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Geocentrists Convene To Discuss How Galileo Was Wrong
rollcall writes "'Galileo Was Wrong' is an inaugural conference to discuss the 'detailed and comprehensive treatment of the scientific evidence supporting Geocentrism, the academic belief that the Earth is immobile in the center of the universe.' The geocentrists argue that 'Scientific evidence available to us within the last 100 years that was not available during Galileo's confrontation shows that the [Catholic] Church's position on the immobility of the Earth is not only scientifically supportable, but it is the most stable model of the universe and the one which best answers all the evidence we see in the cosmos.' I, like many of you, am scratching my head wondering how people still think this way. Unfortunately, there is still a significant minority of Western people who believe that the Earth is the center of the universe: 18% of Americans, 16% of Germans, and 19% of Britons."
I hope there is live blogging from the conference.
Committee meets to discuss how light is actually extreme dark.
My mom says I'm the center of the universe.... or is that just the basement?
I wouldn't take those numbers seriously. If someone asked me if I thought the Earth was the centre of the universe in their survey, I'd say 'yes' just because the question itself is ridiculous.
...even they know the earth goes round the sun.
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
This is some kind of prank... right? Please?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Unfortunately, there is still a significant minority of Western people who believe that the Earth is the center of the universe: 18% of Americans, 16% of Germans, and 19% of Britons."
If your mechanic thinks that "The Little Mermaid" was a Shakespearean drama, that really doesn't affect his ability to fix your car. Same with this.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
there is still a significant minority of Western people who believe that the Earth is the center of the universe: 18% of Americans
In other news, 17% of Americans were found to exhibit a sense of humor when called by pollsters while most of the rest just get upset.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Now if you take the Bible as the literal truth, as so many do, this is to be expected.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
In the rest frame of the Earth the entire universe revolves around it.
Why do the websites of lunatics always seem to be based on the same template from some horribly awful site made for Mosaic in 1995? Does crazy dictate design? Or does each wackjob just copy the code from the previous wackjob? Or maybe these sites are all made by the same escapee from the insane asylum? Maybe they are still in the asylum, and the computer in there is running Windows 3 on a dialup modem?
"...18% of Americans, 16% of Germans, and 19% of Britons." 100% mouth breathing idiots.
Let's see... 18% of Americans believe that the Earth is the center of the universe? For real?
No shit.
I now understand a little more about the stalwarts that supported Bush no matter what.
There is more scientific evidence supporting the existence of ghosts and Bigfoot than there is of a geocentric universe.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Deep in our hearts, we all know that the geocentrists are correct. The earth is the center of the universe. It's also of a disc-like shape. That's the only logical explanation all the dinosaurs that populated the earth when it was created some 7000 years ago, are gone now. They must have fallen off the surface of the earth when they were trying to visit australia for a holiday, missed the continent and wandered just a teeny weeny little bit to far past it.
If 18% of American's think that Earth is stationary, do the other 82% think the Earth revolves around themselves?
Their error, as I understand it, is they imagine the universe entirely in terms of geometry, without trying to understand dynamics. How do they account for the path a satellite in a polar orbit takes over the earth?
I read the last line in the summary as:
"I hope there is live flogging from the conference."
Which would fit.
90% of the world believes in God(s), and there's nothing but imaginary evidence for that, too.
But by all means mock the fringe dimwits who don't actually negatively impact society.
If we look out into deep space, our instruments allows us to see equally far in every direction. Therefore, trivially, we /are/ at the centre of the observable universe. What's the problem?
A compendium of bible quotes loosly supporting this:
http://hypertextbook.com/eworld/geocentric.shtml
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
does this remind anyone else of an Onion News Article?
It's all relative.
Exactly how does one propose to fix the "center" of the universe when space and time are relative to the position of the observer? Technically you could say that everywhere and nowhere is the center of the universe.
I believe that the planet earth is the outside of the universe. The surface of the planet facing inwards. As you get closer to the center of the universe everything gets smaller and smaller. That is not to say that anything actually shrinks, that would be ridiculous. What happens is that one unit of distance is comparatively smaller compared to here on the outer edge known as earth. If you think of it this way the big bang would have occurred near the centre on the universe, and stars swirl around on the inside, sort of like a snow globe in space. If we really want to learn about the nature of the universe we should be working towards the outer edge, that is to say the earth's 'core' as the uninformed scientists of the world like to call it.
There is another theory that the universe works much like a video game and simply wraps around when you make it to an edge (one of the edges cuts through Camden I hear). But do remember that this 'theory' is total bullshit. Arbitrarily making Camden the wrap around point makes no sense.
To this day, Earth is more or less the center of observable universe.
But let me ask you: where would you place The Center, if not Here?
I blame immigrants and chavs.
Found it on the linked site -- another link that leads to a merchandising store with shirts, mugs and stuff.
Man, I soooo need one of those mugs. It will look so good right in between to the caffeine molecule cup and the spaghetti monster mug.
From a mathmatical standpoint geocentric models are quite interesting, however have any sufficiently complex models been developed to accurately account for varying lunar and planetary angular diameter?
The poll from article gives question "As far as you know, does the earth revolve around the sun or does the sun revolve around the earth?" and according the article "correctly respond that the earth revolves around the sun".
As far as understand how the gravity works, this is not actually the correct answer? At the same time as the Sun's mass affect to Earth, the Earth's mass affects the Sun. So even it seems like that we only revolve around the sun, actually the Sun is also revolving around the Earth at the same time.
... would laugh hysterically when presented with the copy for the web site. So, they had to go with someone who had heard of "FrontPage" sometime during the last decade.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
I thought so to, but since I see E. Michael Jones's name on the poster, I am sure it's not.
This is precisely his kind of topic.
Pick a lagrange point between the sun and the earth as the center of the universe so that neither one moves.
Is it April 1 already ? I appear to have missed Winter. What next, folks who don't believe in evolution ?
Maybe they should have a double conference with the Flat Earthers, of course that level of concentrated of willful ignorance in the face of overwhelming proof in one location might have unforeseen side effects.
There's no preferred point of reference, so you could just as well say that the Sun revolves around the Earth as vice versa. It's not like the Sun is a fixed immovable point around which everything revolves either, at least once you get beyond the solar system. Nor is there any other single fixed immovable point. You can pick any fixed immovable point you like and construct a model to match it. (The big problem with a geocentric model is retrograde motion--that is, the planets appear to go backwards from time to time.) The thing is that it's a lot simpler to look at it from the point of view that that the Earth goes around the Sun--both conceptually and mathematically, which is why astronomers do so when they are looking at the solar system. But it is possible to construct a description of the universe in which the opposite is true that is consistent, just damned inconvenient and not very useful.
So, in that limited since, Aristotle was as right as Galileo. Galileo just happens to be more useful.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
... by The Onion. They might also win an Ig Nobel.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Surely these people are making the philosophical argument that while the Earth is not the center of the solar system, nor is it the center of our galaxy, it could be the center of the universe. :-)
I think that this is more of a study in being a Devils Advocate, re-affirming the scientific process, and a study of the history of science.
