31

The Lounge / MOVED: I are serious cat!!! WTF?!?!!

« on: March 03, 2007, 07:45:24 AM »

This topic has been moved to Angry Ranting.

http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=11127.0

32

The Lounge / Dawkins on CNN

« on: February 09, 2007, 03:02:09 PM »

Richard Dawkins will be appearing on CNN on Monday the 12th at 8 PM EST; Paula Zahn will be interviewing him as a followup to her rather awful 'panel' on atheism recently, which rapidly turned into a bash-atheism session. I'm sure Dawkins will easily demolish the 'arguments' made by the panel.

http://richarddawkins.net/event,123,CNN

edit: Forgot to add the date.

33

The Lounge / Real-life fighting suit invented

« on: January 15, 2007, 12:52:46 PM »

http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1168470616997&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1014656511815

This is pretty cool, reminds me of the suits from The Forever War or Halo.

34

The Lounge / The Nature of Atheism- guest article for a friend's blog

« on: January 03, 2007, 01:45:35 PM »

Here's a guest article I wrote for a friend's blog, on atheism and some of my personal philosophy:

http://www.nathanrice.org/2007/01/03/the-nature-of-atheism/

I hope you enjoy.

35

The Lounge / The blog of Nathan Rice

« on: December 19, 2006, 12:43:29 PM »

For some time I've been exchanging emails with a Christian penpal. Originally we were debating on the subject of Intelligent Design, but we've branched out into other topics of politics, morality, science, etc, and found we agree on more things than either of us would have expected. Though he comes from a conservative Christian background and I from a liberal agnostic/atheist/semi-theist one, we both approach issues with a willingness to be convinced if we are wrong. He started a blog a few months ago, which I think provides an interesting perspective not seen often enough: that of the intelligent, critical theist. I thought the people here might be interested in reading his blog:

http://www.nathanrice.org/

I'll be writing a guest article for his blog soon, I'll let you know when that happens.

36

The Lounge / Dawkins on 'Book TV'

« on: December 19, 2006, 10:44:24 AM »

Here is Richard Dawkins speaking at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, as appeared on C-SPAN 2's Book TV. The first video is Dawkins reading bits from 'The God Delusion', the second is the Q&A session that followed.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,303,Reading-of-The-God-Delusion-in-Lynchburg-VA,Richard-Dawkins--C-SPAN2

37

The Lounge / My (in progress) contribution to the world of METAL

« on: December 15, 2006, 05:23:42 PM »

This is a song I've been working on for a few weeks now. It's nearing completion- all that needs to be written is the solo, all that needs to be recorded is the solo, the rhythm part under it, and the outro. It's metal, with some influences between other types of hard rock. Does it rock? Does it suck? Do you not care for it? VOTE! This is Spirit of the Machine, by Eternal Pain Solution.

http://dyshost.com/music/spiritofthemachine.mp3

38

The Lounge / OH EM GEE WANT WANT WANT!!!!

« on: November 04, 2006, 02:23:12 PM »

39

Flat Earth Q&A / A thought on the UA...

« on: October 08, 2006, 04:14:50 PM »

So we have seen that, according to the FE model, the Earth, the sun, all the planets with accompanying moons, and perhaps the entire universe are accelerated at a constant rate of 9.8m/s/s. This is caused by an as-yet unknown force that acts on all these bodies. The question was recently posed as to why this universal accelerator (UA) accelerated all these bodies, but not objects on the surface of Earth as well. If objects on the Earth, such as people, were accelerated by the UA, then when one jumped upwards one would never fall back down- you would continue traveling upwards until air resistance robbed your velocity relative to Earth, and would then remain in place, suspended above the Earth. Unimportant hypothesized that the force could not penetrate through the Earth, and thus would not affect objects on the surface. However, in the FE model the sun and moon are both directly above the Earth, yet are acted on by the UA. Why is it that the UA can accelerate them, but not objects on the Earth's surface?

