BickByro, in you’re last post (assuming you haven’t posted while I write this), you said:
"I don’t have a lot of time now, so let me be brief. If you people want to flame me, start a Pit thread. There are posters who have actually been participating in logical thought with me (emarkp, bobort, I’m looking in your general direction) and have served to demonstrate that (1) there IS evidence I will accept and (2) there can be value (maybe even a little insight) in the questions of a layman.
I suspect pldennison speaks for a lot of you out there when he asks, “why the fuck should anyone need to disprove the conspiracy theory?” Well, because it’s allegedly so fucking easy to prove any moron could figure it out. It’s not supposed to even be a challenge if you have a high school education, right? These are the epithets constantly thrown around by debunkers, and I think anyone who’s paying attention here is learning that (even IF we went to the moon) demonstrating this particular “scientific fact” is a bit more difficult than, say, proving the earth revolves around the sun. Isn’t it, at the very least, an interesting exercise to know exactly WHY the conspiratorialists’ claims are scientifically inaccurate?"
Well, Bick, seems we all ALREADY know why the paranoid delusionals’ claims are scientifically inaccurate. You’re the only one around here who can’t seem to grasp it. After three pages worth of people trying to drum the fact that the Apollo moon landing did, indeed, happen, in all of which not one single person has agreed with anything you’ve said, after endless links showing why the Van Allen belts aren’t deadly to astronauts, after pages of equations showing how fucking luminous the moon is, after enough evidence to convince a particularly dim-witted turnip that man has walked on the moon, and you STILL don’t get it. Maybe you should consider the idea that the problem is YOU, Bick. Maybe you should just accept that you’re just too dumb to get this. Don’t feel too bad! Everyone has a few concepts that are just too tough for them. For example, I know I’m way too dumb to ever understand macro-economics, or quantum physics. Similarly, you should just accept that there are certain concepts that will eternaly be beyond your grasp, like doorknobs, or lightswitches.
When you said,
“Well, because it’s allegedly so fucking easy to prove any moron could figure it out. It’s not supposed to even be a challenge if you have a high school education, right?”
Right. I hate to break this to you, Bick, but it really is that easy. And yet, it still has you stumped. I find that interesting. Don’t you?
Bick, the idea that the Apollo moon landing was a hoax is just too stupid to believe. It makes no logical sense on its face. It’s trivially easy to prove we went there. We have eyewitness testimony that has been consistent for more than thirty years. We have the word of hundreds of scientists and technicians who were directly involved in the project, and thousands and thousands of workers involved in designing, building, and launching the Apollo project. We have the independent verification by tens of thousands of scientists and amateur radio operators from around the world, including from behind the iron curtain. We have the independent verification of every scientist who has used the data collected from the Apollo missions, ALL of which has consistently born up under peer review for THREE FUCKING DECADES! And your taking the word of the FOX NETWORK?!?!?! What the fuck is wrong with you? You know how dumb you are? Soviet Russia never claimed the Apollo mission was a hoax. The one government in the world who MOST wanted to humiliate the US, and they never even tried. You know why? BECAUSE ONLY AN IDIOT WOULD HAVE BELEIVED THEM!
We got moonrocks, which geologist after geologist has said could not possibly have formed on the Earth, and you say that scientists now beleive that the moon was originally part of the earth, and that they know this because they compared moon rocks to ancient earth rocks. You fucking moron, where did they get the moon rocks if we’ve never been to the moon! In what twisted, Bick-logic world does that statement in ANY WAY support your argument?
Bick, you’re so dumb I’m surprised the President hasn’t sued you for infringing his trademark. For the love of God, please give up.
Drop, have you even read the link? “Fight like a man”, indeed. I’d like to see YOU go toe-to-toe with someone who has the intellectual capacity of a boulder.
I skimmed the first page of posts in that thread. My favorite is when he said:
Umm… the camera only picks up light that goes into it, so you see only the light that behaved as such. Dumbass! This isn’t rocket science (pun intended).
Well gee, as long as there’s a thread named after me…
Nimune, you demonstrate an overwhelming lack of intellectual curiosity with the following:
“We got moonrocks, which geologist after geologist has said could not possibly have formed on the Earth, and you say that scientists now beleive that the moon was originally part of the earth, and that they know this because they compared moon rocks to ancient earth rocks. You fucking moron, where did they get the moon rocks if we’ve never been to the moon! In what twisted, Bick-logic world does that statement in ANY WAY support your argument?”
