What becomes of old 'friends'..

[JayUtah]

Spurstalk? There's Apollohoax discussion on a football forum?

Basketball.  And yes, they let FatFreddy88/Rocky/DaveC/<legion> run rampant in their off-topic sections.  They seem to have a very high tolerance (intentionally so) for trolls.

[AtomicDog]

If you have a board about fly fishing, if it has an off topic section, sooner or later FatFreddy will show up spamming the moon hoax.

[Peter B]

He leaves this guy for dead:

http://www2.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/december1999/posts/18799.shtm

especially in the areas of humility and irony.

Surely is a parody, but remains eyewatering in it's claims. I thank you for the diversion.

Yes, it's a parody. :-)

It comes from the old Self Service Science Forum of Dr Karl Kruscelnicki (sp?) who is one of Australia's leading science communicators. Dr Karl used to have a slot on a very popular youth-oriented radio station, and couldn't handle all the calls he received. So he set up a website where people could ask the questions, and arranged for some subject-matter experts to provide answers.

The experts came to be known as Avatars, and were quite scrupulous in answering questions - they knew the mainstream of their field very well and kept out of fields outside their expertise.

But when it came to non-science topics, all the rules went out the window. So when someone asked one day what an Avatar was (given its other meanings elsewhere on the Internet), this was one Avatar's quite humble (cough cough) response.

[Mr Gorsky]

Basketball.  And yes, they let FatFreddy88/Rocky/DaveC/<legion> run rampant in their off-topic sections.  They seem to have a very high tolerance (intentionally so) for trolls.

The Tottenham Hotspur (English football team) forum is also called Spurstalk. San Antonio have the domain name though. Being English, and not a follower of the NBA at all, my first thought also turned to wondering why the moon hoac was a hot topic with the fans at White Hart Lane.

[Echnaton]

I wonder why it is such a long running topic for San Antonio Spurs fans.  Now if it were on the Houston Rockets forum, I'd understand.    OTOH, the Rockets moderators might take denigrating the space program and the people who made it happen more personally.

[Noldi400]

And lest we forget, our old fiend Hagbard::

Why would it be so hard to fly a spacecraft to the moon? The pro-hoax films talk about the radiation riak, but the radiation wasn't as bad as all that, according to Clavius. The rockets were desinged over a period of years by some of the greatest engineers they could find. Why couldn't they do it?


This is going to be difficult to explain. The world is not what we think it is and the conspiracy works on many levels. What if I were to tell you that there is a secret global government and that all national governments are simply public-relation departments of that secret global government? Sounds crazy? Well, bear with me. The Cold War, like nearly all wars, was a manipulated fraud. Of course we on the ground, as well as people far higher up in “power” didn’t know this. As far as we were concerned there were two sides: the West and the Communist block, but at a higher level the two sides were run by the same people; and that situation is the same today. During the Cold War it became necessary as part of the Space Race to make it look like man had gone to the moon for the first time. But the charade had to be credible to the public, which meant that the people had to be seen to go there using the technology of the time. There’s another historical analogy: when Columbus “discovered” America. The truth is, the Elite Secret Society Mystery Schools knew very well that the New World existed, they had for thousands of years. The ruling Royal lines of the Vikings, Egyptians, Romans, Phoenicians, Welsh and Irish had already sent secret expeditions over the Atlantic and travel between the two continents was a regular thing. But it became necessary for political and social reasons for the common people to be “briefed in”. So they sent Columbus, an Elite Mystery School member, over the Atlantic to pretend to accidentally trip over America! So it is with the moon. In the 60’s it became necessary in the “Great Work” for the common people to see astronauts going to the moon. In fact people were going to the moon long before that! And they still do, traveling in far more sophisticated craft than the primitive chemical rockets we see rising up over Cape Canaveral.

You see this is why the Russians never blew the whistle. The Space Race was a feint, unreal, epiphenomenal. It was an illusion engineered by government psychologists and political strategists. There’s a lower level reason too which was probably the one given the junior officials and spies: For the Space Race to be credible in the public eye it had to be close. This is the case in all races. If you’re watching a horse race and the two front runners are neck-and-neck approaching the line isn’t it exciting!? Especially if you’ve put a bet on one of them! A race where the front runner is ten lengths ahead is far less so. In the analogy of the story of the Tortoise and the Hare a race that is too one-sided causes the viewers and participants to lose interest. Up until the moon landings the Russians were winning hands down; achieving nearly all the designated firsts of space travel. If that situation had continued the public in both the West and the Soviet Union would have lost interest, maybe beginning to ask if the huge cost of the space programmes were worth it. The moon landing project allowed the Americans to catch up, giving them back their national pride and reigniting interest in the Space Race in all humanity, ultimately benefiting both countries.

Hmmm... yep, I think he covered all the issues.

[ka9q]

How do people like this survive in the world?

I've read that delusions and psychoses aren't limited to schizophrenics. There's a milder disorder called "Delusional Disorder" in which the person is "high functioning"; he can actually function pretty well as long as it doesn't have to do with their delusion.

[Peter B]

And lest we forget, our old fiend Hagbard::

Why would it be so hard to fly a spacecraft to the moon? The pro-hoax films talk about the radiation riak, but the radiation wasn't as bad as all that, according to Clavius. The rockets were desinged over a period of years by some of the greatest engineers they could find. Why couldn't they do it?


...The Cold War, like nearly all wars, was a manipulated fraud. Of course we on the ground, as well as people far higher up in “power” didn’t know this. As far as we were concerned there were two sides: the West and the Communist block, but at a higher level the two sides were run by the same people; and that situation is the same today. During the Cold War it became necessary as part of the Space Race to make it look like man had gone to the moon for the first time. But the charade had to be credible to the public, which meant that the people had to be seen to go there using the technology of the time...

And as the 'X Files' explained, that was why the Buffalo Bills lost four Superbowls in a row... 

(Little do they realise it was so I could twit a friend at work who was a Bills supporter, while I'm a Patriots supporter.)

[twik]

I think hagbard actually summed up the fatal attraction of conspiracy theories for many people:

The world is not what we think it is....

It's so much more exciting that way!

[ka9q]

Especially when you're "conspiratorially aware".

I think that expression should live on.

[twik]

To me, the concept that the Cold War (and all wars back from that, until whenever the conspiracy espoused began) were fakes to keep the peons under control is the dividing line between CTs who are sane, if misguided, and those who are desperately delusional.

It's one thing to suspect that the moon landings might be hoaxed, particularly if you've only read one side of the story. To firmly believe all reality is a hoax is a different mentality entirely.

[ka9q]

Well, strictly speaking you can't logically disprove solipsism.

I just decided long ago that it's not very useful.

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

Well, strictly speaking you can't logically disprove solipsism.

I just decided long ago that it's not very useful.

If I bump my toe the hurt feels real enough.

So I go through live at least acting as if my toes and the things they could bump into are for real.

 

[Not Myself]

Well, strictly speaking you can't logically disprove solipsism.

I just decided long ago that it's not very useful.

If I bump my toe the hurt feels real enough.

So I go through live at least acting as if my toes and the things they could bump into are for real.

 

This thread is in danger of wandering into "What should we do if there is no free will?" territory

[ChrLz]

Well, at least no-one has mentioned their favorite programming language...