2721

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Non-believer. Open-minded. Just need help to understand.

« on: March 10, 2019, 05:26:53 PM »

This is such a convoluted explanation when the one we have - that the moon is lit by the sun - already matches observations.

2722

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Non-believer. Open-minded. Just need help to understand.

« on: March 10, 2019, 08:00:51 AM »

There are times when the sun is just setting and the moon is visible and it looks to the naked eye as though the sun is too low in the sky to be illuminating the moon. The terminator on the moon doesn’t appear to line up with where the sun is. That has been discussed on here before, the effect is actually an optical illusion. You can prove this by holding out a piece of string in front of you and lining it up between the moon and sun. If you do that you’ll see it all lines up perfectly.
This is more evidence that it is indeed the sun illuminating the moon.

I’m not clear why the moon would have phases if it was self-illuminating. Do only certain parts of it light up at certain points in the lunar cycle? Why would that be?

I’m also not clear about the light and index card experiment.

2723

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Aether

« on: March 09, 2019, 01:35:09 PM »

What you are telling your readers is that you simply DO NOT KNOW if gravity is attractive.

It is observably attractive, as seen in the Cavendish experiment, observations about objects falling, moons orbiting etc.

I’ll ignore your word salad, suffice to say that it’s weird how the Nobel prize continues to elude you.

Rainbows do not claim that four trillion billion liters of water stay glued next to the outer surface of a sphere by pure magic.

Nor does gravity. It is one of the 4 fundamental forces in the universe, it’s effects are observable and remain so whether the mechanism behind it is understood or not.

2724

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Aether

« on: March 09, 2019, 12:45:35 PM »

Ok, you’ve said a few times what it can’t be. So what is it? One again - I don’t have to understand the mechanism behind an effect to observe the effect exists. Rainbows existed and could be observed before we understood the way sunlight reflects and refracts through drops of water to cause the effect.

2725

Flat Earth Community / Re: Earth seem from 1 million miles.

« on: March 08, 2019, 06:51:46 PM »

Is your claim that this is fake?
What is your evidence for that claim?

I imagine that "pictures" of the Earth from a million miles away must be proven, not the other way around.

Well. Obviously it’s not possible to prove this.
But you could say that about anything.
If we are going to be strict about it, you can’t prove anything outside of the limited language of mathematics.
I don’t like that Occam’s razor page for 2 reasons. Firstly, it implies that Occam’s razor is an immutable law of the universe when actually it’s more of a rule of thumb.
Secondly, it’s highly subjective what is the “simplest” explanation, you can write things in different ways to imply that the thing you’ve decided to believe is the simplest explanation.

Given that we can’t prove these photos are real and you can’t prove they are fake we have to go by balance of probabilities.
Firstly, is space travel a thing? Well, I’ve seen a shuttle launch so I’m going to say yes it is. Hundreds of people have been into space, 7 of those are space tourists who paid for the privilege. Am I to believe that all of these people are lying? All the photos and film they’ve taken are faked? My satellite dish is pointing at something. I know this because when my neighbour put up some scaffolding which blocked line of sight my TV signal went. On a work trip to Sri Lanka I observed that the dishes there point up at a far steeper angle than they do in the UK. This all tallies with what I’m told about the TV satellites being a in geostationary orbit above the equator. My GPS works, I’m told this is by a network of orbiting satellites. The ISS can be seen from earth, there are websites which tell you when and where.

So, I have lots of reasons to believe that space travel is possible and satellites are real, I don’t have any real basis to think all this is faked somehow. So why would I think these photos are fake when all of the technology necessary to take them exists?

2726

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: "Behind the Curve" experiments [looking for flat earther responses]

« on: March 08, 2019, 02:09:29 PM »

As usual, you fail to understand that GPS and flight tracking for flights close to or in the so-called Southern Hemisphere do not exist.

Yes they do. Just claiming they don't is meaningless. Are you asserting that GPS doesn't work in Australia?

MH370 is pretty solid evidence for this reality.

Well, it isn't, for several reasons.
1) It was a northern hemisphere flight
2) Most of the plane's route is known
3) The pilot turned the transponder off.

If I turn my GPS off that doesn't mean GPS doesn't work.

Again, any joe blow can claim hundreds of people use these flights.
Fact is, they don't.

That isn't a fact, it's an assertion, one that "any joe blow" can make and for which you have no basis for making.

If they even do fly between Australia and South Africa, more than likely most of these non-stop flights are cancelled at the last minute and persons are diverted to one-stop or two-stop layovers.

Where's your evidence for that?

Recent outlandish flight speeds have been posted for long distance flights, proving planes can also fly faster than advertised.

Examples?

2727

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: "Behind the Curve" experiments [looking for flat earther responses]

« on: March 08, 2019, 12:30:35 PM »

Lackey, do you actually have any evidence to back up your opinions.
Just denying or declaring fake everything which doesn't conform with your world view is not a sensible way to think or debate.

Oh, you fail to consider MH370 as evidence?

What do you think it's evidence of?
The most likely story is it crashed into the ocean and was never found. As the black box was never recovered it's impossible to be sure what occurred.
But the flight path it took indicates something went very wrong, whether deliberately (captain suicide, like that dude who calmly flew into a mountain, or hijacking)
I'm not clear what you think this is a smoking gun of and how it in any way refutes the fact that flights between, say, Santiago and Australian cities exist and are used by hundreds of people a week. You'd think if those flights were advertised and took twice as long as advertised you'd have heard about it.
MH370 was going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, both in the northern hemisphere, so what do you think it shows?

I see you have now made another post baselessly claiming that the flights don't exist because there wouldn't be enough demand.
What is your basis for that claim?

2728

Flat Earth Community / Re: Earth seem from 1 million miles.

« on: March 08, 2019, 08:27:35 AM »

Even an amateur FE'r like myself can see this as the propaganda it is. If their arguments weren't so one sided they would have more credibility.

Is your claim that this is fake?
What is your evidence for that claim?

2729

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: March 07, 2019, 01:14:13 PM »

Nepetism.

What is Nepetism?

Similar to faveuritism

2730

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: "Behind the Curve" experiments [looking for flat earther responses]

« on: March 07, 2019, 12:40:02 PM »

Lackey, do you actually have any evidence to back up your opinions.
Just denying or declaring fake everything which doesn't conform with your world view is not a sensible way to think or debate.

2731

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: I got a second warning for no reason

« on: March 04, 2019, 08:46:38 PM »

Do you really think anyone's interested in this simpering innocent act?

Have to say from my experience moderating fora, one of the things which really winds me up is the whole wide eyed innocent "who me?" act.
TomF, give it a rest. It's been quite amusing but the joke rapidly wore thin.

2732

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Why the swinging Tarzan was I warned & topicanned?

« on: March 04, 2019, 04:08:41 PM »

Please give a single example of where I was trolling.

Ooh, can I play?
Come on, dude:

I can't figure out how you faked that. The bottles are so big that the surface tension, while visible around the edge, is easily ruled out.
The water in the bottles obviously are level with eachother, and parallel with the horizon.
If you'd pinched off the tube between the bottles to lock a level then raise one up, it would have shown because the water in the two bottles wouldn't be level compared to each other. Same if you'd put salt in one bottle, while it would make one higher, it wouldn't tip the water in them.

How did you fake that?

I'm going to have to try that one when the weather warms up and the snow clears from some of the roads. I'll figure out what you did there one way or another 

From this thread: https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=13332.60
That whole post is "Oh, you pesky round earthers, you got it right again and made us look like right chumps. We'll catch you out next time!"

2733

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Can we get an AlwaysTheSkeptic Megathread?

« on: March 01, 2019, 05:37:45 PM »

I was gently suggesting, not angrily demanding. I don’t know enough about how the automated PM system works to help but am happy to if it’s explained.

2734

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Can we get an AlwaysTheSkeptic Megathread?

« on: March 01, 2019, 05:18:59 PM »

Is it beyond the wit of Parsifal to make PM templates which more accurately reflect what someone is warned for though? Anyway, stop being belligerent. The OP is making a suggestion, I only piped up because I agree with it. Over to you, boss.

2735

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Can we get an AlwaysTheSkeptic Megathread?

« on: March 01, 2019, 05:02:23 PM »

No, not in AR and I never said that. Both times it was for one off posts which fell afoul of Svarrior’s tightly run ship. Neither time was I spamming but let’s not bicker about semantics.