Let me try to spell this out for you, smart guy (and again understand I am not endorsing this view, merely presenting it as a possibility).
NASA’s “moon rocks” have been generally accepted by scientists as having originally been part of the earth. This IS an established scientific fact, as jab1 corroborated in the GD thread. The reason scientists have concluded this is because chemical analysis of the “moon rocks” reveals they are identical to earth rocks from 4 billion years ago.
So in answer to your question, “where did they get the moon rocks if we’ve never been to the moon?” I would reply: THEY GOT THEM FROM THE EARTH. Then they irradiated them, simulated micrometeor impact and passed them off as “moon rocks.”
Sure, this argument is cynical, maybe even paranoid. But neither of those terms is a synonym for “fucking moron.”
Actually, in your case, it is, because it also involves disregarding the knowledge and experience of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of physicists, geologists, chemists, metallurgists, engineers, and many other people who are much, much more experienced, educated, and intelligent than you.
Having read that entire thread, and briefly participated, I have concluded that you, BickByro, are either:[ul][li]a hard-core conspiracy nut who’s only pretending to have just discovered this hoax, and enjoys jerking everybody off, orfar and away the stupidest SDMB poster ever to make it past 30 posts.[/ul]Troll, or moron. Either way, you’re a train wreck, and an embarrassment to the SDMB.[/li]
Fuck you very much.
Pretty sketchy; not enough on it to make a troll/moron call. Depending on how you read it, it may support both. It’s worth noting, though, that he calls himself a “one-time AOL Born Again Online nuisance.”
(It’s not just a coincidental name; the email address at the top of that page is the same as the email link from his SDMB profile. Definitely the same guy.)
Also note, if you look at his previous posts, he is more than willing to engage in idle, unfounded speculation on any number of topics, offering apocryphal “explanations” for everything from why HAL went nuts in 2001 to a half-assed summary of string theory to the pronunciation of the letter Y. Based on past experience, it can be concluded that careful, fact-based analysis and BickByro’s brain live on opposite sides of a rather wide river.
Do you know why NASA’s Moon rocks are “generally accepted” as having once been a part of Earth? Because it’s theorized that the Moon itself was once part of Earth, genius. But, even so, the past four billion years has rendered the composition of the Moon rocks different than those of terrestrial boulders.
Good God, you guys take people questioning your worldview personally! I expect these rabid reactions from the folks from the LBMB. All BickByro has done is try to take a contrarian stand against accepted scientific canon. This is how science is advanced: somebody takes a stand (the thesis), other people shoot holes in his argument (the antithesis), and through the the reconciliation you create the synthesis. Instead of calling him stupid you should thank him for doing a MUCH BETTER job of defending his position than your typical crackpot. And many of you are coming off as crackpots for the scientific establishment, accepting everything you are told as God’s Revealed Truth, as if those scientists were not prone to the same human errors and weaknesses as priests or UFO believers. You have fallen into the same error as those you usually castigate.
Just curious: Have there been experiments on the moon rocks where scientists were asked to compare a group of samples and determine which, if any were of extraterrestrial origin? Or were they handed the precious (and some of my tax money paid for 'em to be brought back here, so they’re precious as far as I’m concerned!) rocks and told they were from the Moon, and based all of their experiments on that being true?
Also, have there been any investigations into whether any of the photos were retouched? The examples like the astronaut standing in front of the reticle might easily be explained as having been redone by a retoucher who thought the lines detracted from the picture, inadvertently providing grist for the conspiracy theorists.
Let me tell you something–if it is a crime to engage in “idle, unfounded speculation on any number of topics,” the feds are going to be cracking down on the entire SDMB any minute now.
Now I don’t waste my time posting about salmon recipes or who is the cutest SDMB member, and as you can tell from my previous posts I enjoy discussing:
(1) Sex
(2) Esoteric topics (Are you going to tell me there’s ANYBODY on this board who can give an “informed” explanation for why HAL went crazy, beyond the cop-out answer given in 2010?)
And not much else. Sorry if my interests don’t match up with yours.
