Flat-Earth Argument Results in Rap Battle (npr.org)

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Flat-Earth Argument Results in Rap Battle (npr.org)

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @12:42AM from the of-course-it-does dept.

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.

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Re:The earth is flat? by Coisiche · 2016-01-27 00:59 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'd expect the flat-earthers to have a stock reply for that one. Much like the believers of other ridiculous things have their toolkit of responses to use to deflect the truth.
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 got to be a good one.
Why the fuck is this on Slashdot?! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-27 01:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

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!
1. Re:Why the fuck is this on Slashdot?! by Shortguy881 · 2016-01-27 05:05 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Well, not only is the story amusing, Neil Degrasse Tyson in a rap battle with B. o. B., but this is also a great introspective of the country we now live in. Well known public figures can denounce something theorized over 2000 years ago (since then proven as scientific fact) and not be dismissed as completely idiotic. We as nerds tend to like science and uphold its tenants of observable phenomena. If you can't find something interesting in this story, you are just not looking.
  
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  Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Re:The earth is flat? by CajunArson · 2016-01-27 01:12 · Score: 5, Informative

Actually, according to them the North Pole really isn't the issue. It's the South Pole that doesn't exist. Instead there's a wall of ice around Antarctica that's guarded by NASA employees to keep people from finding the truth (I'm not actually making that up, unfortunately).

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AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-27 01:12 · Score: 5, Funny

Well you sure typed some words on the internet
Re:The earth is flat? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2016-01-27 01:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Re:The earth is flat? by starless · 2016-01-27 01:24 · Score: 4, Informative

Well, there may be no NASA employees at exactly the south pole, there are certainly NASA
employees and contractors in Antarctica flying balloons...
http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antar...
Re:The earth is flat? by i.r.id10t · 2016-01-27 01:39 · Score: 4, Funny

Actually... only one turtle. And four elephants.

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Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
More than five centuries by azcoyote · 2016-01-27 01:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
1. Re:More than five centuries by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-27 02:05 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  many people believed the Earth was round, they just thought it was a lot smaller
  Both that the Earth is round and a very good approximation of the size were known for centuries before Columbus. *Columbus* underestimated the size of the Earth and thought he could make it; other people refused to support him because they knew that he could not load his ships with enough provisions to survive the trip.
2. Re:More than five centuries by Sique · 2016-01-27 03:13 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The christian churches never proclaimed officially that the Earth was flat. Only some quite obscure mysticists from the 3th and 4th century AD did, but they never got much attention. To most people, it didn't matter what size or shape the Earth had, as they never moved around very much, and for those, who did, they knew the Earth was round, and the more astute ones even knew the estimated size. Henry the Navigator, Infante of Portugal in the first half of the 15th century, organized many explorative expeditions around Africa and the Atlantic, which then mounted in a quite correct map of the coasts of Africa, the discovery of Madeira and the Azores, and during the time of Columbus, the discovery of the sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese of the 15th century definitely knew decades before Columbus that the Earth is round, and that its circumfence is about 26,000 mls. And there was no religious dogma hindering them to state so.
  
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  .sig: Sique *sigh*
3. Re:More than five centuries by Chris+Mattern · 2016-01-27 04:53 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  many people believed the Earth was round, they just thought it was a lot smaller
  Nope; it was Columbus who thought it was smaller, and was wrong. The Earth's size was first accurately estimated by Eratosthenes around 200 BC by using the shadows cast by the sun in different locations, and his figure (which was in fact only 0.16% off from the true figure) has been the generally accepted one ever since.