Right now, it is 12:41 Pacific time. My book is ranked 5610 on Amazon. Sibrel's video is ranked 5447 (DVD) and 6339 (VHS). I won't be near a computer for at least two hours after the show; can someone track the three ratings and see what happens? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]


My book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...423187-1824137

Video (DVD): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...423187-1824137

Video (VHS): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...423187-1824137

I've got the VCR set up to record the clip, I should be able to stream it later tonight - I'll post the link to this thread. 5:55 p.m. eastern time - go BA!!!

Indeed.

Yes, this sounds very much like Sibrel. The everything is black or white "for me or against me" approach to the world is always present in his rhetoric.

Stunning logic. Moon hoax too stupid to deserve a response. Moon hoax gets response. Moon hoax is absolutely true.

Nice job, Phil.

"The main problem with Mr. Sibrel's theory is that it's just completely wrong."

*&#$*^#&

The time was too short. I was hoping Phil would get in a slam dunk but they cut for time. Bart just sounded a bit lost. Good thing it was obvious that the host thought this was "nutso stuff".

Good try though Phil!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Waarthog on 2002-11-15 18:23 ]</font>

OK, I rushed a bit to get the first post in after "Round 2".

As with most such TV fora, neither side was given much time to make a case or refute the other. They got a couple things wrong -- for example, Phil's name was mispronounced (first by Sibrel, then by the host), and in the initial introduction, Sibrel was introduced as the BA's face was shown.

One good thing is that the host made no attempt at "fairness" or evenhanded treatment for Sibrel's ideas. I believe the word he used was "nutty".

The whole segment was maybe five minutes. I'd say you did the best job you could have, given the time constraints.

I noticed Bart had added a scribbly ring around the Earth. I wondered if he was going to mention how he thought the astronauts couldn't survive passage through the Van Allen belts.

Would've been interesting if he had to respond about how the satellite survived passage if humans couldn't live through the same event.


-Adam

Good job Phil! Not enough time allowed for the segment, but there's not much to be done about that, I guess. At least you did get to debunk the "no stars" argument, and the host was certainly in our corner.

I taped it, and I'm converting it for video streaming right now - I'll post a link to the clip shortly!

I liked it when Phil compared moon hoax theories to "something that grows in a damp, dark place."

Definantly not enough time. Unfortunately, the host pushed Phil to answer the question of the stars after Sibrel's argument of "being able to see the astronauts placing a transparency of Earth being on the window." I would have liked to have been able to hear a bit more of how you can tell what you see in the video is not as Sibrel says it is (as in why is he wrong?). You do the best with what you can, I guess.

What I'm afraid of is people buying Bart's video just to see what he's talking about. Hey, that's it! Someone needs to make a video on why the claims are false so people can see what Bart is talking about without giving him any money. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img]

But it was funny during the intro. to the forum, when they showed the video of Buzz hitting Bart, the host actually said, "Go, Buzz!" [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

__________________
"As I lay beneath the Southern Cross, the stars tell more than I could" . . . David Meece

OK, right click, save as:

http://www.ghostwriter-webs.com/jt/m...nbc250kbps.wmv

It's 320x240, 250 Kbps, a little over 10 megs in size. Enjoy!

I have to say I was kind of disappointed in how it was handled. Several of the HB claims were described, but none were refuted. The only counterclaim was basically "these people are nuts." I'm not blaming the BA - he had almost no time to say anything.

"Dr. Plait, please explain in 12 seconds why the hoax believers are in error."
"Well, we can start with the flag waving. You see, whenever the flag is supposedly waving in the breeze-"
"Sorry, Dr. Plait, that's all the time we have. But thanks for joining us."

It wasn't much like that, but it might as well have been.

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

<a name="2-11-15.SW"> page 2-11-15.SW aka what sceen?
On 2002-11-15 19:33, Zeit wrote: To? HUb's 386/20


http://www.ghostwriter-webs.com/jt/m...nbc250kbps.wmv

the sceen i suggest 360K Bytes would be the Scene in which
the audio track has the word "FLORIDA" accompainment
{{belive {oh never mind}}}

Cool, I've got Hub' quoting me!! Now if I could just understand what he means....

Sigh. Yup. Not enough time. I was about to attack the video when Mr. Abrams told me we were out of time. Yikes.

