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Post by margamatix on Jul 26, 2005 16:58:59 GMT -4
But that's the whole point Peter. It's pointless directing me to video footage, because I've seen a video of David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear.
In the footage I referred to, you can quite clearly see that the astronaut is hoisted up on a wire. Would it not be better simply to deny that it is genuine Apollo footage?
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Jul 26, 2005 17:09:23 GMT -4
In the footage I referred to, you can quite clearly see that the astronaut is hoisted up on a wire. No, that is only your interpretation. If it were clear then everyone would agree with you.
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Post by gdwarf on Jul 26, 2005 17:46:08 GMT -4
But that's the whole point Peter. It's pointless directing me to video footage, because I've seen a video of David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear. In the footage I referred to, you can quite clearly see that the astronaut is hoisted up on a wire. Would it not be better simply to deny that it is genuine Apollo footage? So wait, we should beleive your video, but you don't have to beleive ours? You asked for video footage, as soon as you get it you say it's worthless. Why ask for it then? You can't pick and choose, you either accept all Apollo video (I mean the original stuff, from NASA, not the badly compressed soundless clips from the people who say it's all a hoax.) or you accept none of it, you can't have it both ways.
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Post by echnaton on Jul 26, 2005 18:03:40 GMT -4
But that's the whole point Peter. It's pointless directing me to video footage, because I've seen a video of David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear. In the footage I referred to, you can quite clearly see that the astronaut is hoisted up on a wire. Would it not be better simply to deny that it is genuine Apollo footage? No, you don’t see it in the video, because there are no wires to be seen and no suspension apparatus like the one shown on Jack Schmidt in your video. You interpret the existence of wires from the motion of the astronaut. This interpretation is what people are disagreeing with you about. You have yet to provide any compelling argument that your interpretation is the correct one, whereas others have made a solid case for the view that this was a standard action that took place on the moon. You need to separate the evidence from the interpretation and make a better case if you want to convince anyone here.
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 26, 2005 19:23:02 GMT -4
But that's the whole point Peter. It's pointless directing me to video footage, because I've seen a video of David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear.
But this whole thing started out as you showing us video and drawing conclusions based on it. In this particular case an important detail -- the astronaut pushing against his crewmate's hand for leverage -- was lost in the poor quality of the original footage. We pointed you to better footage so that you could see it for yourself. The argument changes when you realize what the astronaut is actually doing with his arms and legs.
We also directed you in general to other footage of astronauts because I believe that you would benefit from seeing other astronaut motions to get a feel for how to interpret some particular motion that seems questionable. You are making a judgment regarding inauthenticity by measuring what you see in the video against what you would expect. But your case can only be made if you can justify your expectations. This is what you have failed to do. You simply assume that we accept your expectations as objectively valid. We do not; that is what is meant by "begging the question."
Your argument depends on everyone agreeing that your personal expectations are valid. But you've effectually placed those expectations outside the boundaries of the debate. "Begging the question" means to assume that everyone already believes in some important premise to your argument. You might be of the opinion that the premise is self-evident, but you have to be open-minded enough to consider that it might not be.
Do you really think David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear? I don't. I know how that trick is done, and it's a dirty, cheap trick. But even people who don't know how it's done suspect that it's just a trick and that some other hypothesis explains the observation. Audiences for magic shows consent to be fooled.
On the one hand you ask us to dismiss David Copperfield's stunt -- even though the video "clearly" shows the statue disappearing -- because you seem to know it's not meant to be taken at face value. But on the other hand you beg us to accept that a different video "clearly" supplies evidence for your hypothesis, even when that hypothesis is just as objectively improbable as a statue "really" having disappeared.
You can't seem to separate observation from interpretation. Until you do, you won't understand why we object to your opinion.
In the footage I referred to, you can quite clearly see that the astronaut is hoisted up on a wire.
Of course not. If it could be "clearly seen" that the astronaut is being hoisted by a wire, then we'd see the wire. But there is no wire to be seen. We see the astronaut move in a way that you claim is inconsistent with what is possible and convenient to him. You hypothesize that this motion is due to some wire drawing him upwards. But you have to prove -- by some other means -- the existence of that wire. You don't get to conclude it's a wire just because you can't think of anything else.
