OT - Conspiracy Theories.... I love the imagination!

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by Cpl. Kalkwarf

Sorry for the rant, Ill probably get banned or at least givin a good talking too.

With that said, since this board is supposed to be politically neutral, it would be much appreciated if the comments from the left were left at the door so to say and same with the right. It does not seem fair for one to be overlooked or winked at and the other is not. Let all remember this the next time we type.

Me personally I do not care about the discussion at all, but I do care that in a neutral environment, generally this board that one side is more tolerated then the other.

Politics are hard to avoid in any discussion of real world events. We all should bear in mind that sweeping generalizations and wild accusations are easy and fun but seldom factual. We all have different interpretations of what is Left and Right, as well as how much of each is present, tolerated, embraced, etc. on this board. To a hard-core Leftist, a centrist is in bed with the Far Right. To a conservative fundamentalist, a centrist is a radical liberal. There's no making everyone happy. Therefore, if one has axes to grind with the Left or Right, those axes are probably best ground someplace else.

Webstral

[pmulcahy11b]

OK, I'm out of this thread. It has all the signs of a flame war in the making.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Personally I doubt this thread is leading to a flame war. It's been a spirited discussion about politics certainly but people in general are attacking the politics and not the forum member who raised the argument - this is how it should be conducted.
There is no way that you can have freedom of speech on a forum if the forum does not allow people to voice their opinion - however if anyone wants to exercise their free speech they should damned well take full responsibility for what they say and the effects it has.

Now that that rant is over, I'll go on to other things.
Cpl. Kalkwarf mentioned the notion of the end of the world because of all the things happening in the world today. Frankly, I see the media causing this more than any real world thing. Earthquakes, riots, volcanoes, cults, ethnic wars and so on ad nauseum, have occurred ever since humans started to compete with each other for resources. 200 years ago, it would take 3-6 months for the news to travel from one continent to another, 500 years ago it could take a full year. At that time only the most important news was transmitted and everything else (such as a minor earthquake in Australia) was ignored as having no relevance in other countries.
These days someone in Denmark farts too loudly while on the toilet and the nextdoor neighbour has posted it to Twitter, Facebook, My Space, their own blog and the local news. Then Little Johnny Internet-boy in Antartica is reading about it 15 minutes later.

It isn't that more events are occurring, it's simply that more are being reported and what's worse, every time something does happen the media in an effort to make it more sensational, drags up every other example of such a thing happening - even when it bears no relevance to the current event.

[Cpl. Kalkwarf]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

Personally I doubt this thread is leading to a flame war. It's been a spirited discussion about politics certainly but people in general are attacking the politics and not the forum member who raised the argument - this is how it should be conducted.
There is no way that you can have freedom of speech on a forum if the forum does not allow people to voice their opinion - however if anyone wants to exercise their free speech they should damned well take full responsibility for what they say and the effects it has.

Now that that rant is over, I'll go on to other things.
Cpl. Kalkwarf mentioned the notion of the end of the world because of all the things happening in the world today. Frankly, I see the media causing this more than any real world thing. Earthquakes, riots, volcanoes, cults, ethnic wars and so on ad nauseum, have occurred ever since humans started to compete with each other for resources. 200 years ago, it would take 3-6 months for the news to travel from one continent to another, 500 years ago it could take a full year. At that time only the most important news was transmitted and everything else (such as a minor earthquake in Australia) was ignored as having no relevance in other countries.
These days someone in Denmark farts too loudly while on the toilet and the nextdoor neighbour has posted it to Twitter, Facebook, My Space, their own blog and the local news. Then Little Johnny Internet-boy in Antartica is reading about it 15 minutes later.

It isn't that more events are occurring, it's simply that more are being reported and what's worse, every time something does happen the media in an effort to make it more sensational, drags up every other example of such a thing happening - even when it bears no relevance to the current event.

Yeh and the media makes it worse by rehashing it ad nauseum making one incident seem like a constant occurrence.

Agreed that the speed of news makes things seem more frequent. Then again, there are allot more people now days. So there are more frequent human caused situations then there was back in the day.

[waiting4something]

To me the only way we are closer to the end of the world is there is a lot more people. We live longer and less of us die compared to the past. We have less room for crops of food, and oil is getting used up fast. I'm not saying the end of the world is here, but the hole in the dam is bigger.

[Ironside]

I think it was the late Arthur C. Clarke who said that people who seek public office are the last ones that should be given it.

[Cpl. Kalkwarf]

Originally Posted by Ironside

I think it was the late Arthur C. Clarke who said that people who seek public office are the last ones that should be given it.

