The Earth Is Flat

I love weird stuff and I also love people who believe in it.

Whilst stumbling around cyberspace the other week, I stumbled across a particular favourite of mine, a bunch of conspiracy theorists who share an absurd belief.

I am talking about the Flat Earth Society, a group of seemingly eloquent people who truly believe that we all live on a planet that is similar to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

To them, our beloved planet is not a sphere; it is a disk.

To them the Earth is flat.

Given all of the evidence to the contrary, they still maintain in this modern day and age, with all of the advances in space travel, physics and astronomy that the governments of the world are uniting against the population of the world to hide the truth that we live on a giant frisbee.

Here’s what they believe:

The Earth is a disk with the North Pole at its centre.

Antarctica is in fact a wall of ice that surrounds the edge of the disk, keeping the oceans in.

Space travel is fake. The USSR and USA were so obsessed with winning the space race during the cold that they faked their accomplishments to deceive the other into believing that they were ahead.

Photographic evidence of a globular Earth is also fake. NASA is an institute whose sole purpose is to prolong the myth of a Round Earth.

Circumnavigation of the Earth is performed by going around the North Pole in big circles.

The sun moves in circles around the North Pole. When the sun is over your head, it is daytime. When it is not over your head, it is night time.

You cannot see the curvature of the Earth from an aircraft. Your perception of a curved Earth is due to your perception through heavily curved aircraft windows.

Gravity as we know it does not exist.

The sun and the moon are simply rotating spheres, each 32 miles across that can be found 3000 miles above the surface of the flat Earth.

The concept of a Full Moon is impossible in the Round Earth theory.

Earth is not a planet and the other planets are small.

The stars also rotate above the Earth.

The moon landing was a hoax.  Astronauts shown moving on the moon in slow motion were on wire supports.

Here is a picture of what they believe the Earth looks like:

This is amazing and if you take a look at any of the Flat Earth Society websites, they have supposedly scientific evidence to back all of their claims. However, what I find even more amazing is that people actually believe this utter nonsense.

I simply cannot comprehend how, or even why, people choose to ignore reality and shift their belief system to an incredible wild idea that took hold of humanity before the great scientists in our history proved it wrong.

I can understand people in the past believing that the Earth was flat, because they didn’t know any better. However, nowadays, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support their outrageous claims. On the contrary, there is plenty of evidence to support the Round Earth theory.

Why are these people so delusional?

Why choose to champion a ridiculous lie?

Their theories are totally ridiculous, even laughable. It seems to be that when anybody tries to debunk their weird theory, they simply invent something that explains why you are wrong. An example of this is that if the Earth were indeed flat then at the edges of the disk, gravity would be totally different and approaching the edge would make gravity more pronounced. In fact, the Earth is so big that gravity would pull the Earth into a ball shape. Their answer to this is amazing, as we have seen; gravity simply does not exist or more accurately, it doesn't exist in the way that we have been led to believe.

Really?

So all of those science experiments I performed in A-Level Physics to determine the acceleration due to gravity are totally false and pointless?

It's worse, when you consider that Flat Earth conspiracy theorists claim that we are all being kept in the dark about this. What they are saying is that every government in the world is lying to us all in an attempt to cover up this preposterous notion. I know that politicians are all liars but this concept is absurd. As well as that, anybody who is involved in the airline industry must be in on it.

Imagine for a second training to become a pilot. You are taken into a room and forced to sign the equivalent of the official secrets act before a man stands in front of you and says:

“Before you start training, we must inform you that the Earth is not a globe. It is a giant spinning pancake. You mustn’t tell anybody as we are trying to keep it secret. If you do, we will fly you past the Antarctic wall and kick you out into oblivion.”

Imagine your first day in the Oval Office after being sworn in as President of the USA:

PRESIDENT:  Right – now I’m President, I want to know all about Roswell. Do aliens actually exist?

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: Sir, aliens do not exist. In fact, the Earth is not even a planet; it is a giant frisbee surrounded by a huge wall of ice. The sun and moon are disks rotating 3000 miles above us.

