A sad development - Marcus Allen at the BIS?

[Zakalwe]

That is great!  Thanks so much, Zakalwe.  I couldn't find it locally, and was too cheap to order it over the web.. 

Glad you found it useful. I ordered the magazine (I live in the UK) on Tuesday and it arrived yesterday.

I'm still letting this sink in..  While I will concede that this seems to have gone very well for the side of truth, there were some interesting statements in it, esp. the bits I have bolded, about Mr Allen now backing away from his Apollo denial, and the fact that somehow people like him 'are unable to access' the facts.  What, is clavius.org too hard to find?? - and this guy's a researcher?  Doesn't he even watch MythBusters?  save me...

Be interested to hear comments.

I assume that he [Allen] approaches his research in the way that may HBs seem to...by wearing a set of blinkers that means that contrary evidence to their viewpoint is ignored. My own experience with HBs seems to split them into 2 camps: the ignorant- those that simply have never researched the evidence for Apollo; and the die-hard believers in conspiracies- this group seem to have a desire/willingness/need to believe in conspiracies (often they are not bothered about WHICH conspiracy...as long as they get to hold some secret knowledge that the rest of the "sheep" do not have).

It'll be interesting to see if Mr. Allen publishes a retraction in his magazine, though I will not be buying it (the magazine). If he does, then I put him in the first group, if he doesn't then he is firmly in the latter group.

[ineluki]

Translation:  NASA got to him and he's now receiving a gub'mint shill paycheck.

If he's getting one, where's mine?

From my topsecret NWO contact:
Due to budget cuts they are restricted to paying off Moonhoaxers, who are already well known and sane enough* to be a danger to the official record.

* unfortunately for them, that excludes P1K, FF, t....nium and a few others

[Echnaton]

It is a nice recounting of pleasant, gentlemanly debate, which I suppose is the intended purpose.   Although the actual points debated were not presented.  At least the article opened the question of the contradiction between Allen's previous comments of the missions being faked and his position at the debate of accepting the reality of the  Apollo moon landings.   It is too bad the contradiction was placed outside the scope of the debate.  I wonder if that was a deliberate ploy by Allen to save himself from being completely humiliated. 

Thanks for finding the article.

[BazBear]

What, no more disinfo payments?! Okay, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore! It's time to launch Operation: Occupy NASA!

[Chew]

I don't believe Allen really changed his mind. I'll bet anyone a silver quarter the next time he makes a public comment he will repeat all the bullcrap he said before.

[Echnaton]

What, no more disinfo payments?! Okay, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore! It's time to launch Operation: Occupy NASA!

Come on to Houston, the mayor was very cooperative with the small occupy Houston crowd.  We can set up at the JSC rocket park, there is an air conditioned building and we can sleep inside the Saturn 5 inter-stage sections.  How cool would that be?

[Echnaton]

I don't believe Allen really changed his mind. I'll bet anyone a silver quarter the next time he makes a public comment he will repeat all the bullcrap he said before.

Tactical debating.    His readers will undoubtedly understand the nod and wink he gives to them while he gets to bask in the "glory" of presenting to a real science society.

[gillianren]

I'm sorry; I just have a hard time buying, "Ooops!  I just didn't know!"  Because if you're that ignorant of something, you have no right being so vocal against it.  And, as has been said, it's not like the Apollo record is difficult to research.  How dare he?  How dare he make a big enough nuisance of himself to have been prominent enough to have been invited to the thing in the first place if one audience's knowing what they're talking about is enough to change his mind?  Good on him if he really did change his mind, of course, and if he did, he'd better be at least as vocal against the hoax now as he was for it, but I'll believe that when I see it.

[twik]

Come on to Houston, the mayor was very cooperative with the small occupy Houston crowd.  We can set up at the JSC rocket park, there is an air conditioned building and we can sleep inside the Saturn 5 inter-stage sections.  How cool would that be?

How powerful is the air conditioning?

