RE: [asa] Moonwalk: Where was I?

The tv coverage of Armstrong and "Buzz" brought the world together like
never before. Mankind was indeed taking a giant leap, and we all were
privileged to witness the event.

With some ambivalence, I'll share my odd story. I was with my fellow
senior high-school football playing buddies in a corn field drinking our
traditional cornfield beverages. They promised me we would be back in time
to see the landing. As the time approached, however, their promises were
looking very hollow. So, without an adijos, I headed down the dark dirt
road w/o a flashlight hoping to find a house, though none were in sight.
Eventually, after coming around a bend in the road, I found a trailer-home
with lights on. Without hesitation I knocked on the door and asked politely
if I might join them in watching the Apollo landing. They graciously
allowed my strange presence, and we (including several children) all watched
silently the big event. It was an amazing moment, though it was frustrating
trying to get six astronauts to resolve into two. After about half an hour
or so, I gracefully departed and found my buddies quite annoyed. [Besides,
I took the keys.]

It was a time, I think, when all who watched felt more connected to mankind
than they could have hoped, and a time for re-evaluation of ourselves, and
for some like me, our friends.

Regarding the Moan Hoax, I think that was the final straw for astronomer
Phil Plait to become a public figure to counter anti-science nonsense. His
first book was "Bad Astronomy", which argued against many silly ideas that
had continued to spread as they had gone, essentially, uncontested.

Coope

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Randy Isaac
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 10:57 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: [asa] Moonwalk

Today's Science Times section of the NYTimes is devoted to the 40th
anniversary of humans walking on the moon. Many of us, no doubt, recall
exactly where we were when we watched it live. I was in a bowling alley in
Kimball, Nebraska, part of a team of itenerant farm workers following the
wheat harvest. It was an exhilerating experience to watch it.

I was struck by one of the articles in the Times which claims that as many
as 6% of Americans think that the moon landing was faked. Below is the main
portion of the article. I can't help but think of the parallels that are
often discussed on this list--the geocentrism, the age of the earth, and
other topics where the scientific mainstream is rejected. Lots of aspects in
common.

Randy

Vocal Minority Insists It Was All Smoke and Mirrors

By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/john_schwartz/
index.html?inline=nyt-per> JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: July 13, 2009

They walk among us, seemingly little different from you or me. Most of the
time, you would never know of their true nature - except that occasionally,
they feel compelled to speak up.

Take an example from Lens, this newspaper's photography blog. A recent
feature," <http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/dateline-3/> Dateline:
Space," displayed stunning
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nationa
l_aeronautics_and_space_administration/index.html?inline=nyt-org> NASA
photographs, including the iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin standing on the lunar
surface.

The second comment on the feature stated flatly, "Man never got to the
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/moon/index.html?inline=ny
t-classifier> moon."

The author of the post, Nicolas Marino, went on to say, "I think media
should stop publicizing something that was a complete sham once and for all
and start documenting how they lied blatantly to the whole world."

Forty years after men first touched the lifeless dirt of the Moon - and they
did. Really. Honest. - polling consistently suggests that some 6 percent of
Americans believe the landings were faked and could not have happened. The
series of landings, one of the greatest gambles of the human race, was an
elaborate hoax developed to raise national pride, many among them insist.

They examine photos from the missions for signs of studio fakery, and claim
to be able to tell that the American flag was waving in what was supposed to
be the vacuum of space. They overstate the health risks of traveling through
the radiation belts that girdle our planet; they understate the
technological prowess of the American space program; and they cry murder
behind every death in the program, linking them to an overall conspiracy.

And while there is no credible evidence to support such views, and the sheer
unlikelihood of being able to pull off such an immense plot and keep it
secret for four decades staggers the imagination, the deniers continue to
amass accusations to this day. They are bolstered by films like a
documentary shown on Fox television in 2001 and "A Funny Thing Happened on
the Way to the Moon" by Bart Sibrel, a filmmaker in Nashville.

