Two Examples of How You Can “Prove” Anything with Low Standards of Evidence

A lot of wacky ideas seem to be supported by evidence, but when you look at what’s used as evidence it often amounts to a bunch of unimpressive coincidences.

Take the following two examples:

1. Kubrick’s “The Shining” is his confession for staging the moon landing. Some of the “evidence” given:

We have to begin to understand Kubrick’s story from his use of symbols. As I like to say: if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a symbol is worth a thousand pictures. For it will be through the use of symbol that the real story of The Shining can be revealed.

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A cold winter storm has now blown over the Hotel. The oncoming storm is a symbol of the Cold War between Russia and the United States. Of course the Cold War is also one of the driving forces for the entire reason for faking the moon landings.

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As Danny stands up, the answer is revealed in an instant. Danny is wearing a sweater with a crudely sewn rocket pictured on the front. On the rocket clearly seen on Danny’s sweater are the words: APOLLO 11.

The audience watching the film literally sees the launch of Apollo 11, right before their eyes, as Danny rises from the floor. It isn’t the real launch of Apollo 11, it is, of course, the symbolic launching of Apollo 11. In other words – it isn’t real.

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May I humbly suggest that the word “All” in this repeated sentence actually stands for “A11” that is: “A-One-One”, or Apollo 11?

“A11 work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

May I suggest that the nickname, or the code name, for the faking of the Apollo Moon Missions was A11?

Accepting that this is true we can see what Stanley is really telling us:

“Apollo 11 work and no play makes Jack (Kubrick) a dull boy.”

I’ll give him one thing, though, Jack Nicholson and Kubrick do look a lot alike!

2. Lady Gaga is an Illuminati Puppet:

The symbolism surrounding Lady Gaga is so blatant that one might wonder if it’s all a sick joke. Illuminati symbolism is becoming so clear that analyses like this one becomes a simple exercise of pointing out the obvious. Her whole persona (whether its an act or not) is a tribute to mind control, where being vacuous, incoherent and absent minded becomes a fashionable thing.

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“Gaga” is probably the easiest word to say in the English language, as it is often the first sound emitted by babies trying to imitate speech. So her name basically says: I’m a lady and I’m empty-headed. This empty head can filled with any crap you want. Imitate me young people. This state of mind is achieved after successful mind control.

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You only need to look at a couple of Lady Gaga pictures or videos to notice that she is constantly hiding one of her eyes. Most people will simply interpret this  as ”a cool thing to do” or a “fashion statement”. Those who have passed the 101 of Illuminati symbolism know that the All-Seeing Eye is probably its most recognizable symbol. The gesture of hiding one eye, usually the left one, goes way back in occult orders.

The comments  under the Lady Gaga article are hilarious, you have to read them.

These articles are both entertaining reads, but ultimately they’re just picking out anything that fits their theories. Using their standards for evidence I bet I could easily prove that Barack Obama is a Muslim or that there are hidden messages in the Bible or that Paul McCartney is dead. Oh wait…

Blue Moon & Eclipse – Beautiful End to 2009

I  just have to share this beautiful Astronomy Picture of the Day (for January 2, 2010):

Isn’t that gorgeous? If you know me, you know I love the moon. I’ve tripped more than once staring up at it while walking, it’s beautiful, so peaceful, and it amazes me to think that the light shining off of it is sunlight. SUNLIGHT! Reflecting off of the moon! How cool is that? It’s the simple things in life…

I digress…not only is this just a beautiful picture, but it’s also unique because it’s a Blue Moon, which means there were 13 full moons this year (as opposed to 12), and this one just happened to fall on New Year’s Eve. What also makes this special is that it’s a partial lunar eclipse, you can see the Earth’s shadow on the right.

The Earth’s shadow during a full moon! I love it.

Water on the Moon – Confirmed!

On October 9th of this year, NASA crasheed a rocket into the surface of the moon. The impact sent a (somewhat anti-climactic) plume of debris into the LCROSS satellite so that it could read it for evidence of water.

And guess what? They found it!

There is water on the Moon, scientists stated unequivocally on Friday, and considerable amounts of it.
“Indeed yes, we found water,” Anthony Colaprete, the principal investigator for NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, said in a news conference.

The confirmation of scientists’ suspicions is welcome news both to future explorers who might set up home on the lunar surface and to scientists who hope that the water, in the form of ice accumulated over billions of years, could hold a record of the solar system’s history.

Science!

Water on the Moon

The big space news in the last couple of days has been the discovery of water on the surface of the moon, which I think is pretty freaking cool:

NASA scientists have discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the Moon. Instruments aboard three separate spacecraft revealed water molecules in amounts that are greater than predicted, but still relatively small. Hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, also was found in the lunar soil. The findings were published in Thursday’s edition of the journal Science.

People are saying that this makes colonizing the Moon more of a possibility because we would be able to mine the water, but it doesn’t seem to me that there’s all that much of it:

“The data from Cassini’s VIMS instrument and M³ closely agree,” said Roger Clark, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist in Denver and member of both the VIMS and M³ teams. “We see both water and hydroxyl. While the abundances are not precisely known, as much as 1,000 water molecule parts-per-million could be in the lunar soil. To put that into perspective, if you harvested one ton of the top layer of the Moon’s surface, you could get as much as 32 ounces of water.”

Maybe it’s enough, obviously I don’t know much about what the needs of a moon base would be, but I think this discovery is really awesome even if it makes the return of people to the moon just that much more within reach.

