Chip, that's an excellent reply. Why don't you go and post it up underneath the original on the Galactic Guide site? I'd do it myself, but I don't want to steal your lines.

That's something to think about. We don't really need a permanent installation right away. Maybe setting up a kind of temporary base that can be stocked and used on an occasional basis would be better. We could start by building a small shelter, and stock it with exploration tools. But we don't worry about making it self-sustaining at first. We just haul all necessary perishables with us for, say, a series of one-month research missions, and use the base to explore the environment and determine what we need to create a more permanent installation.

Sort of a lunar Skylab. I like it.

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

<a name="2-10-22.P2P"> page 2-10-22.P2P aka Push2page1
On 2002-09-17 17:44, AstroMike wrote:
I noticed this new comment:


DID NOT READ IT ALL:
made the push off a link from another thread
which VERY SOON .. (8:04 A.M.) I'LL PUSH2?

This is absolutely insane. I know this thread is long dead, but I need to clear up the record.

I am C. W. Powers, and twelve years ago, I posted a send-up of the moon landing hoax to the newsgroup "alt.movies.kubrick" in response to some dweeb who seriously questioned whether we actually landed on the Moon.

I took the idea of the moon landing hoax and ran with it, claiming that Stanley Kubrick, the director of "2001: A Space Odyssey", was hired by NASA to help fake the Apollo moon landings. I sprinkled the posting with authentic facts and authentic-sounding facts that anyone familiar with Kubrick's work and/or the space program would recognize.

The post was an obvious satire. An attempt at humor. To wit, a joke.

In and of itself, this is wholly unremarkable. However, on a whim, I thought I'd see if that post was still around. What I found absolutely floored me. This silly posting was not only been copied to other newsgroups, such as alt.humor (no surprise, I guess), but was actually taken *seriously* as an argument for and against the moon landing hoax.

Google "kubrick", "apollo", "powers" or bits of text from the original post and you'll find the piece was either referenced or copied in part and even in its entirety. This is nuts.

True, Google is a double-edged sword when it comes to research, but even the functionally illiterate would've instantly taken this as a send-up, given the BIG FAT CLUES in the piece, e.g. Kubrick sending a camera unit on location to shoot in THE SEA OF TRANQUILITY in order to get the lighting just right. Hello...?

And, in all of my self-delusional attempt at cleverness, I actually made a mistake in the post (which someone here caught--good for you), which was that the "little known but highly respected" British director, Randall Cunningham, hired by NASA to replace Kubrick and direct the failed Apollo 13 mission, should have been *Richard* Cunningham. Get it? Remember Richie Cunningham? He was the character played by Ron Howard on the 1970's T.V. show, "Happy Days." Ron Howard is now a successful director, and directed the movie "Apollo 13." Five years ago, a writer for the St. Petersburg Times, Collette Bancroft, almost figured this out (see the end of her article: http://www.sptimes.com/2002/09/29/Fl...r_lunacy.shtml)

Stanley would certainly have had a laugh at the original post, and maybe he did (I hope so), but no doubt he'd also have shaken his head in sad disbelief at how it others have taken it to heart.

So, please, please can we let this go? It was a JOKE, and to every engineer, astronaut, pilot, administrator and scientist who devoted their lives to getting us to the Moon and safely back, I sincerely regret that the brilliance of your achievement was ever put into doubt because of this.


Christopher Powers

"The truth was erased, the erasure forgotten, the lie became truth."
--Orwell, 1984

Welcome aboard. Unfortunately, the hoax believing crowd do not understand this "joke" of which you speak. (I'll also note that, since the thread dates to August 2002, we had let it go!)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Well, Christopher... we did let it go. Almost exactly five years ago, in fact. But never mind. (Edit: Great minds, Gillian. Great minds.)


You might find it amusing to note that, from time to time, someone here comes up with an idea for a comparable bogus conspiracy theory, and suggests setting up a CT-style web site. Invariably, one or more of the regular posters chimes in and vehemently discourages such jokes, often citing your experience either directly or by inference.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

That happens regularly with April fool jokes too. I remember the (now gone) Byte magazine would regularly post their jokes with hints, something like "New sound emitting diode, works at 1000 volts and 500 amps. Note: Single use only. Contact April Jones at Gotcha Industries, Fool's Gold, Nevada." Yet, some of their stories (which might involve a new, but ridiculous type of computer) would end up in major newspapers. They finally had to stop the jokes completely because no matter how obvious they seemed to the writers, some always were fooled, and too often they fooled newspaper reporters.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

In some other thread, I calculated that it would have taken Kubrick 50 years to create all of the footage needed to fake Apollo, assuming he did it in the late 60's using 2001 techniques.

But the obvious smoking gun is that, if you look closely, half of the astronauts were played by Peter Sellers.

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See? Because of me, now there's a warning. -Homer Simpson

If I may derail a long dead thread from the OP...

Popular Electronics magazine used to do the same thing around April 1st, when I was much younger. One that almost got me..oh, about 25 or 30 years ago...was an "article" about a tiny device, the size of a small pill, that was to be implanted in dogs and other pets by subcutaneous injection, for identification purposes. I remember one of the joke's give-aways was the device's primary component, a "comb filter."

