have we finally uncovered the Illuminati?! :eek!!!!:
 
Re: Re: The Flat Earth Society Resources

rynner said:
Have we finally uncovered the Illuminati?! :eek!!!!:
If so, then the illumination's provided by a 15 watt bulb! :p
 
I heard on the radio the other day a chap who was not only flat earther but he also believed that the earth was the centre of the 'solar system' and that the sun and the planets revolved around it.
His justification for this was that in the bible, God created the earth before the sun , so what was the earth orbiting during the couple of days that it took God to make the sun. He said that there was more evidence in the bible for a geocentric system than the scientists had for a solar system.

And still it moves.


Talking of which I was wondering today. If the earth was to stop spining would we all get the opposite of motion sickness?
 
rynner said:
No, I meant the equinox (note date of post).

The sun is overhead, at the equator, on the equinoxes, at noon.

Sorry Rynner, I didn't realise it was such an old thread.

However, I still don't get it.

Please forgive my ignorance on this, but isn't the sun directly overhead on the equator every day, at noon? That's why they have a 12-hour day and a 12-hour night throughout the year (must get very boring). Because the sun's apparent course is the same every day on the equator, I have heard it described as "the sun wearing a groove in the sky".

My dictionary defines equinox as "the moment at which the sun crosses the equator and renders day and night equal throughout the world....". I understand that, because there has to be a crossing-over point. I went to Iceland, and in high summer, it just doesn't get dark. Very beautiful it is too. But in winter, the opposite is true. So the equinox is the point at which everyone in the world has a 12-hour day and a 12-hour night, for one day.

What I don't get is why you would need it to be the equinox for the sun to be directly overhead on the equator at noon. If it wasn't overhead, surely they wouldn't have a 12-hour day. I'm probably being really thick. :)

Big Bill Robinson
 
Big Bill Robins said:
Please forgive my ignorance on this, but isn't the sun directly overhead on the equator every day, at noon? That's why they have a 12-hour day and a 12-hour night throughout the year (must get very boring). Because the sun's apparent course is the same every day on the equator, I have heard it described as "the sun wearing a groove in the sky".
Bill, it is only an approximate 12 hours of daylight. When you get away from the equinoxes people on the equator will see the noon-time sun either to their north or south, but not directly overhead. This is all to do with the inclination of the earth's rotational axis, and is also why geographers defined the two lines of the tropics (i.e. they bound the region where the sun can appear directly overhead.) :)
 
At the equator, the sun is overhead at noon just twice a year - at the eqinoxes. For six months the noon sun is north of overhead (by up to 23.5 degrees), and for the other 6 months it's south.

In the same way the sun only sets in the west at the equinoxes - in Britain it sets between SW (midwinter) and NW (midsummer) - much less range in the tropics.

Play with a globe, or perhaps find a good website on the Seasons, with diagrams! :)
 
Thanx Rynner - me being thick as usual. I learned something though.

Bill.
 
Ehukai said:
Dont be stupid...!! Of course the earth is flat; have you ever tried standing on a foot ball....! How on earth ( no pun ) could you stand on something spherical...you may say that we are smaller, well I tried a mouse on a football ( which you have to agree is correct proportianally to a human/Earth ) and it also had trouble !

QED

Er... call me stupid (and naive if you were being sarcastic), but maybe an ant on a basketball would have been a better experiment?
 
liveinabin said:
Talking of which I was wondering today. If the earth was to stop spining would we all get the opposite of motion sickness?

Depends how much time it took to stop. it might smart a bit if it happened instantaneously; it would be a bit like sitting in a plane and flying straight into a cliff-face at just over 1000 miles per hour.
 
Wouldn't our enertia fling us into space, where we would all burst? :confused:
 
Inverurie Jones said:
Wouldn't our enertia fling us into space, where we would all burst? :confused:
Nah. We should be O.K. :)

At any moment in time we have the same instantaneous velocity that we would have had if the earth had stopped at that moment. As the force of gravity is sufficient to provide the centripetal (inwards) force to keep our feet firmly on the ground most days, it would still be able to do it even if the earth suddenly stopped spinning.

