8421

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why can't we see the sun via telescope after it sets/moves further? or can we?

« on: September 12, 2016, 12:26:35 AM »

Imperfections on the earth's surface intersect the perspective lines of the sun once the sun is close enough to the geometric horizon of the plane earth.

There's no geometric horizon on a flat plane in relation to the sun unless the sun actually sinks or otherwise lowers its altitude to the point it's behind, say, a mountain.

Perspective lines can shrink behind something in the foreground. Easily. Consider that if you hold a dime in front of your face you can obscure an elephant in the distance.

No matter how small of an imperfection above the surface of the earth, the sun can eventually get behind it as the perspective lines of the sun and the earth merge.

8422

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Opposite theory of gravity

« on: September 12, 2016, 12:19:27 AM »

Why then does not TFES follow Sandokhan  theory of gravitation?  When I have more time I'll try to condense his writings a little.

If you trust his thoughts on gravitation so much, why is there no mention of "dextrorotary", "quarks" or even "Sandokhan" in the Wiki?

Yes, that is a very serious question! If you are going to quote his comments on Cavendish and the other measurements you should understand his theory!

Sandokhan is welcome to create a section in the Wiki for his model. He is the most qualified to create such a section. No one is turning him away, and this has been expressed to him before.

8423

Flat Earth Community / Re: Could this experiment be performed ?

« on: September 11, 2016, 11:06:21 PM »

This is just an idea....
No claims made for a theory or hypothesis.
Or even if it would be  practical or possible.
I rather doubt that there is a highway that would be straight enough and level enough.
.
Here is the idea. But....If you could.
Let's assume you are at Mile Marker  1 and then   take sights on Mile Markers 2 and 3 with a telescope
Could you perform an experiment something like the Bedford Level ?

Sure, why not?

You should be expected to somehow defend the elevations, however, as you will be challenged regardless of result.

8424

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why can't we see the sun via telescope after it sets/moves further? or can we?

« on: September 11, 2016, 10:55:40 PM »

Imperfections on the earth's surface intersect the perspective lines of the sun once the sun is close enough to the geometric horizon of the plane earth.

8425

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Buying a home is a terrible investment

« on: September 11, 2016, 09:35:57 PM »

To work?  Unless you do all your work at home.  Which is going to be your apartment.  Do you have enough room for an office?  Or are you going to use the kitchen table?
For legitimacy.  As for renting space:
1. Might not be any space in your area, depending on where you live.
2. Know what sucks?  Having to work around the schedule of your client, you, AND whoever else may try to book your space.

If you have enough room in your apartment to open your laptop and type on it, you have an office. Filing cabinets don't need to exist anymore, you know?

Of course, if you wanna start up a store, shop, or something else, well... good luck doing it on a "rent by the hour" mode.

If I were a smart individual looking to sell physical goods I would figure out that we have the internet now and I could open a website, or sell on existing websites.

Also, there is such a thing as  pop-up shops, kiosk businesses, and door-to-door. You would probably want to do that and test the interest of the general public before taking a leap and opening a whole store (which would make sense to take a business loan on if the product was popular).

Depends on the business.  Maybe not an accountant but certainly other ventures require more than one person.

What ventures require multiple people to start up and is impossible to run as a one-man-show? I'm thinking.

The ones I can think of are Amusement Park, Car Dealership, Supermarket... Nothing I can think of that would be startable with 30 to 60K anyway.

And if I thought really hard I can think of smaller-scale one-man-show versions of those businesses too. Nothing is impossible.

A website for an accountant isn't a significant venture. How hard is it to get Wordpress installed, find a survey form plugin for Wordpress, and customize a template? A properly motivated person could do it themselves if they didn't want to pay someone to do it.

Motivated, sure, but it would likely not look very good.  No amount of motivation is going to give you skills.   
And wordpress?  Really?  Let's make your business look like a joke from the URL.  I'm sure it won't hurt.

Wordpress is a free Content Management System you can download and install on your own webhost (ie. a $5/mo shared hostgator plan). Wordpress.com provides a software-as-a-service version of that who will host it for you. I'm pretty sure they will sell you your own .com alias these days, too.