I love AR, me. It’s by far my favourite section. But I would spam in there with endless threads which sort of should be in the upper fora but he knows the way he writes them they wouldn’t fly there. I’m finding it a bit annoying but maybe it’s just a phase he’s going through and I agree you probably should’nt do something on the basis of one or two people’s grumbles about it. I just added my 2 cents because I agree with the OP

2736

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Can we get an AlwaysTheSkeptic Megathread?

« on: March 01, 2019, 03:36:35 PM »

Seconded. I have been warned for spamming twice when I’ve just posted something which has been deemed against the rules. This dude actually is spamming and...nothing.

2737

Flat Earth Theory / Re: New to FE theories and have some questions

« on: March 01, 2019, 11:45:27 AM »

I have posed question several times now about what aspects of what we see and experience on a day to day basis can not be explained simply and easily by assuming a spherical Earth of the modern accepted size. In other words why should we favour FET over RET?  So far I have never received any replies.

A lot of the things I've seen in this area are "The earth can't be a globe because if it were then ...", but the "..." is almost always based on ignorance or misunderstanding.
But then when that misunderstanding is corrected the person sticks to their guns and round and round we go.

2738

Flat Earth Theory / Re: New to FE theories and have some questions

« on: March 01, 2019, 09:43:29 AM »

It's good, confirmation bias.
As ever the FE beliefs in this are are a mass of contradictions.
It's claimed that we know the earth is flat because ships don't really sink below the horizon, they can be "restored" with magnification.
Except when magnification clearly shows a ship or building sunken behind the horizon in which case it's waves, or perspective.
FE always wants to have its cake and eat it, there are lots of "heads we win, tails you lose" arguments and this is one.

Ships don't really sink below the horizon, they can be restored with optical zoom is one claim.
Now, sometimes a speck out at sea can be hard to see clearly, and maybe a dark hull may be harder to distinguish from the sea than a light top of the ship.
In that case yes, optical zoom will "restore" the ship but I used the word advisedly, all it will do is make things clearer. So now you can distinguish the dark hull from the sea. But it hasn't magically made anything appear from behind the horizon which was previously occluded, it was never behind the horizon in the first place.
But if the ship is going away from you then it will sink below the horizon just like the sun will always set.
Yes, there may be atmospheric effects which mean this doesn't happen exactly as a model with a perfect sphere and no atmosphere predicts, atmospheric effects can be complicated.
But the ship does always sink, the sun does always set. That is the consistent thing and one of the things which proves we live on a globe.
You don't get a ship going further and further away and you can keep on restoring it with optical zoom, it always sinks behind the horizon, not behind imaginary perspective lines which are a feature of art, not physics.

2739

Flat Earth Theory / Re: New to FE theories and have some questions

« on: February 28, 2019, 11:29:04 PM »

Bobby even admits that this is evidence is not consistent with a globe.

He does, but he did then go on to attempt to repeat the experiment and couldn't reproduce the result.
He documented all this in a thread before he left.
So what do we do now? We have one result which is hard to explain on a globe and one which is hard to explain on a flat earth.

2740

Flat Earth Theory / Re: New to FE theories and have some questions

« on: February 28, 2019, 04:21:06 PM »

You linked me to a sentence. Did you investigated his claims or materials? If no evidence can be found on that topic then it should be rejected until evidence can be found on the matter of wide angle lenses at high altitudes.

Agreed, his claim about wide angle lenses should be rejected until evidence can be shown. You present none on your Wiki so I'm guessing he didn't have any, but feel free to present it if he did.
Otherwise it's just him screaming "illusion" - I see that as a failing argument.

The Magnification of the Sun page gives numerous pieces of evidence for how light behaves with the atmosphere and in other areas. It doesn't baselessly claim illusion.

Your examples are are a terrible, low quality still from some traffic camera and then some photos clearly showing glare. Filtered images do not show this effect - and no, not just polarised lenses, they may help reduce glare but they don't eliminate it. This has been explained to you.

I note you continue to ignore the evidence provided about celestial bodies changing angular size as their orbits and ours take them close and further away, and you continue to require a very different level of proof depending on whether the claim confirms to your world-view or not.