In more general terms, you've made an observation and you've formulated a hypothesis to explain the observation. But the truth of the observation cannot be tested by referring to the actuality of the observation. The motion of the astronaut is not proof of the wire hypothesis because the hypothesis was specifically formulated to explain that observation. Of course it will "follow" from the hypothesis, because the hypothesis was defined to explain the observation!
To cite the observation as evidence of a hypothesis that was designed to explain it is the simplest form of circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is not valid reasoning, but it's often very hard to tell when you're doing it because it seems so self-consistent.
The humorous example goes like this: "Why are you beating that woman?" "Because she's a witch." "How do you know she's a witch?" "We wouldn't be beating her if she weren't."
To break the circle in your reasoning you have to show evidence of the wire that isn't tied to observations you already made. The best way to do that in this case would be to show direct visual evidence of the wire itself. You're trying to infer the presence of the wire from its supposed effects. But since that inference is the essence of your hypothesis, it's disqualified as proof for it.
Would it not be better simply to deny that it is genuine Apollo footage?
It wouldn't be "better"; it would be a lie. We know it's genuine Apollo footage, although reduced in quality almost to the point of uselessness. We're not interested in avoiding unpleasant facts. We're interested in the truth, whatever it happens to be. Not everything connected with Apollo turns out to be rosy and happy. But as long as it's the truth, we're happy.
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Post by Kiwi on Jul 26, 2005 23:21:55 GMT -4
...you can quite clearly see that the astronaut is suspended on a wire. Then show us the "clear" wire. And please don't pick out another Aulis piece of video that shows the sun glinting off the antenna on top of someone's PLSS and try to tell us, "See there's the wire!" And don't assume that because some pixels in the TV camera freak out because of the reflected sun that that's also evidence of "the wire." We've heard it all before and it's all been thoroughly debunked. Margamatix, you do have to use your brains to get along on this board. Coming up with wild, illogical, unsupported claims (as Aulis does) just won't do. You have to produce evidence, not uneducated guesswork. Do you even understand what Jay has carefully explained above about your logical fallacies? If he (or anyone) can show that you have committed such a grave error, your argument has no value whatsoever and can be dismissed out of hand. You have to rethink it. Look up logical fallacies on the internet -- having some understanding of them helps you think critically and argue accurately. I have to wonder why you even bother with Aulis. David Percy doesn't even know that to estimate the height of the sun in a particular photo, a true right-angled triangle must be visible. That is, the camera must be perpendicular to the shadow. He even tries to tell us that shadows from the sun should be parallel. He seems to have not heard of vanishing points, and in his book "Dark Moon" on page 22 he has two pictures of trees casting shadows with the captions "parallel shadows." The biggest joke of all is that if you carefully lay straightedges along the shadows you find that they merge near the top of the adjacent photo. His own shadows are far from parallel. On the same page, this experienced photographer says, "it is simply not possible to have variations in shadow direction on flat terrain... within any one picture, if that photograph is genuine." The guy is talking nonsense, which you would know if you understood perspective or were an experienced photographer. Why trust him? <Fixed typo>
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 27, 2005 1:12:24 GMT -4
And please don't pick out another Aulis piece of video that shows the sun glinting off the antenna on top of someone's PLSS...Even if it were a wire in another piece of video, it still wouldn't be "clear" proof of a wire in the Station 8 video. If you want to tell us there's a wire "clearly" in the Apollo 16 clip, you have to show us the wire in that clip. That's just the way proof works. If you want to show that the defendant was at the bar where someone was killed, you have to show him at that bar, not at some other bar. The astronaut's antenna needs some explanation. It sticks out of the top of the backpack, as you would expect it would. But it's not a telescopic tube (breaks too easily) nor an insulated coil (not well developed). It's a bowed tape, almost identical to a common carpenter's tape measure. I've seen it used on some Vietnam-era radios, but I couldn't Google up a picture of one. A straight, linear antenna of a certain length works best. But a rigid antenna might break. The tape antenna naturally stays straight and doesn't wobble around like a flexible coil antenna. But it also bends under pressure. So if the astronaut got it caught on something he could just pull it free and it would spring back up straight again. This also helped during egress and ingress, where the antenna could be folded down and held under a flap so that it wouldn't poke holes in anything. If you look at an astronaut from the front, you might not even see the antenna at all because you'd be looking at it edge-on. But in the side view the antenna would be about an inch wide and clearly visible. Since one side of the antenna is highly polished, it sometimes catches the sun. Any glint that's just above the astronaut's backpack is likely to be the antenna. www.clavius.org/img/big-top-plss.gifAnd