My Galileoscope

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it on my blog, but I finally got my Galileoscope in the mail! I actually got it almost 2 months ago, and I still haven’t had a chance to use it very much…the woes of living in the city!

The instructions that came in the box were terrible, but they have much better instructions posted here (pdf).

I have a difficult  time focusing it, so I plan on getting a tripod for it because my hands aren’t nearly steady enough. But once you have it focused it’s fantastic.

I’ve been able to look at the moon, and it’s just beautiful. I’ve never looked at anything through a telescope before, and there’s nothing like seeing the features of the moon clearly with your own eyes. I hope to have the opportunity soon to get out of the city and try to spot Jupiter or Saturn.

I definitely recommend the Galileoscope for anyone with an interest in astronomy. If you’re American it only costs $15, so it’s quite a bargain. I’m Canadian and in total, with shipping and the conversion to Canadian dollars it cost me less than $40.

Forty Years Ago Man Was on the Moon

It’s been forty years since one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments: putting a human on another world. How freaking cool was that?! I wish I was around to see it live, and as you can tell by reading this list, I hope I’m around to see it happen again.

My eyes welled up when I read NASA’s take on the 40th anniversary, so I’m just going to quote them:

Forty years ago, Apollo astronauts set out on a daring adventure to explore the Moon. They ended up discovering their own planet.

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It was Christmas Eve, 1968, the close of one of the most turbulent, fractured years in U.S. and world history. The picture offered a much needed new perspective on “home.”For the first time in history, humankind looked at Earth and saw not a jigsaw puzzle of states and countries on an uninspiring flat map – but rather a whole planet, a fragile sphere of dazzling beauty floating alone in a dangerous void. There was a home worthy of careful stewardship.

The late nature photographer Galen Rowell described this photo as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.”

In a fitting tribute to the 40th anniversary of the moon missions, the LRO has sent back some pictures of the moon landing site. Head over to this site to have a look, they’re really cool to see. You can see the LM and it’s shadow, and even the paths taken by the astronauts across the surface.

Things I Want to See Before I Die (Part 1)

For some reason I’ve been thinking about my mortality a lot lately, maybe because I recently celebrated a birthday. Since I abandoned my wishful thinking of an afterlife I’ve become more okay with death.  I don’t have irrational fears of hell, I can just shut my eyes and that will be the end.

But the thought that the end is truly the end is also a really sad thought, because we live a time of so much innovation, and I would like to be around to witness it.

I decided that I’m going to make a list of discoveries and advancements that I’d like to see in my lifetime. I hope I can check some of them off soon, and I’ll try to update the list as I think of things…which is why I’m calling this post Part 1.

Here’s the list so far:

1. The discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle
2. Humans back to the Moon
3. Discovery of alien life, hopefully intelligent but bacteria would be cool too!
4. Figuring out what the heck dark matter is
5. Space tourism
6. Nuclear power to replace coal
7. AIDS vaccine

I’ll start off with 7, that’s a pretty ambitious list! Unfortunately I won’t be taking part in discovering or implementing any of these things, but I will idolize the scientists who do so. And I do hope to take part in some space tourism in my lifetime, how awesome would that be?!

What would be on your list?

One of the Many Reasons I Don’t Get the Appeal of Religion

I’m sitting on my balcony right now getting ready to watch some fireworks (Happy Canada Day!) and I’m in awe of the beautiful moon. It’s shining more brightly than any of the street lights down below.

If you just think about this for a minute. 150 million kilometres away there’s a giant ball of gas that is burning so hot and radiating so much light that during the day today it burned my skin, and now it’s illuminating our night because it’s being reflected off of an orbiting ball of rock.

Incredible.

As I stare at the moon I can’t help but think that believing a god blinked it into existence diminishes its magnificence. I think it’s way cooler and it makes me feel way luckier to be here when I consider that, as the evidence shows, our existence here is simply the result of random chance.

What do you think?

Going to the Moon, 40 Years Later

Here’s something cool…

On July 20th, 1969, humans first set foot on the moon. Now you can follow what happened leading up to the mission via Twitter as if it were happening today.

Go to: https://twitter.com/ApolloPlus40

[Follow me on Twitter @EnlightningLinZ]

Phantom Torso Returns to Earth

For the last 4 months, until May 27th, an armless, legless torso has been aboard the International Space Station, so that scientists could learn more about the space radiation that presents a challenge to having a human presence in space.

The torso provided a real-world confirmation that the computer models previously used to look at space radiation  were accurate, so now they can be confident in using the models to plan future space missions.

What does it all mean?:

“Short lunar missions are fine,” [Francis] Cucinotta [of NASA’s Johnson Space Centre] says, “but living in a lunar habitat for 6 months starts to be problematic. We’re going to have to do a really good job with radiation shielding and perhaps medical countermeasures to have 6-month missions.”

Mars will be even tougher, these models suggest. Some scenarios call for missions that would last 18 months or more. “Right now there’s no design solution to stay within safety limits for such a Mars mission,” Cucinotta says. “Putting enough radiation shielding around a spacecraft would make it far too heavy to launch, so we need to find better lightweight shielding materials, and we probably need to develop medical techniques to counteract damage to cells caused by cosmic rays.” He notes that one of the biggest obstacles to progress in this area is “uncertainty in the types of cell damage deep cosmic ray exposure can cause. We still have a lot to learn.”