As for my “web page” (such as it is) yeah, I set it up as a lark because I had never done such a thing before. It’s definitely me. As for the AOL Born Again Online reference (I’ve since moved on to the MSN Religion rooms), I greatly enjoy debating religious topics with both hard-core Christians and hard-core Christian bashers. At the time, I was entrenched in a particularly heavy-duty chat room debate, and I had entertained the notion of copying good comments from the chatters and posting them on my site. Obviously, I got lazy.
As for WHY I enjoy such debates, I don’t think it has to do either with being a troll or an idiot (though I’ll admit to chat-trolling a fundamentalist or two on occasion). It seems to me that both extremes generally seem to approach the argument with a fair deal of groundless assertion, and naturally it is usually people on either one extreme or the other who enjoy having such debates. I’m sure this particular topic has been ground into a fine meal on the SDMB many a time.
I enjoy (unlike yourself, apparently) discussing and debating topics with people who have views I simply cannot understand–how can they think such crazy things?, I ask myself, and my talking to them sometimes I learn.
I can tell you this: I’m no “hard-core conspiracy nut who’s only pretending to have just discovered this hoax.” I really did just see it on Fox. If you therefore are forced conclude I’m an idiot, fine. I can accept that. I didn’t come to the SDMB looking for friends.
SPOOFE Bo Diddly: If you want to get back to the debate, that’s cool, but maybe it shouldn’t be here.
But come on, when you say things like:
“Do you know why NASA’s Moon rocks are “generally accepted” as having once been a part of Earth? Because it’s theorized that the Moon itself was once part of Earth, genius,” I’ve got to wonder whether you’ve read anything I’ve posted at all. I’ve mentioned that theory over and over and over again… genius.
Droppy, his thesis has been shot so full of holes you could use it as a seive. Apparently, he is not advancing science.
What, you mean providing evidence to debunk Bicky’s notions?
Yes. The link in my quote prior to yours leads to indications of such.
If there have been, it would be Bicky’s job to produce them. So far, all he’s come up with is a poor understanding of perception and 30-year-old photograph technology.
[Eric Cartman voice]I told you guys it was fuckin’ useless, but you didn’t listen.[/Eric Cartman voice]
After it was explained to Bick in very common sense terms three or four times why you would see things in shadows on the moon – each prompting a rebuttal that shows a profound misunderstanding of physics and the fact that sunlight reflects off of stuff – I decided it wasn’t worth it (I’ll admit I didn’t leave in the most gracious way, but still, can you fucking blame me?) . . . and this was at the top of page 2 (it’s now on page four). It wasn’t until he was shown extremely detailed calc equations proving him to be wrong that he finally said, “hmm, I’ll think about it and get back to you.” Jesus.
And drop, no one’s upset that he’s taking an unpopular position. You should note that it took a year and a day for most people to get fed up with him. People are upset with him because he has made mistakes in logic so howling that he must be either a troll or a fucking rock.
Oh, I posted the facts, all right. But since you mis-interpreted them so spectacularly, I wish I hadn’t.
OTOH, it did reveal your inability to think logically, so I guess it did some good.
dropzone, they DID compare them to Earth rocks by simply comparing their chemical composition to what was already established and in reference books (not to mention their own memories!). When it was determined that the Moon rocks had been formed in the absence of oxygen and liquid water, that was proof enough. Even meteorites should show contamination from the Earth’s atmosphere. But the Moon rocks had never been exposed to oxygen or water. Never, in more than 4 billion years.
You may have a point, though: By arguing in favor of the reality of Apollo, I’m more sure than ever of my facts and my ability to argue.
jab1: Nothing about my “misinterpretation” of your citations in any way demonstrated an “inability to think logically.” If you find a 4-billion year-old rock on earth about the size of a softball, you can bet there’s at least a golf ball-sized center of that rock that has never been exposed to oxygen or water. As long as you keep that golf ball in a vacuum and never expose it to oxygen or water, you’re golden. What’s so illogical about that?