So I learned something: given an hour, Sibrel can get in details I may not be familiar with (like in the radio interview). Given 20 minutes I can nail him. Given 5 minutes everyone looks bad. Feh.

So, I'm disappointed, of course. But there were some interesting points. For one, I believe I can now legitimately call Bart Sibrel a liar. He said I am a NASA employee and get my checks from them. That is not true, and either he knows it's not true or has not done enough research to know that I am not a NASA employee. Either way, he is lying.

I have never been a NASA employee. I was a contractor for several years, and I have NASA grants. This is a substantially different beast than being a NASA employee, though I'm sure if I confront him about it he'd poopoo the difference. I defy him or anyone to find record of a paycheck, anywhere and at any time, from NASA to me. It won't happen. I have been paid by Hughes, by ACC and by Sonoma State University since leaving college, and that's it (besides writing and lecture payments and the like, none of which are from NASA or even from the government).

Also, he mentioned the Earth shots were taken from an unmanned probe. What? He says in the video that the astronauts were in low Earth orbit, so he's contradicting himself there. He also said in the interview the astronauts were fiddling with the transparency. Again, which is it? Unmanned, or manned in LEO?

I talked a lot with Andy Chaikin last night, and if I get a chance this weekend I'll try to write up some of the arguments against Sibrel's video claims. I have to think about it; the last thing I want is to give him any more publicity.

__________________
Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
http://www.badastronomy.com
badastro@badastronomy.com

Also, he mentioned the Earth shots were taken from an unmanned probe. What? He says in the video that the astronauts were in low Earth orbit, so he's contradicting himself there. He also said in the interview the astronauts were fiddling with the transparency. Again, which is it? Unmanned, or manned in LEO?

Not to rain on your parade here (it was cool) but I believe what Sibrel was saying was that the transparency was made from an image previously taken by an unmanned probe, rather than the image being sent 'live' by the probe. The crew then put this manufactured image over the window. This is David Percy's argument. Didn't Sibrel believe they just put a circular cutout over the window and filmed the Earth through this cutout? Or was that some other nutter? Either way, he's found bits of evidence that can be spun to fit his hypothysis, whilst he ignores the gazillion other bits of evidence which rubbish it.

BTW, welcome to the 'Sibrel knows he's lying' club.

Then Sibrel is still confused. He says in the video that they were in LEO and filmed the Earth through a circular mask cut in cardboard. Now he's saying it's a tarnsparency. Next he'll say there were pixies sprinkling fairy dust over the astronauts. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

He says in the video that they were in LEO and filmed the Earth through a circular mask cut in cardboard. Now he's saying it's a transparency.

Some of Sibrel's footage appears in David Percy's What Happened On the Moon?, only with Percy's voiceovers instead of Sibrel's.

In Sibrel's video he argues that the television pictures of earth were made by putting a matte or cutout in the window (or using the window itself as a matte) and letting a portion of the earth, as allegedly seen from LEO, show through.

In Percy's video, Percy argues that a transparency containing an image of the earth was placed in the window and illuminated from behind by the glow of the earth. Percy's version answers some of the questions raised by Sibrel's argument, namely that the earth would move by very rapidly through such a cutout, and that the cloud patterns would be all wrong.

Sibrel has adopted Percy's argument. He can't very well go back and change the video he's already made and distributed, although he still sells it with the same cutout argument in it. In live debate he gives Percy's argument instead of his own.

Zeit, thanks so much for the conversion. This is the only way people like me are going to be able to see clips like this.

As a quick suggestion though, I think it would be better to encode them in a different format such as .mpg. There are some people who don't run windows and can't use the M$ proprietary formats. Otherwise, great job.

As for the clip itself, I was frustrated by the lack of time they gave anyone to speak. The majority of the segment was spent showing video clips and such. The interviewer also spent too much time getting to the point when asking his questions. Bad use of airtime all around.

Some suggestions. If I were the BA, I would have made a point of the fact that the "secret" video footage Sibrel described was really public-domain footage practicing for a TV broadcast. That would take the thunder out of his "amazing discovery". In regards to the star argument, I think it would have been stronger to give a quick concrete example like trying to take a photo of the night sky during a baseball game than trying to explain cameras and lighting. Maybe encourage the audience to try it out themselves, too.

It was a good job for what you had to work with though. Good work, Phil!

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

Yeah, I was wondering about that one!