+1

[Nowhere Man 1966]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

Personally I doubt this thread is leading to a flame war. It's been a spirited discussion about politics certainly but people in general are attacking the politics and not the forum member who raised the argument - this is how it should be conducted.
There is no way that you can have freedom of speech on a forum if the forum does not allow people to voice their opinion - however if anyone wants to exercise their free speech they should damned well take full responsibility for what they say and the effects it has.

Now that that rant is over, I'll go on to other things.
Cpl. Kalkwarf mentioned the notion of the end of the world because of all the things happening in the world today. Frankly, I see the media causing this more than any real world thing. Earthquakes, riots, volcanoes, cults, ethnic wars and so on ad nauseum, have occurred ever since humans started to compete with each other for resources. 200 years ago, it would take 3-6 months for the news to travel from one continent to another, 500 years ago it could take a full year. At that time only the most important news was transmitted and everything else (such as a minor earthquake in Australia) was ignored as having no relevance in other countries.
These days someone in Denmark farts too loudly while on the toilet and the nextdoor neighbour has posted it to Twitter, Facebook, My Space, their own blog and the local news. Then Little Johnny Internet-boy in Antartica is reading about it 15 minutes later.

It isn't that more events are occurring, it's simply that more are being reported and what's worse, every time something does happen the media in an effort to make it more sensational, drags up every other example of such a thing happening - even when it bears no relevance to the current event.

Sometimes it isn't as simple as left and right, there is a political chart that is called "The Nolan Chart" where it measures both economic and social freedom so it would include such political philosophies like libertarianism and so on. I tend to be very conservative morally but except for a few things, I tend to be libertarian because I know "that people are going to do what they are going to do," I just think they need to step up and be responsible. I think except for a few duties the Constitution specifies, when you get government in things, it just screwed them up.

Chuck

P.S., I've even seen three dimensional political charts too.

[waiting4something]

Just to keep this thread alive, I'm gonna make this statement. I don't think we ever landed on the moon. I think that was a hoax.

[Fusilier]

Originally Posted by waiting4something

Just to keep this thread alive, I'm gonna make this statement. I don't think we ever landed on the moon. I think that was a hoax.

I'll bite. Why?

[waiting4something]

Why I think the moon landing was fake is because we in a race with the Soviets both on the ground and space. Us landing on the moon would make it appear that the U.S.A. was much farther ahead of the Soviets. How do you go from just being able to orbit the earth a few years earlier to landing a craft on a rock surface in space like the moon that quickly? Why have we only done this once?
It seem like a better challege then just sending our guys up there to orbit around the Earth like we have been doing ever since. It was ironic how our plans to do this again in 2010 got scrapped. I'm guessing they hoped to do this for the first time then, but then figuired they weren't really ready yet. With the world convinced that they have already done this, why risk looking like a liers now if something bad happened.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by waiting4something

I don't think we ever landed on the moon. I think that was a hoax.

If you have a powerful enough telescope you can see stuff that humans put on the moon. Including stuff that arrived with manned moon misions. Actually SEE it. That fact makes it hard for me to believe that there were no manned moon landings. Its pretty solid evidence.

[Fusilier]

Originally Posted by waiting4something

Why I think the moon landing was fake is because we in a race with the Soviets both on the ground and space. Us landing on the moon would make it appear that the U.S.A. was much farther ahead of the Soviets. How do you go from just being able to orbit the earth a few years earlier to landing a craft on a rock surface in space like the moon that quickly? Why have we only done this once?
It seem like a better challege then just sending our guys up there to orbit around the Earth like we have been doing ever since. It was ironic how our plans to do this again in 2010 got scrapped. I'm guessing they hoped to do this for the first time then, but then figuired they weren't really ready yet. With the world convinced that they have already done this, why risk looking like a liers now if something bad happened.

Do you have any actual evidence to support these claims?

Do you have any answer to how previous claims of evidence have all be debunked?

Do you have any answer to how there is ample evidence from international 3rd parties that have confirmed the landings? (For not only the first landing but the others as well)

It also seems that there are few fallacies in your reasons as well - affirming the consequent and fallacy of false cause (if I haven't mislabeled the terms). Those shouldn't be good reasons to believe in things even when being skeptical

[waiting4something]

Originally Posted by Fusilier

Do you have any actual evidence to support these claims?
Well, of course I don't other wise it would no longer be a conspiracy theory.

Do you have any answer to how previous claims of evidence have all be debunked?
What are you talking about Willis?

Do you have any answer to how there is ample evidence from international 3rd parties that have confirmed the landings? (For not only the first landing but the others as well)
What third parties and what landings where these?

It also seems that there are few fallacies in your reasons as well - affirming the consequent and fallacy of false cause (if I haven't mislabeled the terms). Those shouldn't be good reasons to believe in things even when being skeptical

You shouldn't believe everything you read, because that like believing in everything you hear.