I will, as an INTP personality type, argue against my position sometimes, to hear out any weaknesses in my position.
I have read on the flat earth boards before, and it seems to me to be a misture of real flat earth believers, devils advocates, and others who like to creatively argue an absurd point, so as to intellectually have an interesting battle of the wits.
..........FULL STOP.
1. Say something that excites morons.
2. Put up a web store.
3. Profit
Isn't it?
The Earth is pretty much at the center of the observable universe...
If we accept that the universe is infinite, any point can be accurately called the center. Imagine the number line -- where is the center? Some people might say 0, but they would be just as correct as someone who said 1 or -1376! Any point in an infinite space is surrounded by equal (infinite) distance.
The earth is the center of the universe!
Modern cosmology says that there is no center. Since any coordinate system needs an origin, we might as well choose a convenient one.
The same goes for motion. Relativity tells us that there's no preferred reference frame, so we may as well choose a convenient one.
the earth is in the exact center of the Visible Universe.
I guess somebody told them that it all depends on where you define your inertial reference point.
Of course, the movements of other celestial bodies get pretty complicated then. But it's not like it couldn't at least be numerically solved...
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
... according to the Hubble model of the expansion of the universe, in the sense that all astronomical objects are moving away from us. Then again, that's true for every point in space (apply a Galileo transform and see), which is the beauty of that model.
The summary should read:
Catholic] Church's historical position on the immobility of the Earth was not only scientifically supportable, but it was the most stable model of the universe
The Roman Catholic Church long ago accepted our current scientific understanding of the organization of celestial bodies.
Oh, and evolution through natural selection as well.
And one of its greatest thinkers believed that reason and faith were both equally valid ways to truth and not in conflict at all.
These nuts are in no way affiliated with official Roman Catholic Church positions. So let's just halt the Church bashing before we begin, ok?
First, one has to define what center of the universe means. This seems rather difficult and open to more than one definition. So why not arbitrarily define some point as the center as with the prime meridian? Have YOU really considered what center of the universe means especially where the universe is not static?
Technically, the Earth IS the center of the universe. It just depends on your point of view.
I've always been curious about how these polls that show that n% of the population believe geocentrism to be fact are conducted, but not curious enough to actually read up on them.
Do they ask, "do you think the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa?" -- implying a quick, pragmatic exposition of the subjects understanding of the matter.
Or, do they ask, "do you believe that the sun revolves around the earth?" -- implying that the subject has considered both choices and has come to some conclusion for himself?
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if someone has a day-to-day mental model that states that the sun "comes up in the morning" and "goes down at night". I do think it's a problem if ~1/5 of all Americans have spent some amount of time reasoning about both models and have some belief that geocentrism is fact.
Nearly every early elementary school classroom I've been in has some form of the typical solar system diagram (with the sun at the center), I'd be really surprised if ~1/5 of all students coming out of that experience would veto that model and "believe" that the Earth is at the center of the universe. I hope I'm not wrong...
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Yep, this is a case of Not Even Wrong.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
1 in 5 people think the earth doesn't orbit the sun? Bullshit. People are dumb, but not that dumb. At least, not around here.
What does the claim that 17% of the population believe in a geocentric earth mean? Even assuming that there's no one in that population that is simply saying that for kicks, it seems probable that a large part are simply answering that way because they don't know anything either way and are just guessing. At some level that's not as bad as having people who actively believe in geocentrism. But at another level, that means that one should expect that around 34% are really ignorant and have of them just got lucky when asked. That's not good. However, I suspect that some of these answers really are just people messing with the polsters or not bothering to thing.
But one thing to note is that many of the geocentrists are religious. Not only is geocentrism common among Christians but there's a substantial fraction of ultra-Orthodox (charedi) Jews who are affirmatively geocentrist. This is especially common among the chabad chassidim who are often geocentrists because their guru, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, made pro-geocentrist comments and because they want to preserve the word of Maimonides as inerrant (of course some of these are the same sort of people who refuse kidney transplants because the Talmud says that one kidney is the seat of your good instincts and the other is the seat of your bad instincts. So we're not talking about highly enlightened individuals). There are however, some very disturbing studies by Alexander Nussbaum showing that even among modern Orthodox Jews, anti-science views are disturbingly common. See for example http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v12n03_orthodox_judaism_and_evolution.html .
However, one thing to note is that although the conference in question in the top post is Catholic, affirmative geocentrism is not nearly as uncommon among evangelical Protestants as one would hope. Indeed, it is common enough that Answers in Genesis, one of the world's largest young earth creatonist ministries, feels a need to have essays that talk about why Christians don't need to be geocentrists. http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v15/i2/geocentrism.asp . Incidentally, There's some evidence that anti-Copernican sentiment actually started in Protestants and only spread to Catholics a few years later. Thomas Kuhn discusses this in his excellent book "The Copernican Revolution" although my understanding is that more modern historians disagree with him on this point and many don't think that there is a strong case for anti-Copernicanism as an originally Protestant ideology.
Finally, note that there are still some flat-earthers out there although they are very rare. They aren't as uncommon in the Islamic world. See for example this segment on Iraqi TV http://haha.nu/interesting/iraqi-tv-debate-is-the-earth-flat/ . In the West there is still some flat-Earthism but it is often more conspiratorial than religious in nature. See http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/ although some of the people there are trolls, some are quite sincere.
90% of Muslims.
Islam teaches creationism as well.
For one, it really seems like the brain is wired with a "god receptor." People seem to have a need to have faith. Even many of those that don't have faith in a traditional religion find another cause that they are as blindly faithful to as any religion.
Another thing is that the whole prime cause thing is difficult for many people. The idea that the universe caused itself is just hard for people to wrap their heads around. God is easier because god is abstract, and a thinking being creating things is more easy to grasp for most people.
Finally, there's no evidence that there isn't a god. Now I realize that's not saying much, anything that exists totally outside of the universe won't have any evidence, but it is something to understand.
In particular, it is what sets it apart from something like a theory of geocentrism. There is a lot of evidence that isn't true. It is a testable hypothesis and one that is easily falsified.
So I have an easy time seeing how someone could believe in god, but reject geocentrism and harder time understanding how they could accept it. Faith in the unprovable is a bit different than ignoring solid proof that is there. Faith I can understand, though I don't have it myself. Flat out denial of reality is hard for me to get.
Registration is to an aol email address.
1. Stupid people are exploitable. /*Insert appropriate details of clever scam*/
2.
3. PROFIT!
equally applicable to crooks as well as politicians.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
That would be home made Kombucha.
Those that remain confused about the planet's position, & disposition, may be set off course by the notion that they themselves are positioned near, or are, the center of something.
You know, that's an excellent point.
I bet I could conduct a survey which shows that more than 90% of people believe the sun revolves around the earth. I would simply ask them, "Do you think the sun will rise in the east tomorrow?"
