EVERYONE IS WRONG!

[syrakusos]

DARWIN WAS WRONG!

Complicating the matter is the ability of cattle to interbreed with other closely related species. Hybrid individuals and even breeds exist, not only between European cattle and zebu but also with yaks [bos grunniens] (called a dzo), banteng, gaur, and bison ("cattalo"), a cross-genera hybrid. For example, genetic testing of the Dwarf Lulu breed, the only humpless "Bos taurus-type" cattle in Nepal, found them to be a mix of European cattle, zebu and yak. -- Wikipedia

BERNOULLI WAS WRONG!

(and so were Anderson and Eberhardt)

1) The notion that the air passing above and below the wing must do so in equal time is totally false.

2) The notion that a wing must be curved on top and flat on the bottom is totally false.

3) Given the velocity field near a wing, we can calculate the lift by considering how the air is deflected and using the principle of conservation of momentum

http://www.av8n.com/fly/lift.htm

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WAS WRONG!

Franklin knew of two types of electric charge, depending on the material one rubbed. He thought that one kind signified a little excess of the "electric fluid" over the usual amount, and he called that "positive" electricity (marked by +), while the other kind was "negative" (marked -), signifying a slight deficiency. It is not known whether he tossed a coin before deciding to call the kind produced by rubbing glass "positive" and the other "resinous" type "negative" (rather than the other way around), but he might just as well have.

[but today -- I point out -- we assign different polarities -- and it is NOT (totally) "arbitrary" but the result of sophisticated ELECTRIC FIELD experiements!!!]

http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/woppos.html

COLUMBUS WAS WRONG!!

The Earth is not "round" but an oblate spheroid and he seriously underestimated its circumference -- and the people he invaded were not Indians!

H. G. WELLS WAS WRONG!!

He predicted that the Second World War would see nations bombing each other cities from lighter-than-air airships -- but they actually used heavier-than-air airplanes!!

COL. JIMMY DOOLITTLE WAS WRONG!!

He predicted that the US and Japan would go to war "wiithin 20 years" but it took almost TWENTY-ONE!

LINUS PAULING WAS WRONG!!

He thought that DNA was a triple helix, but it is a double helix.

Everyone should come to me for an imprimatur before making any assertions.

Signed

Melqart Moloch

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael,

LOLOLOLOL...

That certainly sounds like the science arguments around here recently.

Thanks for the laugh.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Michael M. I will yield to you.

On the Columbus question Samuel Eliot Morrison said the educated people at Columbus's time believed the earth was round. Columbus did get the size wrong although I remember hearing that an ancient Greek has come close to actual size. The shape of the earth did really become known until we had satellites to map the earth.

The other questions I don't know enough about to comment.

Edited November 18, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[syrakusos]

... the educated people at Columbus's time believed the earth was round.

Therefore I was wrong! And no one should listen to me!!

(Thanks, Chris, the burden of sanctimony was getting to me... You set me free, dude...)

[Chris Grieb]

I'm so relieved!

[Brant Gaede]

Michael M. I will yield to you.

On the Columbus question Samuel Eliot Morrison said the educated people at Columbus's time believed the earth was round. Columbus did get the size wrong although I remember hearing that an ancient Greek has come close to actual size. The shape of the earth did really become known until we had satellites to map the earth.

The other questions I don't know enough about to comment.

I forget the details, but that ancient Greek, working in Egypt I believe, did it by experimentation. Something to do with measuring shadows at different places at the same time of day and using the difference between places as a factor in his calculations. Who was he anyone? Also, corrections needed. I think the different places must have been on the north/south axis as the sun "moved" on the east/west.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Of course the people Columbus invaded were Indians. It was the Indians who weren't Indians.

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

Don't Columbus think the people he encountered were Japanese?

