BS: Did We really land on the Moon?

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Bagpuss
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 08:42 AM

A bagpuss and a clanger all in one thread.

For reference, when you squeeze the whistling clanger, he/she says "Oh sod it! The bloody thing's stuck again". I have this on the greatest authority (Oliver Postgate, creator of both The Clangers and Bagpuss - as well as Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine and Pingwings!).

Bagpuss

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 04:21 AM

Such a lot of praise for a post in which I even forgot some line breaks makes me nervous, I'm not used to it.

Ebbie, I can easily say 'yes' to your questions, but I'm less sure I'd say 'yes' to your conclusions from that (grin).

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: wdyat12
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 01:19 PM

You got that right.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 01:03 PM

Those that think they know everything are always getting in the way of us who do.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: wdyat12
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 12:50 PM

Ha! I'll have to show your posts to Ben. He still thinks he knows everything.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: sledge
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 10:56 AM

Yes you can get them on video, I have several of the little charmers as stone cast ornaments. Don't forget the iron chicken.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,Tracey Dragonsfriend
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 10:42 AM

The Soup Dragon was from the series 2The Clangers" in the UK. The Clangers were cute little pink creatures that ived in on the moon, and their voices were entirely done using a "Swannee Whistle", (I have no clue what the real name of this instrument is, but my Grandad had one, and I've wanted one of my own ever since!) which gives such expressive voice tones that you'd swear you can tell what they're saying. The narrator would give you a general overview of what was going on. The Soup Dragon was friendly, armoured in aluminium scales, spoke in the whistle's very lowest register, and would provite the Clangers with steaming bowls of noodle-filled soup on demand. There were also chiming flower-like things, and all sorts of other oddities that were friends of this cute pink family of Clangers. In the UK you can currently buy them in gift shops as small stuffed toys that play a sampled whistle when squeezed, so I wonder if you can get it on video now...

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,Tracey Dr
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 10:36 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: sledge
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 06:40 AM

I think this passion for a conspiracy these days reflects the fact that most of us lead very quiet, somewhat dull lifes with little or no risk or danger in it.

So we react by creating these whacko theories with little or no evidence thereby injecting a little danger into dull normalcy with no real element of risk to anyone (except for those who are murdered by the government for exposing coverups)

:)

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: wdyat12
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 12:58 AM

OK. Back to this thread now. Thanks Ebbie.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 12:55 AM

Fiber Segue: " - do not pretend you can answer each question (you're bound to lose this game in most cases); either there are answers you just do not know at this moment or some answers will remain unanswered forever without the big picture being wrong"...

Wolfgang, I couldn't have said it better myself! Might you admit that there are times that applying the science of B follows A and continues in an orderly fashion on to Z might not answer the posed question? *G*

Ebbie

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: wdyat12
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 10:47 PM

Naaaa! Soup Dragon is a group. My 30 semething son Ben filled me in. Still don't have a clue.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,CLANGER
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 07:23 PM

Wydat12--Soup Dragon

I think the Soup Dragon is a ~wiseman?~ that lives on the moon, he looks after the clangers, not sure though. I saw it on T.V when I was small, but there again I watched the moon landings.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 05:35 PM

If the moon were really made of green cheese, space ships would be shaped like fondue forks.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: wdyat12
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 04:44 PM

You're making me hungry Guest.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 04:40 PM

Is it moonbeams or moonshine that mucks up all the brains here? No volunteers to go up there and find out? [Bring me back gorgonzola or feeta, or any other color you find there. And forget the rocks, we've got enough already.]

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: wdyat12
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 01:59 AM

Hey all you old lefties, I copped that off hober.com.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: wdyat12
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 01:56 AM

Here is a site that might shed some moonlight on this thread. Be careful though, the flag on their hompage is conspicuously flying the wrong way. Turn Left: Make your own Conspiracy Theory. http://www.cjnetworks.com/%7ecubsfan/conspiracy.html

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: wdyat12
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 12:36 AM

Clanger,

Enlighten me. Soup Dragon???..... Oracle? Wiseman? Chinese Restaurant?

Wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,Bruce O.
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 09:09 PM

Search with Google for 'Robin Hood and maid' to turn up Smithson's ballad. It's on the rochester.edu website. They don't even know that it's by Smithson. [They missed Thomas Robbins as author of 3 of them]

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,Bruce O.
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 09:01 PM

Read your history! Bishop Godwin's 'The Man in the Moon' has been around since 1660. I have a reprint, but it left off Samuel Smithson's ballad of the same title at the end. Smithson was quite a humourist, and Prof. Child never figured out that Smithson's "Robin Hood and Maid Marian" was a parody of Robin Hood ballads.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,CLANGER
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 08:54 PM

WDYAT12 The moon is fake?

