A couple of days ago, I was in a used book store and found "Dark Moon". I thought about it for awhile and bought the book. I figured since it was used, the authors weren't making any money off me. The previous owner only read about ten pages so the book is like new. That should have been a warning right there.

Anyway, I plodded my way through a few chapters and I can't believe anyone buys into this stuff. It's poorly written and full of errors. The thing that really struck me about this book is that about half of the book covers things like crop circles, Roswell, and the usual alien connections. The other thing that struck me as is that the book is very poorly written.

Well, if you're going to buy a book like that, that's the way to do it. At least a reputable bookstore made some money, and the person who bought it in the first place got some of his cash back as well when he sold it, so in a way you are actually helping to mitigate the damage done a bit.

I also see no problem with owning such a monstrosity, as long as you didn't feed the hoaxter in the first place. And your motivation is pure. You are simply attempting to find out what the "other side" has to say.

Just think, now you can honestly say you have read the HB's work. They can't claim that you are working from ignorance (at least in regards to this one book).

Good for you.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Speaking of "Dark Moon", it looks like the authors are doing their own "customer reviews" on amazon.com. I would at least suspect it was them after reading the review from Steven Wright of Rochester MI. He brings up the statement from the new Nasa chief about radiation (which we know was also brought up by someone somewhere else) and goes on to give the book a five star rating. He says it's 'great stuff', but I think Mr. Wright is Mr. Wrong. Luckily, I was able to post my own review first.

Bart Sibrel "reviews" his own video on Amazon. The problem is that Bart isn't very good at hiding his particular brand of paranoia, and so it's very easy to spot.

Yes, one of Dark Moon's cardinal flaws is its length and inability to stick to the subject. Of course, the conspiracy theory mindset is hardwired to the notion that everything's "the subject", so there you have it.

Of course, part of the length is to help separate the contradictory arguments by placing as much irrelevant verbage between them as possible. It's the "inundation" technique -- throw a whole lot at the reader so he won't examine any one point too closely, and he'll only have the last ten pages or so in his head.

The video is the same way -- extremely long and apparently designed to be absorbed over several sittings so its contradictions aren't as apparent.

JayUtah

I hope you would concede Bart at least saw a copy of the video in question.
I think that makes him entitled to write a review. Dont you?

Give it up, Squirm. You know your personal attacks aren't allowed here.

He's not writing under his real name. He's posing as other people to brag up his own work.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JayUtah on 2002-05-08 13:17 ]</font>

oops

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: CC on 2002-05-08 15:04 ]</font>

Not a personal attack but a gentle reminder to you, not to throw moon-stones from those who live in Seethruart's glass lunar-domes.

Not Squirm. Perish the thought! But for once I will concede it is an honest mistake on your part.
I thought my initials might have given it away! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img]

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: CC on 2002-05-08 15:21 ]</font>

Not Squirm. Perish the thought!

Sorry, I meant Slime, not Squirm, formerly known as Carrot Cruncher. Whatever you're calling yourself this time around, stop using his forum to perpetuation your personal vendetta against me.

I happen to believe it's unethical to pose as someone else and give a favorable review for one's own work. Do you agree or disagree?

I wholeheartedly agree.
You see, we are much a like. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

JRKeller

I was wondering can you give an example of bad prose. I realise you may understandably disagree with the pseudo-scientific findings in the book, but I dont understand why you found it so 'poorly written'.
I found it most agreeable. Then again I'm not into Shakespeare.

Please elaborate.

The book 'Dark Moon' seems designed to befuddle the reader. If you don't know Apollo, it's incredibly difficult to follow the contradictions throughout the book, as you won't personally relate to the 'anomolies' in question. If you do know Apollo, you realise where they are wrong, and then where they've contradicted themselves. I'm going to have to read it again to bring up specific examples, but I do know they are there.

"Poorly written" does not necessarily besmirch the aesthetics of the work. I would say it's "poorly written" in terms of style, scope, and structure.

Bennett and Percy rely a lot on the dangling rhetorical question. Carefully italicizing words in their questions, they raise issues without addressing them. I don't currently own a copy of the book, but I recall one question asking why von Braun left NASA when they "were apparently fulfilling" his lifelong dream.

A good question. The authors offer no answer, but are quite content to lead the reader very carefully to the brink of a conclusion and let him plummet while they themselves remain safely within the realm of speculation. This is so that they can back away at will from any particular point when it becomes uncomfortable. But the constant reliance on innuendo is a major stylistic flaw.

Dark Moon is a sort of intellectual minestrone. It's as if Bennett and Percy opened up the refrigerator, grabbed all the conspiracy theory leftovers, dumped them into a pot with some spices and water, and served up the result. The book is gargantuan, and about three times as long as it needs to be. Dark Moon contains much that is irrelevant. And I suspect that most of it is there to distract the reader from the flimsiness of the essential line of reasoning.