[Ellen Stuttle]

I forget the details, but that ancient Greek, working in Egypt I believe, did it by experimentation. Something to do with measuring shadows at different places at the same time of day and using the difference between places as a factor in his calculations. Who was he anyone? Also, corrections needed. I think the different places must have been on the north/south axis as the sun "moved" on the east/west.

http://eduwww.mikkeli.fi/opetus/myk/kv/com...rathostenes.htm

Misspells the name -- and has errors of English usage -- but describes the method briefly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes

For a brief overview of the history through Columbus, see:

http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge.../measearth.html

Excerpt:

Astronomy 161:

An Introduction to Solar System Astronomy

Prof. Richard Pogge, MTWThF 2:30

Aristotle gets Physical...

Aristotle (384-322 BC) also proposed a spherical earth on geometric grounds, but backed up his assertion with physical evidence (described in his On the Heavens of 350BC[4.1])

-- Persons living in southern lands see southern constellations higher above the horizon than those living in northern lands.

-- The shadow of the Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse is round.

-- The fact that objects fall to Earth towards its center means that if it were constructed of small bits of matter originally, these parts would naturally settle into a spherical shape.

Aristotle's demonstration was so compelling that a spherical Earth was the central assumption of all subsequent philosophers of the Classical era (up to ~300 AD).

He also used the curved phases of the moon to argue that the Moon must also be a sphere like the Earth.

___

Edited November 18, 2007 by Ellen Stuttle

[syrakusos]

The symbols on ancient coins shows that the Greeks (and Romans) assumed that the world was round.

"The average person in Hellenic and Roman times knew that our

world is round. The philosophic inquiries and dialogs that began

with Thales reached their peak with Aristotle. Later, various

hellenistic astronomers made measurements of the size of the

Earth and the sizes of and distances to the Sun and Moon.

Several schemes for explaining the motions of the planets were

invented. Generally, the average person of those times did not

believe Earth to be flat any more than the average person of our

day believes that we are alone in the galaxy."

http://www.celator.com/cws/marotta.html

and also

http://www.answering-islam.org/Science/globecoins.html

From Wayne Sayles:

The Greeks, always seeking a sense of symmetry were ill at ease with the calculations of Eratosthenes

(275-194 BC) who postulated the size of the terrestrial globe. His theoretical size was much too big for the

known size of the inhabited world that they knew . In fact, the oecumene occupied only one-fourth of the theoretical

size of the earth. Crates solved the problem by anticipating the existence of three other continents, separated

by water, which formed a balance and an acceptable harmony. It was recognized by Crates that this could

be represented accurately only in the form of a globe. His theory was so highly respected that the Attalid King

Eumenes II commissioned him to construct a 10 foot diameter globe at the library of Pergamum in 180 BC.

http://www.deepfield.com/anoot/essay/looking%20glass.pdf

Edited November 19, 2007 by Michael E. Marotta

[C. Jordan]

Quick note: Umberto Eco wrote that most authorities during the Middle Ages believed the Earth was round. Only a minority of scholars had a different opinion. Eco defends this position in ON LITERATURE (trans. Martin McLaughlin) and he also illustrates the debates in his novel BAUDOLINO (trans. William Weaver).

Of course this means my school teachers who said Columbus was proving the world was round were as wrong as Columbus himself, who miscalculated the size of that round Earth, and who mistook Hispañola for Sumatra.

[emb021]

"just as soon as you realize I'm always rights, we'll get along just fine"

[emb021]

Columbus.

As noted, Columbus, like others of his time, knew the Earth to be round. Columbus, also as noted, had thought it smaller. To Columbus, he fealt he would hit Asia when in fact he hit the Americas. The issue for his men was that they didn't think they'd hit any land (ie, they didn't have the resources to take an ocean voyage from Europe to Asia had the Americans not been there).

It was Washington Irving, in a fictionalize biography of Columbus, that started the idea that Columbus putting forth the idea of a round earth when everyone else thought it flat.

