Author Topic: What becomes of old 'friends'..  (Read 479039 times)

Offline Noldi400

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #735 on: October 08, 2013, 09:52:46 PM »
I have to admit to a certain fondness for that business about "If xyz crater is at the top of the moon when it rises, why is it at the bottom of the moon when it sets?".  There's just something elegant about that level of simple-mindedness.



It also seems to me that any HB theory notion leads inevitably to the claim of a shadow world government ("Illuminati" or whatever) because there's really no other way to explain why other countries - the USSR in particular - wouldn't have blown the whistle.

Of course, Hunchbacked has his own theory involving the Evile CIA and its worldwide reach. He seems awfully critical of our intelligence community for a citizen of a country whose DGSE is perhaps best known for sinking the Greenpeace flagship.
"The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are... a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut." - Dean Koontz

Offline ChrLz

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #736 on: October 20, 2013, 05:03:22 PM »
Just for the record, Highwic has returned to BAUT here:
http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php?146819-Planet-X-now-seen-in-constellation%EF%BB%BF-of-Capricornus&p=2163558#post2163558
.. with the same old misidentification and dire end-of-world-by-Planet-X-death-on-its-way-any-minute-now-incoming assertions....

To his credit, his post was brief and he didn't give a TEOTWAWKI date which has been his embarrassing undoing many times in the past.  I am tempted to ask him to please explain what's different now to all his previous failures, before he should expect anyone to take this new 'improved' one seriously, but BAUT isn't really my thing these days.. and I just can't be bothered.  Old and cynical I guess!

Offline twik

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #737 on: October 21, 2013, 05:30:43 PM »
Quote
It also seems to me that any HB theory notion leads inevitably to the claim of a shadow world government ("Illuminati" or whatever) because there's really no other way to explain why other countries - the USSR in particular - wouldn't have blown the whistle.

That's what I consider a "tipping point" - either they have to realize that someone, somewhere, would have blown the whistle on whatever they're on about, or else virtually the whole world is in on it. If they go past this point, logical discourse becomes impossible. They think the Moon doesn't exist? What we see is a hologram. Water really isn't wet? If we say it is, it's Illuminati mind control. When they reach this stage, there is no reasoning, because "the PTB did it" is the equivalent of "a wizard did it".

Offline sts60

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #738 on: October 21, 2013, 05:42:53 PM »
Quote
It also seems to me that any HB theory notion leads inevitably to the claim of a shadow world government ("Illuminati" or whatever) because there's really no other way to explain why other countries - the USSR in particular - wouldn't have blown the whistle.

That's what I consider a "tipping point" - either they have to realize that someone, somewhere, would have blown the whistle on whatever they're on about, or else virtually the whole world is in on it. If they go past this point, logical discourse becomes impossible. They think the Moon doesn't exist? What we see is a hologram. Water really isn't wet? If we say it is, it's Illuminati mind control. When they reach this stage, there is no reasoning, because "the PTB did it" is the equivalent of "a wizard did it".
rocky/DavidC/FatFreddy88 is a good example.   He's had to deny the existence of the South Atlantic Anomaly to maintain his viewpoint.  He claims every spacecraft maker in the world is an accomplice to NASA in covering up the "real" space environment.  And, when he claims the "lurker and viewers" at a given board support him, only to have polls showing them disagreeing with him by margins like 19-0 and 293-1, he immediately claims everyone who disagrees with him is a shill or sock-puppet.

When people aren't even allowed to disagree with you honestly, what kind of useful discussion is possible?

Offline cjameshuff

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #739 on: October 21, 2013, 06:24:30 PM »
Solon's weird ideas about light are another. He doesn't seem to deny Apollo, he actually asserts the fact that they didn't see and photograph a sky full of stars as evidence for his theory. Every example that contradicts his beliefs gets ignored or rejected because it can't be proven they didn't use "gratings" or some other magical optical technique. And his conspiracy involves everyone who has ever worked with optics and/or vacuum, so unlike Apollo, it also requires that the conspiracy have started a good century or two ago.

And the Apollo hoax CTs at least have some concept of a motivation for doing it. Solon's CT: they've been trying to keep people from realizing that visible light can't travel through vacuum and stars are only visible due to some hand-waving ionospheric effects because...because.

Offline Noldi400

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #740 on: October 21, 2013, 08:04:26 PM »
Quote
It also seems to me that any HB theory notion leads inevitably to the claim of a shadow world government ("Illuminati" or whatever) because there's really no other way to explain why other countries - the USSR in particular - wouldn't have blown the whistle.

That's what I consider a "tipping point" - either they have to realize that someone, somewhere, would have blown the whistle on whatever they're on about, or else virtually the whole world is in on it. If they go past this point, logical discourse becomes impossible. They think the Moon doesn't exist? What we see is a hologram. Water really isn't wet? If we say it is, it's Illuminati mind control. When they reach this stage, there is no reasoning, because "the PTB did it" is the equivalent of "a wizard did it".

Exactly... "It's turtles all the way down".

I'm sure that there's a term for it, but every hoaxie claim requires a bigger one to make it possible, until it quickly grows to a level of absurdity that the average six-year-old should be able to see through.
"The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are... a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut." - Dean Koontz

Offline Chew

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #741 on: October 21, 2013, 08:11:50 PM »
Conspiracy Theorists' First Law of Hoax Conservation: If your hoax theory starts to fall apart, you need to ramp up the crazy.

Offline Chew

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #742 on: October 21, 2013, 08:13:57 PM »
Actually, that should probably be the second law? First law should be a hoax theory at rest will never remain at rest for very long and a hoax theory in motion will remain in motion regardless of the facts.

Offline sts60

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #743 on: October 21, 2013, 09:22:57 PM »
Solon's weird ideas about light are another. He doesn't seem to deny Apollo, he actually asserts the fact that they didn't see and photograph a sky full of stars as evidence for his theory. Every example that contradicts his beliefs gets ignored or rejected because it can't be proven they didn't use "gratings" or some other magical optical technique. And his conspiracy involves everyone who has ever worked with optics and/or vacuum, so unlike Apollo, it also requires that the conspiracy have started a good century or two ago.
Poor Solon had absolutely terrible research skills.  He'd routinely ask innocently, "Why are there no picture of X taken from Y?", or "Why is there no mention of Z?"  When immediately presented with a dozen examples of things he said didn't exist, he'd put his shoulders to the goalposts and quickly push them into... himself; he contradicted himself a lot

And, yes, he sure does love his gratings.  He pretty much put gratings on every piece of glass in the solar system.  He even proposed that the Shuttle's windshield had gratings, at which I had to point out that I've been in various Orbiters and they had no such thing.  Even Earthbound solar cells were part of the Great Grating Extravaganza.

Which brings up a trait of quite a few conspiracists, namely, the Inability to Leave Anything Out.  According to Solon's own claims, there is no point in solar cells on the ground to have gratings, as they already operate well within his "conversion" zone.   But there's no stopping to think about the superfluity of such a feature, because somewhere he read that some solar cells use some sort of grating, and he was darned well not going to leave that out.

And the Apollo hoax CTs at least have some concept of a motivation for doing it. Solon's CT: they've been trying to keep people from realizing that visible light can't travel through vacuum and stars are only visible due to some hand-waving ionospheric effects because...because.

That's something he never addressed, all right: what was the point of hiding something that could be discovered by any physicist with a decent-sized vacuum chamber?  Funny, when I got my physics degree, they forgot to swear me into the Secret Plane Wave Society.  But, as you noted, Solon's conspiracy pretty much puts an Apollo hoax, JFK, and 9/11 combined into the minor leagues; every physics book ever dealing with EM has to be a hoax.

By the way, he did veer into Apollo hoax land after it was pointed out how the astronauts did see stars during the flights under appropriate circumstances.  (IIRC, he went briefly with the "guilty press conference" routine.). But when I showed the A8 crew seeing the Moon from 50,000 miles, he accepted that and darned if that didn't match his calculations for maximum Moon visibility distance in a vacuum, how about that?   No response to my follow up showing the A10 viewing the Moon from twice that distance...  Except to complain that no wonder it took so long for Lyman Spitzer to get a visible-light space telescope named after him.   Ahem.

Offline JayUtah

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #744 on: February 05, 2014, 02:10:57 PM »
I just granted an interview to NHK (Japan public television).  They're sending a crew out next week to do the interview.

Many of you know of Kevin Overstreet, whose hoax web site (now disabled due to bandwidth limits) got me started on debunking the hoax claims.  You may also know that he now works for me and never was much of a conspiracy theorist.  ("I was only 15!  Give me a break!")  Kevin walked into my office and proposed that he should come along too and we'll make it an intellectual cage match.  :)
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams

Offline twik

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #745 on: February 10, 2014, 03:46:29 PM »
Solon's weird ideas about light are another. He doesn't seem to deny Apollo, he actually asserts the fact that they didn't see and photograph a sky full of stars as evidence for his theory. Every example that contradicts his beliefs gets ignored or rejected because it can't be proven they didn't use "gratings" or some other magical optical technique. And his conspiracy involves everyone who has ever worked with optics and/or vacuum, so unlike Apollo, it also requires that the conspiracy have started a good century or two ago.
Poor Solon had absolutely terrible research skills.  He'd routinely ask innocently, "Why are there no picture of X taken from Y?", or "Why is there no mention of Z?"  When immediately presented with a dozen examples of things he said didn't exist, he'd put his shoulders to the goalposts and quickly push them into... himself; he contradicted himself a lot

And, yes, he sure does love his gratings.  He pretty much put gratings on every piece of glass in the solar system.  He even proposed that the Shuttle's windshield had gratings, at which I had to point out that I've been in various Orbiters and they had no such thing.  Even Earthbound solar cells were part of the Great Grating Extravaganza.

Which brings up a trait of quite a few conspiracists, namely, the Inability to Leave Anything Out.  According to Solon's own claims, there is no point in solar cells on the ground to have gratings, as they already operate well within his "conversion" zone.   But there's no stopping to think about the superfluity of such a feature, because somewhere he read that some solar cells use some sort of grating, and he was darned well not going to leave that out.