That works very much against Percy and Bennett. A large, complicated case is much harder to prove than a small, comprehensible case. The face on Mars, Avebury, and crop circles are essentially irrelevant to the notion of whether the Apollo record was falsified.

If you strain the minestrone of its irrelevancies, the elementary broth that remains is predictably thin and unsatisfying. It's the same old photographic and cinematographic anomalies that form the core of nearly every hoax theory offering.

The authors' new twist is that these anomalies aren't the result of NASA's inattention to detail, but deliberate sabotage by conscientious fabricators who wanted the truth to come out. At first glance this seems better than assuming NASA is completely inept and made thousands of mistakes.

But on second thought you have to now assume NASA is inept and allowed a substantial, well-organized subculture to exit within its highest echelons of alleged secrecy. These people couldn't simply blow the whistle in the conventional way because they would have been killed. So we're supposed to believe NASA conveyed the notion that death would punish disloyalty, yet under these circumstances a healthy rebellion flourished and produced thousands of "whistle-blows".

The authors have no answer for this, aside from the standard, "You must read Dark Moon completely in order to understand the authors' hypothesis." In other words, shut up and eat your minestrone.

But the implausibility of the authors' principal hypothesis is not the structural error. The structural error is to rely on the so-called anomalies to provide the alleged corpus delicti for the existence of whistle blowers.

The problem is that the issue of anomalous photographs is cited to support -- or rather, fails to support -- all all the hoax hypotheses dating back to Kaysing's 1974 book. And so Dark Moon's hypothesis fails for the same reason all the others do: the anomalies aren't necessarily anomalous.

David Percy is the first hoax author to claim any expertise in photography, lighting, and the other skills associated with recording images on film. Unfortunately none of that seems evident in his arguments. Dozens of other photographers puzzle at Percy's apparent ignorance of reflectors, emulsion behavior, lighting, perspective, and shadows.

The non-photographic inconsistencies such as radiation and rocket propulsion leave Bennett and Percy essentially wallowing in a sea of ignorance. Experts have questioned the authors' interpretation of the associated sciences -- in which neither author can claim any expertise -- and have been left empty-handed. All this culminates in the persistent argument that Apollo 13's crew would have landed on the moon in the dark.

All this mishandled evidence places the authors squarely in the gunsights of the subversion of their support. Therein lies the structural flaw. If there are no bona fide anomalies, then there is nothing for the whistle-blower hypothesis to explain. Therefore there is no need for whistle-blowers, and this probably explains why the authors haven't been able to produce any of the alleged whistle-blowers for questioning.

That, in my opinion, is why Dark Moon is poorly written.

Maybe poorly written was a bad choice of words, but I think it is the best that I can think of. It's not that the authors write like first graders or anything like that, but if I had had written a research paper, thesis, book, etc., of that quality about the work that I do, I would have received, this is poorly written. I take the entire work and make my judgment about its writing style that way.

Here's an example.

In the book, there is a section on the non-parallel shadows. The authors show a low quality black and white photo of the Apollo 14 LM at far distance and some rocks in the foreground. They have put some arrows of the photo showing the direction of the light source. They also present a photo of a row trees and their shadows and of course the shadows line up.

My problems with this section are:

1) The original photograph is in color and can be easily obtained and free in some cases. I can find this photo in many places. Use the best photo you can find. I bought that photograph off a website for 10$, so it's quite easy to do. BTW, I had Ed Mitchell sign that one and we had a good laugh about the Fox show.

2) The photo comparison between trees and Apollo 14 is inappropriate (the old apples and oranges comparison). The photograph of the trees is a close up shot and the Apollo 14 LM is a distance shot. How can anyone tell how a shadow falls on a flat surface at a distance of about a 1000 feet, from an oddly shaped machine.

3) What the authors should have done is find out how far away the LM and find a similar Earth bound object (a kids play set at a park would probably work) and photograph it. Then use that in a comparison.

4) Or they could have tried to recreate the Apollo 14 landing site photo using two different light sources. Maybe they did try and found out that when you do this, you get two shadows.

I guess I can summarize it this way. Poor research in my opinion and then using it and writing about it is poor writing.

perhaps cc is Bart Sibrel in disguse (his trying to tell us the book is good so we go buy it)

__________________
<marquee> the guy that has come from mars, for no reason (no reason, or you think for no reason......) </Marquee>

No, CC is Slime, a.k.a. Carrot Cruncher, the character most directly responsible for the crippling of the ApolloHoax forum. He has next to nothing in terms of real insight or understanding of Apollo issues. He just likes to argue; that's all.

And so his manner of debate is to go over every post you've ever made and, in lawyer fashion, try to trip you up in your own words and draw the argument away from the topic and into irrelevancy. He asks leading questions so that he can use them as straw men later. He posts under a variety of nicknames, trying to get you to believe they're separate people who all agree with him. His idea of winning is to embarrass you on completely irrelevant grounds into leaving the argument.