We'd probably end off in a heap with broken legs though. ;)
 
Re: stopping the earth

Since the atmosphere would carry on moving, I think it might get more than a little windy. :(
 
Re: Re: stopping the earth

Timble said:
Since the atmosphere would carry on moving, I think it might get more than a little windy. :(
By my calculations, at the equator the wind speed would be ~1670 km/hour. (About Mach 1.4 at sea level.)

Flying a kite might be fun. ;) :)
 
An interesting little factoid from a book I'm reading: apparently, if you go up Mt. Kilimanjaro and the weather is clear enough to see Mt. Kenya (and vice-versa), then that is the longest view possible on Earth. (According to my atlas, that's about 150 miles.)

Anyone else got any especially long views? Obviously high places with low ground or sea in between would be favourites.

Earlier in this thread I mentioned once simultaneously seeing the looms from two lighthouses which are about 100 miles apart (although the lights themselves were below the horizon), so I was seeing at least 50 miles in either direction then. I may have seen further to various distant mountains when at sea, but I can't be sure now of the distances.
 
rynner said:
An interesting little factoid from a book I'm reading: apparently, if you go up Mt. Kilimanjaro and the weather is clear enough to see Mt. Kenya (and vice-versa), then that is the longest view possible on Earth. (According to my atlas, that's about 150 miles.)

It must be possible to see a similar distance (or further) from Himalayan mountain-tops.
 
markrkingston said:
It must be possible to see a similar distance (or further) from Himalayan mountain-tops.
Not if nearer mountains in the range block any further view.

I don't know if the 'longest view on Earth' between Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya is true, but if not there must be a better pair of high mountains somewhere with low ground or sea in between - then the line of sight between the mountain tops will just pass above the curvature of the Earth in between.
 
rynner said:
Not if nearer mountains in the range block any further view.

I don't know if the 'longest view on Earth' between Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya is true, but if not there must be a better pair of high mountains somewhere with low ground or sea in between - then the line of sight between the mountain tops will just pass above the curvature of the Earth in between.

This doesn't involve particularly high points, and smacks of exaggeration, but while I was at Keele University, I was repeatedly told that in an easterly direction there were no higher points between Keele Hill and somewhere in Russia.
This theory was banded about to explain the unfeasibly cold weather conditions in Keele, so may have been utter shite. The route east from Keele to Russia takes you through the tops of Germany and Poland, ,the southern tip of Lithuania and the middle of Belarus. I suspect someone will tell me there may be mountains there, but I don't know for sure.
Also, being as Keele Hill is hardly a mind-staggeringly high peak, I guess the view would be buggered up by any curvature one would encounter...
 
We of the Flat Earth Society are willing to do what it takes to make our message known. We may have started small, but we're branching out and earning the trust and following of lots of people. Although the steps we've taken may seem a little drastic to the outside observer, we feel that, in the end, the net gain will justify the means. Here are a few of our victories. . .

-----In the small town of Grass Roots, MO, one of our members has successfully infiltrated the public education system. By being hired on as a teacher in the district, she was able to gain a foothold that has allowed us to "replace" nearly every lower grade teacher in the entire town with loyal Flat Earthers. The students are now undergoing deprogramming measures and are expected to be released when they reach their mid-thirties.

Over a period of several months, over half of the workers in the Wisconsin state prison system were "relocated", their positions filled by our associates. The list of replacements includes 7 guards, 957 cafeteria workers, 3716 Pepsi machine repairmen and 14 members of the clergy. With our operatives strategically emplaced, the convicts and felons are being given a healthy dose of "pro-Flat Earth" propaganda.
Success story: Upon escaping during a bloody shootout that left 19 prison workers and 27 prisoners dead, a reformed felon known only as "Rasp" went directly to a payphone and contacted our HQ. He is currently working in place of "retired" health-care worker Mr. Sonnovin at the Green Acres nursing home in Charlamange, WI.
-----After spending over sixteen million dollars and using over 48 thousand yards of industrial strength strapping tape, we of the Flat Earth Society were able to construct an enormously powerful neurotransmitter that can implant suggestions directly into the brains of the nearby non-Flat Earthers. Having set it up just outside of the Russian Antarctic exploration post (Vostok), we are awaiting word that all three scientists and 174 penguins have been shown the light.