And the Apollo hoax CTs at least have some concept of a motivation for doing it. Solon's CT: they've been trying to keep people from realizing that visible light can't travel through vacuum and stars are only visible due to some hand-waving ionospheric effects because...because.

That's something he never addressed, all right: what was the point of hiding something that could be discovered by any physicist with a decent-sized vacuum chamber?  Funny, when I got my physics degree, they forgot to swear me into the Secret Plane Wave Society.  But, as you noted, Solon's conspiracy pretty much puts an Apollo hoax, JFK, and 9/11 combined into the minor leagues; every physics book ever dealing with EM has to be a hoax.

By the way, he did veer into Apollo hoax land after it was pointed out how the astronauts did see stars during the flights under appropriate circumstances.  (IIRC, he went briefly with the "guilty press conference" routine.). But when I showed the A8 crew seeing the Moon from 50,000 miles, he accepted that and darned if that didn't match his calculations for maximum Moon visibility distance in a vacuum, how about that?   No response to my follow up showing the A10 viewing the Moon from twice that distance...  Except to complain that no wonder it took so long for Lyman Spitzer to get a visible-light space telescope named after him.   Ahem.

I wish Solon had not gotten banned, because it became one of my personal Great Mysteries - what was he actually going on about? He was like a stage magician doing an obvious build-up to the Big Reveal, but he never quite got around to it. What was his point? Why would the rest of the scientific world work for hundreds of years to deny the truth? I mean, I can see the point for some alleged scientific truths - yes, if free energy does exist, it would hurt the current energy producers, or if there's an easy cure for cancer hiding in our spice rack, it might worry the pharmaceutical industry. But what is the benefit to anyone about concealing that light cannot be seen in a vacuum? The most he was able to explain was that he believed that if we didn't see glorious photographs of space, that we'd lose interest in space exploration, which is kind of a definitive "weak sauce".

I guess I'll never know if he were leading up to some grand tying together of disparate threads, or if it all boiled down to "my own idiosyncratic studies of light make me think it's invisible in a vacuum, and therefore everyone else must be lying."
« Last Edit: February 10, 2014, 03:53:50 PM by twik »

Offline ChrLz

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'.. (and on gold foil)
« Reply #746 on: April 07, 2014, 12:16:45 AM »
Amidst the quiet.. a small update - Ove and Turbonium are (were..) still feebly waving their flags over at Unexplained Mysteries, but it hasn't gone well.

First, Ove pretty much self-destructed - note to tinfoilhatters, never let me or anyone goad you into nominating your best evidence... :D
Ove's 'best' was an interview that a Russian media crowd did with Alexey Leonov, where Leonov hinted that he had seen Kubrick's wife talk about some imagery he had supposedly done for NASA.  (I believe the source of that might have been a doctored interview that was part of the "Dark Side of the Moon" mockumentary.)  Anyways, I asked him to present the actual images that Kubrick supposedly faked, and well, let's just say his choices weren't all that good...  Ove has now been banned from that section of the forum.


Then there's turbonium, whose latest 'evidence' is a Nostradamus interpretation.  He chose a known 'fake' translation, and frankly, he has got no traction with anyone over there...

So it seems the last few deniers are disappearing from view, now being subject to derision at any decent forum, or relegated to the completely whacked forums like Icke, or trying (and failing) to get any more than troll attention at Youtube...

It is good to note that occasionally during those threads (the first one is a whopper - Ove just tacked on at the end), an 'odd' person or two may drop by, but most are converted to the Light Side.  And I think a large part of the reason, is the arrogant ignorance of those like Ove and Turb who just ignore questions or countering evidence/argument.  So thanks, Ove and Turb - your utter incompetence is doing wonders to help stamp out the denial...

One other thing:

Here, I discussed a side issue, namely the application (and earlier removal) of the gold kapton foil to the A11 footpads at the time of 'mating'.... :D.  Does anyone have any better/more accurate/cited information on this?  I've given my interpretation but I guess it is also possible that the foil was at that time covered with plastic protective sheeting.. it just doesn't *look* like that is the case..

Offline JayUtah

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'.. (and on gold foil)
« Reply #747 on: April 08, 2014, 12:06:07 PM »
So it seems the last few deniers are disappearing from view...

Good.  Maybe now I can actually write the book version of the Clavius web site without worrying about it being obsolete out of the gate.  Dwight, you are so fortunate to be able to write history rather than polemics. :)
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams

Offline ineluki

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'.. (and on gold foil)
« Reply #748 on: April 15, 2014, 07:08:58 AM »
Then there's turbonium, whose latest 'evidence' is a Nostradamus interpretation

It's almost as if he is running some kind of game to see how silly his claims can become before everyone finally stops feeding him.



Offline frenat

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Re: What becomes of old 'friends'..
« Reply #749 on: April 15, 2014, 08:01:52 AM »
Then there's turbonium, whose latest 'evidence' is a Nostradamus interpretation

It's almost as if he is running some kind of game to see how silly his claims can become before everyone finally stops feeding him.



That's exactly what it looks like.
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