[waiting4something]

Originally Posted by Targan

If you have a powerful enough telescope you can see stuff that humans put on the moon. Including stuff that arrived with manned moon misions. Actually SEE it. That fact makes it hard for me to believe that there were no manned moon landings. Its pretty solid evidence.

What do they have up there? Is it the stage that they filmed it in?

[Fusilier]

Originally Posted by waiting4something

You shouldn't believe everything you read, because that like believing in everything you hear.

Correct. Which is why you always check the sources of any claims.

In this case there is ample facts (either observable, testable, or verifiable) from a large number of neutral 3rd parties that shows that the landings did indeed occur.

[Webstral]

Moon landings are a better challenge, but they are much harder to pull off. We've been stuck in Earth orbit since the 1970's because the political will to go back go the Moon (and spend the money) isn't there. While I'm not even a well-read amateur on the subject of lunar exploration, I do know that getting people there and back requires a much greater expenditure of energy, which translates into much greater cost than an orbital destination. While I firmly agree that we should be returning to the Moon (and exploiting lunar resources), the political will just hasn't been there.

Just wait till China (or worse, India!) puts something significant on the lunar surface. Then you'll see the political will return like a bad case of acid reflux.

Webstral

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Webstral

Moon landings are a better challenge, but they are much harder to pull off. We've been stuck in Earth orbit since the 1970's because the political will to go back go the Moon (and spend the money) isn't there. While I'm not even a well-read amateur on the subject of lunar exploration, I do know that getting people there and back requires a much greater expenditure of energy, which translates into much greater cost than an orbital destination. While I firmly agree that we should be returning to the Moon (and exploiting lunar resources), the political will just hasn't been there.

Just wait till China (or worse, India!) puts something significant on the lunar surface. Then you'll see the political will return like a bad case of acid reflux.

Webstral

I firmly believe that the next astronaut to set foot on the moon will be Chinese. The first expedition to Mars will be international -- but the way the economy and the will of the electorate is going in this country, there may not be an American on that first crew that goes to Mars. The people and politicians in this country don't seem to have the stomach or resolve to tackle the big projects anymore, even important ones like getting off fossil fuels (which should be a priority for the entire human race -- an international effort like that which sent astronauts to the moon, scaled-up). And our politicians are barely willing even to do something that might be politically risky or cost them campaign dollars. I believe that without colonizing space (and soon) the human race is not going to have a chance to survive even if we get through the next century intact, but the people of this country by and large can't see the necessity of almost any large-scale scientific research, let alone something hugely expensive like human space exploration and colonization.

On another tack, what power telescope does it take to pick out the landing sites on the Moon? It's actually an urban myth that you can see the Great Wall of China or other large man-made structures from orbit with the naked eye -- you need a lens with a pretty decent magnification to see even the largest man-made structures from orbit. During the day, from the orbits that the Space Shuttle and the ISS use, you can't even look down with the naked eye and see our largest cities -- you need a lens with a magnification of at least 4x to start seeing them. (At nighttime, however, you can see the lights from the cities fairly well with the naked eye.) It seems that you'd need one of those huge telescopes like the 200-inch one on Mt. Palomar to see the landing sites from the Earth.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

In regards to how did we go from orbiting the Earth to landing on the Moon so quickly, I'd just like to say that in the 1920s we had aircraft made of wood, wire and canvas, then in the 1940s they were made from metal and powered by jet engines and could just reach the sound barrier. In the late 1950s they began the design that resulted in the SR-71, a high altitude Mach 3 aircraft that first flew in 1964. In 1981, the first US Space Shuttle launch was achieved, a spacecraft designed in the 1970s.
So in 50 years we have gone from wood & canvas biplanes to the space shuttle, I think we could easily have achieved the Moon landings. The technology was sufficient and the political will and funding were strong enough to support the efforts

[Mahatatain]

Personally I think that the moon landings were real.

The criticism I've always heard is to do with the footage having shadows on things that shouldn't have had shadows and flags "flapping in the wind" etc. I've always wondered whether some of the real footage wasn't particularly good and that as a result the NASA PR department decided to use some footage from the training on earth to make the what they released more impactful.

[Fusilier]

Originally Posted by Mahatatain

The criticism I've always heard is to do with the footage having shadows on things that shouldn't have had shadows and flags "flapping in the wind" etc.

