CP3S

Warbler said:

CP3S said:

I'm enjoying the moon landing hoax discussion. Real discussion and less smart comments and people taking offense would go a long ways though.

how can we possibly have a real discussion about a insane idea that the moon landing was fake?   There is no point to it.   And I refuse to give BmB the pleasure of that kind of discussion.   As Boost said, it is ass craziness.   No matter what you say, you can't change the minds of idiots like BmB.    There is no way to have a rational conversation about the moon landing with someone crazy enough to believe it was faked.

What if it really was faked? Or what if something else is faked, and we never question or consider? Your stance doesn't seem to be it really happened because of "A", "B", and "C" reasons; but rather that "it really happened BECAUSE IT IS INSANE TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE!!!" "Insane idea", "ass craziness", "idiots like BmB" "FOAD", etc.

I don't think it hurts to question the "of course!"s in our lives.

Imagine if our government had decided that the space race was a lost cause, wasted money and impossible. Would it really be below them to fake it for the win? Obviously, I don't think this is what happened. But I do feel like nobody has bothered to really look over the reasoning and say way it is such an "insane idea" and "ass craziness", rather they just write it off as insanity and refuse to talk about it. Feels like there is a good deal of emotions involved, rather than rational. As the little kid who once dreamed of being an astronaut and tended to look at those guys as the epitome of awesomeness, the idea of it being faked did use to strike quite a nerve on me, so I get it. But I also think it is kind of cool to learn about there arguments and to be able to supply technical reasons for why they are so very ignorant and wrong.

CP3S said:

I mean, someone doesn't believe we ever landing on the moon, or that we didn't land on the moon every time we said we did. Is that really a big thing? Who cares what they believe.

its insulting to the US, all the people that worked on and risked their lives to get to the moon, and especially offensive to families of the three men that died in the fire.

I am sick and tired of all these asinine conspiracy theorists assclowns.  

I don't think getting pissed at them defends the honor of our country. Knocking them on their ass by discrediting their stupid reasoning, I feel does.

Keep in mind, a lot of people who think the moon landing was faked aren't from nor have ever been to America. They have an outside in view on the whole thing. Seems it was a topic that came up a lot when I lived overseas, since that damn Fox documentary has been circulating foreign airwaves for so many years. Since I was an American, and that documentary played on TV from time to time, I guess a lot of people found it an appropriate dinner topic. That stupid documentary is probably the most detailed piece of media they have seen on the event. I think they can be forgiven for being pulled in by it.

Likewise, you have a lot of younger kids these days who sadly don't see the space programs as exciting as the kids of my generation and prior and don't see it as something sacred, but spend a lot of time on the interwebs absorbing information (some most of which is BS, like the Apollo conspiracy). I think these poor youngins' can be forgiven for their ignorance and are better off being educated and set straight than written off as assclowns. When the younger me believed something silly and bothered to mention it to someone, I was usually set straight, which made me rethink and change my view. But I imagine if someone got defensive, called me names, and walked away, I'd probably find myself grinning and realizing I may be onto something and that these people seem to be incapable of proving my silly belief wrong. I might just cling to it tighter, feeling that since no one will refute it, it might just be irrefutable.

BmB said:

Blocking someone for saying something you don't agree with isn't helping the case that you are rational enough to lay judgement on whether the moon landings were faked or not.

^This.

I'm enjoying the moon landing hoax discussion. Real discussion and less smart comments and people taking offense would go a long ways though. I mean, someone doesn't believe we ever landing on the moon, or that we didn't land on the moon every time we said we did. Is that really a big thing? Who cares what they believe.

Warbler said:

CP3S said:

darth_ender said:

Incidentally, I've been reading through the old religion thread that twister found.  I find it fascinating that C3PX was such an ardent defender of Christianity (and as eloquent as always, I might add), while sean_wookie dismissed religion so out of hand.  Both, it seems, have had some changes of thought in the past 5 years.  Fascinating.

I am still an ardent defender of Christianity.

?

I defend it when it needs it. ;)

It is actually an old poster. One of my close friends had it on his wall when we were kids.

