At almost 58 years of age, the arc of my life has paralleled that of the exploration of space. Astronomy, telescopes and deep curiosity have been with me the whole time.

I, too, remember an article about the USSR spacewalk by Leonov being faked. Googling around will hook you up with all sorts of stuff the USSR supposedly faked.

Anyway, by the time the FOX show was broadcast, I was teaching high school science. I recorded the show for my own amusement. I was shocked when I finally got around to watching it but what really struck home was the number of my students who had seen and believed the show. I did some "teachable moment" debunking of the aspects of the show I already understood and then went looking for more ammo.

The "Moon Hoax" assignment that I give (almost) every year was the final product. I have written about it on these pages previously and will be doing so again. Right toward the end of the school year, I will be doing this multi-day activity with all my honors earth/space science students. I will be polling them before watching the movie, after the movie and after my rebuttal. I will let you know what the results are although I predict the general range of "belief" that man has walked on the Moon will be in the 70% range before the show, 20-30% range after and 80% or above after my rebuttal.

The Kennedy assasination conspiracies have drifted in and out of my sphere of caring over the years. In fact, I have been reading (since the first of the year) Vincent Bugliosi's huge book on the subject. However, I don't feel much of a need to try to educate anybody about that one as most of the crowd I run with are not conspiracy believers about it.

The 9/11 stuff came later as people whom I otherwise find intelligent started to spin those stories. I tried to stay on top of it all but find that I only have the capacity to deal with a single consipiracy theory. Since it hits so close to home (my classroom), the Apollo hoax claims are the ones I spend my energy on.

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"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."

-Kilgore Trout