A "yes" answer implies they believe in a geocentric model, as we all know the sun does not actually rise.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I suspect that 18% are just incredibly daft, and can be led into answering a question such that they appear to support geocentrism.
"Do you think the Earth is the center of the universe?"
"Uh, yes?"
"Might the Sun not be center of the universe?"
"Uh, oh yeah, sure, yes."
Herschel
Relative to our point of view it is correct that everything revolved around the Earth. It has nothing to do with science it has to do with perspective and limited vision. Shakespeare had a quote about locking ones self in a nutshell and declaring that you were the King of an infinite Universe. I think that view describes their position in physics quite nicely.
Their error, as I understand it, is they imagine the universe entirely in terms of geometry, without trying to understand dynamics. How do they account for the path a satellite in a polar orbit takes over the earth?
You do realize that the widely accepted cosmological theory for the creation of the universe, the big bang, was introduced by a Roman Catholic priest?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître
Also the Vatican operates an observatory and does real research:
They study meteorites to "give us insights into how these samples were formed more than *4.5 billion* years ago when the planets themselves were being formed." Did you note that number rather? Not the 6,000 or so you were expecting is it.
While looking for dark matter they were involved in the discovery of two extrasolar planets.
They have helped explain perceived anomalies as background stars appearing in a sparse portion of a nebula, unrelated to the structure of the nebula.
They are researching why an unexpected amount of UV radiation is emanating from some young active stars.
They are helping to map out the geography of some galaxies and identify regions of star formation.
etc...
http://vaticanobservatory.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=38&Itemid=145
At least, the Earth is the center of the *observable* universe. Which is all the universe, I, personally, care about.
Not a big deal where one wants to locate the origin of a co-ordinate system. In fact, who knows IF there is a center (as in centroid) for the universe. What is more worrisome is (the much larger population that believes in) the 6000 year old earth or that modern humans descended, not from apes but from "Adam & Eve" That 20% consider Obama is a Muslim is less worrisome than the fact that they probably think that should disqualify him.
Or, for the non-geocentrists out there, may I propose a better conference to attend that very same weekend?
The Students for the Exploration and Development of Space are holding 'SpaceVision 2010' only one state over. Instead of arguing whether or not the Earth is at the center of the Universe, you can come listen/discuss about how we are going to be exploring space in the future; a far more practical and relevant discussion.
This isn't to say that the geocentric argument isn't an interesting one, but its day-to-day applicability is questionable. Whether or not I believe in geocentrism is irrelevant; what is relevant is how we are next going to explore and use space for our own betterment. To this end, even the geocentrists should agree! According to TFA, they appear to be Christians [Catholics?] for the most part. Are they not, then, under the express believe that God put everything here for us exclusively? Would that not include space? Wouldn't even their own time be better spent discussing, then, how we can exploit space instead of whether or not we're at the center of it?
Full Disclosure Department: Clearly, I am related to the SEDS group, and therefore have a stake in promoting this conference. I ask only that this article is neither promoted up, nor down, but left as food-for-thought for all to read.
From TFA
When Americans are asked to identify the country from which America gained its independence, 76% correctly name Great Britain.
Only 66% of those aged 18-29 know that America gained its independence from England, compared to 79% of those aged 30 and older.
Well, which is correct? I'd actually like to know this one...
they should all be locked up in an insane asylum and declared criminally insane.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
... eventually. Newton, Einstein, and one day Hawking will be. But said scientists are usually less wrong than predcessors, Galileo was merely less wrong than the Vatican.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Sorry for the bad link. I didn't notice the non-ASCII character. Lets try again ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaitre
Did anyone else notice that the article linked to is even by slashdot standards, 'old news' July 6th 1999. I think with wikipedia and better knowledge distribution systems this survey would be very different now.
XBMC | Pulse-Eight
The Flat Earth Society (http://theflatearthsociety.org/)
"I, like many of you, am scratching my head wondering how people still think this way."
What do you think the most likely reason for people to disbelieve geocentrism is? Is it 1) They understand the scientific evidence for and against it and have come to the conclusion themselves or 2) they were taught that it was an incontrovertible truth at some point during their education?
It seems that lots of people fail to realize that the prevailing scientific theories are only our best guesses at this point in time. Maybe next week we'll discover a planet on which gravity does not function the way Newton described it and there will be a "Newton was Wrong" conference...
Yep, Heliocentric is a great, and probably simplist model, but really, it's all relative frames of reference, and you can choose any frame of reference you want. As one person here says "In fact, the world does revolve around me, I get to choose the frame of reference"
Is it the best/simplist model? Nope. Is it a VALID model? Prove to me it isn't
It's all relative - Heck, Einstein talked all about frames of reference, and they apply to orbital mechanics too
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Many are making a big deal of this whole (non)debate. Many are dissing religion when there is no need to. It evidences their bias not their knowledge of science or the scientific method. Unfortunately our education system teaches "Scientific Fact" using teachers who do not understand science or the scientific method. I wish we would spend more time explaining that these "Scientific Facts" are nothing more than the least complicate, most widely accepted explanation for the data at hand.
In purely scientific terms the Geocentric model is a perfectly good model. I for one believe it is excessively complex with all of the epicycles necessary to make it work. That said, it can work and it can explain the motion of the cosmos.
In science, you present a theory, test the theory, and revise the theory. The Geocentric model does just that. It leads to an extremely mathematical model with the Earth as the frame of reference. I suspect that all of this complicated math would ultimately reduce into a simpler model with the center of mass for the universe as the reference frame. But that does not prevent us from defining the motion of the cosmos with the Earth as the frame of reference. Nor does it prevent us from engaging in stupid arguments over religion vs science.
We need to Teach The Controversy!
Indeed, and the people who are likely to answer incorrectly are also the least likely to understand the distinction between "do you think" and "do you believe", so I'm not convinced that rephrasing as you suggest would have helped.
Many people think/believe that New Mexico is a separate country from the US, while Canada is not. Many people, even here on Slashdot, believe that "loose" means to fail or be defeated. In most cases, these people will easily correct their misbelief when instructed by what they consider to be a reasonable authority.
My suspicion (which I think is in accord with yours) is that the majority of these people, like people who can't find the US on a world map, simply don't know and don't care what the correct answer is, and merely provided their best guess. Many of these people probably also believe that heavy objects fall faster than light ones, not because they reject Galileo and his evidence and reasoning, but merely because they weren't paying attention that day in class.
If the question had been "Scientists claim that the Earth revolves around the Sun; do you agree or disagree?", then I suspect the numbers would have been quite different.
...that religion is on its last legs. First you had religion - it ruled all. Then science came (post christianity), but was silenced by the church. Eventually science took over the role of religion in explaining natural occurences, while the church continuously protested. What now? they try to "merge" with science to "prove" they are right either through intelligent design or, in this case, geocentrism (thats right, they condemn science, yet try to use it to prove they are right). Of course, it doesn't help that hawking just released The Grand Design either (great book, BTW)
Oh, and a quick preliminary research on those speaking indicate a highly religious group. Biased, anyone?
