In other news... (humorous news items)

[sardia]

... and they get away with it because to the actual decisions most people make in life, it doesn't matter what shape the earth is. Unless you are a tanker ship captain in the southern hemisphere or a GPS systems designer for example, you can get by believing the earth is banana shaped.
Alas, what people believe the shape of the earth is shows what the shape of the earth is in.
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Pffft, the doom Sayers have been whining about the quality of present day since forever. Prove it that the shape of the Earth is getting worse with some metrics that span hundreds or thousands of years. And no cheating by saying global warming.

[DaBigCheez]

It is enough to just get on a tall building and verify to can see farther off to prove the world is not flat. Maybe it's oblong, maybe it changes from places to place, but it would definitively prove it's not flat.

Nah, clearly that's just due to the atmosphere being thinner at higher altitudes, so from higher up you can see further because the blanket of air isn't as thick and takes longer to start obstructing your line of sight.

...Right?

[Sableagle]

Can you see Aconcagua from Everest?

[Coyne]

Can you see Aconcagua from Everest?

Everest is at 27°59′17″N 86°55′31″E, Aconcagua is at 32°39′12.35″S 70°00′39.9″W (Wikipedia).

Using this great circle mapper yields 6945 miles surface distance between them on the surface. The Earth is a 360 degree sphere, and the angle between the center of the Earth in the two mountains can be computed as a proportion of the circumference of the Earth. So 6945/24900×360° yields about a 100° angle.

Now compute the height of the triangle formed by the center of the Earth and the two points using the radius of 3960 miles. Chop triangle in half to form two right triangles, radius is hypotenuse and the vertical distance is the adjacent of the 50 degree half angle, 3960 cos 50° is about 2545 miles.

So if you look straight from tippy top to tippy top, through the Earth, the bulge of the Earth would stick up above your line of sight about 3960-2545 or 1,414 miles. I would think that would sort of block your view, even from those heights.

Now if I just did everything right...

[Xenomortis]

It is enough to just get on a tall building and verify to can see farther off to prove the world is not flat. Maybe it's oblong, maybe it changes from places to place, but it would definitively prove it's not flat.

Nah, clearly that's just due to the atmosphere being thinner at higher altitudes, so from higher up you can see further because the blanket of air isn't as thick and takes longer to start obstructing your line of sight.

...Right?

We have a horizon because that *isn't* happening.
Notice how, when it's misty/foggy, you don't have a sharp horizon.

Now obviously this won't win you any arguments with a flat-earther; they'll just claim that's just large billboards tracking your movement, setup by the Secret Government Agency.

[Sableagle]

Can you see Aconcagua from Everest?

Everest is at 27°59′17″N 86°55′31″E, Aconcagua is at 32°39′12.35″S 70°00′39.9″W (Wikipedia).

Using this great circle mapper yields 6945 miles surface distance between them on the surface. The Earth is a 360 degree sphere, and the angle between the center of the Earth in the two mountains can be computed as a proportion of the circumference of the Earth. So 6945/24900×360° yields about a 100° angle.

Now compute the height of the triangle formed by the center of the Earth and the two points using the radius of 3960 miles. Chop triangle in half to form two right triangles, radius is hypotenuse and the vertical distance is the adjacent of the 50 degree half angle, 3960 cos 50° is about 2545 miles.

So if you look straight from tippy top to tippy top, through the Earth, the bulge of the Earth would stick up above your line of sight about 3960-2545 or 1,414 miles. I would think that would sort of block your view, even from those heights.

Now if I just did everything right...

...you can ask a flat-earther the same question, and see what answer you get. I couldn't see Denali from up here, or Africa out of the other windows, but I'm curious how they'd try to explain that.

[speising]

oh please, that's easy. Einstein has proven that gravity affects light. Ergo, light from distant objects gets deflected downwards, which *looks* like the earth were curved.

[HES]

Eminem has proven that gravity affects light.

How I read that.

[pkcommando]

oh please, that's easy. Einstein has proven that gravity affects light. Ergo, light from distant objects gets deflected downwards, which *looks* like the earth were curved.

Any perceived planetary curvature is the result of the ends of the Earth being curved like a table edge:


Where's your precious Science, now!?

[eran_rathan]

Eminem has proven that gravity affects light.

How I read that.

right on.