In informal debate nomenclature, such a set of tactics is known by a certain name, but unfortunately that name is not printable here. Suffice it to say he usually has very little to offer. And the Bad Astronomer has already warned him that his tactics are not allowed here.

Let's see how long he can stick with issues instead of meta-issues.

How can anyone tell how a shadow falls on a flat surface at a distance of about a 1000 feet, from an oddly shaped machine.

And who says the surface is flat? Unlike many Apollogists (I just coined that word!), I believe the foreground rocks are the "correct" shadow and the LM shadow is the one affected by optical and geometric factors. This is not to say that those who argue the foreground rock shadows can be affected by hillock geometry are wrong, merely that the effect they mention doesn't seem to be as great a factor.

Fortunately I've done the photogrammetrics and I estimate, assuming we're talking about the same photo, that the LM is about 250 feet away from the photographer.

David Percy shows a great many sample photos. Over the one showing the row of trees in the park, Percy draws a series of lines to suggest shadow direction. The guide lines are obviously parallel, since Percy is trying to show that such an arrangement would cast parallel shadows. Unfortunately the line in one case is between the shadows and merely splits the difference in angle so as not to be too egregiously incorrect. The other guide line is actually over the top of the tree shadow, so the reader can't see the actual shadow and tell whether the guide line is correct.

Luckily for the astute reader, a park bench in the same photo, not intended as a proof object, provides the proof that the shadows fall according to perspective, not parallel as Percy claims.

And subsequently Percy has provided proof photos in which the shadows fall directly left-to-right across the frame, i.e., the sunlight is shining exactly perpendicular to the optical axis. That is, of course, a uniquely special case and the only case, after the transformation to projective space, in which the shadows would be parallel. But it is not the case in nearly all Apollo photos that the sun shines exactly transverse to the optical axis.

And further, distance is the great mitigator. In any but the special case used as "proof" by Percy, shadows will appear more horizontal the farther away they lie from the photographer. A shadow with any transverse element to its direction will appear to lie horizontal given sufficient distance.

Or they could have tried to recreate the Apollo 14 landing site photo using two different light sources.

There is a standing challenge to David Percy to recreate in the studio exactly the photos he says are anomalous. If he can so expertly determine the lighting setup from just looking at the photo, then to recreate it in his studio should be child's play. It would go a very long way toward proving his hypothesis. Instead he offers only diagrams and drawings. But of course the reader won't know if the diagram he's shown will actually produce the effect claimed by the authors. And in fact, it won't.

Percy either knows very little about lighting, or he is deliberately misrepresenting his knowledge of lighting to the reader.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JayUtah on 2002-05-14 23:21 ]</font>

The photograph I'm talking about is number 20 and on the previous page is the photo of the trees and the park bench. I did notice that the park bench shadow didn't line up with the tree shadows.

I'll take your word on it that the LM is 250 feet away. My method was to go outside, look at cars and people and make my guess that way.

I think what makes me mad (I wanted to use a few curse words hear, but I'll refrain) is that no NASA photograph people were contacted. Someone like Dick Underwood, who was the chief photographic planner and is mentioned, referenced or quoted in just about every space photography book (Home Planet, This Island Earth, The Infinite Journey) is never even referenced here. He's still alive and helping NASA plan space photography.

I also found the section on space suits quite laughable. It is clear from this section, no research was done.

I borrowed a copy of the book from an aquaintance but couldn't force myself to read more than a dozen pages and skim through the rest of it. As I've found from my little email war with Aulis, Percy and Bennett are not interested in doing any research, and they seem oblivious to the inconsistencies in their view of the information available. The gymnastic feats - which they denied in the book existed are now, since they have been shown examples, "too dangerous to have been attempted by astronauts on the moon" [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]

Their latest essay on radiation, which looks like an admission that the book was wrong on that issue, is held out by Bennett and Percy as proof that Dark Moon was right. ("See, we TOLD you radiation in space was deadly".)

The book is, as I recall, about 500 pages, which they might have filled with researched material. The actual Apollo material could have been presented in about 100 pages of tightly focused writing, given that no analysis of other explanations for what they present were provided.

My definition of a poorly written book (on a subject I have a real interest in) is one that fails to get me to read more than a chapter or two. Dark Moon even fell far below that threshhold.

Refering to the A14 photo, if we zoom onto the astronaut to the left of the LM, we can only see him above is knees. Also, we cannot see the feet of the LM. Photos taken from a position to the right of this picture ie at about 90 deg to the LM from this vantage, directly up-Sun, show the ground sloping quite sharply up to the left. This all points to the LM shadow in this picture being partially obscured by the terrain, that is, a ridge between the camera and the shadow that cannot be readily seen in theimage. Notice also that the astronaut has no shadow.