Is that the same ~1/5th of Americans who think that Obama is a Muslim?
Get in my belly!! Anybody that talks about other people's religion should be eaten. I'm higher in the food chain than you. Besides that I'm a cannibal like Hanibal
The first speaker claims to have a PhD from "Calamus International University, London, England". Speaking as somebody working within the UK higher education system I can tell you that there is no such recognised university operating within the UK higher education system. Looks like it might be one of these fake colleges that runs from the upstairs of a shop.
We're heading back into the dark ages! While we're at it, let's bring back public beheadings, too!
Yeah, I'm not talking about merely substituting that single word, I'm more curious about which one is actually conveyed in the question and therefore answered.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Never heard of the Flat Earth Society? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society
Those folks consider Earth is a pancake borded by an Ice Wall, hidden by a government-led conspiracy. Gravity doesn't exist, it's just the effect of the pancake flying upwards in the cosmos.
Worth reading!
I wonder how many of the wrong answers on these questions were due to reading comprehension. Especially when looking at the numbers broken down by race and gender. It is terrible and embarrassing to lack some common knowledge. But it is tragic when people simply lack the life skills necessary to understand a simple survey question.
I'd like to see these sorts of polls compared against some tests to see if people understand the survey questions.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This is some kind of prank... right? Please?
Conventions, conferences, training seminars held in nice vacation destination - obviously this is only done due to the wide availability of large hotels and such accommodations and has nothing to do with extracurricular activities or plans to show up a few days early or stay a few days afterwards. Oh, wait ... this is in Indiana(*) not Hawaii or Florida ... nevermind.
(*) No offense to Indiana. I'm sure its nice, parts even beautiful, but it doesn't offer the beauty of a Hawaii or the sin of a Vegas.
There has been a long and hostile fight between the Flat Earth Society (FES) and the Geocentrists. The conservative FES claim ancient heritage, and will not accept any newfangled ideas from the Geocentrists.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Indeed, I think you posed the most interesting question in the whole discussion--one I came here specifically to pose myself--and your original post deserves a lot of mod points, but so far most people seem to be more interested in posting evidence of their own smug superiority, or engaging in the usual slashdot attacks on/defenses of religion than in looking at what was actually said.
Correct: You can pick any non-accelerated reference frame as center.
Earth is accelerated around the sun, and the sun is, to a lesser degree, accelerated around the milky way, as well as around the solar systems barycenter. It is anyway usually implied in the phrase "heliocentric reference" that a non-accelerated reference is picked.
Try to write simple laws of physics if your reference point is accelerated in a gravity well.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Only if your post is at the center of it's own little universe. Hah !
I was always reminded of this ridiculous stand by Sherlock when I watched the Married with Children episode where Kelly shows to be doing this exact thing: she was able to hold a number of things in her head perfectly in a FIFO queue but only that number of things and if she learned anything new at all, she would lose the last thing from the queue. So with this ability she was in a contest and would have won if the last useless thing that was thrown at her didn't push out the fact she had in her head that it was her father, who won 4 touchdowns in a single football game at school, the look on Al's face was priceless both, when he heard the question and was sure she'd be able to answer and then, when she lost.
So the question is of-course this: was Sherlock a gorgeous blond girl from Chicago?
You can't handle the truth.
I grieve that I can not attend the Galileo Was Wrong event. I have committed that weekend to attending the Flat Earth Society conference. Following that inspirational event I will attend an equally stirring Tea Party Rally as well as a Concerned Republicans meeting. So many quality events and so little time -----
I know we love to outrage over all this unscientific minds and their bold claims, but truly, it's not surprising.
Once you have someone that believes in god, well, that's a bottom line. You can get a shitload of other crazy things form them, and it doesn't matter at all, because they have proven to be stupid and unscientific from the very beginning when they told you they believe in a magical creepy father figure in the sky.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
18% of Americans, 16% of Germans, and 19% of Britons....are verified idiots. Obviously we need to put some more chlorine in the "gene" pool in order to get better clarity.
Probably because any decent web designer would laugh hysterically when presented with the copy for the web site.
Wrong. There are three universal qualifications for web design.
(1) Know more about web design than the client, which is not saying much.
(2) Be able to politely smile and keep your lunch down despite the ridiculousness or offensiveness of the content the client shows you.
(3) Make sure the check is good before beginning work.
And of course:
(4) ?
(5) No profit. At least in the opportunity cost sense, you would have done better flipping burgers.
Mark my words - we're entering a second 'Dark Ages'.
With the rise (or perhaps backlash) of religious doctrine against the progress made by modern science over the past few hundred years, we will eventually have the more reasoned voices in society drowned out by the clamouring of idiots.
Creationism/Intelligent Design vs. Evolutionary Theory was the first battleground, now Heliocentrism. What next? Alchemy? Flat-earthism? The stork theory of human reproduction.
This is a disgrace to modern society.
Ok, so the Universe is ~14 Billion years old. SO, from where we sit, the maximum distance of our "sight" is 14 Billion light years in any direction. Thinking about this abstractly, we sit at the center of a bubble in space (essentially, the entire universe, or at least what we can see of it), 28 billion light years across. Now consider that the farther away an object is from us, the "older" it is, relative to us, due to the speed of light being finite. SO, we sort of ARE at the center of the Universe, surrounded by the big bang (creation) in every direction. I would be surprised if this isn't one of those nut ball's arguments.
Occam's razor would suggest that the website merely has not changed since 1995, except for changing conference dates.
How fast do celestial bodies have to be traveling for the Earth to be the center of the universe? According to observable data the speed of light is about 299792458m/s, so a light year, in meters would be: 299792458 m/s * 60 sec * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 365 days, roughly, so 9454254955488000 m/ly. The distance to Alpha Centauri, the next closets star to us after, of course, Sol is a bit over four light years. Converted to meters, that would be: 9454254955488000 m/ly * 4 ly, or 3.78*10^16 meters. Using that number as the radius of the circular orbit (yes, I know orbits are generally elliptical) Alpha Centauri would need for an Earth-centric model gives us a distance traveled in a day to be: pi * 3.78*10^16 meters^2, or about 4.49*10^33 meters in one day. To convert that from meters per day to meters per second we would divide by 24*60*60, as there are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute: 4.49*10^33 m/day / 86400 = 5.19*10^28m/s. Now take into account that I did a lot of rounding and I have been out of school for a really long time, I could have made huge mistakes. But I do know that 5.19*10^28m/s is faster than the speed of light, which is believed to be the cosmological maximum speed limit. Please do correct me if my calculations are wrong or I am in error somewhere.
Their stupidity could be important for the survival of the species. It looks a lot like civilization could fail in the next 50 years, thanks in part to the things science brought us (oil, pollution, habitat destruction, etc), and if so, we'll need yahoos like these to say "see?! science failed us!!" to rally the remaining survivors behind a religion that's all about suffering and having tons of kids in order to repopulate the species. Catholicism was pretty handy as a bootstrap religion.
