Every thing explaned at my website in the sig. If your not happy with my explanation, talk about itin my disscution zone.

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Conspiracy Cam

http://www.conspiracy-theories-hoax.com
Find the truth

Yawn.

Kesh--I'm actually hoping the Chinese go up there and do as I've suggested. It would be a great kick in the pants to get our politicians moving.

Bored? Or just tired.

Yeah, that'd be a great motivator to return to the Moon. To put one over on the Communists. What would you want the US to do? Pull out the Chinese flag, tear it to bits, and re-right the US flag? Then wave 2 spacesuited fingers at the Chinese descent stage?

That would really tell the world the US has moved on from the old cold-war motivation for Apollo. Not.

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"We need rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Technically the topic is factually accurate. "WE" never did go to the Moon, only 12 men have walked on the Moon as well as a few others who have orbited it.

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The proceeding post was brought to you by NASA, the National Association of the Sellers of Alcohol.

Factually perhaps, but not grammatically.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Well, technically, even those 12 men didn't walk on the Moon. They walked on some thick rubber bootsoles that were touching the Moon on the other side. :wink:

Essay by Larry Niven:

A panel at the World Science Fiction Convention was about evolving ways to make the conquest of the universe pay for itself.
"Sell the right to leave your footprints in the moon," one said. "The contract says that they’ll be roped off for all eternity, like Neil Armstrong’s. Someone will bite."

And I thought: barefoot.

Arthur Clarke has pointed out that a man dropped into vacuum won’t just explode. He’d have roughly two minutes, conscious, to get himself into air again. He’d blow his eardrums (they grow back) and the varicose veins might be spectacular, a badge of honor. If he forgot to exhale he’d burst his lungs.

But we’re playing tourist games; we don’t have to go that far.

One of you is going to be the first human being to walk barefoot on the moon. There’s no need to be stark naked. Take a pressure suit -- standard by the time we can make this offer -- remove the boots, apply tourniquet pressure around the ankles or calves. We’ll bring you out to some flat patch of deep dust, in a moon crawler (also standard by now). You’re in the airlock; there’s a countdown--

Now you do the three-yard run. Not too fast, bozo, because you’ve got to make that turn, and if you bound over the damn airlock you’ll have to come back!

Afterward we’ll set up the fence and signs, treat your feet for dehydration and frostbite, possible cuts and that mapwork of burst blood vessels you’ll be bragging about into the next century. We’ll take close-up pictures of the footprints to go with the video of your run, and drive you back to Moonbase. (We can’t use a flying vehicle! Rocket exhaust would erase the footprints.)

Danger? No worse than skydiving. Well, not much.

Expense? Today it’s impossible. Tomorrow. . . . My lovely wife Marilyn gets the Neimann-Marcus annual catalogue. It always offers a hugely expensive one-of-a-kind gift. What a lovely 50th anniversary present this would be! Bill Gates, I never know when you’re listening.

8)

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery

"This is not a pipe".

Free cookies to anyone that gets that "joke". :P

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The proceeding post was brought to you by NASA, the National Association of the Sellers of Alcohol.

I immediately think of the Magritte painting, but I'm not sure why it would be relevant.

http://www.acclaimposters.com/_galle...e/10091031.jpg

The artist's intent is to separate the notion of an object from the notion of the depiction of an object. Looking at representational art, we immediately interpret the content, or the depiction. We do not consciously acknowledge the depiction. What the artist says here is that you are not looking at a pipe, but rather a picture of a pipe.

It speaks to a larger philosophical argument about reality and what we accept as fact. Does one "really" walk on the surface of the moon? I'm also reminded of the old joke where the balloonist lost in the fog asks the occupant a building where he is, to which the reply is given, "You're in a balloon." We typically bypass so much literal meaning that it becomes a joke to emphasize it.