Bingowings said:

As there is no evidence for or against the existence of any supernatural beings any position on the subject is a belief or at the very least an unsubstantiated opinion.

By that logic, there is no evidence for or against tiny little men who come into my kitchen at night and nibble at the bread I left out on the counter. But still, I have no reason to even consider the possibility of them. Especially when what are clearly mouse droppings found on the floor lead us to a much more plausible and reasonable explanation for the nibbled bread.

I feel like lack of evidence for or against kind of cancel each other out. If there is no evidence for or against, why is it even a consideration or a question? I could come up with an off the cuff ridiculous hypothesis (like two races of aliens fighting each other into extinction in just the next system over), and claim it to be true, so long as it is unable to be disproven. I might even go out and spread the word about these poor aliens who are misguidedly bringing each other to the verge of extinction and try to convince the world we need to start putting time and money into ways to send them a warning and tell them we have plenty of room for them on our planet (after all, it is a resource war. These poor things share a tiny planet that is only a few hundred square yards round. Fortunately, these aliens are only half an inch tall at their absolute tallest, but still, the planet has been overwhelmed by too many of them. If only we could go rescue some of them and bring them to earth, all the violence could stop!).

Nobody could prove me wrong (because my planet is too small to be seen through a telescope, and in fact, this planet doesn't reflect light somehow, so a telescope could never see it anyway), but still, nobody would believe me. There is simply no reason to. "No evidence for" + "no evidence against" = "no evidence for"

A true lack of belief/unbelief in God is Apatheism.

That is not accurate. You are kind of mixing concepts of ideologies with concepts of philosophies and forcing one to be the other.

Atheism plain and simple describes the lack of belief in a god. There are many types of atheists who are atheists of varying degrees, but in the end, someone who ascribes to atheism denies the existence of at least one or more gods.

Apatheism on the other hand, is a lack of interest. An apatheist might be an atheist, but beyond that, they really couldn't care less and don't really think the existence of a god really even matters or is of any sort of consequence. I'd call an apatheist more of an agnostic who couldn't care less. To an apatheist, whether god exists or not couldn't possibly be of any importance.

There are plenty of total atheist (believing adamantly that no gods exist) who find the lack of existence of deities to be of extreme importance, which would place them far from being apatheists.

Bingowings said:

The evidence seems to point rather conclusively towards men landing on the moon but that doesn't mean there isn't more to the story than what we know or that all that evidence is 100% of the truth.

It just means from the evidence we have it seems more probable that they did and seems highly improbable that the landings were 100% faked.

I feel like giving the faked landing theories even 1% credit is far too much. There is no reason to believe we didn't land on the moon. All the "evidence" against it are crackpot misunderstandings of physics.

An example is the movement of moon dust. Many people have cited the odd way in which moon dust is shot into the air by the rovers wheels and the rapid manner in which it falls to the ground is way too fast for a low gravity environment. This is one of the first things moon conspiracy theorist will throw at you, and exhibits a misunderstanding a physics. The moon has no atmosphere, no air, so there is nothing else to impede or slow the fall of the dirt other than the lower gravity. The dirt in recordings of the rovers is falling slower than it would on earth, and no faster than other objects are seen to fall on the moon, but it is falling in a perfect uniform pattern and making perfect arcs from the wheel to the ground, which is exactly what we'd expect to find with a lack of atmosphere.

Another big thing credited as major evidence of a hoax is the flag blowing in the wind. The flags' poles had just a single wire jutting out along the top making the flag stand straight out, the bottom (which is the part we see swaying in videos) is unsupported. Again, no atmosphere on the moon means no wind, but it also means lack of atmospheric friction. Do we suppose if we had something like a car antenna on the moon, and we twanged it, it would simple go straight back to its normal position instead of violently flying back and forth like it would on earth? No, lack of atmospheric friction means it would go on flipping back and forth longer.

This is clearly what we are seeing with the flag. The astronauts pound it into the ground, and the vibrations continue to sway the unsupported bottom of the flag for a while. Couple this with lower gravitational pull encouraging the flag to stop swaying. Again, this is exactly what we should expect to see in a law gravity no atmosphere environment. It is evidence for that footage actually being taken on the moon, not evidence against it!