And it doesn't take much talent to find a good looking Wordpress theme and replace a logo... Not a good logo creator? There's Fiverr for that.

Yes, tell me, how often do you click those little pop-up boxes?

If I'm searching for "accountant in Los Angeles" why wouldn't I click on the inline search results if it was relevant?

I, like many others, block ads.

Firstly, most people do not block ads.

Secondly, ad blocking may be short lived, as many technologies are emerging in that space which will allow websites to pass-through advertisement content through their own domain with internal redirect links without the browser seeing itself connecting to a third-party advertising network to retrieve ads.

Finally, the popular adblocker companies allow advertisers to pay to play, so your AdBlock Plus won't stop my google ads anyway.

8426

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Buying a home is a terrible investment

« on: September 11, 2016, 08:29:05 PM »

So a young person should buy a home AND start a business? It needs to be one or the other. You can't be putting all of your money into a home and expect to start a business of any momentum. The money that would be put into a home should be put into a business if that is the path.

It's not 30-60K for each attempt. After the big things are out of the way, like a website and whatever other core assets, the costs to try again and again are just marketing, which can downscale to hundreds of dollars. Once the ball is rolling the profits of a working business should cover future marketing.

UUuuhhhh....
That's not correct.  Like, at all.
If you fail at your business, you likely have a lot of product you purchased that needs to be sold.  And you'll sell it at a loss.

And any upfront costs are going to be the same as in order to cover the cost of failing, you need to liquefy whatever assets you own.

Let's take something simple: an accounting business.
Permits. -One time unless you change the name.  Which you would do if you want a fresh start.
Office space - Same as the upfront cost.  Unless you work out of your home.
Equipment - Sure some you can save but odds are, you've got debt to pay so you sold it.
Employees - Same cost.  No savings there from retrying.
Websites - If your first try failed, you're gonna redo your website.
Marketing - Yeah... this isn't a few hundred dollars, this is a few thousand.  Radio ads are not cheap, nor news paper ads.

http://fitsmallbusiness.com/radio-advertising-costs/

$500 a week is not cheap, especially if you're doing it multiple weeks.


Sorry but you're assumptions are totally off base.

Why would you get office space if you can be a one-man startup? You can meet your clients at their office or home, meet somewhere professional and private, or even rent something by the hour from one of those places for a veil of legitimacy if so inclined.

Why would you start off with employees to pay?

Government licenses to operate aren't really that pricey.

A website for an accountant isn't a significant venture. How hard is it to get Wordpress installed, find a survey form plugin for Wordpress, and customize a template? A properly motivated person could do it themselves if they didn't want to pay someone to do it.

Marketing... modern marketing methods are Pay Per Click, or Pay Per Action, electronically targeted by location, age, interest, and search query. You could just pay for 30 leads and stop if you really wanted. Classifieds exist, as does word of mouth when you do a good job. None of this requires $500 a week to start off small.

You weren't smart enough to start a business and you have failed as well. Back to your mother's house for you.

8427

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Buying a home is a terrible investment

« on: September 11, 2016, 07:30:01 PM »

If you follow my plan, you have a business of buying homes, which has profit and assets, which unlike almost every other asset businesses own, almost always appreciate in value.  My plan is way better than yours.

The bank doesn't give you unlimited loans, and a 2nd mortgage doesn't give you full value. You are over your head in debt when the plug is pulled and lose it all. You weren't smart enough. You are now a failed entrepreneur, I am afraid, and it is back to renting for you.

8428

Flat Earth Community / Re: How would you promote the society if we were funded?

« on: September 11, 2016, 07:17:21 PM »

Here's what I would do. Since Round Earthers seem operate on Appeal to Authority, I would pay a parade of their scientists to debate with us on these matters on a public website.

We would get the media involved to advertise this showdown for us, who would write articles along the line of "Flat Earth Society Challenges Scientists" and the public the world over will come to watch. We will gather the best Flat Earth debaters from both websites to participate and the battle will commence.

As surprised as I am to find myself agreeing with an FE guy, I hope you actually do this.  I would love to see Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson debate some of you, it would make some really good TV, I think.

As a benefit, we will get to immortalize the discussions on the website as reference material and point to it as a source of authority that not even a PhD in this field could satisfactorily defend his beliefs.

I imagine the outcome being somewhat different.  I really hope you can make this happen, would love to see who is right about the results!

A PhD scientist like Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't have some sort of secret that the 30,000 other PhDs have neglected to write about and index on Google. They would just come to us with arguments like the Eratosthenes's stick shadow experiment as a proof of RE circumference and the end result would be all the same as many other people who have tried that argument on this site and the .org one.

I certainly hope that they would accept the challenge and try. Some of them do seem to care about "ignorance in science" and may freely debate us without monetary compensation involved.

8429

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Opposite theory of gravity

« on: September 11, 2016, 07:16:39 PM »

So? Thomas Jefferson claimed knowledge in many fields. Are you calling Thomas Jefferson a liar because one can only be acquainted with one field at a time?

Not calling Jefferson a liar, nor claiming that "one can only be acquainted with one field at a time" (straw man, much?).  But suppose a paper surfaced in which Jefferson gave a theory pertaining to a field in which he had no known expertise.  We would not consider it proof of anything, especially if his theory ran counter to the experts in that field.

Who is more likely to write a paper debunking Astrology; someone who believes in it and has been practicing it for many years, or someone who begins investigating it and immediately sees it for what it is?

I would give Jefferson a lot of credit if he debunked something outside of his expertise, actually. Being a polymath is distinguishable in itself.  Arguing that Jefferson can't debunk Astrology because he hasn't been practicing it for many years would be a most ridiculous argument. In fact, Jefferson (or really any intelligent person) would be a far more reliable source than the people who fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

8430

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Buying a home is a terrible investment

« on: September 11, 2016, 05:56:03 PM »

So a young person should buy a home AND start a business? It needs to be one or the other. You can't be putting all of your money into a home and expect to start a business of any momentum. The money that would be put into a home should be put into a business if that is the path.

It's not 30-60K for each attempt. After the big things are out of the way, like a website and whatever other core assets, the costs to try again and again are just marketing, which can downscale to hundreds of dollars. Once the ball is rolling the profits of a working business should cover future marketing.

8431

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Opposite theory of gravity

« on: September 11, 2016, 05:42:01 PM »

All the proof you demand of us and you point us to an article by someone trained in philosophy, latin, history, politics and management?

So? Thomas Jefferson claimed knowledge in many fields. Are you calling Thomas Jefferson a liar because one can only be acquainted with one field at a time?

8432

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Buying a home is a terrible investment

« on: September 11, 2016, 05:08:26 PM »

good luck getting a bank to lend you 300k to invest in mutual funds.  lol.  you don't seem to grasp that the choice is between "rent or mortgage," not "rent or mortage or index funds."

it's true that nothing beats indexes for return on investment, but home ownership doesn't trade off with that.  roi isn't the reason it's makes good sense to own your home.

In renting you can often make sure that you are paying less than what a morgage would be. You also don't have to pay a down payment.

Imagine that the down payment for a $300,000 home is 10% or $30,000. The recommended 20% down payment is 60,000. Either of those amounts are enough to start a business of some sort. There is risk involved in a small business, but that really depends on how smart you are. With more immediate capital in renting you also have the advantage of trying again and again until you get it right.

Young people should be encouraged to start businesses, not invest all of their money into a worthless home. That is terrible advice to give a young person.

8433

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Buying a house is a terrible investment

« on: September 11, 2016, 03:50:09 PM »

in comparison to what?  i don't think anyone says that owning one home and living in it for thirty years and then immediately selling it is an awesome investment.  but it beats the shit out of renting for 30 years.

How so?

because you're buying equity in an asset.  you don't buy any equity when you pay rent to your landlord.  that's all liability.  net assets is negative.  when you make a mortgage payment, you gain equity and reduce liability (the loan).  net assets is positive.  this is pretty basic shit.