Of course not. But eventually, at some point, facts and analysis must come into the discussion. I reviewed your post history and at no time did I see you addressing a factual point with anything resembling a citation, a sourced statistic, or an expert quote. Your arguments, in every instance I could find, amounted to, “It seems to me…” or “My friends and I decided that…” and the like. When somebody else comes along and offers well-supported information, idle speculation like that gets shunted off into the “interesting but irrelevant” column. You, as far as I can tell, have historically engaged in nothing but speculation; you’ve never been the “somebody else who comes along with facts.” This is merely context for your sheer, blind stubbornness in the Apollo thread, as it gives insight into your thinking process, if I can call it that.
Both of which took place in MPSIMS, which is designed for noodling and jibber-jabber. When you make assertions in Great Debates, you can expect to be held to a much, much higher standard.
Unless you’re now suggesting that Armstrong was boning Aldrin in the LEM, I’ll assume the whole Apollo thing falls into category two.
And your defense of the HAL speculation is supremely lame. The correct answer to that question – which was in GQ, after all – would have been as follows: “Here’s what Arthur C. Clarke says in 2010. <synopsis> Nobody knows what Kubrick was thinking. That’s as factual as anybody’s going to get. Anybody want to toss around some hypotheticals?” You didn’t. You offered up a theory you and your friend made up. It’s an interesting theory, to be sure, but to put it on the same level as what the co-author himself wrote is asinine and arrogant.
My beef here has nothing whatsoever to do with interests. It has to do with innumerable people providing hard, proven scientific fact to answer your questions, only to have you respond with objections (1) from left field or (2) that demonstrate you don’t understand what you read.
Emphasis mine. A more bald-faced confession of ignorance I have rarely seen.
Not to my knowledge. People have raised the issue every now and then, but after being presented with the evidence have recognized how easy the hoax theory is to shoot down. You’ve been shot down as well, many times, but for some reason you’re sitting on the ground in a bullet-riddled airplane, shrieking, “I’m still in the air! Really, I’m still in the air!”
I’ve learned a tremendous amount on this board (and from Cecil himself, natch). Many of my opinions have been overturned. I used to believe, for example, in the possibility of Pearl Harbor having been manipulated by FDR in order to draw us into WWII, but after having seen that topic cranked over in GD, with detailed and highly informative historical and military quotations and analyses provided by posters who are far better read than I am, I had no choice but to reverse myself and come down firmly on the opposite side. The debate is interesting, as examples and counterexamples are raised and evaluated, but eventually the question must be answered. (Exceptions: gun control, abortion, and that sort of thing. Those are based on philosophical differences. The Apollo hoax doesn’t even come close.) In the face of overriding, unanswerable evidence, I have absolutely no problem changing my views. I can’t imagine how much more overwhelming the evidence has to get before you abandon your quixotic attempt to find some small degree of validity in the ludicrous Apollo-hoax story.
At first, yes. He wasn’t content accepting the superficial analyses. He wanted more concrete detail, more specific and technical refutations. This curiosity is absolutely to be commended.
But as the debate continued, it became clear he wasn’t actually looking for information. He is one-hundred-percent convinced that the Apollo missions were falsified. Instead of clear-headedly evaluating the data, he has repeatedly zeroed in on tiny elements, nitpicking irrelevant details. This isn’t critical thinking; it’s merely a demonstration that he simply doesn’t understand what people are telling him.
It’s as if we’re all standing around an elephant. We all look at it, and say, “Yep, that’s an elephant.” But there’s BickByro on his hands and knees with a magnifying glass, examining the elephant’s toenail, saying, “I’m not so sure.” We ask why. He says, “Elephants aren’t green.” We take a closer look: “Uh, that’s just a grass stain. The rest of the elephant is normal.” And then he says: “But if it’s an elephant, and this is green because of a grass stain, then where’s the grass?” And we say, “It’s over there.” And he says, “How do we know for sure this stain came from there?” And we say, “It doesn’t have to have. It’s obviously a grass stain, and could have come from anywhere.” And he says, “A hah! But you just said–!” And so on, and so on. Pathetic, really.
Okay, BickByro, I’m going to acknowledge the remote possibility that you’re not a troll, and that you’re legitimately confused. I’m going to take a stab at the whole goddamn “visible in shadow” thing. This will walk you through the logic of it, point by point. Let me know where this breaks down.
The moon reflects a lot of light. Proof: Look out the window; we can see it 250,000 miles away. In addition, under the clear light of a full moon, you can easily see the landscape here on earth.