"There are smart, normal people who buy into these conspiracy theories,"
said Philip Plait, an astronomer and author who counters the conspiracy
theorists point by point and at excruciating length at his "
<http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/> Bad Astronomy" Web site.
He is one of many people who have joined the fight to affirm that It
Happened. A <http://www.clavius.org/> group effort, at
<http://www.clavius.org/> www.clavius.org, debunks with gusto; its main
author, Jay Windley, named the site for the Moon base in
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/arthur_c_clark
e/index.html?inline=nyt-per> Arthur C. Clarke's classic science fiction
novel, "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Even though the so-called evidence from the conspiracists can clearly be
proved wrong, Mr. Plait said, understanding the proof can require a working
knowledge of history and photography and of science and its methodology.
"You've got to do the work; you've got to put the elbow grease to it," he
said, "and most people don't do the work. So these things get traction."

Mr. Marino, the author of the post on the Lens blog, is a 31-year-old
architect born in Argentina. In an e-mail interview, he said that the
political corruption during the years of dictatorship in his country shaped
his thinking: "I started to realize how political corruption operates and
how it is the interests of a few in power that really governs our world."

As he traveled the world - he now lives and works in China - he picked up
books contending that the landings were faked and saw documentaries
including Mr. Sibrel's, he said, which paints a dark portrait of political
manipulation during the Nixon administration and somehow ties in the Vietnam
War, the Titanic and the Tower of Babel before even getting to the supposed
photographic evidence of lunar deception.

Mr. Sibrel, who sells his films online, has hounded Apollo astronauts with a
Bible, insisting that they swear on camera they had walked on the Moon. He
so annoyed
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/buzz_aldrin/in
dex.html?inline=nyt-per> Buzz Aldrin in 2002 - ambushing him with his Bible
and calling him "a coward, and a liar, and a thief" - that Mr. Aldrin
punched Mr. Sibrel in the face. Law enforcement officials refused to file
charges against Mr. Aldrin, the second man on the Moon.

In an interview, Mr. Sibrel said that his efforts to prove that men never
walked on the Moon has cost him dearly. "I have suffered only persecution
and financial loss," he said. "I've lost visitation with my son. I've been
expelled from churches. All because I believe the Moon landings are
fraudulent."

Ted Goertzel, a professor of sociology at
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/rutgers
_the_state_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Rutgers University who has
studied conspiracy theorists, said "there's a similar kind of logic behind
all of these groups, I think." For the most part, he explained, "They don't
undertake to prove that their view is true" so much as to "find flaws in
what the other side is saying." And so, he said, argument is a matter of
accumulation instead of persuasion. "They feel if they've got more facts
than the other side, that proves they're right."

Mark Fenster, a professor at the
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/univers
ity_of_florida/index.html?inline=nyt-org> University of Florida Levin
College of Law who has written extensively on conspiracy theories, said he
sees similarities between people who argue that the Moon landings never
happened and those who insist that the 9/11 attacks were planned by the
government and that
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> President Obama's birth certificate is fake: at
the core, he said, is a polarization so profound that people end up with an
unshakable belief that those in power "simply can't be trusted."

The emergence of the Internet as a communications medium, he noted, makes it
possible for once-scattered believers to find one another. "It allows the
theory to continue to exist, to continue to be available - it's not just
some old dusty books on the half-price shelf."

Adam Savage, the co-star of the television show "MythBusters," spent an
episode last year taking apart Moon hoax theories bit by bit, entertainingly
and convincingly. The theorists, he noted, never give up. "They'll say you
have to keep an open mind," he said, "but they reject every single piece of
evidence that doesn't adhere to their thesis."

For those who actually went - and have I mentioned that we did land
astronauts on the Moon? Six times? - the conspiracy theories are simply
galling.

Harrison Schmitt, the pilot of the lunar lander during the last Apollo
mission and later a United States senator, said in an interview that the
poor state of the nation's schools has had predictable results. "If people
decide they're going to deny the facts of history and the facts of science
and technology, there's not much you can do with them," he said.

"For most of them, I just feel sorry that we failed in their education."

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Received on Tue Jul 14 14:57:34 2009