The sinking ship effect has been proven to be an effect purely perspective in nature. By viewing the scene through a telescope with sufficient zoom a half sunken ship can be restored with its hull in full view. Hence, the effect which is usually thought to prove that the earth is a globe really proves it to be a plane.
The validity of this argument (the part where dark hulls "dissapear" against the dark water and sails are starkly visible against the sky) hinges on the notions that:
A) Hulls are dark [wood]
and
B) Sails are readily visible against the sky [more visible than the hull on water presumably].
What is so laughable about this is that we have (yet again) another blatant demonstration of how pseudoscientific and antiscientific "theories" are not updated over time with new advances in observation technology, and just plain new observations. Almost universally, such moronic belief systems cling tightly to the "widom of the ancients". (That typically are not genuinely "old" at all, and/or never wise in their own time). You parade around jpegs of old text that were never peer-reviewed by the scientific community, never accepted in their own day--and yet since they are old, you apparently feel as if you can talk about them as accepted fact in their own day, and use them as backing evidence today. I know a few other fanatical, moronic, dogmatic belief systems like that (can you think of a few?). The underpinnings of your belief system have been built by an imbecile.
The concept of "rigorous evidence" involves a bit more than jpegs of an old text never accepted in its own day, written by an idiot who is now dead. Please see,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method.
News flash, Tom: the hulls of most modern sailboats are fiberglass, often painted with a brilliant white gelcoat. Furthermore, as someone who actually lives right near the ocean and is a sailing enthusiast and sees sailboats nearly every day, I can tell you from actual experience (rather than from hand-wavy assertions) that it is the
sails that get harder to see, as they blend in more with the increasingly hazy white air as the distance increases. Furthermore, sails--being thin for weight--tend to take on whatever color the air is (darker overcast, bright sunny, red sunset, etc.) Meanwhile the gleaming white hulls are a beacon on the dark pacific ocean. (Someone mentioned you live near Monterrey. If so,
shame on you for perpetuating what you probably know firsthand to be patently, observably false.)
I'm really getting sick of people making bold, ludicrous assertions that they have zero experiential knowledge of, or backing evidence of other than old texts accepted as dogmatic fact, or hand-wavy thought experiments that betray a certain kind of infectious idiocy. You post quotes from a book from an age of wooden boats, and repeat the assertions as if you know them to be fact. You post a bunch of ridiculous formulas having something vaguely to do with an eclipse, and you have no idea what it means or how it could make a useful prediction. Your credibility with me is zero. You
seem like an intelligent guy (sometimes), but as they say, "put up or shut up". You, sir, have proven yourself (to me at least) to be a moron. And probably faking it anyway for kicks. (Which I would actually admire because that would take a great deal of skill and "out of the box" thinking.)
And I had such high hopes upon landing here, thinking that
you would be able to provide stimulating debate. Instead, you just repeat (contradictory) assertions over and over that you already believe, without providing a shred of a compelling reason for anyone else to believe them, or even a compelling reason to continue the debate. Your moronic, terse "answers" shut down any real intellectual sparring. I would assume, because, you are afraid of a real intellectual debate that is a step above trading ad-hoc assertions.