Light does not need an atmosphere for reflection or for transit. Proof: The light reflected from the moon reaches the earth through 250,000 miles of near-perfect vacuum.
Thought experiment: Visualize a triangle with the sun, the moon, and the earth at the points. You might want to draw this out as we go. If you do, make the triangle large; we’re going to add quite a bit to the drawing.
Now imagine an object placed on the line from the sun to the moon, at the same distance from the moon as the earth (250k miles). For sake of argument, let’s say it’s a rectangle one kilometer by four kilometers by nine kilometers (kind of like a huge refrigerator door). This rectangle, which we will call R1, is the same light-gray color as moondust.
The side of the rectangle facing the sun will, of course, be brightly lit by sunlight. This is obvious.
Now – follow me here – the half of the rectangle facing the moon will also be lit, this time by moonlight. Can you see this? The rectangle is large on the human scale, but compared to the sun and moon, it’s an infinitesimal speck, and blocks next to none of the sun’s light from reaching the moon. Most of the light passes the rectangle, reflects off the moon, and comes back to illuminate that side of the rectangle.
Still with me?
Now add another rectangle. This new rectangle (R2) is placed midway between the first (R1) and the moon (i.e., approx 125,000 miles from each). R2 is much smaller than R1 – one foot by four feet by nine feet.
R1 casts a large enough shadow that it blocks sunlight from the sun side of R2. However, the moon side of R1 and R2 are both illuminated by moonlight. Why? First, again, there’s plenty of sunlight reaching the moon. Second, the lunar surface, being highly irregular, scatters and reflects light in all directions from many points. Therefore, there is no straight light-line between the moon and R1 to be obstructed by R2, and R1 receives plenty of moonlight.
If you’re having trouble visualizing this, imagine yourself sitting on the moon side of R1. You are 250,000 miles away from the moon, so it’s the same size as it appears from the earth. Now, 125,000 miles closer to the moon is, essentially, a refrigerator door. At that distance, it’s effectively invisible, and the moon appears unobstructed. Because you can see the moon, its light is reaching you, and you are illuminated. QED.
Now, further, look at it from the perspective of R2. Turning toward the moon, of course, you see it bigger and brighter than from R1, because you’re now half the distance from it. Then look toward the sun, and see the large rectangle of R1, which is big enough [okay, not really, given those figures, but make the leap] to block the sun. You are sitting in its shadow.
But now visualize: You’re sitting on the sun side of R2, looking at R1. The moon side of R1 is brightly lit by moonlight. Therefore, you are indirectly lit by moonlight as well. Light travels from the sun to the moon. It reflects off the moon and into space. It reflects from (i.e. illuminates) the moonward sides of both R1 and R2. The light reflecting from the moonward side of R1 lands where? The sunward side of R2.
Therefore, someone sitting on the sunward side of R2 is in the sun shadow of R1. However, they can see R1, illuminated by moonlight. Illumination is, by definition, the same as reflection; you see objects because their light is reflected to you. Therefore, far from being in pitch blackness, you are illuminated by reflected moonlight. Not as bright as direct sun or moon light, but light nonetheless.
You can also repeat the whole experiment above placing R1 and R2 on the lines between the earth and the sun, and the earth and the moon, and see that the reflections continue to work. Then transplant this imagined reflective system to the surface, alter the angles, and change the rectangles to spacesuits etc., and it still works the same way.
The whole demonstration can be summarized in one short, simple, easy-to-understand sentence: If you can see the moon’s surface illuminated by sunlight, the moon’s reflected light is reaching and illuminating you. Why in the name of all that is holy is this so hard for you to understand?
Dropzone: Gimme a break. This is the BBQ pit, right? Does it not say, “If you got to flame, do it here?” Excuse me for using the board for its intended purpose. If you read the original thread, I did post there several times, and rather politely at that. Frankly, Bick wouldn’t accept that man could walk on the moon if you strapped him to a rocket and launched him at it. If logic and science wouldn’t convince him, I thought I’d take a shot at scorn and invective. Apparently, that doesn’t work either, but it sure made ME feel better.
Bick: Yeah, all those moon rocks are actually the centers of really old earth rocks. Why didn’t I think of that? Oh yeah, I’ve got a functional intellect.