Both of those have been tested and refuted under laboratory conditions as being false.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

In regards to how did we go from orbiting the Earth to landing on the Moon so quickly, I'd just like to say that in the 1920s we had aircraft made of wood, wire and canvas, then in the 1940s they were made from metal and powered by jet engines and could just reach the sound barrier. In the late 1950s they began the design that resulted in the SR-71, a high altitude Mach 3 aircraft that first flew in 1964. In 1981, the first US Space Shuttle launch was achieved, a spacecraft designed in the 1970s.
So in 50 years we have gone from wood & canvas biplanes to the space shuttle, I think we could easily have achieved the Moon landings. The technology was sufficient and the political will and funding were strong enough to support the efforts

And don't forget the reverse engineering of alien spacecraft technology discovered at the Roswell UFO crash site!

[kota1342000]

Well, since we're speaking of conspiracy stories and I think Ive had my fill of political garbage, I think Id like to put forward Terry Pratchett's theory about alien abductions and their banning by the intergalactic community as of late. The confusion as to what would be interesting in our BVDs aside, the banning on abductions has been placed due to different species of alien expeditions lying in wait to abduct humans accidentally abducting other aliens who were lying in wait to do the same thing. Add to that another group of aliens who had received confused instructions and were herding cattle into circles and mutilating crops, and it was clear that the intergalactic community had to make Earth a "no-abduction zone" until it was determined exactly how many earthlings they had actually abducted. As it turns out, only one; who happens to be eight feet tall, extremely hairy and with gigantic feet.

[pmulcahy11b]

We haven't landed on the moon...yet. Those pictures were grabbed off of news communications satellites using a device invented using technology from crashed UFOs, which allowed us to intercept signals from satellites not yet invented. We did that with the alien technology, because the saucer in the Roswell crash contained a device that allowed communication with different points in time using a time-space tunneling technology.

How's that for a conspiracy theory?

[pmulcahy11b]

Since Kota brought up Sasquatch, what do you think of that? I can believe that there could be a Yeti -- the places it's supposedly been spotted are remote and hostile enough to humans that a breeding population could go almost unnoticed. Sasquatch, however, I have more trouble believing -- I don't think a viable breeding population could go this long unnoticed in the US and Canada, since we humans have tramped liberally across the landscape for hundreds of years, and civilization has been gobbling up more and more of the wilderness in the region for almost as long.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by kota1342000

Well, since we're speaking of conspiracy stories and I think Ive had my fill of political garbage, I think Id like to put forward Terry Pratchett's theory about alien abductions and their banning by the intergalactic community as of late. The confusion as to what would be interesting in our BVDs aside, the banning on abductions has been placed due to different species of alien expeditions lying in wait to abduct humans accidentally abducting other aliens who were lying in wait to do the same thing. Add to that another group of aliens who had received confused instructions and were herding cattle into circles and mutilating crops, and it was clear that the intergalactic community had to make Earth a "no-abduction zone" until it was determined exactly how many earthlings they had actually abducted. As it turns out, only one; who happens to be eight feet tall, extremely hairy and with gigantic feet.

I read a story in my early teens -- can't remember the author or name of it. In that story, it turned out that the "aliens" were us. Those "aliens" were in fact our descendants, tens of thousands of years from now, and they periodically travel back in time to study their ancestors, and to ensure that historical events unfold in such a way to ensure their existence.

Quite frankly, the possible paradoxes that come with time travel boggle my mind. But I think that time travel is the one technology that absolutely, under no circumstances whatsoever, that humans should ever be allowed to develop. Think of the crap we've pulled with technology so far -- the human race isn't responsible enough to possess time travel. The amount of wisdom you'd need to have to not produce any paradoxes with time travel is probably impossible for any race in the universe to possess. And it's virtually certain that time travel would be misused by mankind -- we've pretty much misused every other technology we've come up with in some way or another.

[Fusilier]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Sasquatch, however, I have more trouble believing -- I don't think a viable breeding population could go this long unnoticed in the US and Canada, since we humans have tramped liberally across the landscape for hundreds of years, and civilization has been gobbling up more and more of the wilderness in the region for almost as long.

IMO it's highly unlikely due the absence of any real evidence and for the reasons you've gave as well. But regarding the bit about it having nowhere to hide... on the other hand, they recently discovered a deer that nobody knew even existed, in Vietnam which has an very high population density.

[Abbott Shaull]

Originally Posted by Raellus

And don't forget the reverse engineering of alien spacecraft technology discovered at the Roswell UFO crash site!

Reminds of WWII when the Soviet got their hands on B-29 that had landed in the Soviet Union due to damage while on a bomb run over Japan. Stalin order exact duplicates to be reverse engineered. Well they sure did, even included the bullet holes that riddle the plane...lol

[weswood]

My theory on aliens is that they aren't from outer space....they're from underground. All the UFO sightings are just drones to draw attention away from the truth.

[waiting4something]

I don't think Big Foot could exist either with him being so big and not getting spotted. They have done so much to find one and never produced anything yet. By now someone would have shot one or found remains of one.