40

The Lounge / Your Political Compass

« on: October 04, 2006, 11:48:46 AM »

This test shows where your beliefs lie on the political spectrum, in the form of a 2-dimensional graph:

http://www.politicalcompass.org

 The horizontal dimension is leftishness/rightishness, the vertical dimension is authoritarian/libertarian. The horizontal axis ranges from -10 (far left) to 10 (far right); the vertical axis ranges from -10 (anarchist) to 10 (authoritarian). My score is -7.00 left, -6.41 libertarian. What's yours?

41

The Lounge / Earth Day ecological footprint quiz

« on: October 01, 2006, 10:13:18 AM »

http://www.earthday.org/footprint/index.asp

My ecological footprint is 13 acres, which I suppose isn't too bad considering the average for my country is 24. If everyone lived like me, we would need 2.9 planets, so I guess it is pretty bad, actually.

42

The Lounge / Blind Guardian's North American tour!

« on: September 28, 2006, 03:23:47 PM »

So, it seems a bunch of people here are into metal, there are even a number of Blind Guardian fans here. So, I'm doing my bit to promote the tour, for their new label, Nuclear Blast (as well as other bands on the NB label), and in return I get free stuff. The first of much spamming to come (I'll keep it in the 'Everything Else' section):

43

Flat Earth Q&A / Doppler shifts

« on: August 29, 2006, 06:04:13 PM »

The Doppler shift is a phenomenon that occurs when an object is moving towars or away from an observer. You can observe this effect by watching a police car drive by on the road with its siren turned on; as the car approaches you, the pitch of the siren grows steadily higher, peaking when the car reaches you, then the pitch grows steadily lower as the car moves away from you. This is a consequence of the fact that sound is carried by waves; as the car approaches, the sound waves arw "squished" (a simplified explanation); as the car recedes, the waves are "stretched" (again, simplified). The same effect occurs with electromagnetic waves, such as light.

To measure the Doppler Shift of stars, we look at how the stars' color varies. Remember that with sound waves, the pitch grows higher as an object approaches and lower as it recedes? With light waves, the color of an object moves towards the blue end of the visible light spectrum as the object approaches an observer (a "blue shift") and towards the red end as the object recedes (a "red shift"). When we measure the Doppler effect on nearby stars, we see that the amount and direction of the shift changes with a regular period. This is easily explained by a heliocentric model of the solar system; as the Earth approaches the part of its orbit that is nearest a particular star, the star has a blue shift, and as the Earth moves away from the star, the star has a red shift. However, if we are being accelerated at 9.8m/s/s, we should be approaching lightspeed on an asymptotic curve, and be moving very, very nearly at lightspeed relative to external stars. Therefore, we should not see a periodic change in shifts, but rather a constant shift on all stars, at least until we pass by them- stars in front of our acceleration should be exceedingly heavily blue shifted, and stars behind us should be exceedingly heavily red shifted.

Another problem also arises; we should be racing past the nearby stars, unless of course FE posits that the entire galaxy is being accelerated. However, if the galaxy is indeed being accelerated we should measure massive blueshifts on galaxies in half the sky (the part that is in front of us) and massive redshifts on the other half. Instead, we measure large (but much smaller than would be expected if we were moving near lightspeed) redshifts on the part of the great majority of galaxies in the universe. Unless, of course, the entire universe is being accelerated, but then the question arises, accelerated relative to what?

44

Technology, Science & Alt Science / The evolution thread

« on: August 28, 2006, 09:35:15 AM »

There seem to be a number of Creationists/IDists around here, so I thought maybe we could have a debate on evolution to distract from the much-less-relevant-in-the-modern-world debate on RE vs. FE.

As you all probably know, I am an atheist and thoroughly believe in common descent via evolution. The evidence supporting it is vast;

-Despite Creationist claims, there are thousands upon thousands of transitional fossils. In 1972, there were 4,000 hominid fossils alone, nevermind all the other transitions; and the number has certainly vastly increased in the last 34 years. Creationists attempt to explain away these fossils by claiming that they are not truly transitional- for example, Archaeopteryx is really either fully bird or fully dinosaur, not in-between; yet if Archaeopteyx is so clearly one or the other, why can Creationists not agree on which group it belongs to? The same goes for all other transitionals; Creationists completely disagree with each other about which group these supposedly 'clearly one or the other' fossils belong to.