It wasn't until sometime in the early 1800 that certain religious extremists brought back the idea of a flat earth.

[syrakusos]

It wasn't until sometime in the early 1800 that certain religious extremists brought back the idea of a flat earth.

They were not "religious extremists."

Discussion board that looks a lot like this one. (Think about what that means.)

http://theflatearthsociety.org/

"Then, in the year of our Lord fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, it all changed. For decades a small band of self-proclaimed "enlightened" individuals had been spouting their heretical nonsense that the Earth was in fact round. Citing "proof" based on nothing more than assumptions, half-truths and blind guesses, they dazzled the populace ..."

and also

"Although the steps we've taken may seem a little drastic to the outside observer, we feel that, in the end, the net gain will justify the means. Here are a few of our victories. . . "

[Ah! thank goodness, because for a few minutes, they were sounding like Objectivists ...."]

http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskop...arthsociety.htm

But, just like the Atlas Society and the Ayn Rand Whatever, there are different flat Earth groups, so keep them straight. These people believe that the Earth was flat, but was enspherized by television broadcasters.

FELFAT however, holds the position that the Earth was formerly, and is naturally, entirely FLAT (and most likely unbounded). The earth was originally designed to be flat, and all aspects and features of this planet are properly understood only within the context of an entirely flat earth.

The original flat earth was confined, restricted, and twisted into a perverse spherical shape by a conspiracy of TELEVISION BROADCASTERS in an attempt to realize their dream of TOTAL HUMAN MIND CONTROL through subsurviant captive homogonized market share.

See here:

http://www.cca.org/woc/felfat/index.html

(Thank God, I'm an atheist, or there is no telling what I might believe...")

[Chris Grieb]

Years ago I read a book called Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Martin Gardner had a great chapter on the Flat Earth Society.

The people who think the earth is round but we are inside was also discussed.

I remember that Martin Gardner said that the big idea at its time is the one attacked.

Edited November 30, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[emb021]

It wasn't until sometime in the early 1800 that certain religious extremists brought back the idea of a flat earth.

They were not "religious extremists."

What I know of the various Flat Earth groups that existed from the 1800s to the present have by and large been christian fundamentalists. If you read Gardner's work, he speaks of several of these groups. There may be FE groups that don't base their belief on religion, but most that I have heard of are.

[Ross Barlow]

What I know of the various Flat Earth groups that existed from the 1800s to the present have by and large been christian fundamentalists. If you read Gardner's work, he speaks of several of these groups. There may be FE groups that don't base their belief on religion, but most that I have heard of are.

The modern flat-earth movement has definitely been Bible-based. One of the “proof-texts” this minority among fundamentalists uses most is from two gospels, Matthew and Luke, where the Devil temps Jesus by taking him up to “an exceedingly high” mountain top and shows him “all the kingdoms of the earth” in “a moment of time.”

Considering that these kingdoms would include the Deccan kingdoms in India and Han dynasty China, not to mention pre-Classic Mayan kingdoms in Central America, the earth would have to be flat for one to even remotely imagine that one could see them at once.

The late great Robert J. Schadewald (whom I met in 1985 when I was investigating the topic of “scientific creationism”) wrote a lot about such odd-ball pseudo-science, and he was a friend (one might say a protégé) of Martin Gardner.

Europe’s brief descent into flat-earth theory occurred during the Dark Ages in c. 550 CE when Classical scientific writings were absent or ignored. Cosmas Indicopleustes (or Cosmas of Alexandria) wrote the flat-earth text “Christian Topography” which was the accepted theory until Classical writings were re-discovered. Cosmas had traveled to India once, so he was considered an authority in that age of little travel or trade.

-Ross Barlow.

[John Dailey]

~ Hmmm...now, how to determine which of the above arguments/assertions about ancient-others' beliefs being wrong, are themselves wrong?

~ I know! Let's check Wiki, and (to corroborate), pick our favorite book-references!

LLAP

J:D