Preposterous idea, really.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska

Where'd you get the idea you had a right to go through life unoffended?

I clicked the link in your post, Very entertaining...
Namely, if I may quote from the article:

Welcome to BAUT.

Now that you live in infamy, perhaps you will stick around and help promote good science as penance

ETA: The link includes cameo's of Phil Plait (badastronomy.com) and JayUtah (clavius.org)

Welcome to BAUT Christopher, stick around we need more like you

As well as the Moon phases during the Aries lunar trip. Those were glaring even back in 1968.

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Thanks for the welcome! I expected absolutely no response and instead found a sympathetic audience and, well, people who *get* stuff. I like it here.

I knew this thread died 5 years ago, but given that googlespace is effectively timeless (hence the very reason for this thread), I just wanted to get my side of the story out there, anywhere, even at the tail end of a long-dead thread, and even if only to protect earnest young college students from tripping all over themselves on the topic, as evidenced by this classic case in point: http://web.archive.org/web/200406081...wa/samples.htm.

By the time Ms. Rainwater did her “research”, the Kubrick/hoax piece had metastasized for nine years and was inoperably ingrown into the virtual medium. I sent the writing sample to my friend, Bruce, a local college professor. Here are excerpts from his reply:

"Writing is a cultural practice that university educators promote as a core intellectual discipline, entailing careful construction of an argument, conscious selection of words and rhetorical tropes, and methodical marshalling of evidence in print. Reading is a related critical practice of discernment applied to the written word...”

“The student who adduced your piece as a writing sample unwittingly also presented evidence that she turns to ‘cutting and pasting’ more readily than writing, and that, as suggested by the term (i.e. cutting and pasting), it's a cultural practice that concerns itself less with constructing an argument than with cobbling together a project. (My students do this all the time, and often have trouble understanding when this constitutes plagiarism.) “

He goes on to say, “The other detail I sense here is good old fashioned American nonsense - facilitated by the internet..."

And finally, "...In short, what for you was a humorous poke at a nest of silliness wound up resonating in serious ways with a cultural subject whose profile is legible in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the APA: paranoid features on one or another kind of character disorder."

A character disorder, indeed.

So, I have to wonder, is such an abject lack of critical thought a new thing, or has it always been with us, now amplified by the junk that Google indiscriminately barfs up into our laps? (Sorry...it’s the caffeine. I’m actually a big fan of Google.)

To paraphrase Bill Cosby, “They say that cocaine intensifies your personality—but what if you’re an a******?” Just as coke intensifies personality, it seems that the internet facilitates and consequently intensifies predisposition, including predisposition towards shoddy critical thinking, delusion, deception and plain old laziness.

Anyway, I'm typically not very cynical, and certainly did not intend to belabor the point, so thanks again for your indulgence. I think perhaps this would make a good case study. Maybe I'll use it as an excuse to start one of those "blog" things...


Chris

Chris,

Thanks for joining!

I cover this topic on my web site here http://www.clavius.org/bibkubrick.html but it sounds as if I need to correct some facts. The Clavius web site also ranks high in the Google rankings, so hopefully the true story will get equal exposure.

There is really no indulgence occurring: we like having exactly your sort of contribution. BAUT is primarily about getting to the bottom of things as best we can.

You've discovered a few things about conspiracy theorists in following your essay from inception to acceptance. Chiefly, they dont' seem to have a sense of humor and they'll believe almost anything that seems to support their beliefs. It's amazing how earnestly conspiracy theorists will believe the most patently silly things.

You're not at all alone. http://www.clavius.org/bibmilne.html describes another author in your same situation. He contacted me a few years ago and told me his story. He also wrote an article purporting to support the hoaxed moon landing theory. And his too was paraded through conspiracist circles as if it were the honest truth. The author, one David Milne, wrote for a tabloid that was printed using the labor of the homeless and destitute in order to teach them a skill and give them and sense of hope. He wrote the copy and they printed and distributed it. He never intended his article to be taken seriously either, but it was latched onto and has been enshrined in conspiracy lore forever.

If you have the authoritative version of the story, I'd be happy to put it on my web site with any comments you'd care to add.

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

<complete departure from topic>
I doubt that was Bill Cosby. His routines aren't like that. Sounds more like George Carlin.
</complete departure from topic>

Also welcome to here. Here is where you are.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

The anonymity and virtual nature also facilitates rudeness. People write things they, most likely, would not say to your face.

Welcome Chris.

It was from "Bill Cosby: Himself", and did contain one of his rare curses. (If only his private life was as clean as his act.)

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I didn't know that. I stand corrected. So George Carlin stole his material from Bill Cosby then. Gotcha.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

nono... he only needed 25 years. Remember? They used slow motion, you only need half as much footage to record enough time. : )

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Life is unfair. But that's ok.. as long as you make sure it's unfair in your favour. -Me

You don't plan sincerity. You have to make it up on the spot. -Denny Crane

I never make predictions, and I never will. -some footballer

That's 50 years on Earth. Since the Moon has one-sixth Earth's gravity, they only need to shoot 50 / 6 = 8.3 hours.

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