Author Topic: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)  (Read 16902 times)

Offline JayUtah

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Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
« Reply #30 on: August 30, 2019, 10:52:21 AM »
A seagull poster, also known as a mudguard.

I get the seagull analogy.  (It's our state bird.)  Explain mudguard, if you please.
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams

Offline JayUtah

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Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
« Reply #31 on: August 30, 2019, 12:58:04 PM »
I read his post AND looked at his linked page.  From the convoluted and seemingly uneducated conclusions he made, I cannot find any reason to assume he has made ANY logical notations.

Agreed, but still kind of a ad hominem. (Not in the malicious way, but just in the "logically sketchy" way.)  That the claimant is evidently inept at visual reasoning does not compel belief that the annotations must be incorrect.  The correctness of the annotations can be adjudicated on their own, irrespective of the traits of the author, and in fact are the primary evidence themselves of the traits we attribute to the author.  The author is a nitwit because the annotations make specious claims, not the other way round.  Moreover,  viewing the gallery and the posted photos in toto, one can make the case that "Izraul" didn't make any of the annotations or draw any of the conclusions himself anyway.  The photos evidently come from a hodge podge of sources, at least one of which appears to be Jack White.  Hence we have no reason to believe he is the author of any of them.  The claim insinuated in his post is that the photos he presents are the result of his diligent research and investigative effort, including veiled claims of expertise in digital image analysis.  But we know that to be false in at least some of the cases; the photos were identified, commented upon, and annotated by others.  The best we can conclude according to the evidence is that Izraul has collected them and is now presenting them for some reason that continues to elude us.  He has not returned to defend his claims against the criticism that has ensued.  There remains some question whether criticism was a reasonable expectation to attribute to him.  Others have come here mistakenly thinking it is where hoax claims are welcome and endorsed, rather than reviewed critically.  One can view his post as postured to appeal to other hoax claimants:  "I sought to debunk the hoax claimants and ended up agreeing with them."

The separate question of whether the annotations are clear lets me come clean.  I didn't initially notice the annotation on the Earth.  It was up near the top edge, and I extracted the claim regarding the photo entirely from the caption at the bottom.  I did, however, notice the annotation in the center of the photo, in which the arrowhead seemed simply to indicate the lower half of the photo.  When I went back later to pay closer attention to all the available information, I interpreted the top annotation the same way:  that the arrowhead was meant to focus attention and not to indicate a direction.  The arrows appear to be used inconsistently, and silly me tried to give them a consistent role.  That in turn colored my interpretation of the text of the annotation, which does not say, "This is the Sun."

As others came at the evidence with less bias, it became more parsimonious to interpret the annotation near Earth to indicate an inference of illumination angle.  It is important in many cases to argue in a way that draws all inferences in favor of one's opponent.  That makes it less credible for an opponent to dismiss your criticism as a straw man.  Here it is more reasonable to say that the author has correctly identified the object in the photo as the Earth and has attempted intelligently to infer illumination information based on that correct identification, than it is to infer that the author is so inept as to be unable to distinguish the Earth from the Sun in a photograph.

But most of us here are used to proponents drawing preposterous conclusions and making claims based on confidently erroneous identifications or assumptions.  The generous practice of drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the opponent bites us when we consider that quite a lot of the inferences that proponents rely upon are not at all reasonable.  And, as I mentioned, there is the nefarious rhetorical practice of making ambiguous arguments in order to bait one's opponent to be the one to make the (intended) inference, only to tar him with the consequences of having done that.  In the wake of so many such propositions, we have adopted a stern practice of requiring the proponent to make his inferences explicit.  Hence I held my concession in abeyance pending a clarification from the proponent -- which is almost certainly not going to come forth.

"But Jay," one might ask, "did you abate the concession because of the rhetorical dilemma you identify, or instead to save face after having been thoroughly contradicted by other reasonable critics."  Heh, probably more the latter.  No one is immune to the effects of ego.  The sting of probably having interpreted the annotation contrary to its reasonable intent gets blunted by being able to pivot to something I am still abstractly right about.  This is why skepticism works.  As careful as I often am in making criticism, there are still people who are simultaneously aligned with me ideologically yet committed enough to fairness to call me out on it.  It's more important that we get it right than that we bludgeon proponents who have reached poor conclusions.
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams

Offline Abaddon

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Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
« Reply #32 on: August 30, 2019, 03:46:05 PM »
A seagull poster, also known as a mudguard.

I get the seagull analogy.  (It's our state bird.)  Explain mudguard, if you please.
New to me also.

