This Day in History 1835: "The Great Moon Hoax" is published in the "New York Sun"

On August 25, 1835, the first in a series of six articles announcing the supposed discovery of life on the moon appears in the New York Sun newspaper.

Known collectively as “The Great Moon Hoax,” the articles were supposedly reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science. The byline was Dr. Andrew Grant, described as a colleague of Sir John Herschel, a famous astronomer of the day. Herschel had in fact traveled to Capetown, South Africa, in January 1834 to set up an observatory with a powerful new telescope. As Grant described it, Herschel had found evidence of life forms on the moon, including such fantastic animals as unicorns, two-legged beavers and furry, winged humanoids resembling bats. The articles also offered vivid description of the moon’s geography, complete with massive craters, enormous amethyst crystals, rushing rivers and lush vegetation.

Read more: This Day in History 1835 

The Flat-Earth Fallacy

When Fantasy and Science Collide

Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series of novels may seem like fantasy to most of us, but to some the vision of a flat disc-like world is a reality…

Incredibly, right now in the 21^st Century, there is a growing surge in popularity for the belief that the Earth is flat. Once dismissed as irrational fools that would eventually go away, they are now starting to fight back with ever increasing complexity in their arguments to support their misguided conviction. They say that society has been misled by government conspiracy into believing that the Earth is a globe, although the reasons for why such a conspiracy would be needed are a little less clear. The most common hypothesis put forward seems to be that it is in order to continue faking space travel and embezzle the funds left over.

Think about it for a moment… how many people would need to be in on this cover-up?

Pilots, astronauts, governments, Elon Musk and his SpaceX Company and all its employees, meteorologists and the whole scientific community would need to be collaborating on this, not to mention most of their family members.

The Russian Roscomos Space Agency and America’s NASA, have apparently been so successful in fooling society that the Earth is round that China, Europe and India have started their own space programs, and have joined in on the conspiracy.

You couldn’t make it up. Well luckily, you don’t have to because the Flat Earth Society has done it all for you. You can visit this website here and gaze at it in awe, possibly in much the same way as you would watch a chimp’s tea party, or watch me attempting to dance gracefully.

Trolls or Genuine?

After initially discovering this ever growing community of the Flat Earth Theory on social media, I assumed they were just another version of online trolls. It wasn’t until I read some of the comments that I realised they genuinely believed what they were saying, although I am sure some of them are just doing it to amuse themselves and laugh at the outraged replies to their comments. It’s almost like coming across a fully grown man who believes in Santa Claus and who has managed to make a rationale for every law of physics such a mythical character would need to break in order to deliver on his role.

It’s almost like coming across a fully grown man who believes in Santa Claus and who has managed to make a rationale for every law of physics such a mythical character would need to break in order to deliver on his role.

Celebrities are starting to be rolled out by the Flat Earth Society too.

Shaquille O’Neal, the former NBA basketball star and B.O.B. whose real name is Bobby Ray Simmons Jr a rap artist, are two of the most well-known of these. Rumours originating from a spoof website that President Donald Trump is a proponent are false, however.

So, enough of my incredulity, let’s have a look at some of the claims that ‘prove’ the Earth is a flat disc and not a globe at all…

The Claims

• Gravity is a lie.
• There is no curvature of the horizon.
• Satellites are a hoax and photographs of the Earth are photo-shopped, whilst Computer Generated Imagery is used to create videos of the planet’s global look.
• Water would fall off the planet’s surface if we are spinning on a globe.
• Space agencies are in reality using their huge budget to control missiles from space.
• The Arctic Circle is the centre of the disc and Antarctica is a 150-foot high wall of ice at the outer rim of the disc.
• NASA employees guard the rim.
• The sun and the moon are spheres (!) that move in circular motions 3,000 miles above the Earth, creating night and day.
• Albert Einstein was a fraud.
• An ‘Anti-moon’ causes eclipses

Continue reading here: The Flat-Earth Fallacy

The 6 Dangerous Fallacies of Social Media

You may have heard of social media. There’s been a bit of news about it recently. However, a lot of people making that news have created expectations and beliefs about social media that aren’t true.

1. Social Media is Inexpensive

False. As Charlene Li said recently, social media trades media cost for labor cost. Done correctly, social media - even a simple reputation monitoring program - is a time intensive proposition that requires daily vigilance.

2. Social Media is Fast

False. Social media is by definition slow. Done correctly, social media is about developing meaningful relationships with customers and prospective customers in their natural habitat. That’s not a “wave the magic wand” scenario. You have to create content, be part of many communities, and proceed incrementally. Many successful social media programs take months (or even more than a year) to really germinate.

3. Social Media is “Viral Marketing”

False, in the same way that a square is also a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t a square. Can a social media program go viral? Absolutely. But if you’re engaged in a social media program in an effort to go “viral” you’re not really engaged in social media at all. You’re engaged in an advertising and marketing campaign that uses the Web as its distribution platform.