-Most of the so-called bars to evolution are based on misunderstandings of how evolution actually works. Creationists will say, "A fish never gives birth to a dog, so evolution doesn't work" (no, that's not a strawman example; I have had people honestly say that to me). What such arguments fail to realize is that evolution is very, very gradual, and that there are not such distinct lines between taxa. If a fish gave birth to dog, it would be evidence of some very strange phenomenon that had nothing to do with evolution. Evolution does not require any more change per generation than the difference between you and your parents. Over three billion years, such small changes add up to a very large amount of change; much more change than the difference between a fish and a dog. Of course a fish will never give birth to a dog; but a fish will give birth to something slightly different, over many generations, until you have something that is distinctly not a fish. The lines between taxa are blurry. Though a fish will never give birth to a dog, there was a time when something just-barely not a dog gave birth to something that was a dog; but that just-barely not a dog would be the same species as its offspring- as I said, the lines between taxa are fluid.
-Another supposed block to evolution is Michael Behe's concept of "irreducible complexity", which states that some living systems need all of their parts to be present to work at all, meaning they could not have evolved gradually. However, while these systems could not have evolved piece-by-piece, as all the pieces are needed for the system to convey selectable benefit, there are other ways for such systems to evolve. The first is co-option, where already-working systems are incorporated into a new system, and then their function is changed. The second is 'scaffolding': imagine you are building an arch out of stone blocks. Stone arches hold themselves up, but if you remove any piece the whole structure falls down. So to build one, you would make a scaffold underneath the arch to hold it up until construction is complete. Similarly, evolution might create a system with lots of unnecessary, redundant parts- such a system would not be irreducibly complex- then once the system was 'built', natural selection would remove the redundant parts so that every part left was necessary for the system to work at all- rendering the system irreducibly complex.
-Another block is supposedly a result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A common misconception is that the 2nd Law states that order cannot arise from disorder, therefore evolution could not have happened. However, order arises from disorder all the time. Complex, ordered weather patterns such as hurricanes arise from chaotic winds; snowflakes arise from chaotic frozen water droplets. All that is required is the input of new energy- and the sun provides lots of new energy. I have heard Creationists (notably Duane Gish) state that the input of new energy is not enough, that there must be energy-converting-and-directing mechanisms; yet that is exactly what the chemical synthesis engines (photosynthesis, for example) inside living cells are: energy-converting-and-directing mechanisms! Apparently Duane Gish has never heard of photosynthesis.

Now, anyone want to argue this?

45

Flat Earth Q&A / Refutation of "Better and Flatter Earths"

« on: August 14, 2006, 10:13:34 PM »

I posted this in the FAQ section for the piece "Better and Flatter Earths," but that was probably not the correct place to post it, so I am reposting it here for discussion.

"Yet it has been claimed that if the Earth were spinning round, there would be a howling gale all the time."

This is pure BS, because the atmosphere does in fact whirl around with the Earth- therefore we don't feel "howling gales". The atmosphere is held in by gravity. No gales. Ridiculous hypothesis #1 falsified.

"When this idea was explained, I did tentatively suggest that the trails might be due to the actual rotation of the Earth and not to the individual motions of the stars. Naturally, this objection was brushed aside with the contempt it deserved."

Not naturally at all. That objection is absolutely correct, and he doesn't even try to refute it- it's just ignored. The stars move, but they are so far away and they move so slowly relative to their great distance that we never notice the motion. The stars appear to move because the Earth rotates. What, do they believe the stars actually move in a circle around the Earth? If there's no gravity, what causes them to do this? Ridiculous hypothesis #2 falsified.

