What becomes of old 'friends'..

[ChrLz]

And over at ATS, ...

Never been there, is it anything like the David Icke forums?
If so I'm not sure I want to.

Never spent any time at Icke's forums, so I don't know..  If it helps, AboveTopSecret is sort of somewhere between GodlikeProductions and Unexplained-Mysteries.  U-M is probably the best general forum around if you want a mixture of crazy and good stuff with very good moderation (ie very rarely do they delete posts, and they tend to bend a little towards skepticism).

ATS is an extremely active forum, but suffers a little from moderation that mainly involves deleting posts (and people).. and they bend significantly *away* from skepticism..  It's a good place for finding new UFO reports as soon as they happen..  But I'd suggest that to use it effectively, you need to ignore the first few pages of replies and look for the 'better' posters..!  I'm still a member there - used to be quite active, but not much anymore due to the moderation issue.

Like I said, if you want a good mixture of woo with fair moderation, I'd suggest Unexplained-Mysteries.  Interestingly there's only one barely active Apollo-denial thread there, with really only turbonium sporadically posting (and getting thwacked immediately).  But there's a fair bit of other spacey stuff.

Hmm, I wonder if Patrick will jump over there next..

[onebigmonkey]

And over at ATS, ...

Never been there, is it anything like the David Icke forums?
If so I'm not sure I want to.

The woo lovers are divided by ATS. They love it when it reveals something they agree with, but conversely there are lots of screams of 'cointelpro' and CIA front etc etc when someone deletes a post or moderates something in a way they don't like. There are all kinds of accusations about who owns it and that it is populated by huge numbers of shills and spooks. I think there are probably more dissenting (ie sane) voices there than the likes of Icke, where trying to argue any logical and coherent point of view is like wading against a tide of effluent.

It's slickly presented and has a lot of advertising content, which must generate some cash for someone!

[JayUtah]

And he-who-shall-not-be-named is back at JREF, indomitablespirit.  Wow, that's a seriously sick obsession.  "I have a friend who's an expert in the environmental systems..."

He also posted in the medical threads, as an apparent attempt to ease his way back into the forum.  How much you want to bet he shows up to Cosmoquest within the next few days?

[Drewid]

He's so obvious isn't he.

[JayUtah]

It's hard to be an effective sock puppet without being obvious in that way.  The point of a sock puppet is to buttress the claim of the principal identity.  And you can't do that without referring to the principal frequently.  Done too often or too soon, it becomes conspicuous.

As to the style and mode of argumentation, poor Patrick just isn't that creative.  He can't seem to vary his general approach well enough to avoid detection.  It's always the same editorialization, the same lame evasions, and the same general theme:  someone he knows has a great argument.  Oh, and poop.

[JayUtah]

He's already well into the, "This is so fake I just want to puke!" meme.  I guess he doesn't have much time this month for trolling.

[nomuse]

Huh.  "lowerabdominalspirit" didn't last long, did he?

[Abaddon]

Huh.  "lowerabdominalspirit" didn't last long, did he?

16 posts and an "administrative suspension", further action pending investigation by mod. I will bet on outright ban to follow.

[Daggerstab]

See also: theloniusmonkey on CosmoQuest. Slightly more subtle from the previous attempt: introduced himself in the appropriate forum (globe-trotting optics salesman, he-he), then blathered on some unrelated threads to simulate newbie activity before zooming in on the hoax threads, and then only two of them, instead of the usual dozen. Still not good at self-control though - his last posts mention what "decisively" is doing on other forums. So far nobody has taken the bait.

And one of his non-hoax posts mentions bikes - in a thread about choosing a telescope. 

I sometimes do little seminars at astronomy club gatherings for first time scope buyers. One time for a group of high end clients we even set up 8 scopes on Mauna Kea and these folks came out from the mainland, tried out the various options and so forth. Not that you need to go to one of these Mauna Kea things. Pretty expensive and a bit of overkill to say the least flying out Mauna Kea way to decide what first scope to buy. But my group has had a great deal of practical success doing this sort of thing locally now and then. Where I am heading with all of this if it isn't obvious is to ask the question, "What have you done research wise for yourself to try out this that and the other thing scope wise?" Buying scopes is a little bit like buying a bicycle. Some bicycles look great but do not ride well. Some bicycles do ride well, but not for everyone. Simply not the right bike for me but might be for you. And different people want to do different things with their bikes and likewise telescopes. I'd recommend if you haven't done so already that you hook up with a local astronomy club. There are plenty out there. See what other people are using and doing with their telescopes and work toward making an informed decision for yourself based on your interests and needs. Sounds like you will be successful. By that I mean you seem enthusiastic about it and so I suspect you'll have a lot of fun. Good Luck!

Yeah, Patrick, nobody knows it's you. We've been all fooled by your supreme thespian talents.

[nomuse]

The creative writing student in me winces every time I read one of his posts.  Where's the organization?  Where's the flow?  Heck...what happened to those poor sentences!  He needs a good editor to Alexander through that Gordian Knot of prose.

[raven]

Poor organization is actually, from the perspective of a conspiracy theorist, an advantage.
If you post a Gish gallop in a way that is difficult to read, you can feel tremendously self-satisfied when your opponents do not mention some claim buried in your poorly formatted posts and can mention it later as proof of your statements truthitude.

[AtomicDog]

With the knowledge of telescopes that theloniusmonkey has demonstrated, I doubt that he has ever even looked through one.

Why would a prospective telescope buyer travel all the way to Mauna Kea from the mainland to check out a scope with all of the historic sites in California,  Nevada,  and New Mexico,  with seeing almost as good for testing purposes?

[gillianren]

Around the time my mom made a telescope for a class she was in, we went of a field trip with her class down to Palomar, for example, and of course I really ought to have gotten around to going to Mount Wilson, which was just right there for me.  I admit Mount Wilson is dealing with substantially more light pollution issues than it used to, but they still do good work there, right?

[Count Zero]

I admit Mount Wilson is dealing with substantially more light pollution issues than it used to, but they still do good work there, right?

Right.  LA has that funky inversion layer that keeps a lot of the *ahem* "particulates" close to the ground:



This makes the air at Mt. Wilson unusually clear and steady.  Looking up, light from below is not as badly scattered back down to the telescope as one might expect.  Telescopes in darker areas have an advantage when photographing very dim objects, but the steadiness of the air at Mt. Wilson keeps it a world class observatory for brighter objects:  planets, comets & stars (including the Sun - IIRC they still have a solar telescope up there).

[gillianren]

Hee.  My first reaction was, "I know where that picture was taken!"