[CorruptUser]

I'd sooner be taught physics by Professor M Mathers than the ICP clowns. Magnets...

[doogly]

I'd sooner be taught physics by Professor M Mathers than the ICP clowns. Magnets...

ok but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM

[Sableagle]

How I read that.

Headline today:

UN attacks forced civilian relocations

... which only made sense after I read the first paragraph. Turns out civilian relocations happened, they were forced ones, and the UN has issued a fatwa against them or something, not that civilians relocations were made necessary by attacks by the UN.

[karhell]

Oh wow. Talk about misleading headlines... I had to re-read that several times to parse it properly

[Soupspoon]

From my first view of this news report, I find it humorous (and perhaps borderline unreconstructed-man/undiscovered-fetishist?) that the headline picture of her in her official 'work gear' is far more revealingly salacious than the sample image demonstrating why she was dismissed.

(Maybe they picked worst-of vs. best-of, a lower 'work' photo has a slightly more modest costume featured.)

[jewish_scientist]

Watch a sunset while laying on your belly. As soon as the last rays of the sun disappear from your view, quickly stand up. If the Earth is round, this slight change in viewing angle should be enough to let you see the tiniest little sliver of the sun. A more rigorous form of the same experiment can be done with 2 cameras and a ladder. The same thing in reverse is why the bottom of a ship sailing away disappears before the top.

What always annoys me about these types of conspiracy theories is that they have no explanation on how they would start. There was a point in time where no one know the shape of the Earth, so they did experiments to figure it out. Since they already had no idea, they would have no reason to alter the published results.

[elasto]

Watch a sunset while laying on your belly. As soon as the last rays of the sun disappear from your view, quickly stand up. If the Earth is round, this slight change in viewing angle should be enough to let you see the tiniest little sliver of the sun.

Wouldn't the same thing be observed if the earth were flat with a rounded edge though (as per pkcommando's pic)?

(As ucim says, sunsets themselves seem to pose the bigger problem: It's trivial for any geographically scattered group to confirm that sunset for each of them happens hours apart, which doesn't make any sense if we're all looking at the same sun and the earth is flat.)

[Soupspoon]

If space (the Earth) isn't bent, then perhaps time (local 'nowness') is bent, like Christopher Priest's Inverted World (or differently, but a similar distortion logic). Or tied to 'latitude' so that as you walk clockwise/widdershins around a pole-centred disc you experience a linear time-dilation-like effect. That wraps to match +0.5 days against -0.5 days.

With a fudge around the pole (and polar rim).


Probably 'easier' to just have a Sun looping around the mid-radius 'equator' with a complex helical counter-distortion of all light rays specifically designed to make it look like a spherical Earth. And, needs a) temporal delay of light across to the further reaches, b) a solar 'orbit' (or adjustment of warping mechanism) that makes for a larger apparent mid-'latitude' circling during Southern Summer, plus c) speedtrap that light across to opposite where the Sun 'is', while fastlining Southern Summer Sunlight all round that rim (noting that Scott-Amundsen Base and the immediate surrounds is on the soundstage next to the Apollo 11 one) while diverting light away from the Northern Winter Darkness (and vice-versa, dragging the smaller-circling Sun light away from the rim during Southern Winter).

It's basically needing to be designed to fake what is apparent reality (see Terry Pratchett's Strata), enough to fool all us shills (and thus needs far fewer actual co-conspiritors to keep the Truth away from honest scientists who can be taken in by the Designed-In Conspiracy). Also, it needs a Designer. But if you're cutting the throat of Occam with a razor you pretty much have to bring your own barber-surgeon to do it.

[Mutex]

Speaking of hard to parse headlines, what would you guess this one (from the BBC) is about?

'Deeply sorry' Labour disputes chief quits

Spoiler:

The chief of the Labour party's disputes panel has quit, saying she is deeply sorry.

[Grop]

I wouldn't know how to parse disputes panel.

[Soupspoon]

I wouldn't know how to parse disputes panel.

(Assuming natural grammatical unfamiliarity, and taking "Location: France" as the cue…)
"Panneau des Différends", apparently. A panel for the handling of disputatious concerns.

(If it's a comment about the garden-pathness of the 'explanatory' phrase…)
"The chief of the Labour party's disputes panel has quit," is of course different from "The chief of the labour party disputes panel has quit", where someone denies that the dissolution of an entire panel has happened.