I know, catch 22, right? Personally, I would like to see it because, like I said before, I'd like to see what it is Sibrel is talking about with the "fake Earth" footage (because the little bit they showed on the program did not show "them placing a transparency on the window") without having to buy his video (as in, give him more money). How do you stop a madman?

Then again, the Buzz incident has given him publicity galore, and too many people know of the conspiracy theory without adequate rebuttal info., maybe it is time that publicity be turned against him. The only way to get rid of a parasite or a disease is to attack it directly; to kill a weed you have to kill the roots. (Just giving the alternative view.)

On the bright side, Phil, I believe you did a good job at defending NASA's need to spend the money necessary to combat the hoax theory. It came across very clear that what used to be a nuisance is now becoming a problem and needs to be dealt with.

Hurray for the home team!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: nebularain on 2002-11-16 00:14 ]</font>

Me, for instance. I'm a Mac guy.

I just saw a tape of the interview and you were cheated for time B.A. Sibrel got at least double the amt. of time. Yet he did make a fool of himself. I am sorry that you only really got enougth time to debunk one of his ideas.

By the way during the tape he did mention the thousands of hours on the web thing in the above quote. So He goes onto the website and makes a positive review for his own book (and probobly more than one person also!!) that is shamefull and just rude. If you are going to do that at least put your name in it.

__________________
GIYUL :-)
"It takes Thousands to fight a battle for a mile, Millions to hold an election for a nation, but it only takes One to change the world." - Dan Sandler 2002

I haven't seen the program, but time constraints are brutal. I wonder if a different approach would have been better - maybe you can keep this in mind for next time. You could have brushed off the interviewer by saying, "The star thing is quite simple and has been explained numerous times, on my website and elsewhere. I'd rather address Sibrel's claim about the video." And then gone on to spend your very limited time on the issue you wanted to answer. I know it's difficult to skip what the host asks, but with very limited time sometimes it is important to push the point you want to make.

Of course, it's not like I've ever been interviewed on TV.

I realize that the wmv format does limit the viewing audience to Windows users, but that's the best I can do right now. I have a TV tuner card in my trusty old Pentium II 350 box - when I encode from VHS tape on that, I end up with enormous avi files, this latest clip was almost 900 megs! By using a free program from Microsoft, I'm able to reduce the clip to a manageable size, but the only format it will produce is wmv.

I'll look around for another method - take care, and keep on debunking!

Isn't this really round three. I saw a thread from a couple months ago it's still listed in the board called round 2. What round is it? This title mistake is a conspiracy to confuse me about how many times the BA has battled Sibrel. I'll have to notify the Bart about this mistake.

I thought that might be the case. It's another example of Microsoft trying to dominate the market by bundling it's software with windows. But if you look around you can usually find better stuff for free or low cost.

In this case, you should use TMPG. It's the best format converter I've seen. The basic model is free, and it's the only one I know of that can reliably convert WMV to other formats. Give it a try.

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

Thanks, David, I'll give it a try!

One of the things that I noticed is that B.S. claims that only a few people were involved in the moon hoax, yet he came up with this elaborate scenario for the window transparancy.

Putting the CM is LEO and staging a fake lunar landing would require thousands of people around the world again he makes NO sense (or it could be nonsense).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jrkeller on 2002-11-17 20:34 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jrkeller on 2002-11-17 20:35 ]</font>

<a name="2-11-17.GRT"> page 2-11-17.GRT aka GRaTe
On 2002-11-16 00:20, WHarris wrote: ?
http://www.pacificu.edu/studentlife/briefs.php3
http://www.promenadeshop.com
http://www.pacificu.edu/studentlife/
http://www.pacificu.edu/
Pacific University in Forest Grove Or is a Mac University "IN" a Mac town {link later}
{{things change & become more {um?}}}
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUb' on 2002-11-17 11:51 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUb' on 2002-11-17 16:39 ]</font>

It's even dumber than that: in LEO, the service + command module would be very bright, easily second magnitude if not brighter. The whole planet would have seen it.

A lot of people saw the module as it orbited the Earth before the burn to put it in a lunar trajectory. But since it was 30+ years ago now, it's easy to simply ignore them when making these silly claims.

Mr. Sibrel said something wrong in nearly (if not) every sentence he uttered on Friday. I plan on writing it up today, if I get a chance.