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Bren wrote:

Zahi Hawass needs to be tea-bagged.

You'll probably outlive him. Why the rush?

You want to talk about shape shifting? Look at the sphinx. Asian features; looks to me like someone from Indochina. Now take a look at that Las Vegas sphinx. They made him into a European!

Maybe the original has North African features; I'm not sharp enough to say. The Vegas one is definitely different, though.

radarman wrote:

What makes the Egyptian pyramids interesting is the high degree of precision in the stone work - and precision that required careful placing of stones at several levels of construction. There are vertical and diagonal shafts extending for great distances that are very nearly perfectly straight. THAT is impressive.

Sure it is impressive. Very impressive.

So are many examples of sculpture and illumination produced by the ancient Egyptians.
They were an advanced society, buyt they DID have construction limitations--such as the pyramid shape if they wanted something tall. So with that limitation, they just spent effort improving the means and quality of the pyramid.

iSeamas wrote:

Anonymous Delivers! wrote:

iSeamas wrote:

Why?

Magic.

iSeamas wrote:

But-

MAGIC.

LOL.

I do wonder if there is are people who buy into the ancient astronauts, but also believe the moon landing was a hoax.

About the latter....

iSeamas wrote:

That is a pretty big assumption.

It's the opposite of an assumption. To suppose that our kinds of technological solutions are the only kinds, and to further suppose that we'd be able to immediately recognize the remains of a radically different solution from a civilization which predates our idea of when recorded history began is a big assumption.

There are artificial structures on Mars?

Also, Antarctica has been ice-covered since the Miocene. There were no humans then.

iSeamas wrote:

D'Eyncourt wrote:

iSeamas wrote:

LOL.

I do wonder if there is are people who buy into the ancient astronauts, but also believe the moon landing was a hoax.

About the latter....

I thought Buzz Aldrin's response was best.

Some background: the person being punched by Buzz Aldrin is a well-known Moon Landing denier--I'll refer to him by his initials, BS. For years BS had been harrassing Aldrin about the moon landing since Aldrin has been the public face for NASA (Neil Armstrong has preferred to avoid almost all publicity). In 2002 at the time of the video from which this GIF was constructed, Aldrin had been lured to some conference about the first moon landing only to find that BS had arranged the entire event. Naturally Aldrin left in a huff only to be confronted by BS on the steps of the building when the above happened (after BS called Aldrin a "thief, liar and coward" and poked Aldrin with his Bible upon which he had also challenged Aldrin to swear that he had been on the moon). For reasons unknown BS's video has always been reversed (witness the reverse "360" on the building column in the background*). No charges were filed.

*EDIT--it occurs to me that perhaps the numbers are reversed because the video was taken inside of the building: thus the numbers are printed on the smoked glass and the "column" instead is an alcove between the actual columns. On the other hand I always had the impression that this video was taken on the steps outside of the building. Anyone know if Aldrin is left-handed?

Last edited by D'Eyncourt (2009-11-11 8:56 am)

Bren wrote:

To his credit, Bart Sibrel did publicly acknowledge that he'd done wrong, and owed Aldrin an apology for his own part in that altercation. He made this admission on an episode of Coast-to-Coast AM, during which he also jokingly implied that host Ian Punnet (an ordained minister, no less) was smoking marijuana. He also accused at least one caller of secretly being a shill for NASA.

Was it "I'm sorry I've been wrong all along" or "I'm sorry the video didn't turn people against Aldrin"?

I strongly suspect the latter, especially considering your last sentence above.

You take that back! Dan Aykroyd was on Coast to Coast just the other day.

Just saw him on the schedule. I don't listen all that often, but they regularly do get legitimate academics who are willing to go slumming.

Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has been on Coast-to-Coast several times as well. The current host is genial and asks good questions which allows the Bad Astronomer to talk a lot about his topics (not just astronomy).