Having just watched Capricon One again I visited the IMDB to check what they thought of it.

I noticed that Our Man in Utah has been having a recent debate on that message board.

Yes, the thread with the religious zealot seems to have burned itself out. However, the thread with "thegame-1" seems to be rewarding. He's scratching his head over some of the conspiracy beliefs. I've invited him here, as he doesn't want to clutter up IMDB with an ongoing debate (a laudable policy). So please treat him as a reasonable enquirer if he drops in.

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

It is very nice to see someone take on board all of the information that you supply, Jay, and re-examine his ideas in the light of it.

It is to reach folk such as thegame-1 that this board is so important.

__________________
"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

I read through some of the posts and it looks like you were making real good progress with thegame-1. However, the last post I read (by peteandsam) was a real winner: it was a hoax because American hasn't boasted enough about the accomplishment for it to have been real. Sheeesh!! :roll:

__________________
Webmaster, Rocket & Space Technology

It takes a lot of courage to change one's mind publicly, especially after having been an advocate.

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

Jay, I'm amazed at your patience with these people sometimes. Even though you certainly didn't seem too happy with the religious zealot, you kept things pretty well decent there. I think a lot of people would have degenerated into name calling out of frustration, heh.

But it is kind of refreshing to see a moon hoax believer actually listen to the things you said and actually start to reconsider his position...I've lurked around here and other places for awhile and seen many of these debates and it seems like most of them come down to the HBs purposefully ignoring any evidence contrary to their opinion. It's kind of maddening really...they present something as "evidence", receive a refutation of that, and then sometimes just ignore it completely and continue making the same claim. Not even bothering to debate the issue any more...it's amazing, kind of.

Anyways...I'm thankful for all the work people like you do in regards to this...I remember watching that Fox special back in the day and not believing the claims but not having any knowledge of how to refute them. Then you find stuff like badastronomy or clavius and there you go...good stuff

Welcome to the board.

first, Jay, thank you. sure, that weird Krishna guy (definitely ESL) said it, but I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic. seriously, from me, thank you for making our lives better.

second . . . man, you're my hero. I couldn't have held that discussion (can't call it a debate, really) even if I had far greater technical knowledge than I do, simply because my eyes kept crossing when I tried to read what he had to say. instead, I skipped his entries and read yours, because you, O faithful Jay, quoted anything relevant.

third, do all cultures have the same pattern for Sunday, Monday, and Saturday? no? I didn't think so. anyway, he never offered proof of that. (and he couldn't have--didn't the Mayans have a ten-day week?)

__________________
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!"

thanks

maybe i'm missing something here, but let's see...wasn't the general gist of this idea something like the number of days matches the number of planets plus the moon and not including the earth, and pluto, or something...i don't know? :-? and then there was the vague connection between sun and sunday, moon and monday...saturday and saturn? i wasn't quite sure where he was going with that...any clues? i don't see why that's important...names for days are pretty much arbitrary really...they could have named them anything, how does that prove crazy theories about the moon being a planet and "above the sun". maybe something is getting lost on me in the translation...

You're absolutely right. The names of the days of the week have nothing to do with anything. Sunday is named for the Saxon Sun god, Monday is named for the Saxon Moon god, and Saturday is named for the Roman god Saturn. But it means nothing. Tuesday is named for the Nordic god Tyr, Wednesday is named for the god Odin, Thursday is named for the god Thor, and Friday is named for the goddess Frige.

The days of the week have no more to do with astronomical bodies than these gods do. So the guy is clearly wrong.

Welcome to the board.

__________________
Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

I think the Hare Krishnas believe that the moon is actually farther away than the sun. You have to throw out orbital mechanics altogether to make their cosmology work, but that's not really the point. The gist of invoking the day names was to point out that "Sun"-day comes before "Mo[o]n"-day, and therefore the sun must come before the moon in some global cosmic order.

But as I pointed out and has been pointed out by others here, there is no rhyme or reason to the naming of days, nor would there necessarily be any significance to their order. The notion of a week, the notion of where that week begins and how many days it has, and the naming and/or numbering of those days, and the origins of those names have too many convolutions to be meaningful, and hold only for English.

Only two of the seven days exhibit an order "helpful" to the case. This is the fallacy of limited scope. That is, if you propose an explanation to account for a feature of a set of data, that explanation must hold for all or most of the data, not just a small subset. The smaller the subset, the greater the chance your proposed feature or correlation is merely coincidence.

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

That must make explaining solar eclipses really fun.

__________________
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

Interesting. I didn't know about Hare Krishnas. I did know that in English and some of the more Germanic related languages, days are mostly named after a mix of Norse and Roman gods. In Spanish and and some other more latin related languages, they are mostly named after Roman gods - starting from Tuesday (Martes/Mars), Wednesday (Miercoles/Mercury), Thursday (Jueves/Jupiter), Friday (Viernes/Venus), and of course Saturn's day.

Monday works in both mythologies, as for Sunday and more details, look here:

http://www.pantheon.org/miscellaneous/origin_days.html

Actually according to my Oxford Dictionary, Tuesday was named after the Germanic god, Tīw, their equivalent of Rome's Mars and Greek's Ares.

__________________
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

Tiw and Tyr are slight name variations on the same god, his story was revised over time:

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/tyr.html?esc

bah humbug, it's harder keeping track of pagan gods than Days of Our Lives.

__________________
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

Interestingly, in Japanese the theme seems to be the elements (though not the classical greek ones):

Monday: 月曜日 : Moon-day
Tuesday: 火曜日 : Fire-day
Wednesday: 水曜日 : Water-day
Thursday: 木曜日 : Wood-day
Friday: 金曜日 : Gold/metal-day
Saturday: 土曜日 : Earth-day
Sunday: 日曜日 : Sun-day

This is also interesting since the Japanese picked up the whole idea of a seven-day week from the Europeans, but seem to have found their own take on it.

And in Swedish, Saturday is "Lördag" which I've been taught means laundry day

__________________
"We do not require reality to conform to the expectations of the ignorant"

This website discusses an older Japanese calendar system which didn't use seven days to a week. IIRC pre-14th century the Japanese calendar didn't have weeks, only days and months, so they would use "24th day of X month" rather than an equivalent of "last Wednesday".

__________________
Now while I might be amused by Cthulhians, I don't necessarily distrust them to carry out the functions of government. -- JayUtah

What's it like being a skeptic in the Middle East? Check out my blog.

yeah that's what i figured but also couldn't quite figure why he was throwing Saturday (Saturn) into the equation as well...to say Saturn is the next furthest out after the moon? :-? dunno, oh well, no big deal i guess...

__________________
Just One More Astronaut

Weekday name origins found here.

I'm sure there are other sites.

<