This reminds me of another cryptic statement, "The Parthenon is a duck," uttered by architect Robert Venturi. The sentiment here involves the distinction in architecture between form that serves a functional purpose and form that is mere ornament, and the line between them -- or even whether such a line should be drawn. The duck in his book is a shed in Flanders, New York which is wholly in the shape of a large white duck. The shape of the shed has nothing to do with the function of the structure and is purely ornament. Venturi quotes noted architect Augustus Pugin, saying it is all right to decorate construction but never construct decoration. That's especially ironic, considering that Pugin is responsible for much of the ornamentation characteristic of Victorian architecture. In having departed from such baroquity, modern architects create "ducks" by establishing ornament solely in large-scale form (cough, Frank Gehry, cough). And so did the Greek architects in building their characteristic temples. Venturi's ideal decorates, but not as a matter of functional design.

Why should we even care?

Because there is great compelling value in visual communication that uses form, color, and spatial value to clear advantage -- to enhance and support, but not to clutter -- or for its own sake. Remember when digital speedometers were available on cars? They lasted one model year. Why? Because analog speedometers convey information more effectively. I remember in one glass cockpit design for airplanes, the radial dial was replaced by a colored arc with a small triangle outside the arc. I think Boeing did this. It was unsuccessful because of the unfamiliarity to pilots of that spatial orientation. Now Boeing instruments show a graphical relationship more analogous to the older radial dials. A quick sample of avionics designs shows a prevalence of circular displays with radii or sectors in combination with color to indicate quantity and out-of-tolerance conditions.

In submarines the status of every hull opening is displayed on a panel so as to be comprehended in a single glance. Previously that information was conveyed as color, where green meant closed and red meant open, leading to the moniker "Christmas tree" for that panel. The sailor operating that panel would report "green board" to suggest it was safe to dive. After contemplation, the arrangement was changed to show a horizontal line for each opening that was closed, and an angled line for open fittings. A fully-closed hull was perceived at a glance from a "straight board", whereas an open fitting broke the line of continuity.

I'm slowly weaving back to Apollo.

From train schedules to financial forecasts, we constantly deal with contexts in which our perception can be either employed or defeated. Long, tabular lists of figures convey little useful information without considerable thought. Consider a corkscrew orbital chart where time progresses from top to bottom and the edge-on perceived location of the satellite is drawn as sinusoidal curve. The same information is found here as in a tabular ephemeris, but in a form that can be perceived in its structure and harmony.

The ability to see a pipe rather than a picture of a pipe is the special advantage of humans; but it is also a disadvantage. For when we look at photographs we are looking at a depiction, not the event itself. Where conspiracists often look beyond the depiction and see only the content, the conscientious researcher knows to attribute some anomalies to the artifice of the depiction, not a perceived anomaly in the content.

Whew! Can I have my cookie now?

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

For when we look at photographs we are looking at a depiction, not the event itself. Where conspiracists often look beyond the depiction and see only the content, the conscientious researcher knows to attribute some anomalies to the artifice of the depiction, not a perceived anomaly in the content.

That's a good point to make, but since photographs are one of types of evidence we offer as support for the claim that we (or 12 others!) walked on the moon, sometimes conspiracists work to disallow photographs as evidence for such a feat. In those cases, they recognize photographs as merely depictions of the event and cast doubt on our ability to derive information about the event from it and question the validity of any such attempt.

To save photographs as valid evidence, we could recognize that when we look at a photograph, we look at the depiction, but we also look at the event (or some event). Depending on your philosophic views and how skeptical your are, you may find that objectionable. But, if we take the view that to perceive something is to make one's self part of a physical system so that one can derive information from it, we can accept that a photograph, in a small way, allows us to see the depicted event too. A photograph can physically tie us to the event it depicts.

Succinctly that's my point, and that was Magritte's as well.

In one sense it's accurate to say the astronauts walked on the lunar surface, and in another it's accurate to say they walked on their boot insoles. In one sense Magritte's painting is a pipe, and in another sense it's a picture of a pipe. And in one sense AS11-40-5903 is Aldrin on the moon, whereas in another sense it's a photograph of Aldrin on the moon.