Because people in technical fields who don't have a grip on reality are dangerous to the profession. What if the next time someone found a bug in your code your management required you to sacrifice a goat as the means to fixing it and then shipped it anyway ?
It's the inverse (?) of “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
...I thought the Planet Express ship remained stationary while the universe moved around it. Now they're saying that's not true?
Why is the universe moving, then? After all, if the earth is the centre of the universe, then the universe is moving in an approximate circle 1AU in radius in a year.
So please explain why the universe is moving...
You see, the earth is not the centre of the universe. In an infinite universe, "centre" has no meaning. Observable universe is different, but then since you are observing from earth, this making the earth the centre of the observable universe is rather tautological. After all, if someone stood on the moon, the earth would be AT THE SAME TIME both the centre of the universe and not the centre.
At any instant, the earth may be considered the centre of the universe, but that is rather like saying the centre of the London is Buckingham Palace. Or your average number of legs is less than 2, making everyone mutant in the leg department.
every respected person knows that the earth is a hollow sphere, we live inside and the sun is a small ball at its centre
Jezzz
Catholic Church asked forgiveness for what they did to Galileo, and recognized he was right years ago. If there were any kind of doubt about geocentrism in the Catholic Church, they never would have done that. Besides, I never heard a Catholic Church representative question geocentrism, more of the opposite.
Adding the fact that the web and cover design is awful and the quotes questionable, I'm pretty sure it's a fake.
Why do the websites of lunatics always seem to be based on the same template from some horribly awful site made for Mosaic in 1995? Does crazy dictate design?
Stop picking on Craigslist, you insensitive clod!
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
>>>>Many of these people probably also believe that heavy objects fall faster than light ones, not because they reject Galileo and his evidence and reasoning, but merely because they weren't paying attention that day in class. Maybe they believe this because that is there daily experience. You may be certain that if you are on the moon and you drop a hammer and a feather at the same time, they will hit the deck at the same time. For somebody who has never been to the Moon, and has never watched that bit of footage showing the experience, they know that the KNOW that the hammer will hit them on the toe whilst the feather is floating off in the breeze. They will be scientifically wrong only if you amend you question to include the stipulation "In a vacuum", and if you try to prove them wrong whilst in an atmosphere, you are going to look like a crank. (believe me I have tried to prove this to my kids, and only managed to reinforce there belief in there personal experience.) The big problem with all of us "scientific" thinkers is that we have just as much "faith" in what we know as the next guy. I know that the planets orbit (mostly) around the sun, and can prove this is the best fit to the evidence by showing you a track of the inner and outer planets and showing how they behave differently during the year against the back ground stars.. I however cannot (without a large vacuum chamber) prove to you that the feather and hammer fall at the same rate, and having never conducted this experiment myself have to rely (have faith) that those experiments conducted by scientists that show this to be true, have been conducted correctly. For those who believe education is the solution to the "incorrect" thinking that is expressed by those who believe in an Earth centered universe, I would suggest a great deal of care. Education has been used by many interests through history to ensure that the population think and act in a certain way. You can steer a person to think just about anything just by controlling what knowledge they are or are not exposed to. The only way to really educate people to understand science and thereby the current state of scientific fact, is to expose them to experiences that allow them to believe what they themselves have seen and felt. Anything else is just another interest group espousing faith in their chosen book.
Next up on Slashdot 18% of Americans, 16% of Germans, and 19% of Britons hate being asked stupid questions in surveys.
That's less than the number of Americans who believe Obama is the Anti-Christ, which is by definition a subset of the segment of religious nutcases.
i'll try that again:::
Maybe they believe this because that is there daily experience. You may be certain that if you are on the moon and you drop a hammer and a feather at the same time, they will hit the deck at the same time.
For somebody who has never been to the Moon, and has never watched that bit of footage showing the experience, they know that the KNOW that the hammer will hit them on the toe whilst the feather is floating off in the breeze. They will be scientifically wrong only if you amend you question to include the stipulation "In a vacuum", and if you try to prove them wrong whilst in an atmosphere, you are going to look like a crank. (believe me I have tried to prove this to my kids, and only managed to reinforce there belief in there personal experience.)
The big problem with all of us "scientific" thinkers is that we have just as much "faith" in what we know as the next guy. I know that the planets orbit (mostly) around the sun, and can prove this is the best fit to the evidence by showing you a track of the inner and outer planets and showing how they behave differently during the year against the back ground stars.. I however cannot (without a large vacuum chamber) prove to you that the feather and hammer fall at the same rate, and having never conducted this experiment myself have to rely (have faith) that those experiments conducted by scientists that show this to be true, have been conducted correctly.
For those who believe education is the solution to the "incorrect" thinking that is expressed by those who believe in an Earth centered universe, I would suggest a great deal of care. Education has been used by many interests through history to ensure that the population think and act in a certain way. You can steer a person to think just about anything just by controlling what knowledge they are or are not exposed to. The only way to really educate people to understand science and thereby the current state of scientific fact, is to expose them to experiences that allow them to believe what they themselves have seen and felt. Anything else is just another interest group espousing faith in their chosen book.
To paraphrase an old saying: "There is nothing so crazy, that some supposedly educated group wont believe it."
Let's face it every idea has a community of critics these days no matter what it is. On the Internet there should be a new rule for it. Like a new law of thermodynamics, reeking of inevitability.
Bitter and proud of it.
Nobody even reads up on what the "Geocentric model" was before arguing.
Technically, galileo only proved that venus rotates around the sun.
The model before his model was that _everything_ revolved around the earth. Planets too. This can be proven false by anyone observing the phases of venus.
The website says it's $50 to attend. This is a advertisement. That is all.
No only that, but the photo shows the Earth as being round, when as we all know from our own observation, it just has to be flat....
Maybe they believe this because that is there daily experience.
I don't think it has to do with daily experience, at least not to the degree that you describe.
In nearly every sense of the word, I firmly believe that the earth revolves around the sun (or, at the least, that it's the most useful model, for the most purposes). Outside of physics exams, and maybe thinking about special effects in Star Wars, I have never had to consider exactly what this fact means. I don't have a daily experience with the earth revolving around the sun, but that's still the way I think about it. I don't think this has anything to do with blind faith in science, or with me completely understanding all the math and physics behind the heliocentric model. I accept it as fact because I was taught it, and I was taught other facts that support this viewpoint, and I've done quite well operating this way for my entire life so far.
However, if you ever came over to my place to help me in my small backyard garden, and you asked, "where will the sun be in the evening in the Fall?", I will gladly point to the place in the sky that the sun will "be". I don't really believe at all that the sun "will be there", but it's the best way to answer the question. Could you imagine trying to decide the location in which to plant a tomato expressed within a heliocentric model?!
Still, I want my kids to intuit a heliocentric model of the solar system, even though they will probably never have a "daily" experience that matches it. I don't think that this is any form of inappropriate indoctrination. There are contexts where each answer is appropriate, but for anyone who has reached sixth grade in the US in the last 50 years, the default answer should be the heliocentric answer. That's just my opinion.
By the way, in 9th grade science (physics? earth science? I forget...), in a school that is far from the best, we re-created the feather-and-lead experiment. Did you seriously not do the same? It doesn't take a great deal of equipment.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Something tells me they may not have wifi access or laptops to live blog from.
After-all, in an infinite space every point is the center looking outward, at least if you are that point.
They're using a different frame of reference. The Earth, relative to the Earth, is at the center of the universe. Why? Because that's where they set the origin point for their measurements. (And for certain observations it's probably a serious pain in the ass to do it that way. Just like the reasons people came up with degrees Kelvin, after 0 Celcius wasn't always the best reference for temperature.) Now if the Earth was being referred to relative to the sun, then no it is not at the center. In that case it would be 1 AU out from the center. (And even then, what direction it's considered outwards in is arbitrary.)
It's all relative actually. Some people just set the origin point for measurement in a different spot. Might not be the smartest thing to do, but what the heck? Not like they're forcing anyone to use their system, so it's no biggy.
Catholic] Church's historical position on the immobility of the Earth...
The summary should read, "the ancient Greek position on the immobility of the Earth..." They had this stuff figured out before Jesus was even born. We associate geocentricism with the Catholic church simply because they put so much effort into reconciling the text of the Bible with the science of the day (which was Geocentricism).
And yes, that's what the Roman Catholic Church is doing again with evolution. Who knows -- give it another thousand years, and maybe people will be scoffing at the old Catholic idea of evolution through mutation and natural selection.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Strictly speaking, the Geocentrists are correct that the Earth IS the centre of the universe, just like everywhere else in the universe.
I'd like to put the whole lot of them into a space ark, activate the stasis field, and ship them off to a star system 500,000 light years away.
On arrival, in the cargo hold, they will find a MagmaTite thermos flask containing a kilogram blob of molten nickel-iron, along with instructions to place this blob at the center of whatever planetary mass they select to become the new center of the universe. They can then confirm the success of the molten blob transplantation by observing that the universe looks pretty much exactly the same as it did from its former center point.
Don't forget to send a telegram! We're all waiting with bated breath to see how it works out.
Our wounderful Christan Love Man give the world a look at the Horror of Christanty .. Cristanfornifcation.
OH! The President and Pope will denounce ... The world will abandon ... but the truth be told.
Christanity is a Virus.
Christans must be killed. Kill Christans ... now!
Plesae, people of Gainsville Florida, Kill the Pervert! You know the PERVERT!
Wherever you look far away, you look at light that traveled some long time, at the speed of light, before reaching your eye. Their is a cosmic microwave background from that epoch. It's like a big sphere the size of the universe. And you know what? It's centered on you! Because whenever you are, you look at the universe as it was when it became transparent.
So what kind of question "Where is the center" is ? It has no meaning.
For any human perspective, the center sure is on Earth. 80% of the population is probably wrong.
It has to do with frames of reference, however the math works out nicer for us if we DON'T use the earth as co-ordinate 0,0,0
It is not insignificant, those two first initials, methinks. Are you perchance leaving a clue for us, hmmm?
Infuriate left and right
WHY is this unfortunate ??
Remember that most the world's population believe in God.
I'm outraged that you would post this, saying it's unfortunate that some of us believe God made Earth the center of the heavens.
Don't turn your back on Christ. Satan is behind this. What you need is prayer and reconciliation with God.
I suppose that next you're going to say we're out of our minds for believing in creationism.
As a Catholic, I condemn such comments.
Go revisit the Central Limit Theorem.
This is completely stupid. Whether the Earth is moving, or whether it is immobile and the rest of the universe is moving in relation to the Earth, is 100% arbitrary, with what you want as the reference point, becoming the reference point. Whether you frame the universe as moving in relation to a presumed Big Bang, or the Earth, does it really matter? I'll give you a hint: the answer is no. It doesn't change a single bit of astrophysics in the slightest (beyond the obvious bit of changing the reference point for the movement).
have you all forgotten high school phyics? A man is standing still, and a boy runs past him, going west, at 5mph. Only, the man and boy are on a tram, moving east at 15mph. The tram is on a large ship going west at 10mph..is the man the point of reference again? No, because they're all on the earth, spinning east at 900mph. Fark, you people want to laugh at someone for picking a different reference point than you? Seriously? One needs to pick a reference point to do anything meaningful in physics; theirs is just different than yours.
Would this possibly be the same 18% of Americans who think President Obama is a Muslim, that it's acceptable to deny a child medical services based on religious beliefs and that the Earth is only 10,000 years old?
Let me know when the Labor Movement will be handed to us by charities...
For those ignorant of American history, Catholics (and the charities they supported) were very frequently confused with Communists prior to the 1950's because of their concern for the ordinary worker. The Catholic voting block was largely responsible for electing politicians who enacted workers-rights legislation. (And even today there are a large contingent of Catholics who ignore the pro-life issues and support Democrats because of their labor-friendly positions... but I digress.)
Things changed in the 80's when the parties tried to split the voting block over the pro-life issue, but the types of people who support charities typically vote Democrat - or used to, until the Democrats started supporting abortion.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Does this mean that 18% have a firm, if not misguided, belief that the earth is the center of the solar system? Or that 18% just don't have a clue if it dosn't have anything to do with the latest news about Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton?
I think its the latter. The Geocentrist movement is far smaller that the clueless moron movement.
Have gnu, will travel.
I thought the point of GR was to get around the inertial reference frame requirement?
You wouldn't dare take seriously a scientists that was also an astrologist, or one that claimed aliens visited him daily
I agree with your larger point (religion is a mental disorder, etc) but a scientist believing in nonsense theories like astrology wouldn't automatically disqualify his scientific work as worthy of consideration. While I might raise an eyebrow, the nice thing about scientific research is that we can test and validate the results. If he has the evidence to support his scientific work, I don't really care if he is a raving lunatic otherwise and neither should anyone else. Genius often comes with a certain amount of crazy. He might have more trouble getting people to take him seriously but fortunately for everyone good science is good science, regardless of the source.
If the Universe were infinite in all dimensions, then "everywhere" is at the center.
But by all means mock the fringe dimwits who don't actually negatively impact society.
What makes you think these people don't negatively impact society? I'm pretty sure they do even if in only a smallish way. They can vote, influence others, etc. Hell morons in Kansas keeps trying to declare creationism as a valid scientific viewpoint.
Any astronomer, no matter how big or small his telescope, can confirm that Earth is at the exact centre of the visible universe and everything swirls around it.
And one of its greatest thinkers believed that reason and faith were both equally valid ways to truth and not in conflict at all.
That doesn't mean he was right. One thing Aquinas is famous for is by claiming to prove god's existence by what god is not. I'm supposed to believe this "great thinker" when he couldn't grasp the logic that he couldn't possibly know what god is or isn't. Every one of his famous five statements about the nature of god is an assumption on his part. There is no foundation to his argument.