"If the axis pointed me (sic) way in summer and the opposite way in winter, then very tall buildings, such as the Eiffel Tower, would sway drunkenly from side to side..."

Buildings don't sway when the axis swings because the axis doesn't swing. This is a result of a horrible misunderstanding of solar system astronomy that anyone with a 3rd grade education could see through. When the Earth revolves around the sun, at the solstice one hemisphere is bent towards the sun, and at the other solstice the other hemisphere is bent towards the sun. It looks like this:



The axis never actually swings. The Earth's axis is consistently bent at an angle of around 23 degrees. Ridiculous hypothesis #3 falsified.

"By the refraction of light. If you watch the phenomenon several times, sooner or later you will see the entire ship apparently suspended in the air above the horizon- and I imagine you don't believe in anti-gravity?"

When a ship sinks over the horizon, and then sometimes may appear to be floating in the air, this is a mirage. A result of the ship's image being refracted back by the atmosphere. However, this effect would NEVER cause a ship to appear to STEADILY sink, or to sink at all. Not only that, but the mirage effect only happens under very specific atmospheric conditions, whereas EVERY TIME the ship appears to sink. Ridiculous hypothesis #4 falsified.

"You're falling into the elementary trap of supposing that a compass needle always points north."

In the flat Earth model, there should BE no "south". But there is. On a FE, the direction "south" should vary depending where on the disk you are- south would be the point where the radius that contains both you and the North Pole intersects with the edge of the world. But south is the same direction for everyone. Ridiculous hypothesis #5 falsified.

"Nobody has seen the Earth as a sphere; all that the spacemen have been able to do is see wider areas of the world at any one time, which is quite understandable. I believe you also consider the Moon to be a globe- but if you care to look at it this evening, you will see that it appears as a flat disk."

No it doesn't. It looks quite like a sphere, especially when you view it under high magnification and look at where the features curve away around the 'edges'. The spacemen do see the Earth as a sphere. It is a fucking sphere.

"Fakes, produced by reactionary scientists in order to conceal the truth about the shape of the Earth."

Well then I suppose every scientist in the world is a reactionary, because not one of them believes the Earth is flat. If you have to resort to labeling all the evidence a competing idea has as a conspiracy, your idea is probably dead. Especially since you fail to produce any memos, testimony, etc from inside the conspiracy. All we have is your word that there's a conspiracy, but even you guys don't claim there's actually any evidence for the conspiracy's existence, besides the fact that the MUST be a conspiracy if FE is true. Ridiculous hypotheses #6 and 7 falsified.

"Originally the Earth... 3,000 miles."

Since this is all speculation and is based on no evidence or testing, and there is in fact much evidence to the contrary that you can discover yourself without relying on "conspiracy" evidence, bullshit hypothesis #8 falsified.

"and the photographs they brought back were distorted due to the angle from which they were taken."

This is again BS, because a flat-ish cylinder viewed from an off-angle doesn't appear to be an oblate spheroid, but a cylinder:



Unless viewed face-on, the Earth would not appear circular- and not ALL of the photographs could possibly be face-on because many show entirely different portions of the planet.

9th and last bullshit hypothesis- utterly falsified. Good day, "Independent Thinkers".

46

Flat Earth Q&A / Shouldn't it be obvious?

« on: August 12, 2006, 02:58:00 PM »

Ok, so in the Flat Earth model the Earth's surface is basically flat and the sky is a curved dome over it. Well this looks pretty obvious at first glance, I mean the sky certainly looks like a dome- you can see it curve over you, heck you can even see where it ends- right at the horizon! And the Earth seems quite flat too, besides the occasional mountain or valley. So, if the sky is a flat dome curving over the Earth- um, WHY is the horizon only a few miles away? I assume you guys agree that the Earth is several thousand miles across, so why does the sky dome appear to end less than ten miles away (depending on the viewer's height of course)? And why exactly do boats appear to sink as they sail away?

How many people here are actually Flat-Earthers, and how many just come here to poke fun at their stupidity? Can anyone actually be that stupid?