don't assume that because some pixels in the TV camera freak out because of the reflected sun that that's also evidence of "the wire."As I said, we run a flyrig at the theater. I'm very proud of it because Andrew, our set designer, designed and built it from scratch. It's a brilliant piece of engineering. I'm working on the improvements to it -- onboard logic, etc. I bring it up because flying for film and theater is a well-developed art. Light glinting off of wires would be a big problem if it were allowed to occur, which is why the wire is carbon-coated and/or anodized in order to eliminate the reflection. In real flyrigs you don't get light glints! Of course nowadays they just remove the wires digitally, but before that was possible it was necessary to physically treat the wires to keep the reflection down. It would be an insult to studio flyers to show glints. Look up logical fallacies on the internet -- having some understanding of them helps you think critically and argue accurately.I couldn't agree more. However, most people have a hard time identifying circularity in their own reasoning, even if they understand what it is. This is why most conscientious researchers submit their research to their peers for review before it's published: to catch those errors of logic committed innocently. David Percy doesn't even know...What Percy doesn't know about photo analysis would fill a warehouse. Although he has legitimate credentials as a photographer, he does not have the appropriate background in mathematics, photometry, and other important field. I know because I've tested his knowledge. So have others. That's why he doesn't answer questions from critics anymore; it's too easy to expose his ignorance. ...that to estimate the height of the sun in a particular photo, a true right-angled triangle must be visible. That is, the camera must be perpendicular to the shadow.Which never occurs in real photography, so we have to use other methods in practice. If you don't have a horizon, you're basically out of luck. You can use shadow vanishing points to orient the sun according to the optical axis, but that's about it. If there's a horizon, you can discern the theoretical sun elevation. This page www.clavius.org/bibzz3.htmltouches on this particular Percy error. BTW, the guy in the tank-top is the guy who built the Apollo space suit replicas. He even tries to tell us that shadows from the sun should be parallel. He seems to have not heard of vanishing points...We managed to get Percy to admit that perspective has a "slight" effect on shadows. So he's gone from saying it has categorically no effect to saying it has some effect, which is an important difference. One is a qualitative, categorical denial. The other is an admission of error and now we're just quibbling over how wrong he is. His [Percy's] own shadows are far from parallel.Even worse, his photo of the man mounted on the horse, intended to show some effects of shooting up-sun without exposure adjustment, shows shadows radiating away, as they should. They are as non-parallel as they can possibly be. I asked Percy to explain that in light of his previous photo "rule" about parallel shadows. That's when he said, essentially, "No more questions." David Percy knows little if anything about the behavior of light and shadow.
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Post by margamatix on Jul 27, 2005 5:27:13 GMT -4
So wait, we should beleive your video, but you don't have to beleive ours? You asked for video footage, as soon as you get it you say it's worthless. Why ask for it then? You can't pick and choose, you either accept all Apollo video (I mean the original stuff, from NASA, not the badly compressed soundless clips from the people who say it's all a hoax.) or you accept none of it, you can't have it both ways. You have not yet directed me to any piece of footage which could noteasily have been faked on Earth. I have directed you to footage which shows a person acting in a way which would be impossible to have happened without the intervention I have described. Anyone capable of viewing this footage and denying this has a mind so closed that it is pointless debating the matter further. Typo corrected
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Post by gdwarf on Jul 27, 2005 6:33:36 GMT -4
So wait, we should beleive your video, but you don't have to beleive ours? You asked for video footage, as soon as you get it you say it's worthless. Why ask for it then? You can't pick and choose, you either accept all Apollo video (I mean the original stuff, from NASA, not the badly compressed soundless clips from the people who say it's all a hoax.) or you accept none of it, you can't have it both ways. You have not yet directed me to any piece of footage which could easily have been faked on Earth. I have directed you to footage which shows a person acting in a way which would be impossible to have happened without the intervention I have described. Anyone capable of viewing this footage and denying this has a mind so closed that it is pointless debating the matter further. You have been directed to the original footage, what the clip you showed us looked like before it was horribly edited and compressed. I fail to see what more you need. You have been told that the footage you have is very low quality and that a better quality movie exists, you have been shown that movie, and yet you claim that it cannot be trusted. You have also been told that it looks very little like a man bing hoisted up by wires, even on your tape, and that astronaut were trained to get up like that should they fall, it is well documented, and if you play the clip with sound you can hear them talk about it, I fail to see how that in any way indicates wires.
