Slashdot Mirror
The Flat Earthers Are Still With Us
narcberry writes "The BBC reports on a scientific community still holding to flat earth theories. From their article: '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.'"
I can't decide which is worse, the Flat-earthers, or the hollow-earthers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth . I heard some guy on C2C the other week spouting out some nonsense about looking for a hole in the arctic that would prove the earth was hollow, I can't believe people still believe this crap.
- Aetheral Research -
Don't forget, there's a conspiracy of NORMAL PEOPLE trying to steal your slack and preventing the aliens from rescuing all SubGenii on July 5, 1998.
See http://www.subgenius.com/ for more details!
For those who don't know but can't be bothered*, http://www.sca.org/ (The Society for Creative Anachronism).
* ... so why do I care? Bloody sod you! Ignore this post!
Would you like a slice of toast?
I think that the term 'News' should not apply to a 500-year old debate.
I think you're confusing two different things. 500 years ago people discussed whether the Earth was fixed of movable, but no one had any doubt whatsoever about it being a sphere. Earth's shape, and even its rough diameter, have been acknowledged scientific facts for way more than two millennia.
Fix your sentence to "I think that the term 'News' should not apply to a 2400-year old debate", remove your reference to the Aztecs, and your post will be in the correct time frame. ;)
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
It's encouraging that these same people are global warming sceptics. From their FAQs:
Q: "How does global warming affect the ice wall?"
A1: The Ice Wall is really a mountain range. It just happens to be covered in ice and snow.
A2: Global Warming doesn't happen. It and its counter-theory (Global Cooling) are effects that cancel each other out. Remember, these "greenhouse gasses" can reflect heat back out into space as well as keep it on Earth. Yes, there are recorded rises in temperature, but the only records we have go back, at most, around 150 years. This is very likely an occurrence that happens every [x>150] years, that's happened before (perhaps many times), and that the Earth has thus survived before.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The parent does not deserve a "funny" tag. Rather, it points out a serious error in the summary, which largely justifies an edit. The BBC article reports on a "group of people". How on Earth did they become a "scientific community" on /.?
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
You can prove the Earth is round by looking at a lunar eclipse. Educated people have known the shape of the Earrh for thousands of years. I have no idea why they teach us as children that everyone thought Chris Columbus would sail off the edge of the earth.
In their fabulous FAQ, http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=a1f7f3fc005b90c85c7385afa7ee25d1&topic=11211.0 :
Q: "Why are other celestial bodies round but not the Earth?"
A: The Earth is not one of the other planets. The Earth is special and unlike the other bodies in numerous ways.
Brilliant! Myself, I was wondering why the world is revolving around me. They just gave me the answer.
Dude, the Flat-Earthers aren't the Christian Right, here. Yeah, there's a Flat-Earther Society that likes to meet and pretend the Earth is still flat, but they don't, in actuality, take themselves seriousely. It's an amusing hobby and an excuse to get away from their wives and hang out with the guys once a year. Jeez.
Google: "All your data are belong to us."
The intersection of two groups is the objects which are members of both groups. In this case, the GP posits that most of the members of the "flat earth" group are also members of the "creationism" group.
Here's your sig.
And he got it from Indian (not Native American) creation myths.
The Flat Earth Society was created as a big joke in the first place. Most of the people posting there (myself included) are doing so as a tongue-in-cheek joke.
Yeah, there are a few nuts in there who actually believe it, but you'll get stupid beliefs anywhere.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
You even have an *idea* what you wrote??
Energy doesn't "convert" to mass and vice-versa. This is an *equivalence* equation, and not even a complete one because M is not M (as in rest mass) but also includes momentum.
If you can take any energy and magically convert it to mass (without the anti-particle), let me know. You'll get a Nobel prize in Physics.
Yes, all the energy ends up back in space as heat (regular light is almost heat anyway).
Now, if you said that the solar wind gets captured by Earth's magnetic field and sucked down to Earth - that is more believable. Except, the solar wind also strips off the outer layers of the atmosphere. So basically end up with insignificant changes.
1 cent for some effort and bold guessing though.
You realize of course Pratchett was basing this view on Hindu mythology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
I thought the guy behind Notice for Newbies post on their forums, "Professor Gaycunt" was also a bit of a giveaway.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
I think someone is pulling a great prank. Just read this section in their FAQ:
Q: "What's underneath the Earth?" aka "What's on the bottom?" aka "What's on the other side?"
A: This is unknown. Some believe it to be just rocks, others believe the Earth rests on the back of four elephants and a turtle.
That's straight of of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.
Not true. The idea that the earth rests on the back of a turtle is not new:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down