-----Three loyal Flat Earth Society members, during a camping trip to the small African nation of Tunisia, came across a privately-owned 59 minute photo stand in the isolated northernmost corner of the desert country. Employing guerilla warfare techniques learned under Mao Zedong in the early 1920's, they were able to effortlessly seize control of the stand and are now using it to distribute pro-Flat Earth propaganda throughout the West African region.

-----On an unrelated note, we of the Flat Earth Society would like to wish a very happy forty-fifth birthday to Edmund Wilbur, our Vice-President in charge of Public Relations. Happy birthday to you, Wilbur, and to all our other members whose birthdays are also today, but whose importance fails to merit a mention by name.

-----Dilligent Flat Earth Society members under the employ of Delta Airlines undertook a project which will no doubt bring countless numbers of motion-sickness prone individuals into the ranks of our organization. Using only permanent markers and every airsickness bag on planes restricted to west coast travel, they were able to neatly outline the Flat Earth Society mission statement on enough receptacles so as to spread our creed to those of the masses with overly sensitive inner ears.

-----Your dog has joined us.

Source

:lol: :lol: :lol:
 
And the same kind of thing again.


In the 21st Century, the term "flat-earther" is used to describe someone who is spectacularly - and seemingly wilfully - ignorant. But there is a group of people who claim they believe the planet really is flat. Are they really out there or is it all an elaborate prank?

Nasa is celebrating its 50th birthday with much fanfare and pictures of past glories. But in half a century of extraordinary images of space, one stands out.

On 24 December 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 mission took a photo now known as Earthrise. To many, this beautiful blue sphere viewed from the moon's orbit is a perfect visual summary of why it is right to strive to go into space.

Not to everybody though. There are people who say they think this image is fake - part of a worldwide conspiracy by space agencies, governments and scientists.

Welcome to the world of the flat-earther.

Our attitude towards those who once upon a time believed in the flatness of the earth is apparent in a new Microsoft advert.

Depicting an olden-days ship sailing on rough seas, presumably heading towards the "edge of the world", the advert is part of a $300m campaign aimed at rescuing the reputation of Windows Vista by comparing its critics to flat-earthers.

Satellite era

But are there any genuine flat-earthers left? Surely in our era of space exploration - where satellites take photos of our blue and clearly globular planet from space, and robots send back info about soil and water from Mars - no one can seriously still believe that the Earth is flat?

Wrong.

Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting rooms in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge the "conspiracy" that the Earth is round.

"People are definitely prejudiced against flat-earthers," says John Davis, a flat earth theorist based in Tennessee, reacting to the new Microsoft commercial.

"Many use the term 'flat-earther' as a term of abuse, and with connotations that imply blind faith, ignorance or even anti-intellectualism."

Mr Davis, a 25-year-old computer scientist originally from Canada, first became interested in flat earth theory after "coming across some literature from the Flat Earth Society a few years ago".

"I came to realise how much we take at face value," he says. "We humans seem to be pleased with just accepting what we are told, no matter how much it goes against our senses."

Mr Davis now believes "the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite - it stretches horizontally forever".

"And it is at least 9,000 kilometres deep", he adds.

James McIntyre, a British-based moderator of a Flat Earth Society discussion website, has a slightly different take. "The Earth is, more or less, a disc," he states. "Obviously it isn't perfectly flat thanks to geological phenomena like hills and valleys. It is around 24,900 miles in diameter."

Mr McIntyre, who describes himself as having been "raised a globularist in the British state school system", says the reactions of his friends and family to his new beliefs vary from "sheer incredulity to the conviction that it's all just an elaborate joke".

So how many flat-earthers are around today? Neither Mr Davis nor Mr McIntyre can say.