Knowing how to regard that evidence -- whether to consider its delivery versus its content -- is the talent of the interpreter. We cannot enumerate pendantically all the policies that should apply to every question. Am I appealing to intuition? No; I am appealing to knowledge and experience.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Yes. Noting talent, knowledge, and experience is the right way to approach the matter. When confronted with the types of duality you describe, there sometimes is a tendency to become overly skeptical or suspicious. A stick in water looks bent even though it is really straight. That the straight stick looks bent does not mean we are isolated from the stick such that we have no hope of learning about it. Nor is it a sign of a conspiracy acting to deceive us. There is simply more physics to learn: that of sticks and that of sticks in water. Understanding the photograph of Aldrin on the moon requires us to master not only light and its interactions, but also the photographic process.

Joe, and Jay...you guys are making my hair hurt!

Editted to say: what little hair is left is hurting.

Sorry about that. Healy's recent appearance got me thinking about Fetzer and his philosophy. There are certain types of philosophy of doubt that just drive me bonkers. This type of stuff from Fetzer angries up the blood and had me in a particular state of mind today:

Joe Durnavich:

Essensentially what you seem to be saying is that there is no absolute proof of anything. That also aplies to the conspiratorial cause as well and for the purposes of this board the burden of proof is upon them to show how thousands of people were involved in a cover up and millions of independant people have been deceived by it.

My current location is given under my screename. Within tollerances I am 100% convinced that is an accurate representation of where I am and the datestamp on the post will pretty well fix the time. I could easily take a photo, post it to the web but all it would show would be an image of me in a room (or even a studio dressed up to look like a room) No one other than me can proove that I'm where I say I am or indeed that I'm who I say I am. At the end of the day the reader of this post has to take the possibilities, weigh any evidence (circumstancial or otherwise) and either reject my claims, and by implication call me a charlatan, or accept the veracity of what I say on trust as a measure of my integrity.

Ultimately this is an apeal to reason, it is not scientific but at the limit of our understandings it's the best we can do.

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By asking questions we sometimes get the wrong answers, from wrong answers we learn to ask the right questions.

Essensentially what you seem to be saying is that there is no absolute proof of anything.

Well, deciding if there is or isn't an absolute proof of anything sounds too much like traditional philosophy, which I don't always find that useful. That makes it sound like a claim to knowledge is like an answer given on a test for which there is a right or wrong answer.

I prefer to think of knowledge not in terms of a quest for "absolute certainty," but as a skill or a technique we develop and employ to get on with our daily lives. Like any technique, we apply it more or less well, and have various degrees of success with it. We must be efficient, too. When a tire goes flat on my car, it would be wasteful to try to ensure with absolute certainty that the spare is going to work long enough for me to get to the tire shop. That would take way too much time and way too much expense that I could better employ elsewhere. I really only need to do the best I can under the circumstances. On the off-chance the spare goes flat on the way to the tire shop, then I can deal with that contingency.

Knowledge may be more like the skill a golfer, say, exhibits, than right answers on some grand, universal test.

Here is Fetzer on the Moon hoax. Consider this quote in conjunction with the other quote from him I posted above. Somebody offered the thousands of photographs as support for the claim that we went to the Moon. What I object to is a not a recommendation to be cautious about the evidence, that we should take steps to test for forgery, etc.. Those are some of the techniques we must apply to properly make the claim. What I object to is notion that we have no right to say that we know that we went to the moon because we cannot meet a particular absolute standard. It is like saying Tiger Woods did not really play golf when he had a bad game and did not win, or saying that he can never say that he played golf because of the possibility of bad games.

No one other than me can proove that I'm where I say I am or indeed that I'm who I say I am. At the end of the day the reader of this post has to take the possibilities, weigh any evidence (circumstancial or otherwise) and either reject my claims, and by implication call me a charlatan, or accept the veracity of what I say on trust as a measure of my integrity.

There is little reason right now for us to go to great lengths to verify who you are. For our current purposes, the "froqesque" label on the posts is enough. That is enough for us to identify your posts and distinguish them from others. More effort on our part may be required in the future if circumstances change, but until then, we are doing just fine.

If NASA set an absolute requirement that Apollo had to be perfectly safe before we attempted a landing, we never would have made it to the Moon. It is because NASA set a particular level of success as a standard and optimized resources to aim for that end, that we have the privilege of being among the first generation of humans to have walked on the moon.

Here is Fetzer on the Moon hoax.

Joe, where did this fetzer quote come from? I would love to see it in context.