So the soup dragon told me.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: pict
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 08:53 PM

Does it matter?I've never understood why anybody would want to go to the moon apart from a cheap thrill.The whole idea of staring into the deepest depths of space doesn't really make much sense to me because it's highly unlikely we'll ever find any populated planet within the lifetime of our species I mean to all intents and purposes the hubble telescope is really just a very big and expensive kaleidoscope I wouldn't mind having a keek through it but what I might see won't make any real difference to my life on earth.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Wotcha
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 07:29 PM

Enquiring minds want to know:
Did Neil Armstrong really say "Good luck, Mr. Gorski" (the subject of an internet chain mailing some years back ...). Seems out of character for the guy.

Was the British TV series "UFO" really outakes from NASA footage that couldn't be used.

"Beam me up, Scottie"
F.A.B.
Cheers,
Brian

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Penny S.
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 05:55 PM

When the FES had contacts in Dover, we looked forward to an annual item about their hypotheses in the local press. I remember one based on the position of the horizon against the line of the cliffs (those cliffs, the white ones), which they argued was higher than it would be if the world were curved. They didn't state where they were standing.

A person with contacts in NASA has suggested to me that the missions were a fake, that they did not go to the Moon, but in fact visited another place with the same name.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: wdyat12
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 04:51 PM

The moon is a fake?

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,CLANGER
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 03:22 PM

The Earth aint flat, but the moon is!

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Blackcatter
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 09:58 AM

They can always say that anyone is lying.

It makes one wonder if the Flat Earth Society were just say all of this stuff with at least half their tongues in cheek. At a certain point we all have to take their word for it that they really believe what they are saying. They could be just looking for attention.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Grab
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 08:48 AM

Blackcatter: Yeah, strange guys, the FES. Their theory was that since no-one had ever crossed from one side of Antarctica to the other, you couldn't provide it wasn't just the "rim" of the world. The theory didn't take account of the fact that you could (and whalers did) sail all round the Southern Ocean, and if the world was a disc then it'd take a damn sight longer to get from one place to another.

But not so long ago Ranulph Fiennes *did* cross from one side of Antarctica to the other. I've yet to hear a reaction from the FES on that one. Maybe they'll just say he's lying and that he can't prove he did.

Grab.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Blackcatter
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 02:13 AM

Unless I missed something above - did anyone mention that last week the founder of the Flat Earth Society died? The Flat Earth Society was on of the main proponents of the "faked Moon missions" idea

Here's the blurb I found on NPR.org:

Flat Earth: The president of the International Flat Earth Society has died in Lancaster, Calif. Charles Johnson believed the Earth is actually as flat and circular as a phonograph record, with the North Pole right in the middle. Johnson and his fellow believers have rejected NASA and space exploration as an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the government. He was 76 years old.

Frankly, though, I don't know if we should believe that he's really dead - I guess the "Truth is out there."

By the way - O.J. dies in Capricorn One dosn't he? Gotta have a different feeling to see that scene nowadays . . .

pax yall

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Sourdough
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 11:44 PM

Wolfgang -

It is a pleasure to see your name in a thread where many people are thrashing around trying to get a hold on an issue that pushes the absurd. In a few sentences you put thoughtfully organized information together in a very readable,and insightful message. Sourdough

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 11:19 AM

The moon rocks I saw are too dull to be taken for earth rocks. That's not saying which moon they came from. Conspiracy theories make a lot of money, so everything now is a conspiracy. Real is impossible to find.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: mousethief
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 11:15 AM

Wolfgang -- well said.

Alex

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Kim C
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 10:18 AM

Mister's uncle is big on conspiracy theories. He thinks the Rothschilds had something to do with the 19th century cotton market and the perpetuation of slavery. Among other things.

It's no use to argue with him. I just nod my head and have another glass of wine.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,Matt_R
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 10:12 AM

Phew, I was starting to think I was the only Belle & Sebastian fan here! I listened to the song yesterday from Napster. Pretty cool!

Don't leave the light on, baby.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Bagpuss
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 09:26 AM

wdyat - always a pleasure to spread news of the great Belle and Sebastian.

Trucker - they phone round the woodyards at that time every year. Its routine.

Bagpuss

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,The Trucker
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 08:31 AM

If ya like conspiracy theories try this one out, that foot and mouth in the UK was spread by its own government, although it has now got well out of hand. It was spread to stop the next stage of the fuel protests (which were planned for March). A few million spent on replaceing livestock is nothing compared to the billions it would cost cutting fuel tax. After all why would they phone round the wood yards a fortnight before the first outbreak?

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 04:32 AM

There's more in this thread to learn than just arguments about the truth of the moon landing: How do you detect baloney in general? Let's say the holocaust denial as an extreme example. Are you going to read all the original documents? Are you able to respond to all questions raised? Most of you aren't and that is wrongly taken by the proponents of an outrageous theory as a confirmation of their ideas.

Can you be quite confident about an idea being baloney even if you have read less than the proponents? I think yes and that's how: Apply common sense and ask some simple questions.