Urban dictionary offers this:

Quote
mudguard
Bald guy with shit for brains.

ie: shiny on top, shit underneath.
Guy1 "Did you hear what delivery date he agreed to during that phone call?"

Guy2 "We'll never meet the deadline, our boss is such a ****ing mudguard."

Offline Obviousman

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Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
« Reply #33 on: August 30, 2019, 04:23:08 PM »
A seagull poster, also known as a mudguard.

I get the seagull analogy.  (It's our state bird.)  Explain mudguard, if you please.
New to me also.

Urban dictionary offers this:

Quote
mudguard
Bald guy with shit for brains.

ie: shiny on top, shit underneath.
Guy1 "Did you hear what delivery date he agreed to during that phone call?"

Guy2 "We'll never meet the deadline, our boss is such a ****ing mudguard."

That's correct, although it doesn't have to be limited to a bald person; it can be applied to someone who appears authentic or convincing on the outside but are in fact full of rubbish under the surface.

I think there could be a second layer here, because if you are a Firefly fan (a 'Browncoat') then shiny can also mean good or valuable; "cool." So being 'shiny' on the exterior but... etc

Offline jfb

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Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
« Reply #34 on: August 30, 2019, 07:12:39 PM »
Looking at the linked page, it's clear someone has no clue what they're looking at.

Row 1, left - Apparently Stanley Kubrick is a squarish black blob, and the other astronaut reflected in the visor is a "stage hand";
Row 1, center - He's looking at the distorted reflection of the flag in the visor and claiming that's another person;
Row 1, right - vignetting == "spotlight"

Row 2, left - he claims he's seeing a boot print in the regolith that's not an astronaut boot.  The images he uses as "proof" are ... not convincing;
Row 2, center - He's obviously confusing elements of the LRV reflected in the visor for "other people" (not that I can see anything that he's talking about - he must be working from a higher-resolution image than what's on the page, because what's on the page is useless);
Row 2, right - this is Pete's famous picture of Al with the sample container.  On the left there's a second person reflected in Al's visor, on the right only Pete is reflected.  The claim is that the left photo is the original, while the right photo is doctored.  This is the first flat-out lie - the exact opposite is true.  Whether it's Izraul's (or whomever's page this is) lie or someone else's, I don't know.

Row 3, left - someone doesn't know the difference between a still camera and a video camera.  Someone also doesn't take into account the difference in signal quality between the lunar broadcasts and the average football game.
Row 3, right - someone doesn't understand how panoramas can be built up from multiple photos and how wide-angle lenses work;

Row 4, left - someone doesn't understand how the position of a light source can affect a picture.
Row 4, right - someone doesn't understand parallax;

... and this isn't fun anymore.  But you get the picture - basically a heaping helping of willful ignorance and stupidity combined with deep dishonesty. 

Offline onebigmonkey

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Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
« Reply #35 on: August 31, 2019, 04:46:27 AM »
Row 2, right - this is Pete's famous picture of Al with the sample container.  On the left there's a second person reflected in Al's visor, on the right only Pete is reflected.  The claim is that the left photo is the original, while the right photo is doctored.  This is the first flat-out lie - the exact opposite is true.  Whether it's Izraul's (or whomever's page this is) lie or someone else's, I don't know.

I spent some time looking at this one today and I'm pretty sure that the image used in the fake one (for the avoidance of doubt: the fake is the one with two astronauts in the visor) is this, AS12-49-7281, with a couple of embellishments to add the shadow:



So the photograph with multiple astronauts in the visor was taken before the photograph with the astronaut pictured in the visor was taken...

Offline bobdude11

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Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
« Reply #36 on: November 11, 2019, 02:37:53 PM »
Off topic a bit (and yet, not entirely):

Jay and STS60 correcting their initial statements regarding the identification of Earth, are just 2 of the many things I have seen that have changed how I interact with folks on the intertoobs.

They (and many others on here) have taught me how to:
 - Be more patient
 - Perform thorough research
 - Be honest in my interactions (up to and including making retractions/withdrawals/apologies as required)
 - Be truthful in my interactions
 - To the best of my ability, remove emotion and focus on the facts (still working on the emotion part)

It is these lessons I carry with me everyday and into my entire life (personal and professional) and I want to thank you all for helping me to become a much better person all around and a much better researcher for things such as these.
Robert Clark -
CISSP, MISM, MCSE and some other alphabet certifications.
I am moving to Theory ... everything works in Theory
"Everybody remember where we parked." James Tiberius Kirk, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise