Check out this scan of an article from the British newspaper "Sunday Times", written by Jeremy Clarkson and published on January 6, 2002:

http://www.thompson1973.fslife.co.uk...ifs/clrksn.jpg

"Magnificent Desolation"

(PS: The scan is NOT made by ME !!)

Funny? Troubling? Farce? Whistle Blow? – I don’t know what to think about this guy. Maybe the guys from the UK know of him and can let us in on his mind set.

I think the resolution of the Clementine camers has already been covered in enough detail elsewhere on the BB to explain the technical reasons that we can’t see the hardware.

Beyond that, I’m not sure I like the idea of being referred to as a “feeble-minded lunatic”!

Lunatic – no way! (a little eccentric, maybe) - Feeble-minded – not yet – just don’t ask my kids! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

He's a motoring journalist(or at least he was), and he's always been that way about America for some reason.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Andrew on 2002-03-14 09:24 ]</font>

"feeble-minded lunatic!"

I resemble ...er, I mean resent that.

Wow, so much bitter hatred towards us.

I find it highly amusing that most of us feeble-minded lunatics are direct descendants of feeble-minded criminals that Britain sent here to "settle."

I really think they ought to take more credit.

That explains the David Coulthard reference. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Hmm, well, not unless you're from Georgia. That was the only British North American colony that was originally a penal colony. The other colonies were either crown colonies, settled by mostly middle class people "on contract" to various lords (e.g., Lord De la Ware who got a colony named for himself), or were private colonies founded by various individualists who sold the idea to people who were looking for new opportunities (e.g., Sir Walter Raleigh in Virginia; the Pilgrims in Massachusetts Bay). Criminals were not welcome in either of those types of colonies.

Australia, now, was just one huge penitentiary. Also, numbers of the British Caribbean islands, such as Barbados and Bermuda, were partially "settled" by political prisoners (not O.D.C.s) who were shipped over as slaves.

The (sorta explains Georgia now, doesn't it [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] ) Curtmudgeon

Whoa, Tex!

As a gentleman from the great state of Georgia, I take umbrage. I demand satisfaction. Choose your weapon, sir. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

...just don't let us drive in the fog...

I choose longhorn cattle prods at 10 paces. Yee-HAH!!! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img]

No, seriously, before my revered ancestors settled in The Republic of Texas, they came from Georgia. Of course, a generation or three before that, they came to Georgia from North Carolina, so I'm not part of the "criminal" element of Oglethorpe's original colony: we was just passin' through (quickly, with our hands on our wallets at all times). [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]

(Even my reference to "The Republic" is self-serving anachronism; all my known ACW ancestors were in Georgia, and fought in Georgian regiments, one multi-great-grandpappy in three different regiments under three different names, because he kept getting tired of getting shot at and went home for six or eight months before getting the guilts and re-enlisting. It was the immediately post-Civil War generation that up and moved to Texas.)

Besides that, I love peaches.

The (are we friends again, now? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] ) Curtmudgeon

[quote]
On 2002-03-14 18:13, The Curtmudgeon wrote:
Er, Curt, mate, plenty of free settlers in Oz too, from the time of the First Fleet in 1788.

Anyway, back on topic, would it be worthwhile telling the journo who wrote this article about Clementine's resolution, and see how he responds? If he's responsible (yeah, well), he might admit his mistake. On the other hand, we might flush out another True Believer.

I asked Karamoon (formerly Squirm) to comment here. We talked about this article at Apollohoax a few months back. Apparently this columnist has the reputation of being something of a pill; he may not be as serious as we'd like to take him.

Jeremy Clarkson could in no way be described as a serious journalist. His column is always written with his tongue firmly in his cheek. On his TV show he blows up Microwave ovens by putting unsuitable things in them. That's his level of seriousness.

Yes, i'd agree with that assessment, though i'm still dismayed at the article [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img]

__________________
N6MAA10816
'Forensic anthropologist! That's why no gun'
Are you a Bright?

The problem with joking under any circumstance is the off chance that someone will take you seriously. The problem with making jokes in a highly strung rhetorical situation is that someone will be predisposed to take you seriously. Such is the case here. Those of you subject on a regular basis to this gentleman's shenanigans know to take his statements with grain of salt. The rest of us don't.

How should a layman properly respond to claims that a spacecraft is in lunar orbit taking pictures, but has failed to see any of the Apollo debris? Your average reader will have no better grasp of optics than that required to incinerate ants with a magnifying glass. He likely needs no better grasp. But there in his Sunday paper is a dilemma he will be forced to deal with based on what he knows.

We in the U.S. are accustomed to regard The Times, for better or ill, as the pinnacle of journalism in the English language. When a columnist writes there, we naively believe he has written from vast experience and with unassailable accuracy. And it would be the author's responsibility in this case to have done the homework required to know where lies the failure of Clementine to provide us with pictures of Apollo remnants.

Similarly with the most noted hoax authors. The reader purchasing the book, or the viewer the video, does so with the presumption that the creators of those works have researched the topic thoroughly and have written so as, if not to educate the audience, at least to convey a picture of the thesis that is reasonably free of distortion and error.

But pseudoscience, by which I mean polemics wrapped in the guise of science, begets superstition. Or at least it fertilizes it. And superstition often begets hate, fear, and resentment which lead to suffering. I am often told not to take things so seriously. "So what if those ideas are wrong? They don't hurt anybody."

But how are we to learn how to root out and destroy the truly harmful ideas if we do not practice critical thinking? How are we to sift the wheat from the chaff if we condone a reluctance to challenge ideas? How are we to recognize excellence if the ravings of the clumsy, the deluded, and even merely the facetious are praised to the same degree?

Skeptics are often criticized as the enemies of unbridled and innovative thought, as the dull gray in the rainbow of ideas. But this is the rhetoric of the pseudoscientist who fancies himself a visionary. There is nothing in skepticism which forbids vision. Rather, skeptics are the consumer advocates in the marketplace of ideas. They do not aim to separate the conformist ideas from the creative ones. They aim to separate the tenable from the irresponsible.

And, unfortunately, to suggest on the basis of selective research that we should have by now a photo of a derelict lunar rover, and to obtain an international audience in which to make such suggestsions, is squarely in the realm of irresponsibility.

Friends. (hugs in a brotherly yet macho manner)

And South Carolina is the largest peach state, not Georgia. Go figure. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Maybe we should de-string the situation.

I don't know how to unstring the debate. The moon hoax theory is held because it's a necessary part of the larger conspiracist world view. Yet it is presented as if it were the conclusion of a legitimate investigation. Its authors intend it to appeal to the intellect (the less informed intellect, the better). But when the argument is rejected on its merits the authors cling tenaciously to the conclusion, deploying yet more complexity and conjecture to support it.

We spin our wheels in direct rebuttal because direct rebuttal is the honest way. But the hoax believers have an infinite supply of speculative cannon fodder. The debate will obviously never be brought to a conclusion by this method. So long as the hoax believers deny the true basis of their belief, I see no escape from high-tension debate according to merit.

We can, of course, simply abandon the debate. But the prediction that by doing so we will allow it to sink back into obscurity is less credible given the willingness of mainstream media such as Fox Television to exploit the sensationalism for profit and give these ideas a much more normalized exposure. Do you really want your children growing up learning physics from Bart Sibrel and David Percy? That's what's happening.

Quite honestly, I'm not so much concerned about spying an antiquated lunar rover, or whether Clementine did any valuable research. Nor am I concerned with the writer's abilities to reason critically, or even his abuse of power by using The Times as a forum.

Feeble-minded? I think that monkey needs to be taught how to dance.

DJ

[quote]
On 2002-03-14 23:34, Peter B wrote:
Correct, mate, and my apologies that I gave any impression otherwise. What I meant was merely in contrast to my pointing out that American colonies were formed differently from one another, and only Georgia was a penal colony; as compared to Australia, where the entire colony was a penal colony even if not all of the colonists were "inmates" (so to speak). Australia was eventually subdivided into its several states, and due to the time periods involved not all of the individual states were penal colonies at the time they were differentiated, but nevertheless, in 1788 and for some time thereafter, the entire island/continent of Australia was a penal colony. With, of course, guards, administrators, spouses-of-inmates, and other free citizens as well as the "criminal element".

The (and such a lovely prison, too!) Curtmudgeon

Curtmudgeon

Fair enough on your comments. It's pleasing to see an American who knows that much about Australian history.

Ahem.

We now return you to a thread topic we can all agree on (silly Britons! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] ).