Flat feet?
I admit that I figured he’d keep coming up with reasons and delays for not launching.
2 Likes
Oh! I’ve been mistaken, they’re the Flatus Earth Society. No arguments against that.
5 Likes
I recently read a translation of the Prose Edda. (I will probably finish the Poetic Edda once the summer begins.) Their cosmology is pre-modern and mystical. Admittedly, I read a translation, but I didn’t see anything about a flat Earth. Midgard is circled by Jormungand which is probably where this comes from, but things don’t seem to have definite places-on-the-map or geography in the usual sense. Muspellheim is to the south - kind of - but most places that are mentioned have unclear, probably magical, placement.
3 Likes
Props! I like to read the bible all the way through now and then, just so I can poop the party when someone misquotes it.
Fanatic: “…it says so right in the bible!”
Me: “Nope, nowhere.”
Fanatic: “But! But! What about the part where it says__________?”
Me: “That’s not the bible. I think you got that from ‘Supernatural’ or something. You know, you can get the bible in English, now.”
8 Likes
Also the sea in which Jormungandr sits, and which is said to surround the world on all sides.
Of course, I accept that one can interpret this metaphorically, and not infer from it that Viking sailors believed they would fall off the edge of the world.
To be clear, I cited Aristotle because he was reporting on what other thinkers of the time believed, and because you were demanding citations. Aristotle himself believed the Earth was spherical.
I’m puzzled at the vehement reaction to my point, which was not that the Earth is flat or that we’ve only recently discovered that it isn’t, but rather that flatness has been believed by many clever people who had access to, and were unconvinced by, many of the traditional arguments against it.
I think our inclination to simply repeat the arguments more vehemently, or write the people off as idiots, is not an effective way to make a point. It probably doesn’t matter w/r to a belief like the earth being flat, as only a tiny number of people believe it and that belief has no effect on the rest of us. Unfortunately, there are similar false beliefs (homeopathy, vaccines cause autism, the answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun) where we tend to use the same rhetorical arsenal with the same lack of success, and in these cases it is pretty important that we find a way to convince those who are wrong that they are wrong.
Certainly not in an elevator
1 Like
2 Likes
I believe the official unit of measurement is ‘football fields’.
As I understand it Mr Hughes doesn’t, himself, believe that the earth is flat, but merely sold advertising on the side of his rocket which was purchased by the flat earthers. I don’t suppose he minded all the extra publicity, but I don’t think it has anything to do with what he believes about the earth.
2 Likes
I am impressed that his rocket continued to accelerate in an almost straight line for a good distance after leaving the launch tower. Either he had it nicely balanced or some sort of active control.
2 Likes
If the guy was trying to prove the earth is flat maybe the budget to build a rocket is enough to pay a trip to the edge… seems a much more simple solution to me.
But I guess it’s not as fun as dying in an explosion.
1 Like
Needs work on the pitch control.
next up look for the rings of saturn
Oh man, look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
1 Like
They pump the cabin full of chemtrail gas and everyone hallucinates, obviously.
5 Likes
Is that standard FIFA football pitches or American football fields? Isn’t the standard for height the London Routemaster double-decker bus?
How many Waleses can you see from 130 Buses high?
3 Likes
I think that it surrounds Midgard on all sides. I don’t know if we are supposed to interpret that as “the world” or not.
I hope that my reply did not come off as vehement; it was not the intent. I don’t think that the flat-earthers are “idiots” exactly. Rather they are cranks; so convinced of their conclusion that they go to ridiculous lengths to defend it. It is an extreme version of a common thing.
An aside: Some of the early “reasons” that the Earth was round seemed pretty mediocre too: that the sphere is the most perfect shape, so what else would god(s) make? You might be able to rehabilitate that argument with appeals to isotropy and energy minimization, but it wasn’t exactly a conclusion from empiric measurement.
2 Likes
Based on the curvature of the horizon in the video, you’d think we actually live in a hollow earth…
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
2 Likes
oh come on people. this is just an elaborate troll. If they wanted high altitude pics, there are easier, more reliable, and cheaper ways to get them.
5 Likes