Yes, you are spending a lot of your money for ownership in something 30 years away, but what it the benefit of that compared to renting really?

- When you rent you are also not responsible for the house in the event of fire or flooding or repairs.

- When you rent you have the option of moving at any time you want. Maybe you find a new good job which is an hour away. You can move to be close to your new work site.

- What if your wife or kids have a job or a school that is further away. Those things are always changing. The ability to move to a equatable location would help them too.

- The initial investment to rent a home or apartment is quite low. Buyers often need to put down a large deposit to buy a home.

- If you rent from an older person who bought their house a long time ago, they have a much smaller mortgage to pay and is willing to rent to you for less than what a new mortgage on a new home would be.

- If so inclined you can live with house mates, which cuts your monthly proportion considerably, especially when compared to home mortgage.

Your main argument seems to be that in 30 years you can stop paying rent. But in that time you are also limiting your freedom and holding yourself back from better jobs which might increase your income significantly right now, not some 30 year distant benefit. 30 years is a long time. 20 years is considered a generation, after all. In 30 years from now you might very well be dead. What a ridiculous investment.

8434

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Opposite theory of gravity

« on: September 11, 2016, 02:08:54 PM »

When you claim that "Cavendish made no effort in his experiment to account for such forces", you are completely wrong. He was a meticulous experimenter and had done much other work measuring very small forces. So that his own movement and breathing would have minimal effect he used a telescope to take readings once the experiment was in progress.

Cavendish and others did not account for any small forces in the experiment. The only extra step he does is to perform the experiment inside a shed to avoid the wind. The experimenters have not studied the non-gravitational forces which may exist between the masses, the evenness of the mass beneath them, or the masses around them. They have to prove, through controlled experimentation, that there are no external or internal forces which may be an explanation to the movement.

From Miles Mathis's paper:

"This is clear, I think, with Cavendish, and it is equally clear with Walker and all modern machines and environs. Walker is in his basement, surrounded by tons of earth. And yet he completely ignores this. He thinks that because he has gone to the center of his room, he has exhausted the boundaries of rigor. Other experiments are done in massive modern buildings that weigh thousands of tons, and that may have any number of different E/M fields, some created by the earth, some created by the iron beams in the buildings, some created by electrical networks in the building. None of this is considered. It is claimed that these considerations are probably negligible, since the forces would be so small. But if we are using one of these tiny modern machines, our forces are already so small they are barely able to override residual air resistance (if in fact they can). We shouldn’t just assume that these things are or are not happening, we should have to prove it. We should have to show that unequal masses are not skewing or wholly creating our outcomes."

You always conveniently forget that similar experiments have been performed dozens of times since Cavendish's work, as described in What did Henry Cavendish Measure?

If Cavendish''s result was so influenced by random influences it would not have agreed with the current figure to within 1%.

I clicked on your link and it appears Sandokhan had slapped you down in discussion on that earlier this year:

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=66170.msg1767225#msg1767225

"In the original experiment of Cavendish there seems to have been an irregularity in the position of rest of one-tenth of the deflection obtained, while the period showed discrepancies of five to fifteen seconds in seven minutes.

Those are two separate margins of error, so they have to multiply. Ten percent times 3 percent. That's a thirty percent error. We don't hear much about that from Wikipedia."

8435

Flat Earth Community / Re: How would you promote the society if we were funded?

« on: September 11, 2016, 02:07:13 AM »

Yes. How so ? You would find no substantial proof that the earth was flat . You would never find someone in geodetics who could not dispute it. It would only add more ridicule of The Flat Earth Society that it already has. Please don't even think of destroying these most entertaining websites.

Every time we do present evidence it's explained away by a chance optical illusion that occurred at time of observation.

8436

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Opposite theory of gravity

« on: September 11, 2016, 01:24:53 AM »

The Cavendish Experiment, to name but one example, demolishes the assertion that "almost everything pushes others...Magnetic illusion is the only exception".  The attractive force of gravity can be demonstrated by a home science enthusiast's low budget version of the Cavendish experiment, with more than one example posted on YouTube.