[karhell]

I wouldn't know how to parse disputes panel.

(Assuming natural grammatical unfamiliarity, and taking "Location: France" as the cue…)
"Panneau des Différends", apparently. A panel for the handling of disputatious concerns.

(If it's a comment about the garden-pathness of the 'explanatory' phrase…)
"The chief of the Labour party's disputes panel has quit," is of course different from "The chief of the labour party disputes panel has quit", where someone denies that the dissolution of an entire panel has happened.

Except that unless there's some subtlety that escaped me, "panneau" is specifically a signpost-type panel. Something like "commission des litiges" would be more accurate.

[Grop]

To be honest I actually did parse that phrase as a noun phrase made of two nouns that I would have to look up. Obviously it is some organisation responsible for handling disputes, which I assume to be legal ones.

[Soupspoon]

Except that unless there's some subtlety that escaped me, "panneau" is specifically a signpost-type panel. Something like "commission des litiges" would be more accurate.

You'd be right. Mr Google sounded so confident (including in reverse, for a basic sanity check) and Mr French Teacher, decades ago, never ever got me up to a standard good enough for me to second-guess that.

(If I ever correct a foreign anglophone's English, unsolicited, it's because I know they care and are trying. Mostly though I find myself correcting an anglospheric anglophone where they obviously don't care/aren't trying. Not here, though. This forum is blessedly free of "could of"s, etc. Here I can just try to fill the gaps before the real experts realise that something I've answered can be answered better, across all subjects I deign to poke my nose into.)

[CorruptUser]

This forum is blessedly free of "could of"s, etc.

Challenge excepted.

[Soupspoon]

This forum is blessedly free of "could of"s, etc.

Challenge excepted.

I effected you're deliberate mis-take their so, its a mute point.

[Zamfir]

This forum is blessedly free of "could of"s, etc.

Challenge excepted.

That should be

Code: Select all

raise Exception("Challenge")

[ObsessoMom]

From my first view of this news report, I find it humorous (and perhaps borderline unreconstructed-man/undiscovered-fetishist?) that the headline picture of her in her official 'work gear' is far more revealingly salacious than the sample image demonstrating why she was dismissed.

(Maybe they picked worst-of vs. best-of, a lower 'work' photo has a slightly more modest costume featured.)

I liked Kareem Abdul Jabbar's take on the situation, referring to the rules for cheerleaders as Jane Crow laws:

The NFL’s plan to protect America from witches

[This] encapsulates exactly what’s wrong with NFL management: They insist on being the self-appointed guardians of America’s mythological vision of itself. Malt shops on every corner, Pat Boone crooning on the jukebox, and modestly dressed virgins sitting around with knees clamped together waiting to be asked to prom. This 1950s, Father Knows Best soundstage fantasy doesn’t stop with paternalistic and puritanical gender stereotypes, but also promotes simplistic notions about race and patriotism. The NFL’s anachronistic fancies aren’t just a misguided attempt to pander to what they think their traditionalist fans want, but also projects the hard-core conservative values of the mostly rich, white one-percenters who own the teams. We must live in their Disneyland – or else.

[...]

In their Pleasantville fantasy, athletes still “Shut up and dribble” (or, in their case, “Shut up and tackle”). That’s because the majority of those athletes who speak up or kneel down in the real world are people of color calling attention to profound life-and-death inequities across the country, daily humiliating and life-threatening inequities that most these owners never have to face and therefore have no personal stake in. Attempts to silence players who refuse to accept their assigned roles fits right in with owners’ smarmy manipulation of the women cheerleaders through discriminatory Jane Crow “laws”.

The country would be outraged if a team’s rules stated that if a black player was eating at a restaurant and a white player walked in, the black player would have to leave the restaurant. Yet, those are the rules for Saints’ cheerleaders, who must leave a restaurant they are eating at if a Saints player arrives. We would be equally outraged if a company demanded that office personnel address top executives only with “hello” and “you’re wonderful”. Yet the Saints’ cheerleaders are restricted to saying only “hello” and “great game” to players. Other restrictions about weight, makeup, body hair, tampon use and forbidding sweatpants in public make it seem as if the Saints watched The Handmaid’s Tale and thought, “They just don’t go far enough.” In other words, shut up and jiggle.