Disappearing ships

Mr McIntyre estimates "there are thousands", but "without a platform for communication, a head-count is almost impossible", he says. Mr Davis says he is currently creating an "online information repository" to help to bring together local Flat Earth communities into a "global community".

"If you will forgive my use of the term 'global'", he says.

And for the casual observer, it is hard to accept that all of this is not some bizarre 21st Century jape. After all, most schoolchildren know that ships can disappear over the horizon, that satellites orbit the earth and that if you head along the equator you will eventually come back on yourself.

What about all the photos from space that show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Earth is round? "The space agencies of the world are involved in an international conspiracy to dupe the public for vast profit," says Mr McIntyre.

John Davis also says "these photos are fake".

And what about the fact that no one has ever fallen off the edge of our supposedly disc-shaped world?

Mr McIntyre laughs. "This is perhaps one of the most commonly asked questions," he says. "A cursory examination of a flat earth map fairly well explains the reason - the North Pole is central, and Antarctica comprises the entire circumference of the Earth. Circumnavigation is a case of travelling in a very broad circle across the surface of the Earth."

Ultimate conspiracy

Mr Davis says that being a flat-earther doesn't have an impact on how one lives every day. "As a rule of thumb, we don't have any fears of aircraft or other modes of transportation," he says.

Christine Garwood, author of Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, is not surprised that flat-earthers simply write off the evidence that our planet is globular.

"Flat earth theory is one of the ultimate conspiracy theories," she says.

"Naturally, flat earth believers think that the moon landings were faked, as were the photographs of earth from space."

Perhaps one of the most surprising things in Garwood's book is her revelation that flat earth theory is a relatively modern phenomenon.

Ms Garwood says it is an "historic fallacy" that everyone from ancient times to the Dark Ages believed the earth to be flat, and were only disabused of this "mad idea" once Christopher Columbus successfully sailed to America without "falling off the edge of the world".

In fact, people have known since at least the 4th century BC that the earth is round, and the pseudo-scientific conviction that we actually live on a disc didn't emerge until Victorian times.

Theories about the earth being flat really came to the fore in 19th Century England. With the rise and rise of scientific rationalism, which seemed to undermine Biblical authority, some Christian thinkers decided to launch an attack on established science.

Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884) assumed the pseudonym of "Parallax" and founded a new school of "Zetetic astronomy". He toured England arguing that the Earth was a stationary disc and the Sun was only 400 miles away.

In the 1870s, Christian polemicist John Hampden wrote numerous works about the Earth being flat, and described Isaac Newton as "in liquor or insane".

And the spirit of these attacks lives on to the present day. The flat-earth myth remains the outlandish king in the realm of the conspiracy theorist.

And while we all respect a degree of scepticism towards the authorities, says Ms Garwood, the flat-earthers show things can go too far.

"It is always good to question 'how we know what we know', but it is also good to have the ability to accept compelling evidence - such as the photographs of Earth from space."

BBC

I find this kind of thing fairly interesting, flying in the face of accepted scientific fact.
 
not so much flying in the face of scientific fact as slapping it around the face a bit and accusing it of sleeping with your wife.

this....is....AWESOME! i love it! it's like a crazy theory so preposterous that it could actually be true..... :D
 
I like it as well, am always open for new [old] ideas never mind how stupid they sound ;)
However then I thought of evidence "for" the flat-earth-theory and had a hard time. Especially because of the Moon. I can see the Moon and it is definetly round [or is it?] and so seem all the other planets. So it gathers that the Earth can't be the only flat disk in our solar system.
I am quiet confident that all the planets are round because nobody has jet seen a disk sideways. Wouldn't that happen?
Anyway, just like the hollow-earth, so stupid it is worth [laughing] thinking about.
 
This almost sounds like something from THE ONION. Is it supposed to be taken seriously?
 
Difficult to tell. The website herecould be entertaining (to the none flat-earther) or indeed a spoof. Have a look at the "Why" pages though.
 
Are you serious? :?:

In case you are - jump on any commercial jet - you can clearly see the curvature of the earth from there. :roll:
 
Mifter Harrif'f cofmic aether hath both weigyht and forme
 
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