[Valis]

I too remain skeptical about this change of heart. I don't know the guy (and I'm not that familiar with the moon hoax "scene" either), but it doesn't sound plausible. His evidence of the hoax was a few pics that looked odd to him. So what? Even if a few pics were made for PR reasons, where did all the other evidence of Apollo's reality go? I find it very hard to believe that a person a) was not aware of all the other Apollo evidence, b) was still famous enough to get to speak at a notable scientific event, and c) was not aware of all the freely and very easily available retributions to his objections about the pictures. As pure conjecture, my guess would be that he knew that all his "evidence" was wrong, so he grabbed the speaker pay (if there was any), and the free publicity.

[Echnaton]

Come on to Houston, the mayor was very cooperative with the small occupy Houston crowd.  We can set up at the JSC rocket park, there is an air conditioned building and we can sleep inside the Saturn 5 inter-stage sections.  How cool would that be?

How powerful is the air conditioning?

Enough to keep the Saturn 5 building comfortable at mid day at the height of the summer heat.  OTOH, if the "Agency" pulls the power, it will turn from a refuge into an oven in short order.  But we new the chances when we signed up as disinfo agents, or at least thought we did?

[BazBear]

What, no more disinfo payments?! Okay, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore! It's time to launch Operation: Occupy NASA!

Come on to Houston, the mayor was very cooperative with the small occupy Houston crowd.  We can set up at the JSC rocket park, there is an air conditioned building and we can sleep inside the Saturn 5 inter-stage sections.  How cool would that be?

Now that sounds like a plan!

[Kiwi]

That is great!  Thanks so much, Zakalwe.  I couldn't find it locally, and was too cheap to order it over the web.. 

Glad you found it useful. I ordered the magazine (I live in the UK) on Tuesday and it arrived yesterday.

Many thanks to you two guys -- it's really great to get the good oil.

Please, Zakalwe, could you post for us full bibliographical info about the issue.  Full details of magazine, date, pages etc.  Sorry if you've already done that, but if so, I missed it.  Brain has been on holiday recently.

[Kiwi]

...if you're that ignorant of something, you have no right being so vocal against it.

That is exactly what I think, and probably other members do too.  But that's the trouble: the ignorant are very vocal.

If there's one word I would use to describe most hoax-believers, it's that one:  Ignorant.  Not overall, of course, but as ignorant about Apollo as I am about embroidery.  And often, sadly, they don't know what they are ignorant about and we don't know what we are ignorant about.

I used to buy every issue of the Australia/New Zealand edition of Nexus magazine for years, but not any more since I learnt about logical fallacies, thanks to the Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board and ApolloHoax.  There were a few people who taught me, and the best was JayUtah.  I looked and looked for a Beginners' Logic website that started with things like answering the question, "Why would I want to think logically?" but never found one.  All those I looked at were for advanced learners.  I want one to which I can send beginners.

It was through Nexus that I corresponded with Ralph Rene.  They published an article about his Apollo claims and I sent them my debunking of it but they didn't use it.

Then when I heard Marcus Allen of the British edition speaking, saying he was a photographer and rubbishing the Apollo photos, I was astonished at how ignorant he was of photographic principles that were quite basic to me, and probably part of many of the beginners' and advanced courses I taught.  He didn't seem to be much more knowledgeable than Rene, who was not a photographer.

I was keen to contact Allen, but other circumstances kept me from doing it.

I guess it is in the monetary interests of the Nexus publishers to keep the conspiracy and "alien spacecraft" and mystery stuff going, and to occasionally publish only the mildest dissent in the letters column to keep up appearances of being balanced.

Certainly, if Allen publishes details of his recent epiphany in Nexus I will be thrilled, and would want to congratulate him as a good, honest fellow-photographer who has integrity.  He owes it to his readers, but will it only come in a book costing the UK equivalent of US$39.95?

I hope not, and shall wait and see with interest.

[gillianren]

And embroidery (about which I know quite a lot) is very simple.  Even more so compared to Apollo.  (Oh, you still get people who apparently know how the item you're selling isn't worth what you're charging despite having taken thirty hours or more to make, but that's different.)  A lot of things that people don't know anything about are.  I know that the ignorant are vocal about it; I just don't think they have a right to be.