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Post by Kiwi on Jul 27, 2005 8:47:49 GMT -4
Apollo 17 "wire"For the record, the link provided by Margamatix www.ufos-aliens.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/apollofilm.rmdoes indeed claim that there are wires holding up the astronauts, and shows a scene of the Apollo 17 flag and an antenna reflecting the sunlight with a similar flare at the top. This is, of course, "a wire," as far as the hoax-promoters are concerned. However, close examination of the Spacecraft Films DVDs, disc 2, "EVA 1," "First Television," with the image filling a TV screen, reveals some interesting points. First of all the film continuously shows the astronauts from 0:8:35 until 0:14:56, a total of 6 minutes 21 seconds, both out beyond the flag and very close to the TV camera on the rover. Never at any time during their different activities is there evidence of wires holding them up. Their antennas can be seen regularly when they are side-on to the TV camera, sometimes dark, sometimes light, and sometimes brightly reflecting the sun. At 0:10:56 the image changes to a darker one, with the lunar surface going from medium grey to dark brown. It changes back again at 0:16:02. From the booklet that comes with the DVDs, I guess that this is a changeover from videotape to kinescope or vice versa. It's not unusual and happens at other times during the flag-raising and, for one instance of a few, between 1:02:36 and 1:04:36 during the ALSEP deployment. During these darker phases, the overall image quality is much lower and there is a type of audio tape print-through, when dialogue can be heard faintly four or five seconds before it actually occurs. Additionally, and of importance regarding "wires," there are many artefacts that appear briefly on the screen -- colour banding, random white spots, dark spots and sometimes a number of white spots that can all be seen at once. Most of these last for one to three frames. The particular flash in Margamatix's link occurs at 12 minutes 10 seconds during "First Television." In fact, there are two flashes from the antenna, both lasting for three frames. Neither of these two flashes are responsible for the flash at the top of the screen, which lasts for two frames and begins four frames after the beginning of the second antenna flash, just as it fades completely away.About one second later another similar flash can be seen at the bottom of the screen and also lasts for two frames. It is unrelated to anything happening on screen, so I believe that the flash at the top of the screen is just another random artefact and just coincidentally occurs above the antenna, but is not in any way evidence of a wire. If it was, it should also have occurred during the first antenna flash. <Fixed times to show that they are mm:ss, not hh:mm>
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Post by Kiwi on Jul 27, 2005 9:27:13 GMT -4
You have not yet directed me to any piece of footage which could easily have been faked on Earth. I have directed you to footage which shows a person acting in a way which would be impossible to have happened without the intervention I have described.
Anyone capable of viewing this footage and denying this has a mind so closed that it is pointless debating the matter further.
Pardon? It's worth remembering that, "Looks like x" doesn't mean it is x. Otherwise we really would be seeing Mickey Mouse in the clouds.
Have you got hold of the Spacecraft Films' DVDs and viewed the appropriate footage full-screen on a TV set and complete with sound, instead of that ridiculously fuzzy little thing in your link? Morevover, have you viewed hours of other lunar footage and observed similar activities?
For instance, take Jack Schmitt's fall as he tries to extract the deep core drill during the Apollo 17 ALSEP deployment -- at 0:14:44 during Chapter 12 of "ALSEP Deployment" on Spacecraft Films' DVD No. 2.
Some hoax-promoters claim that doubling the film speed shows that the activity took place in earth's gravity. Not in this case. The drill table, which he kicks up off the ground, still climbs and falls too slowly at double speed, and his legs move impossibly fast. Besides, the dust flies out in little arcs instead of billowing like it does in an atmosphere.
And another thing regarding his fall -- it can be seen that both Schmitt and Gene Cernan have great trouble operating the jack they are using to pull the drill out of the ground. Why? Because they weigh one-sixth their normal weight.