4. Social Media results can’t be measured

False. Especially in comparison to many other communication programs like traditional PR, TV advertising, outdoor advertising and others, social media actually offers pretty solid metrics. Many social media software packages (great ebook analysis of them here) can provide highly detailed reports on the impact of social media programs. Can those results be tied back directly to sales, and therefore ROI? Probably not yet, but other than search and email (and maybe banners) where CAN you do that?

5. Social Media is optional

It doesn’t matter what the demographics of your customers are. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. Your customers and prospects are talking about you online. Your company needs to be part of that conversation. Today. Online is where many people do their talking, so that’s where you need to be. If barber shops were still driving consumer sentiment, I’d be writing this post about barber shop marketing. Be where your customers are.

6. Social media is hard

False. It’s not hard, it’s complicated. And that’s only because of the alphabet soup of social networks, lifestreams, sharing sites, etc. Social media is not about Facebook or MySpace or Flickr or Twitter or blogs or YouTube. It’s about having a strategy for making your company or organization more like a person and less like a machine. It’s about humanization.

If your customers and prospects feel like your company is more human and actually cares about them, they’ll want to be part of it. That’s the brand engagement holy grail that we’re all seeking. Too often, the humanization part gets overlooked in an effort to create a “user-generated video contest widget that we’ll launch on Facebook with support from Ustream.” Whatever. Use technology to be yourself, and don’t overthink it.

Source:
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/51001

Fallacy #4: Atoms are simple substances.

This is the very expression used in this Number. We have here an example of a scientific fact given through revelation before it was established by scientific experimentation, and we can call this an "anachronistic discovery" in science. The Word cautions us here not to think that atoms are simple substances, that is, indivisible. Today we know that atoms are NOT simple substances, meaning, indivisible entities, but are themselves composed of still smaller substances. Recently it was reported on the news that scientists created "anti-matter" sub-atomic particles whose lifespan was around one-billionth of a second. New substances and particles are now being discovered on a regular basis and there is no theoretical end in sight. It is thus a scientific fallacy to believe of any physical substance that it is composed solely of itself. In other words, there is no smallest substance or particle!

Fallacy #3: Genes have the power to reproduce life or Biological organisms "have life within them"

According to these two fallacies of science "seeds [are] impressed with the property of reproducing themselves" and, "life has been imparted to them." The fallacious idea that seeds or genes reproduce or transmit life has led to all sorts of outlandish ideas in sociobiology. According to one popular theory, genes, in their frantic attempt to survive and perpetuate themselves, create physically attractive women so as to have a better chance to be picked by men for reproducing offspring, and thus perpetuating those genes. In this view, a human being is an egg's way of making another egg. However, the Writings explain that genes (or seeds) do not contain life in themselves but are only receptor organs into which life flows in on a continuous basis. Thus, biology is not the "science of life" but the "science of the receptors of life."
On a recent radio talk show, a woman author speaking about pregnancy, said that "we women have the power to get pregnant and produce life in our womb, therefore we have the ability to..." However, in actuality, pregnancy produces organs of life which can receive life through continuous influx from the Lord. The life in us does not belong to our body, but flows through it. This is a scientific revelation that should not be left out of NC science textbooks. In my view, science textbooks in the future will strive to incorporate the scientific revelations given in the Writings. NC textbooks can do this today.

Fallacy #2: The space between the stars and planets is a vacuum.

This scientific fallacy is upheld in Newton's work and throughout Newtonian physics। Newton, in the spiritual world, rejected his own theory of vacuum: I spoke with Newton concerning a vacuum, and concerning colors...Concerning a vacuum he said, that in the world he had believed in the existence of a vacuum; but when the angels perceived that he had an idea of a vacuum, as an idea of nothing, they turned themselves away, saying that they cannot bear the idea of nothing...Therefore the angels entreated that he and all those who cherished the idea of a vacuum as of nothing would desist from it...When he had heard these things, Newton said that...he would desist from it hereafter LJP 265/6.
Today more and more scientists reject the idea of a vacuum. Outer space is defined as a gravitational field that is never empty and cannot be composed of nothing. The idea that space is a vacuum is an irrational idea because the existence of a vacuum would violate the rational principle that all things in the universe are interconnected through an uninterrupted series of substances and functions, as revealed in DLW. A related fallacy is the idea that God created the physical universe out of nothing. The Word reveals that the Lord creates the universe out of substances and atmospheres that issue from the Divine sphere. I think that the idea of inter-galactic and sub-atomic space being a vacuum or nothing may injure one's idea of Divine Providence and its absolute omnipotence.

Fallacy #1: The sun revolves around the earth.

Scientists used to believe this, but after Copernicus and Galileo, the fallacy largely died out. Nevertheless, it needs to be taught to each new generation since the uneducated person falls prey to this appearance.