The very link you post claims that Aquinas "viewed theology as a science" which it by definition cannot be because theology makes no testable predictions. Scripture is rarely evidence and certainly not any sort of unvarnished truth. Faith is not a "path to truth" (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean) because faith has nothing inherently to do with facts. There is no truth without facts no matter how much one might wish otherwise.
Crap!.. When I saw that it was 'near Notre Dame' I thought that it's in Paris and I could fly there to attend, but then I noticed prices in dollars.. Apparently I'll never fulfill my dream of sitting through one of those events, feeling superior just because I attended primary school...
if you try to prove them wrong whilst in an atmosphere, you are going to look like a crank. (believe me I have tried to prove this to my kids, and only managed to reinforce there belief in there personal experience.)
You may be able to rescue the situation. If you hold a flat sheet of paper by the top edge of so it hangs vertically, the air resistance will be negligible for the first few feet... until it picks up significant speed and swerves randomly. With a little luck you can do this from shoulder height and get a sheet of paper and heavy object to strike the ground at (visually) the same instant. If you want to drop it a greater distance or preform it more reliably you can start with the sheet of paper with a bit of tape along the edge, ask them weather the paper or a brick will fall faster, then roll up the paper into a very tight tube (taped shut) and again let it hang vertically for release. The paper tube can fall from from a decent height before the speed gets fast enough to destabilize it and wind drag to become important. If you hold another sheet of paper horizontally and drop that for comparison it should make it obvious that it's only the wind drag on the horizontal surface size which is causing "light" things fall slowly.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Sig: There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Of course there are.
I make my pancakes in Mobius Strips.
You know, that would be a pretty awesome stunt to pull when serving breakfast at some sort of math conference or other sufficiently geeky event :)
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I asked some people I knew this question. People with college educations. While I only asked 3 of them, 2 of them had a difficult time with it, possibly they thought it was a trick question. And one thought maybe people were confused with some war where we fought the French. For the record, the US has never warred with France, some people I talked to thought maybe the war of 1812 was with France but they weren't sure.
I'm a community college drop out. I didn't pay attention in high school and nearly flunked out. And am usually pretty disinterested in the minutia of history. So why do I know these things when other people do not? I now feel like I'm the weird one here for getting the questions right.
Chuck Norris is the center of the universe. The Earth is connected to Chuck Norris, so the Earth is at the center of the universe.
Thank you David.
I rarely log in, but I needed to comment on this post (the OP).
I am the center of the universe. I don't walk, but I roll the earth/universe.
By the way, if center of universe is something like centre of the circle, then we need to find the accurate boundaries first
The phrase "Geocentrism, the academic belief that the Earth is immobile in the center of the universe..." is a phrase which is teasing the reader and suggesting a big misunderstanding. I suggest there is a translation error here. The people being reported are probably more like historians that are trying to understand the Galilean revolution in perception from different perspectives.
I recall from my college years (at St. John's, where writings of Ptolemy, Galileo and Newton were read), Ptolemy was pretty clear, his book said "I am going to save the appearances...". His math does that.
Galileo was something new, he was studying pendulums, balls rolling down planes and looking at the moons circling Jupiter. Galileo was doing physics. A big change from "saving the appearances".
Now as to the exact language of the transformation that took place with Galileo?
Well there have been a number of expansive interpretations of what happened. It is such an interesting study area that I am inclined to guess the people being described are historians or history buffs or advocates trying to interpret the conflict with the Church in a manner more sympathetic to the Church.
It is a matter of taste, really - or coordinate transformation, to be precise. There is nothing wrong in placing Earth in the centre of the universe - as a matter of fact, my house could arguably be the centre if nobody objects. Of course, it does cause complications when it comes to calculate the planetary orbits; that part is a lot easier if one chooses a coordinate system with the Sun at origo.
Brilliant plan for making money!
Create a ridicilous conspiration theory.
Write books about it.
Organize conferences.
Avoid publishing that theory freely.
Awesome, need a similar idea so that I can retire early!
The guy behind this non-sense obviously is too smart to believe it himself.
Nice parody site, the best I've seen for ages. They've really pulled out all the tops to make it look like the real thing.
Well I use the SwissGrid 1902 coordiniate system. It is definitely earth-centered and it works well for my local orientation! If I want to know about sunrise I check the weather report. I don't need mathematics for that.
did anyone actually read the book?
I'd love to see their evidence
Heheh. Really getting a kick out of all those people trying to explain away the embarrasing 18% figure. Trying to downplay that figure is almost as much head-in-the-sand as clinging to the belief that the Earth is the center of the Universe. Goes to show that the same principles (not willing to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth when it clashes with your own ideology) also work in the /. geek world.
I, for one, have no doubt that 18% of Americans (and 19% of Britains, and 17% of Germans) truely think the Earth is the center of the universe. Hell, half of the US population will belief any stupid position simply "because Oprah said so". And half of the British population finds truth at the bottom of a beer barrel. About the Germans, not so sure, but they have been in trouble deciding on their opinions ever since Der Führer committed suicide....
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
Where did you get this numbers? They seem preposterous.
What the results actually showed was that although 18% of Americans thought Earth was the centre of the Universe, the remaining 72% thought that America was the centre of the Universe.
As someone doing a PhD in orbital mechanics, *anything* can be the centre of the universe. They're not claiming it's an inertial reference frame....
My God is called GRAVITY AND there is proof that it exists. So there.
There are many ways to demonstrate Earth moves wrt the Sun and is accelerated. Just two methods maybe not popular among Slashdotter's pops up in my mind:
- 1) measure with a moderately good spectrograph the Doppler shift of the solar spectrum accurately. One just needs the ambient Sun light, no telescope. In the morning the Sun spectrum is slightly blueshifted wrt to the afternoon spectrum. On an annual basis one can check that the Earth goes away from the Sun from January to June, and the reverse from June to December due to the Earth elliptical orbit.
2) measure with a telescope and spectrograph the solar spectrum reflected from artificial satellites, the Moon, planets or asteroid and verifiy that the single consistant solution explaining the various Doppler shifts is that the solar system center of mass, deep inside the Sun, is at rest wrt to the other bodies, including the Earth.
- measure during a year the angular position of the stars over the sky. The dominant displacement, about 20" of arc, is due to the ratio of the Earth rotation around the Sun and the speed of light (30 km/s / 300'000 km/s = 0.0001 radian = 20"). All the stars seem to move on an ellipse on the sky with semi-long axis of about 20". The proper motion of stars or their parallaxe is much smaller.
Very interesting, indeed. Sid -- www.installierenboiler.com sdorfman@installierenboiler.com
Fantastic! A place where I can go, where everyone is either totally stupid, mentally deficient, completely brainwashed, or suffering from severe mental illness. ....and the religious claim to want respect, when making claims like this!
I have a consignment of chocolate teapots, and flying pig attack insurance to sell.
where is the "center" of supposedly an infinite entity? have we found the edge of the universe?