[elasto]

Can't say I disagree with that.

The US is a mass of contradictions in so many ways. A serious distrust of government oversight and fierce defence of personal autonomy and right to free speech - and yet seemingly total apathy when it comes to private organisations restricting the personal liberty of its employees on 'moral grounds' in ways that should have gone out of fashion in the Victorian era.

I was astonished to see the list of restrictions applied to the ladies - but not the guys, obviously, because it's the ladies that are the evil temptresses - it was Eve that caused Adam's downfall dontchaknow...

[addams]

umm. To be mildly pedantic;
There is not much funny in the way those women are treated.

MaMa Bear;
We might have been better served if you posted That in the Dark News Thread.

[Dauric]

Can't say I disagree with that.

The US is a mass of contradictions in so many ways. A serious distrust of government oversight and fierce defence of personal autonomy and right to free speech - and yet seemingly total apathy when it comes to private organisations restricting the personal liberty of its employees on 'moral grounds' in ways that should have gone out of fashion in the Victorian era.

I was astonished to see the list of restrictions applied to the ladies - but not the guys, obviously, because it's the ladies that are the evil temptresses - it was Eve that caused Adam's downfall dontchaknow...

An interesting article I happened upon seeks to explain that. "Why White Evangelism is so Cruel".

Many Christian movements take the title “evangelical,” including many African-American denominations. However, evangelicalism today has been coopted as a preferred description for Christians who were looking to shed an older, largely discredited title: Fundamentalist. A quick glance at a map showing concentrations of adherents and weekly church attendance reveals the evangelical movement’s center of gravity in the Old South. And among those evangelical churches, one denomination remains by far the leader in membership, theological pull, and political influence.

There is still today a Southern Baptist Church. More than a century and a half after the Civil War, and decades after the Methodists and Presbyterians reunited with their Yankee neighbors, America’s most powerful evangelical denomination remains defined, right down to the name over the door, by an 1845 split over slavery.

Not sure how much of it I agree with, but the thesis of the article presents an interesting line of thought, IE: the contradictions resolve themselves through the lens of a slave-owning society.

(And yeah, it's a bit of a dark turn in the responses to an article someone thought humorous) .

[Yablo]

Man kicks moose – and gets similar treatment

The end of a long winter is a tricky time for moose, Marsh said. They're worn out and nutritionally stressed — maybe a little grumpy.

[Mutex]

And the moral of the story is, don't go around kicking mooses (meese?).

Also TIL a moose is a kind of cow. Makes sense if you imagine them without the antlers.

[Raidri]

And the moral of the story is, don't go around kicking mooses (meese?).

Also TIL a moose is a kind of cow. Makes sense if you imagine them without the antlers.

The plural of moose is also moose.
And a female moose is a called a cow while a male moose is called a bull (like in a lot of other ungulates).

[Coyne]

And the moral of the story is, don't go around kicking mooses (meese?).

Also TIL a moose is a kind of cow. Makes sense if you imagine them without the antlers.

The plural of moose is also moose.
And a female moose is a called a cow while a male moose is called a bull (like in a lot of other ungulates).

Yep, don't kick a moose. Especially, don't kick several moose. Absolutely never kick a herd of moose.

[Sableagle]

TIL death is no obstacle to campaigning for peace:

As Temi Mwale, a young social entrepreneur whose friend was murdered and now fights to stop violence, told me: “Our society does not have to live like this.”

That's what we need, more murder victims fighting to stop violence.

[CorruptUser]

He was lucky it was a cow. If it was a Bull Moose, there wouldn't have been enough of him left to identify.

[Yablo]

He was lucky it was a cow. If it was a Bull Moose, there wouldn't have been enough of him left to identify.

That would have been one Rough Ride.

[LaserGuy]

Moose are actually quite dangerous. They attack humans far more frequently than bears, for example (though moose are generally less likely to kill you, they can still deal a lot of damage). It's also apparently a bad idea to hit one with your car.

[Coyne]

Moose are actually quite dangerous. They attack humans far more frequently than bears, for example (though moose are generally less likely to kill you, they can still deal a lot of damage). It's also apparently a bad idea to hit one with your car.

I suspect that is true because most people see bears as dangerous, and moose...not. Which is an incorrect assumption.