|
Post by Data Cable on Aug 19, 2009 4:48:39 GMT -4
Just how high above the surface does this alleged air start? You'll have to explain the context behind that paraphrase for the newly-arrived.
|
|
|
Post by gonetoplaid on Aug 19, 2009 5:09:02 GMT -4
Just how high above the surface does this alleged air start? Obviously at head level. Otherwise the expression "airhead" wouldn't exist! ;D
|
|
|
Post by nomuse on Aug 19, 2009 16:55:08 GMT -4
Just how high above the surface does this alleged air start? You'll have to explain the context behind that paraphrase for the newly-arrived. Start here: www.bautforum.com/conspiracy-theories/34711-i-will-prove-moon-landings-were-hoaxed.htmlOr, rather; first, make sure you have several free hours, and that you are not drinking any liquids. Then start there! (Moonman was a poster a while back with an interesting spin on things. Among his arguing points was that "vacuum" was a magical substance invented by debunkers to explain away the deadly temperature extremes on the lunar surface.)
|
|
|
Post by Mr Gorsky on Aug 21, 2009 7:10:21 GMT -4
Among his arguing points was that "vacuum" was a magical substance ... Is it actually possible for anyone to be more wrong than this about the nature of a vacuum?
|
|
|
Post by Data Cable on Aug 21, 2009 13:38:36 GMT -4
Among his arguing points was that "vacuum" was a magical substance ... Is it actually possible for anyone to be more wrong than this about the nature of a vacuum? Oh, it gets worse... I seem to recall him asking something along the lines of: "What keeps this vacuum from leaking into Earth's atmosphere?"
|
|
|
Post by homobibiens on Aug 21, 2009 13:57:53 GMT -4
Oh, it gets worse... I seem to recall him asking something along the lines of: "What keeps this vacuum from leaking into Earth's atmosphere?" The vacuum is leaking into Earth's atmosphere, just really really slowly . . .
|
|
|
Post by Apollo Gnomon on Aug 21, 2009 14:31:18 GMT -4
This was the second mention of those threads in a week for me - it came up on a completely unrelated forum as an example of idiocy on the internet. He's famous 4 years later for being a complete moron. Amazing, isn't it?
I went back and reread the threads at BAUT and then here. Then I was talking with another parent about the horrible line of cars for drop-off and pick-up at my kids' school (yeah, we've started school here already. Bleah.)
Anyway, the mom I was talking with made the complaint that on top of everything else, her AC isn't working. The symptom: The air isn't very cold when the car sits still for very long. I explained that the AC doesn't make cold, it pumps heat from place to place, and when the radiator and AC condenser get too hot the AC can't dump any more heat to the front of the car. This came out of things I learned during the MM "debates" when someone who works HVAC came in and said some intelligent things that MM promptly misunderstood and misquoted.
SO ... I was thinking about the whole "space is cold" vs. "space is nothing and nothing has no temperature" issue at work yesterday. I can kinda understand how MM could have been confused. Okay, not really, he was just being stubbornly ignorant despite many valiant attempts to inform him, but still.
In a sense space IS cold. It could be modeled as a 4 degree Kelvin (I think that's the right value) radiative energy heat sink of infinite capacity. The sun and any nearby object are radiant energy sources of measurable value.
|
|
|
Post by nomuse on Aug 21, 2009 16:31:44 GMT -4
Yah..always a risk, there, when you use the simpler answer. Sometimes the person you are debating knows just enough (they got a cup from the Pierian Spring, although drinking deeply is far from their intention), that they can call you out on a simplification. Other times, another poster who also knows the science choses to but in and give a more detailed response -- which can confuse the observers.
But when you qualify properly, and allow exceptions, and show some of the nasty little detail that is in any real-world application of apparently simple principles, then you look blithering and undecided. So it's always a gamble how much you can be safe in simplifying.
For someone like Moon Man, best to say that vacuum has no temperature and leave it at that. He's already confused enough without adding concepts like "hard" vacuum or the 4K background....
|
|
|
Post by theteacher on Aug 21, 2009 17:15:25 GMT -4
SO ... I was thinking about the whole "space is cold" vs. "space is nothing and nothing has no temperature" issue at work yesterday. I can kinda understand how MM could have been confused. Okay, not really, he was just being stubbornly ignorant despite many valiant attempts to inform him, but still. In a sense space IS cold. It could be modeled as a 4 degree Kelvin (I think that's the right value) radiative energy heat sink of infinite capacity. The sun and any nearby object are radiant energy sources of measurable value. I think you are right in a sense. I have followed the JohnSmith-hammer-feather-thread closely and also made a few comments. I also spent a couple of evenings reading through all 46 pages of the MM-thread, you are referring to. Personally I found it highly educating on a factual level, but I couldn't help thinking, that the applied strategy from the other posters seen as a whole is maybe not very effective on a more psychological level. You bring up yourself the "cold in space"-issue. I think to the layman heat and cold and even temperature are categories linked to experience and intuition. The higher you get up, the colder it is, so in space it's really cold. And when you get farther away from the sun, it gets even colder. That's so to speak intuitively obvious. The distinction between physical concepts like conduction, convection and radiation are not that obvious and take some degree of education to be understood and applied to experienced phenomena. I'll admit, that it was surprising, that MM was unable to interpret the chart regarding the reentry trajectory, though a lot of effort was put into explaining it to him, but I believe, that it would have been possible to make him understand it, if certain conditions had been established and maintained. I think, that the thread started out in a manageable way, as it was agreed, that the whole issue should be split up into discrete subjects, that should be discussed one at a time, and that the discussion should move on to the next subject only when the former was settled one way or the other. But that's not what happened, and maybe it is impossible in a forum like this or any forum on the net for that matter, but MM was literally buried in answers and arguments to over his head. He mentioned that himself, as he from the beginning had had the understanding, that he was to discuss with one person only. I agree that he was (very) ignorant, but was he stubbornly so? I think, that he agreed to the arguments, that he actually understood, and