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Flat-Earth Argument Results in Rap Battle (npr.org)
New submitter mjjochen writes: A little something to make you smile (or cry). NPR reports on astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson calling out rapper B.o.B. in a Twitter (& rap) argument over the status of the earth (are we round or flat?). Rapper B.o.B. references the usual conspiracy theories to support his case in his throwdown (music). Neil deGrasse Tyson responds (actually, his nephew does), on why B.o.B.'s points are not very well-informed (music). As Tyson puts it, "Duude — to be clear: Being five centuries regressed in your reasoning doesn't mean we all can't still like your music." Shall we start leeching the four humors from the body again to achieve balance? Hrm.
Holy shit. I think that Slashdot may have hit a new all-time low with this submission. Everything about this submission is dumb and irrelevant.
Come on! Can't we get some relevant submissions onto the front page, rather than total shit like this submission? It's not like they don't exist. They're sitting there in the goddamn queue, while donkey shit like this submission ends up on the front page.
Seriously, why the fuck is Slashdot reporting about a flat-earth argument of all things? Why the fuck is Slashdot reporting about a goddamn rap battle over some flat-earth argument? The people involved aren't even remotely important in any way.
What a fucking stupid submission! It's utterly stupid in every single way!
Having said that, I would be really interested in their explanation of how it can be noon in Hawaii at the same time as it's the middle of the night in Paris.
That's easy it's a combination of turtles with mirrors and sun blocker discs on their backs . . .
. . . all the way down.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I love a good conspiracy theory, I really do. I'm a big fan of the X-files... but... and I think this is a big reason why I only engage in them for entertainment purposes:
The Government cannot simultaneously be incompetent and engage in these "vast conspiracies", as the people who engage in the latter are always complaining about the former so often do. Just because a villain in a Bond flick can ensure the loyalty of silence of the hundreds or thousands of workers from Blofeld to the lowliest janitor in the underground complex does not mean that this is how the real world works. Even the Mafia can't (and isn't able to) do that.
Errr...there is good rap?
I have long since given up on making statements about the stupid shit people can or will believe.
I've met more than enough people who insist on believing the most outrageous things ... and even if they're doing it as an act, any sufficiently advanced attention seeking/denial of reality is indistinguishable from actually being an idiot.
I no longer differentiate between those who are idiots, and those who merely want to seem like idiots.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Without reading TFA, I have to point out that if Tyson tweeted that the rapper was "five centuries regressed in your reasoning" in order to indicate that five centuries ago people all thought that the earth was flat, then Tyson's statement is ironically also uninformed. There's a common myth that Columbus "discovered" that the earth was round. In fact people had believed that the earth was round for centuries before Columbus, but nobody had ever demonstrated this fact to mainland Europe by means of sailing. I'm not talking about the ancient Greeks, either. Even Dante (13th c.) believed that the earth was round, but he thought that the other side was just filled with empty water--apart from Purgatory, which was on an island there. I believe I've even seen references to the earth being round in Christian writings from the first millennium AD. The past is not so simple as people often paint it. It's not as though people were all stupid before until the glorious age of Enlightenment. Hence the kind of fallacy that causes someone to deny the roundness of the earth today is of an entirely different character and magnitude compared to the innocent ignorance of those who imagined the earth as flat in the past.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.