The angles of the shadows is another one I really like. Once in college I had the pleasure of sitting next to a moon landing conspiracy believer during lunch in the school cafeteria. His favorite piece of evidence was the way the shadows go in different directions in the moon footage videos, he explained that would be impossible with the sun being the only light source. All shadows would be pointing the same direction, but since it was a studio with many different light sources, the shadows crossed and went all over the place. It was sometime shortly after noon, on a very bright and sunny day, and when we stepped out of the cafeteria building and onto campus I was delighted to be able to point how the shadows around us crossed and went all over the place, even though the sun was the one light source casting the shadows.

You can pick out every major piece of evidence for a moon landing hoax, apply a bit of reality to it, and find it is nothing out of what we should be expected. 

Now we've resorted to The Shining for proof of a moon landing hoax? That is very silly, if Kubrick really did it, why would he try to rat himself out? Okay, so maybe he wanted us to know the truth, but was sworn to secrecy by the government; don't you think someone involved in the conspiracy would have seen the movie, noticed all the Apollo 11 stuff, and caught on? It is much more reasonable to assume Kubrick was simply making some amusing references.

I don't think it was that unfair of a comparison Bingo drew.

It was more of a "be mindful, here's a larger perspective" comment, than invoking his religion in a "Haha, you're just as silly as conspiracy theorists!" kind of way.

I think Bingo is right, many of us are quick to ridicule one brand of silly, and even quicker to reverently defend our own brand of extreme silliness. Ironically, the whole Christian thing is far more silly and 100% less plausible than the faked moon landing.

See look at that! I just did it.

Bingowings said:

If someone believes something regardless of the evidence that's their personal choice and to call one nuts is to call all nuts, be they jews, atheists, mormons, alien abduction believers, human supremacists, what have you.

Hmmm, I do feel like all observations of the natural world lead toward evidence of a total lack of supernatural beings, including a magical architect. I agree that there is plenty of evidence standing in the way of evolution, but I don't feel this is so much the case toward atheism.

Everybody (except for perhaps for the extremely gullible who are willing to take their polytheism to the extreme) is an atheist of one type or another. The term simply refers to a lack of a belief in a god, technically it can be specific to one god, or a blanket atheism covering all gods. With that, Warbler and most others here are atheists when it comes to Zeus, Odin, Ganesha, and a vast number of other gods. I am sure it is safe to say, even if they opened their minds completely and were truly on a spirit seeking journey, there would not be the least bit of anything compelling them away from their atheistic beliefs in these gods.

Typically evidence for the supernatural boils down to explaining the unknown features of the physical world, and numbing a sense of futility. And generally our culture dictates what sort of supernatural things and what gods we believe in. When we put effort into it, most of the things traditionally seen as evidence for the supernatural can be given a physical explanation.

Not surprising, it was very un-Star Trek like and very clearly made for and marketed at people who were not fans of Star Trek.

Most people I know who loved it don't care for Star Trek in general, and very few Trek fans I know can stand the thing. I got really tired of people saying things like, "You know, I didn't think I liked Star Trek, but that was actually pretty good!" Yeah... No, the fact is you still don't like Star Trek; you liked this because it was made to appeal to you, and it succeeded.

AuggieBenDoggie said:

 

You know, if episode 7 flops or preforms lower than expected because of him, starwars could very well be ruined for us OT fans, because no OT fan is going to trust anything coming out of lucasfilm.

Wait? Has it not already been ruined for us fans of the OT? I wasn't aware there were any of us left who still did trust anything coming out of Lucasfilm.

The only thing about Disney purchasing Star Wars that excites or interests me is the potential of the original trilogy eventually making its way to Blu-ray. Beyond that, I really have a hard time caring.

I'm not sure if there is a director out there that might have been able to get me excited about this (Duncan Jones, maybe?), but J. J. Abrams isn't it.