this is my point here: If it had been possible to isolate the subjects and concepts to one at a time and so to speak keep the spotlight on them and avoid the noise from the abundance of intelligent answers and limit the opponents to a few persons, who were able to shut up and wait at the right moments - which actually was recommended by posters a couple of times - then it might have been possible to get him a little further in the right direction. An example: Speaking about the nature of vacuum, someone - and I don't remember who - as an answer to the claim from MM, that vacuum is cold, asked him how a thermos, which between the two flasks inside contain a vacuum, which according to MM is cold, would be able to keep his coffee hot. This was in my opinion a brilliant question, which clarified the matter to myself in a whole new way, but the question was never answered, because it drowned in an academic-semantic discussion about the correct understanding of the concept of cold. Too many teachers, you could say :-) Thycho Brahe - my fellow countryman - never accepted the heliocentric worldview, although it was gaining acceptance in his time, but he was "stubborn" enough to reject it. And why was that? He could not find empirical evidence for it, because if the celestial bodies moved in circles, which was unquestioned at the time, it simply didn't fit better than the geocentric model, and as he had no telescope, the parallax of the (fixed) stars was not visible to him. It was in fact Kepler, who proposed, that the planets do not move in circles, although he did so on the basis of Brahe's data. I'm a new member to this board, and I am highly impressed with the patience an competence I see unfolded here, and thanks to the Hoax Believers I have learned a lot about spaceflight, that I never knew before, although I watched it all on TV from the very beginning. So maybe you've heard it all before, and you know, its naive and idealistic thinking. If so: Thanks for the patience :-)
|
|
vq
Earth
What time is it again?
Posts: 129
|
Post by vq on Aug 21, 2009 21:29:35 GMT -4
Wow, that thread is multi-facepalm. Just wow.
|
|
|
Post by gillianren on Aug 21, 2009 22:53:00 GMT -4
I think, that the thread started out in a manageable way, as it was agreed, that the whole issue should be split up into discrete subjects, that should be discussed one at a time, and that the discussion should move on to the next subject only when the former was settled one way or the other. And if he himself had been willing/able to stick to that, things might have been different. Yes, and he was told repeatedly that it wasn't going to work like that. I was part of that discussion, and it was made clear to him that we don't do one-on-one at BAUT, any more than someone can come here and insist that only one person answer. I promise. He was stubbornly ignorant. He refused to even consider anyone else's argument, no matter how dumbed down it was. He refused to do any of his own research. The vacuum/temperature issue was explained to him I'm not sure how many times, and not only did he not understand, he insisted that we were saying it because NASA had told us it was true. No matter how much he was told about how the idea of vacuum predated NASA by a couple thousand years.
|
|
|
Post by Apollo Gnomon on Aug 22, 2009 0:45:25 GMT -4
This is one of the most polite and focused fora on the entire internet. People who violently disagree with one another on one topic have become allies on other topics here. It's true that MM was gang-raped at times, but that's because so many people thought to themselves "crap, I can understand this issue, maybe I can explain it with my limited scientific training."
The posters tried very hard to stay on task, but MM himself would come in and say "but what about armstrong's interview" or something, and scattergun several questions and several red herrings. The population here was much larger and more active at the time - any new HB gets shark-attacked NOW - you should have seen in then.
|
|
|
Post by Kiwi on Aug 22, 2009 7:44:17 GMT -4
I think, that the thread started out in a manageable way, as it was agreed, that the whole issue should be split up into discrete subjects, that should be discussed one at a time, and that the discussion should move on to the next subject only when the former was settled one way or the other. But that's not what happened, and maybe it is impossible in a forum like this or any forum on the net for that matter, but MM was literally buried in answers and arguments to over his head. He mentioned that himself, as he from the beginning had had the understanding, that he was to discuss with one person only. This touches on one of my pet peeves about some of our members here and at BAUT. Sometimes I shake my head in dismay at how they behave, and wonder what is wrong them. Do they have monstrous egos that run their lives and boss them around and don't allow them to take their proper place in the scheme of things? Or do they just not think properly? What so often happens, as you probably saw in the Moon Man thread, is that somebody sees a post they can provide answers to, so they press the reply button and answer away, completely ignoring that there is a swag of posts following the one that they are replying to. I fail to understand why they don't do the same as I did recently after an enforced break from ApolloHoax. As I read the threads I wrote down the subject matter and post and page numbers of something I could reply to and carried on reading. If someone else gave a suitable answer I screwed up my note and didn't interfere. The only time I would reply in that situation is when I can add something to or contradict the existing replies. Otherwise, I simply shut up and leave well alone, as we all should. The biggest problem with many people replying to the same post is that they do it in different ways and this can produce conflicting answers and confusion, especially if one person knows the exact answer and another guesses. I have often seen HBs commenting on this and rubbishing the contradictions, and rightly so. It's an embarrassment and it certainly shouldn't happen because of hasty replies.
|
|
|
Post by scooter on Aug 22, 2009 12:13:08 GMT -4
Moonman started at BAUT, an after a painful length of time, was banned and came here to AH.
It was amazing, if not exasperating, to watch. (that's the closest I've seen to Jay to "losing it"...he even tossed in an "lol"...totally out of character!!!). We actually had some sub-threads where there was some actual education occurring (I think?).
In the final analysis, he was just some kid, not a legal type, who had no idea as to the subject matter he was arguing.
"You guys are way out there" was a dead giveaway. That's a good description of how it is "off planet". Practically nothing "makes sense" out there, away from our familiar atmospheric environment.
...and he provided plenty of sugnature fodder.
|
|