In my opinion, your second comment indicates who has the closed mind and, like so many other tedious hoax-believers, doesn't wish to research Apollo properly and is incapable of debating the issue intelligently. We can hear the sound of your mind slamming shut, merely because we disagree with your claim and provide evidence of why we do. It seems that your mind is made up and you don't want to be bothered with the facts.
<Fixed typos>
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 27, 2005 12:14:39 GMT -4
You have not yet directed me to any piece of footage which could easily have been faked on Earth.The question is whether you have directed yourself to any. You seem unfamiliar with the traditional online sources of more-or-less official Apollo information. And I highly doubt that you have sat down and watched any particular mission's coverage from beginning to end continuously on the DVDs or videotapes. So I have to doubt whether your assertion ("could easily have been faked") is based on any semblance of a thorough survey. I have directed you to footage which shows a person acting in a way which would be impossible to have happened without the intervention I have described.False. You have directed us to footage which you claim contains an impossible movement. You have provided no evidence or argument to support that alleged impossibility. You have just begged that question repeatedly. Further, your conclusion is in the form of an indirect argument: it "must" be a wire because no other explanation can be found. You don't have proof of a wire. You just say there's no proof of anything else, so it has to be a wire. But in fact we pointed out that clearer video shows the astronaut propping himself up using his companion. The restored soundtrack clearly indicates that this help was intentional and clearly describes the intended actions. The prone astronaut is instructed to "push against my hand", which he does and produces the torso motion you observe. Your original evidence omitted the audio and obfuscated the video. Anyone capable of viewing this footage and denying this has a mind so closed that it is pointless debating the matter further.The denouement of the question-begger. You are the one unwilling even to examine possibilities other than your predetermined theory. This is especially dangerous. Read this, which I wrote on the subject of indirect argumentation. www.clavius.org/holmes.htmlYou are saying it "must" be a wire because it can't have been anything else. That creates for you a burden of proof to discover and eliminate those contending possibilities, whatever they may be, since you have no non-inferential proof of a wire. Simply turning a blind eye to them does not make them go away. You presented us with evidence. From it you drew a conclusion that was based on what was not shown -- i.e., some explanation for the astronaut's torso movement. Based on your evidence, we uncovered additional evidence that does supply an explanation. Therefore your argument fails, because you didn't discover and falsify that explanation and so you can't claim your conclusion as a default. You are unwilling to examine and discuss the additional evidence we provided. How can we be the ones who are closed-minded if we're the ones working with more evidence? Your conclusion is plausible only when you restrict the evidence you consider. That is, by defnition, closed-minded.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jul 27, 2005 13:35:39 GMT -4
This sounds like a certain someone with a Mars fetish. Instead of waving about a fuzzy photo of a "face" and ignoring the better quality ones that show it isn't, we have a person waving about a fuzzy version of video, then refusing to accept the EXACT same video footage when it is given in better quality. Somehow I'm feeling more and more vindicated for my initial responses.
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Post by JayUtah on Jul 27, 2005 15:57:13 GMT -4
I can see even in the grainy video that the astronaut had his left hand up on something, and that he pushed off with that hand in order to produce that torso movement that seems so suspicious. I originally thought it was the standing astronaut's leg. In the DVD video it's clear there's a hand involved; Cosnette's video starts too late to show the approach. But in the audio dialogue the astronauts clearly discuss how one is going to help the other to his feet.
That said, it is possible to know even from the compromised evidence that the prone astronaut pushes off with his left hand and thus makes his torso move. So it is not really a case of ignoring better evidence, but rather a categorical refusal to consider an alternative.
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Post by Kiwi on Jul 28, 2005 0:53:03 GMT -4
Another thing worthy of consideration is the entire picture that is provided by the complete coverage of TV images, still photographs and dialogue.
We see the same area over and over again from different angles and at different times. Ed Fendell zooms the TV camera in and out and pans it around, showing both sky and lunar surface. Never do we see evidence of anything that could be suspending a wire or evidence that such apparutus could ever have been in place. No anomalous shadows of cranes or rigging, no ceilings, and no tyre tracks or swept ground such as in "Ben Hur" and "El Cid."
What we do see is pristine, undisturbed-for-centuries soil which is here and there marred by recent human activity, most of which we clearly see in the various images and hear spoken about in the transcripts and audio tapes.
<Fixed typo and added "and pans it around.">
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