The Flat Earthers and High Altitude Ballooning

The Earth is flat. You can easily prove this for yourself. Just grab the biggest hard edged ruler you have, put the edge up against the ground (preferably on a bit with no bumps) and you'll see the Earth does not curve away from the ruler. It's flat from end to end.

I'm the first to admit I don't know a lot about the beliefs of modern day 'Flat Earth' believers other than they believe the Earth to be flat and not spherical as Science has generally demonstrated since before we could send people into space and actually see for ourselves.

The Flat Earth Society's website has some FAQs here for their general thinking on their beliefs which, to me, don't make a convincing case for the Earth being flat. Largely because it includes conspiracy theories that suggest even NASA is being duped into believing the Earth is spherical along with a misunderstanding of how cameras, lenses and the photo-shopping of images work.

That aside, Flat Earther's should consider taking up high altitude ballooning. At its simplest level high altitude ballooning is the process of strapping a video camera to a weather balloon and letting it float as far out into the atmosphere as it'll go before the balloon bursts, sending the camera back to the ground. Maybe try it from different points on each side of the Earth and see how things match up (I don't know... it's just an idea).

I'm not suggesting it as a way to see the curvature of the Earth for themselves using their own cameras, lenses and being able to view photoshop free images, rather, if their theory holds up, it could help make their case.

Though I've also read on their website that it's not up to them to prove that the world is flat. They appear to be of the mind set that others should disprove it. I think it's been disproved without a shadow of a doubt but, I imagine Flat Earther's would likely tell me I drank the Kool Aid.

My only thought is, whatever shape you think the Earth to be, it should be demonstrable with actual facts that either have been discovered or have yet to be. The Earth is here. We're on it. Why not prove it's flat and shut those Spherical Earther's up once and for all?

Has anyone bothered to find that 150 foot tall wall of ice that circumnavigates the entire discworld of Earth in Antarctica? NASA surely can't guard the entire thing when the USA can't even effectively guard the Mexican border?

Comments

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices. My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe? Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Introducing Resident Dragon: The Trials and Tribulations of Living in a Shared House with a Dragon in the Suburbs

Resident Dragon Cast: TET, Red the Dragon Cool Froyd the Cat, and Grrr Dog. Buy Prints of finished toons . L ast year (2024), for my birthday in May, my sister bought me a quality, metal bodied, ball point pen (black ink). As someone who likes to sketch with ball point pens, and with a big concern that these last few years I really wasn't drawing as much as someone who considers themselves to be an artist should, I decided to put the pen to good use. In June of the same year I bought two A5 sketchbooks and spent as much time as I needed to fill a page with ball point pen 'doodles', each morning after breakfast. I'm predominantly a cartoonist who's always drawn from imagination, so filling a page in a sketch book is not a challenge. I just draw a line, or a circle, or whatever and see what emerges. Filling Sketch Books Just to Draw More Filling an A5 sketchbook page would take me about 20-25 minutes. I drew all kinds of random things, occasionally using the time to...

Movie Review: The Fall Guy (2024) Minor Spoilers

W hen I initially heard they were making a movie version of the TV series, The Fall Guy (1981-86) , I was definitely interested, as a person who tuned in to that series, weekly, when it originally aired. I had intended to see The Fall Guy in the cinema but, for whatever reason, didn't get there, and didn't prioritize seeing the film as the reviews, and more importantly, general information about the movie came out. Specifically, The Fall Guy makes no effort to capture whatever magic it was the TV show had that made it the show it was. A fact that is driven home by the reworked TV series theme song, played over the end credits and behind the scenes footage of stunts in the film, that removes all references to real world actors and replaces iconic line of "I'm the unknown stuntman who made Redford such a star" with the nonsensical "I'm the unknown stuntman who tries to win your heart." - sure... I guess... I mean, the original song is about never gett...

TV Series Review: The Penguin (2024) No Spoilers

W hile we wait for an eternity (well an eternity in movie fan years anyway) for The Batman Part 2 , sequel to Matt Reeves acclaimed, The Batman (2022), we have, what is essentially a direct sequel with The Penguin , a limited. eight episode, TV Series set within a week or two of the end of the first film. Unfortunately it's a direct sequel to Colin Farrell's Penguin rather than Robert Pattinson's, Bruce Wayne/Batman. Fortunately that's the only real disappointment I have with this series. Right from the first episode The Penguin establishes itself as a show for grown ups who enjoy actual character development, that hooks you in, is thought provoking, and raises questions that you expect will be answered as the story unfolds. After the events of The Batman, there is something of a power vacuum left in Gotham's crime world that Oswald 'Oz' Cobb a.k.a. The Penguin, sets out to fill using his experience, quick thinking, and his ability to hustle his way into...

Social Media: It's All Fake News - Even That News You Shared, That Proves the Thing, Because It's Backed Up By a Credible Expert, is Fake.

Social Media profiles need a peer based rating system that locks you out for 30 days if your feed is one long stream of depressing boredom that bums everyone out. I don't watch or read the news anymore (mainstream or otherwise). From time to time, if something filters through that piques my interest, I'll take a bit of a dive to find out more. The recent US election is a good example. I even wrote a few opinion pieces in this blog. The Daily Show Is Not News Note that I don't count The Daily Show as news, because I did watch quite a lot of that during the US election. While they lean quite a bit toward the left overall, it's not a show you look to for context, since much of their humor is based on reframing context to get a laugh. The one thing The Daily Show does well is highlight how both Liberal and Right wing media latch onto one or two bullet point messages each day and run them through the mouths of every on screen commentator like they're all wind up parro...

TV Series Review: Skeleton Crew (2024) (Disney+) No Spoilers

I f you saw the trailer for Skeleton Crew and decided the show looked too much like Star Wars for little kids, and didn't watch, you missed out on a real treat. While I will say this show was definitely targeted at bringing in younger fans to the Star Wars universe, it is very much more like family viewing than kids only TV. Not to mention, characters are literally gunned down or murdered on this show, but without the really graphic violence you might see on a more adult orientated show. It's actually no more kid only orientated than the first series of Stranger Things (2016), or even the original Star Wars (1977) movie. In fact the whole show is a not so subtle homage to original Star Wars (1977), Treasure Island (1950), and eighties movies like The Goonies (1985), ET (1982), Explorers (1985) and others. The plot is very straight forward. A group of children, living in the Star Wars equivalent of the suburbs, find an aband...

Movie Opinion: Love Actually (2003) Actually has Aged Just As It Should

S creen Rant ran an article by Bisma Fida , Love Actually: The 8 Storylines That Aged Badly, Ranked (Published Dec 10, 2021), which obviously was regurgitated into one of my newsfeeds because Love Actually (2003) is still one of the best Christmas movies ever made, that's why it's still topical in 2024. Bisma, who completely failed to get their profile page pro-nouns in order. Something that should be a priority for anyone commenting on what is accepted by modern audiences, who are all completely comfortable accepting preferred pro-nouns without question, because we're just that enlightened in 2024. F**K Screen Rant Full disclosure, I hate Screen Rant to the point that, if I do click on their click bait titles because I didn't see it was a Screen Rant story, I'll close the browser window almost immediately once I see what it is (which is why I'm not providing any links to their homepage). It's not because I dislike their articles. I would actually like to...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog