Recently, I read of a guy who triumphantly proved that the Earth is flat by taking a carpenter’s level on a plane flight to show that cruising was always level: if the Earth were not flat, the pilot would have to keep changing the attitude (dip the nose) to adjust for the curvature, which should show up on the level.
Now that you have finished cleaning beverages from you screen/keyboard, what I want to know is “so what?” For a picosecond, imagine that the FEs were correct, that the Earth is indeed some sort of flat thing: what then? What do they hope to gain or change by proving a flat Earth? Does turtle soup become a sin? I mean, I am just not understanding the why.
This is analogous to geocentric cosmology: that the Earth be flat is a theological or mythical cosmography, and/or the product of “philosophical” reasoning.
The points are at the corners. The flat earth is shaped like a square not a circle, after all.
Kidding aside, there was some line in the Bible about something-something-four-corners-of-the-earth and some 1850s? Bible literalists took the “EVERY WORD IS TRUE” bit a little too seriously. Also, there was something about disproving various sciences (speed of light stuff, etc) by having a flat or hollow or bowl shaped earth.
Best source I’ve ever read about it (and I haven’t read it for years, hence the fuzzy details above) is Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies In The Name Of Science which has a long chapter on hollow/flat earthers (and actually takes the time to explain what they actually believe, before getting snarky about it.) I highly recommend it. It’s the best guide to kook science ever published.
Or, “If every word isn’t true, does that mean hating the gays is my problem?”
I’m just about convinced that’s relevant to at least some of them: They really, really need the “ritual purity” parts of the Bible to be “correct” in their sense of the term, which means that ritual purity is the same as moral rectitude, which means that their hatred of “abnormal” or “unclean” sexual behavior isn’t just them, it’s due to their inherent Godliness, as opposed to their exaggerated disgust response being inborn and the cause of their conservatism.
For that to be true, the Bible must be completely unimpeachable, or else someone would be able to poke holes in the whole thing, concluding that, while homosexual behavior is known in the animal kingdom and that plenty of historical cultures have been accepting of homosexuality, homophobia is a moral fad, something limited to a relative few places and times.
And if homophobia is just a fad, their hatred is on their own heads. Their obsession is on their own heads. They can’t justify it by saying the Being What Is Who Am says being gay is wrong.
So. “Gays make me feel ooky, therefore the world is flat.” Hey, it’s just as reasonable as the idea that Jesus finds the inheritance tax a moral abomination.
Well, if the earth were actually flat, and someone proved it to be so, that person would be the most eminent scientist in the world right now. He or she would have completely changed significant areas of scientific research. A Nobel Prize in physics wouldn’t be out of the question.
Some Flat Earthers are just trolling but others are deadly serious and truly insane. They aren’t trying to prove anything. That is reality to them. It is hardly unique or even that rare. There are people that truly believe that the World Trade Centers were brought down by explosives planted by the U.S. government and the planes (and the passengers) either didn’t exist at all or were in on it.
It is an uncomfortable truth but a significant fraction of the population is truly mentally ill at any given time and you can find an example of almost anything. I have a wealthy aunt that is sweet but crazier than a march hare. She spends her time going to UFO and Bigfoot conferences. She isn’t a flat-earther but she will fall for just about anything else. There are hundreds of thousands of people or more just like her all over the U.S.
“Someone has to stand up to the experts!” said by John Donald “Don” McLeroy, Republican dentist in Bryan, Texas, and former Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, which establishes policy for the state public school system. Referring to teaching Creationism equally with the Theory* of Evolution in Texas schools.
He probably believes in the Flat Earth, too.
*After all, it’s only a theory. :rolleyes:
Tell the moron that if you tie a toy plane to a string by the landing gear and spin it around in a circle, the plane will always remain level with relative to the center of the circle, it will be RELEVELING itself constantly every point of the way so to speak.
And it is traveling a ROUND path, not FLAT.
The real plane tracks its attitude using a string called gravity, which pulls towards…
wait for it
The center of the round earth. :smack:
If you have the plane follow a laser beam, which has no normal choice but to be straight, the plane will fly off into space (granting said plane has the engines to do so)
Im old and tired and worked all day, if i can grasp that concept…
… well i will let you guys pick a catch phrase.
I’m heading for a nap on my flat bed on the round earth.
The airplane doesn’t fly down its axis exactly, its not like a car…
well cars drift, so they don’t even go straight.. well there is no front wheel that is “straight” as the front tyres are toed in, so its the average of the tyres, and the toe is set only somewhat close to being even, so the average isn’t quite the direction either.
Same with the plane, if they put the brakes on, they pitch UP… so up can mean down anyway.
The spirit level is in no way accurate enough to show the variation between the pitch for a very slow ascent and a very slow descent anyway.
Why is someone so out of their element in declaring their belief in a flat earth ?
And how the hell do they explain circumnavigations of the earth ???
I think its more of a social thing.. there’s this thing called “contrarian”. They say that the authorities are wrong on everything. you know, water is a gas and glass is ionic. they tell you 1+1=3 the second after the government said 1+1=2
The reality is that a cruising airplane flies with a slight positive pitch of a couple degrees or so all the time. I believe this is probably in order to offset mach tuck, which affects subsonic airplanes. The level was registered to the cruise attitude, which does not correspond to ground plumb.
Interesting side question: as I listened to Neil step onto the surface of the moon, everyone in the world at the time had been born before men had walked on the moon; as I watched the rover’s camera show the Apollo 17 lunar module blast off, everyone born thereafter was born after men walked on the moon; are there now more people alive born after the end of the Apollo moon program than those born before it?
It is more simple than that. The wing needs to fly at a positive angle to the relative airflow (angle of attack), otherwise there is no lift. The angle of the fuselage then is the wing angle plus or minus any rigging angle between the wing and fuselage (angle of incidence). You can design a plane that has zero body angle but it will only be level at one speed, any faster and it will be angled down, any slower and it will be angled up.