Yeah, he's not in his late teens. Probably just barely in high school.

adywan said:

The picture i posted is of him. He had various pictures of himself as his twitter profile that were all the same person. He looks about late teens /early twenties. He monitors this thread and as soon as i posted his pic in here he changed his profile to one where you can't see his face and has changed it several times since, all hiding his face.

I only saw the picture you posted, felt it confirmed my assessment of his age, but it was pretty hard to tell from that picture.

I've come to really dislike the Wilhelm. I mean, I get the whole thing, cool little in joke, but it is just so recognizable and it is in everything. One weekend I watched four things. An episode of The Venture Brother. It had the Wilhelm in it. Reservoir Dogs. Wilhelm. Sucker Punch. Wilhelm. Beauty and the Beast. Wilhelm.

It is basically in everything and every time I hear the thing it comes off as cheesy and I find myself rolling my eyes. Often times it is used in places where it doesn't even fit. Reservoir Dogs, guy gets knocked over and Wilhelm. Quite the dramatic yell for getting knocked over on the sidewalk.

Decided to check this thing out after all the talk I've heard about it.

Didn't do anything for me. But I am not a big comic book guy, and haven't been into SW EU since the nineties, nor longing for the good ol' days of the prePT EU like a lot of fans seem to have.

It did give me a pre-PT vibe. I could totally believe this thing was written in the late nineties if somebody presented it to me as such.

I am trying to figure out if those pictures Hotrod posted are mocking him, or if they are seriously holding him in that high of regard.

Either way, what a tool.

Warbler said:

Do we know for certain that he is a kid? 

I work with kids. He sounds like a kid. Adults don't act like that, unless they have some severe developmental or mental issues. I have a hard time believing he is almost 20 like he claims, sounds like a very immature preteen. Maybe early teen.

Do your legal guardians know you are loose on the internet?

Ugh, I hate situations like this. This is why I am an advocate of parents monitoring their children's internet activity, at least until they display appropriate maturity. On the one hand, it is really annoying for the "grown-ups" to have a obnoxious kid running around the forums. On the other hand, I hate seeing adults throwing insults and battling it out verbally with kids. It really isn't a healthy situation all around.

:(

sean wookie said:

So, not liking TotalBiscuit we started a forum war?

No. We didn't start anything. We didn't even know who this TotalBiscuit tool was until he got pissed off at one of our member's opinions and came here to show us what for.

What we had here wasn't a forum war. What we had here was a bunch of people registering at our site to troll us because they didn't like the opinion of one of our members. And some of us happened to find this behavior really sad and amusing and made fun of them for it.

Tobar said:

*throws a brick with "1998" scrawled across it through the window*

I feel like you are trying to compare apples to iPhones here, simple because they share a common name.

The 1998 film is good. But this isn't a remake of that or anything even comparable. You are trying to compare a film adaption of a novel, to a film adaption of a musical, which itself was a stage adaption of a novel.

Same story, but two entirely different mediums.

I hate when people do that!

When the film 300 came out, I heard so many people comparing it to the Richard Egan film from 1962. I even heard some people calling it a remake. Ugh, it wasn't a remake and had no connection to the old film other than being based on the same events. I swear my dad still thinks it is a remake and scratches his head in extreme confusion as to why they would put such weird stuff in it, no matter how many times I try to explain to him that it is based on a graphic novel.

It is hard to see people we care about go through things like this. For some reason, at least for me, seeing someone I know struggle mentally is heart wrenching. Makes me feel so helpless and powerless.

I hope things turn out okay and that he is doing somewhat better. Hopefully he has a followup appointment very soon?

As far as somebody being able to hack facebook, why would anybody go through that much effort just to prank someone? Sounds very time consuming, posing as a whole friend's list worth of people and making cleverly thought out subtle little mockeries. And it would take a very special sort of person to do that sort of thing to someone suffering from post-craniotomy mental disorders.

I wrote a reply to NeverarGreat's post shortly after he posted it, and was surprised to see it wasn't posted. Must have gotten distracted then closed my browser without clicking "post" or something.

NeverarGreat said:

Oh, I know what PJ is trying to do; however, after seeing the first installment, I just don't think that it's working. Maybe I'll eat my words after seeing the next two.

