[Fwd: [asa] Moonwalk]

I and my wife were at a mountain lake in Northern Idaho, and we listened
on the radio and heard the voice of Armstrong. I remember we prayed
for him to be able to get back safely, which took a complex bunch of
manoeuvering.

I was a physics prof at the University, and when school started again in
the fall, rocket propulsion was on everybody's mind.

Larry Johnston

"He has made everything beautiful in its time.

 He has also set eternity in the hearts of men"

 - - Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV trans

============================================================

Lawrence H. Johnston home: 917 E. 8th st.

professor of physics, emeritus Moscow, Id 83843

University of Idaho (208) 882-2765

Fellow of the American Physical Society Website:

<http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/%7Ejohnston/HOMEPA%7E1.HTM>

attached mail follows:

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 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," Dateline: Space," displayed stunning 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 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 "Bad Astronomy" Web site. He is one of many people who have joined the fight to affirm that It Happened. A group effort, at www.clavius.org, debunks with gusto; its main author, Jay Windley, named the site for the Moon base in 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 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 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 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 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."

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Jul 14 20:31:12 2009