I realize people sometimes equate biblical literalism with the Roman Catholic Church. But that's not true and there's a very simple way to realize this at Galileo's time. Back in those days a good portion of the public couldn't read at all. Those that could couldn't read the bible in it's original languages, which were Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. (Or the Latin translation. Basically the only people that could read it were heavily educated.) So you have the parishoners who basically couldn't read the original stuff and had to rely on the clergy to tell them what it said. So basically the clergy actually had a simple reason to fudge what it said, they might lose control over the parishoners if they did. (I mean they put William Tyndale to death for translating it. They're not literalists, they're control freaks.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
These are the same Idiots that watch Fox News and think the President is a Muslim (nothing wrong with that). In the words of Ron White "You can't cure Stupid".
...I'm the center of the universe and everything revolves around me in very very very complex patterns. Yes, that includes the Sun and you.
Geocentrism, the academic belief that the Earth is immobile in the center of the universe
-- yeah, their belief is truly academic. Useless, I mean. Is my belief that their belief is useless an academic one? What makes a belief academic? If they get a Russian in on it and he/she calls him/herself academician, does that sorta kinda cover it? Or does one need to do something special to make a belief an academic one? Perhaps believing while going to an academy?
FAIL.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Or maybe its just that the word was coined with the background of a monotheistic culture, but effectively also carries the much broader meaning of not believing in any kind of metaphysics/magic/god/angels/etc.
A real atheist is something completely different from _any_ believer.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Möbius pancakes!
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
I bet "18% of Americans, 16% of Germans, and 19% of Britons" is probably representative of those folks you see in The Jerry Springer show too.
Long awaited debate on the true essence of light and dark.
http://members.dslextreme.com/users/rogermw/darksucker.html
Most people have belief in belief (as opposed to belief in deities) according to Daniel Dennett (one of the four atheist horsemen of the Apocalypse). The reason people believe is hardwired into our genes. It comes about as a result of our ability to imagine the future, coupled with something referred to as HAAD (hyper acute agency detection). HAAD is just a fancy way of saying that human survival was, at one time, dependent on folks jumping when they saw shadows they thought might be predators, even when they were just shadows. There's some really interesting work being done in the field of evolutionary psychology on this subject. Enjoy.
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway This is the road to hell
The earth is flat, supported on 4 elephants that stand on a large turtle.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Why *is* it that science crackpots can never manage to scrounge up a decent headshot? Looking at the web site, the first one is at least a professional job (shame it's such a bad one), but the rest look like they were cut out of high school yearbooks. Or wanted posters. I mean, it's not like it costs a lot, guys.
At least we Westerners don't believe the sun sets at the bottom of a well every day.
In defense of all religion, however, it's been the religious groups which have preserved and fostered knowledge/education through the ages in stark contrast to the pursuits of secular powers throughout history. It was the religious groups who stored, preserved, and advanced despite secular power interests. It was only through state-sponsored religion that we were able to advance society to a point where that knowledge could be utilized, allowing for the secular world to seek Enlightenment.
Hell, we're even finding today in physical sciences (including quantum physics) that many of the tenants of Eastern religions may have even had a basis in science, at one point - which is dire news indeed for contemporary soft-science standing theories, like Evolution (as the whole "this is the first time we've advanced to this level") would be unlikely, at best.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You sir, are absolutely correct. This little nugget was sitting in the back of my mind when I commented, but I wish I hadn't - because I didn't mention it, and now I wish to mod you up.
Relatively speaking, the Earth most certainly is the center of the universe; or, at least, our universe. Every point of context we have starts Here; if that is not a center, then I do not know what you might call it.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Some believe the Earth etc... was created 5000 years ago by a magic bearded guy in 7 days.
People will believe in a lot of silly things. I would even go so far as to say that in all likelihood a good chunk of those "geocentrists" also believe in that the world is 5000 years old. Heck there is still a "Flat Earth Society" out there I hear...
Anyway I will do my best to ignore those people and hope somehow St. Darwin takes care of the rest eventually...
...is an AOL account. What more do you need to know?
The theory of geocentrism was the best world theory for 20 past centuries. Nobody of the readers - I bet - has a fraction of geniality of Aristoteles or Galileo. Thus - I feel highly uncomfortable to hear so much missunderstanding about these great theories. Dear Aristotel, dear Galilei, RIP.
Who is the person Sherlock Holme that you're referring to ? Have we become that willfully ignorant that we're apostrophing EVERYTHING that ends in "s" ?
Descarte's, Ulysse's, Massachusset's, Lo's Angele's...
From my own frame of reference I'm always the center of the universe I occupy, the same as everyone else. When I drive to work, my car is more or less motionless relative to my frame of reference, and the world is moving around me. Why not say that when I'm standing on the earth and not moving, the earth is the center of the frame of reference and everything else is in motion relative to it? It's a philosophical moot point; one can pick any arbitrary frame of reference and call it the "center".
Although I doubt very much that I mean this in the same way that geocentrists mean it, the Earth is just exactly as much the "center" as any other arbitrarily selected location. Other equally qualified locations include: The tip of my nose, the moon, the center of the Sun, the super-massive black hole at the center of the galaxy, the universal center of mass or the initial location at which the big bang took place. It could even be all locations simultaneously. It's about as well defined as a number divided by 0.
Sure, I think geocentricity is bloody stupid but I really can't see myself getting into to an argument about it with anyone stupid/ignorant enough to believe it!
The problem here is that geocentricity makes sense based on impirical observation of the sun rising and setting. Sure, calendars have been buggered up for centuries, but to the majority of people, the sun, rises and sets, so it looks like it is going around the earth - and that's good enough for them. If, after they have been taught that the earth actually goes around the sun and they still insist on geocentricity, well, then you might conjecture that they have a problem.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Therefore, geocentric view makes sense. Ask anyone in Canada
I've wasted a lot of money in my life, the rest I spent on motorcycles and women.
It's actually not the Earth that's at the center of the universe, it's the moon. Earth is just its slime-mold infested neighbor.
In the meantime the site apparently has been Slashdotted, perhaps proof that there is a God.
>>Many of these people probably also believe that heavy objects fall faster than light ones, not because they reject Galileo and his evidence and reasoning, but merely because they weren't paying attention that day in class.
> Maybe they believe this because that is there daily experience.
No. No it's not. Children see heavy and light objects fall at the same speed all the time. They also see certain objects (like feathers) fall very slowly and are more likely to take notice because the behavior is so unusual, but that doesn't mean they don't see actual physics on a daily basis.
You don't need a vacuum chamber to demonstrate that there's something unusual and extraordinary about feathers. Simply take two small paperclips, attach one to a feather, and then demonstrate that the feather still falls more slowly, even though the weight of paperclip+feather is clearly greater than the weight of the paperclip alone. Argue that you've proven that light objects fall faster than heavy ones, and see how the kids react! :)
Please at least know that Sungenis doesn't speak for the Catholic Church. He's out on his own and was forced to take "Catholic" off his website. His "PhD" isn't legitimate, either.
http://sungenisandthejews.blogspot.com/search/label/fake%20doctorate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sungenis