I thought it seemed to be working well, but of course that is entirely dependent on how the next two installments turn out.

Them's fightin' words. Granted, my Tolkien shelf is missing the Silmarillion, but that's only because I'm lending it to a friend. Which of the two versions of the Hobbit on my shelf am I not familiar with? Or perhaps it's The Lord of the Rings, Unfinished Tales, or The Children of Hurin that I'm rusty on?

I jest.

Clearly I was mistaken. I have the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The Children of Hurin as well. The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales I've never managed to read cover to cover, and have treated them more or less as reference works over the years; Children of Hurin I was extremely excited about and got my copy the first day it was released, started reading, then got bogged down with some academic obligations and never managed to get back around to finishing it. I should do that sometime soon.

My favorite stuff by Tolkien are his children's stories. I love Roverandom, The Father Christmas Letters, and stuff like Leaf by Niggle and Father Giles of Ham. It is a shame the man wasn't a published children's author during his day, I feel like he really excelled at it, but of course, it wasn't really his thing and just fun stories he wrote for his own children. I am sure he would have much rather been well known for his academic works and for his Middle Earth stories.

Tolkien always used the Eagles as his last minute jump in and save the day thing. A very obvious and blatant deux ex machina. I feel they have always been more than a bit of a cop out. There is really no deep "character" and "philosophy". They aren't confusing, they are just lame.

I agree with that, partially. I'm talking about those casual viewers that think that Gandalf summons them with his magic, and they disappear afterwards, or other such confusion. They don't talk in the movies, they just have Gandalf find a moth and whisper to it for some reason, as if that's enough time for the moth to find the eagles and for them to come like trained animals in search of a reward. In the Hobbit, it is established that the Lord of the Eagles was helped by Gandalf when the wizard removed an arrow from him, and the eagles helped Gandalf and company partly in payment of this debt, and partly because they don't like the goblins either. They would not, however, go near any towns of men, for the men would shoot arrows at them. The ancient race of Eagles are described as "proud and strong and noble-hearted", so they clearly have some character. I just think that showing this would clear up the misunderstandings with casual viewers, and would be an addition to the movie which wasn't made up by PJ. But yes, their continual aid at convenient moments is rather lame. 

I see what you mean now. I didn't really put much thought into it before, but now that my mind is on it, the fact that we never hear one of the eagles speak is annoying and a wasted opportunity. They are kind of like glorified magical taxis in the films, plucking characters out of the midst of disaster, dropping them off to safety, and never uttering a word. In Lord of the Rings it wasn't a big deal because we only see them pick up Gandalf, then later Frodo and Sam at the end, and both times they are at parts where exposition or dialogue wouldn't flow too well in the films. But in The Hobbit, there was no reason not to have them speak, and it was a little awkward they just plopped them off and left without any communication.

Hmmm, should this thread really be called "Minor Miracles" or should it be the Xhonzi's Does it Himself Thread"?

I'm thinking these things are less inexplicable by nature or science, and more minor home repairs you can easily get done by getting up and actually tackling the problem.

TV's Frink said:

The Lando System?

Lando isn't a system, he's a man.

A sexy, sexy, dark chocolate man.

NeverarGreat said:

Speaking of highly convenient occurrences, Yoda's death seems to require more explanation than is given in Jedi. As it is, he dies five minutes after Luke arrives on Dagobah, a stunning coincidence. It could be that it was his destiny to train Luke, and seeing as his training was complete, there was nothing to prolong his life.

Actually, this happens in real life a lot. It is not at all uncommon to see a terminally ill person on the threshold of death to hang onto life for days or weeks and then die literally within minutes of some far away living loved one finally being able to make it to see them. We have a remarkable ability to fight and hang onto to life. If this happens in the real world you can easily assume a powerful Jedi master would easily be able to carry out the same feat, but perhaps in an even more remarkable way or for a longer time.

I've always assumed Yoda was hanging onto life waiting for Luke to return before letting go.

Hey, I get out all the time! Mostly to go to TV's Mom's house.

Maybe...

:(