- ask yourself or others about the potential motives (mousethief) - ask whether a conspiracy could have remained undetected (Catspaw, Naemanson,...) - ask what is conspiciously missing under the assumption of the idea being true (in this case e.g., the Russians crying foul; Big Daddy) - do not pretend you can answer each question (you're bound to lose this game in most cases); either there are answers you just do not know at this moment (Catspaw) or some answers will remain unanswered forever without the big picture being wrong

Yes, conspiration theories are fun, independent of content. But most if not all of them should be sold in the 'fiction' section of each bookstore.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 04:21 AM

...and some people believe Columbus discovered a strange land called America. I don't believe it, it was all filmed on a set at Pinewood, and a very implausible soap opera it has proved to be...
RtS

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: wdyat12
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 03:49 AM

Great tunes and great thoughts Big Daddy!

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,BigDaddy
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 12:42 AM

And to bring some music into this: Give a listen to "Beercans On The Moon," by Ed Sanders, "I Saw It On TV" by John Fogerty, and John Stewart's "Armstrong" ("I wonder if a long time ago, somewhere in the universe, they watched a man named Adam walk upon the earth"). I guess I believe it really happened because the Russians would have been only too happy to prove it didn't happen, and must have tracked the flight from the get-go.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: wdyat12
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 10:56 PM

And the smoking man leaves another clue in the ashtray.

wdyat12

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Jeri
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 06:46 PM

One of the reasons I like the X-Files, Murry - they have conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories!

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 06:32 PM

Well, well, well, I had no idea that the Apollo conspiracy theory had such a disreputable past, and having checked out the websites mentioned (thanks Jeri, I had missed MT's link) I realise that there is no way anyone with half a brain could doubt the historical veracity of the Apollo missions.

Still, conspiracy theories are such fun, aren't they? And I still want to know more about your glassy ruins on the moon, Spaw.

Murray

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 06:23 PM

I used to shave my dags too, but now I prefer the natural look. (Sorry, Brett!)

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Amos
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 06:22 PM

Murray:

Let's get real. The blasts at Nagasaki and Bikini were focussed in a radius measured in miles. The impact of a solar flare, no matter how enormous at origin, is propogated along a radius measured in millions of miles, along a surface that expands by the inverse square law...which means by the time it reaches the Van Allen belt its energy density is pretty attenuated I would imagine. And although the Van Allen belt certainly does contain layers of electromagnetic force and some radiation, I haven't seen anything indicating the level and frequency of that radiation is lethal. Especially to someone behind a reflective hull wearing a protective suit.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: kendall
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 06:20 PM

Two men can keep a secret...if one of them is dead.

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Naemanson
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 06:14 PM

Kim, I know what you mean. I was at a buckskinner's encampment at the annual Leonard's Mills Living History Days. Someone walked into our camp, looked at the plank chair and asked (I am not making this up!) "What are those chairs for?"

My father enjoys messing with their minds. He made a small box out of birch bark and put some burdocks inside. Then he labeled the box "Porcupine Eggs" and set it out for people to look at. A good percentage of them asked if that's what they really were.

TV, and the media in general, make people put their minds on hold or something.

(In Maine burdocks are round fuzzy seed pods that attach to hair, fur, or clothing and are next to impossible to remove. They come apart when you try to remove them and stay stuck in the fur. The burdock plant can grow up to six feet tall and provide hundreds of the damned things. My parents have to shave their dags every year to get them cleaned up.)

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: Kim C
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 06:01 PM

Les, as a reenactor, I have never been asked "is that a real fire?" but a lot of others have. A friend was musing on why people would ask such a ridiculous question. Her theory was that people are so used to seeing Pretend Things in the Movies and on Television, and the know the Civil War battle they're about to see is Pretend, so the fire must be too. And the food. And the tent you sleep in. And the baby in your arms. And your hairdo.

Personally, I think we went to the moon, I think John Wilkes Booth was shot dead, as was Jesse James, and I don't believe Thomas Jefferson had Meriwether Lewis murdered. Haven't made up my mind yet about Roswell or the Kennedy assassinations. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Did We really land on the Moon?
From: GUEST,Les B
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 04:55 PM

Spaw is right, it's for the almighty $!

What I find really interesting is the broadcast media's infatuation right now with reality - ie, the Survivor shows, World's Funniest Videos/Animals, Crocodile/Serpent handlers (remember when sharks were the "in" dangerous critter?), Surgery shows, and Cop chases. Remember how many people tuned in to watch OJ's white bronco cruise down the highway ?

And then, to make it more surrealistic, they start messing with our minds about what we thought was real !

Of course media theorists would argue that as soon as you put something through the lens it's no longer real. You're controlled by the viewpoint of whoever is operating the recording device. Even surveillence cameras have the spot on the wall where they're mounted picked by someone. Media is not reality, no matter how objective you try to be. But hey, it's the stuff dreams are made of.