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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 -
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.
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.
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.
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."
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