The Cavendish Experiment is not a proof of gravity. It is very flawed. This experiment is incredibly sensitive and at this scale forces such as the electrostatic force are significantly more powerful than the weak force of "gravity". The slightest external or internal force could affect the device. Cavendish made no effort in his experiment to account for such forces.

See this article by Miles Mathis: http://milesmathis.com/caven.html

Also, in those Youtube videos, the experimenters aren't even conducting their experiments in a closed environment. People are walking, breathing, and moving all around them. Ridiculous.

8437

Flat Earth Community / Re: How would you promote the society if we were funded?

« on: September 11, 2016, 01:10:30 AM »

Here's what I would do. Since Round Earthers seem operate on Appeal to Authority, I would pay a parade of their scientists to debate with us on these matters on a public website.

We would get the media involved to advertise this showdown for us, who would write articles along the line of "Flat Earth Society Challenges Scientists" and the public the world over will come to watch. We will gather the best Flat Earth debaters from both websites to participate and the battle will commence.

As a benefit, we will get to immortalize the discussions on the website as reference material and point to it as a source of authority that not even a PhD in this field could satisfactorily defend his beliefs. I've debated them myself, and believe me, its all the same as the regular people who come here and debate us with Google searches.

8438

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Buying a house is a terrible investment

« on: September 11, 2016, 12:05:09 AM »

in comparison to what?  i don't think anyone says that owning one home and living in it for thirty years and then immediately selling it is an awesome investment.  but it beats the shit out of renting for 30 years.

How so? You are paying off a very large loan for a 30 year-distant benefit of a free monthly rent check.

Are you telling me that you can't figure out a better way of turning $300,000 into something better than $1350 a month?

Say we bought a house in 1980 for $68,714.00. We rent it out to some people and they basically pay our morgage for 30 years. Maybe charge them a little extra for property tax and wear and tear and maintenance, but there are no real profits.

someone is buying equity for you.  you profit each month that someone else pays down your mortgage.  total assets = total liabilities + equity.  if net change in equity is positive, and if net change in liabilities is zero, then you're earning profit.

also, the goal of renting residential property in this way isn't to sell the property as soon as the mortgage is paid; it's to pay the mortgage and then have a bunch of money coming at you every month for forever.

Young people aren't being told to buy a house for themselves + a house to rent out. They can't really do that. The myth is that home ownership is a great investment and that young people should buy homes.

8439

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Buying a house is a terrible investment

« on: September 10, 2016, 10:02:11 PM »

It's a good investment if you're dealing in real estate and aren't required to live in your investment. If the property you're buying is also your home, then sure, you sell it and now you've just gotta buy a new house to live in, though I would assume most who do that do move somewhere cheaper, or have either increased their property value living at their old house through property improvements. But if you're buying real estate, renting out your property, and then sell it later, you did make a profit. And there's no requirement to buy a new house.

Well, that's not really "buying a home" as implied by the topic. And most people can't do that. Furthermore, I submit that you wouldn't really be making much money doing that, either, and is largely a waste.

Say we bought a house in 1980 for $68,714.00. We rent it out to some people and they basically pay our morgage for 30 years. Maybe charge them a little extra for property tax and wear and tear and maintenance, but there are no real profits. The people are primarily paying off your mortgage for you, so you can "profit" in the end when the house is sold.

It is now 2010. The amount you invested in 1980's lending rates was $68,714.00. But that's not really $68,714.00 anymore. Adjusting for US Dollar inflation from 1980 to 2010 and that amount is now equivalent to $181,838.59 (assuming you just put that money somewhere else that at least kept up with inflation).

An average home in 2010 goes for $272,900, so if we sell we profit $91,061. Divide by 30 and it appears that we've made $3035 a year over 30 years. That doesn't sound like a very good investment to me. That money should have gone towards a much better investment.

8440

Flat Earth Community / Re: How would you promote the society if we were funded?

« on: September 10, 2016, 09:16:45 PM »

Find substantial proof that the Earth is flat, such that even someone working in geodetics could not dispute it.

How so?