PRESIDENT: No – really. Do aliens exist?

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: : No sir! And the Earth really IS flat. We’ve been conning the public for years. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin won honorary and secret Oscars for their parts in the greatest work of fiction known to man; The Moon Landing.

-- PHONE RINGS --

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: Hello? Sir, it’s President Putin wishing to congratulate you.

PRESIDENT: Hello Vladimir.

PRESIDENT PUTIN: Zdravstvujtye, Mr President and congratulations. By the way, have you been told that the Earth is really flat yet? We need to keep this quiet.

PRESIDENT: WHAT????????

It makes no sense to me whatsoever, that supposedly intelligent people continue to defy all the scientific evidence and embarrass themselves by relating this bunkum to anybody who is willing to listen.

Why would you anybody do that?

Even if it’s a question of pride and being scared to admit that they are wrong, surely that’s better than being a laughing stock.

Anyway, here is a fun video about it:

I’m sure when Terry Pratchett came up with the concept of Discworld, he did so after reading, and presumably laughing at, a book about the Flat Earth Society.

Of course, writing a post mocking the concept of a Flat Earth might prove to be a stupid thing to do if Flat Earth conspiracy theorists are right. I may end up with a lot of egg on my face and might have to write another post of apology.

These are the risks that a blogger has to wrestle with.

I don’t care; I’ll take my chances.

That said, as I wrote at the start of this post, I love this kind of weirdness, so if on the off chance you believe that the Earth is flat, please let me know.

Random Lyrics

Another day, another stolen idea.

I’d like to apologise and thank Pandora (at Pandora Queen of Denial for sewing the seed with her Random Lyrics post.

I have in my possession an mp3 jukebox jammed full of songs, mostly rock and heavy metal. And in that collection there are some moving, funny and thought-provoking lyrics – even from the heavy metal section.

So without further ado, here are five sets of lyrics from five rock maestros:

Alice Cooper – It’s The Little Things

You can burn my house
You can cut my hair
You can make me wrestle naked with a grizzly bear
You can poison my cat, baby, I don’t care
But if you talk in the movies I’ll kill you right there.

Now I fully understand how Alice feels when he sings this song. To me, the basic message is, there is only so much shit you can take and while you may cope with the horrible things that life throws at you, it might just be the little things that push you over the edge and make you explode with rage. I know that I have a tendency sometimes to bottle things up.

In the past, I have allowed the pressure to reach boiling point and then flown into a rage when confronted by something simple, like, say a piece of cat shit on the carpet. The good thing is that I think I can let off steam a little better these days – I’ve mellowed considerably with age. Nevertheless, tiny little things can sometimes irritate the hell out of me.

That’s what my soapbox is for.

It is a pressure cooker outlet valve.

Def Leppard – From The Inside

So you play the joker and I’ll play the clown
And I’ll laugh while you’re up there and I’ll laugh while you’re down.
Though your screams break the silence, they won’t make a sound.

I love this song.

It is about drug addiction but from the point of the drug itself.

My drug of choice is alcohol and I certainly relate to how alcohol may react to the full cycle of getting drunk and then paying the price. A drunken night out starts off happily enough, with the alcohol loosening those tight strings that harness the extrovert that exists in all of us.

And as the extrovert escapes, all inhibitions are lost and end up having a wonderful time – in your own eyes of course. If you go over the top, you see yourself as an indestructible force that everybody else loves.

The alcohol must see you as a buffoon and laughs because it knows what’s coming. It’s almost like selling your soul to the devil.

Ultimately you pay the price and as you wake up with a hangover, an unknown assailant battering your head with a hammer as your stomach rebels and makes you throw up air, you can imagine the alcohol laughing at you.

And nobody else cares – you brought it all on yourself.

Metallica - The Unforgiven III

How can I be lost, if I’ve got nowhere to go?

I’ve been in a bad place; I guess everybody has at some time or another.

Your life seems to have no direction and you are at your wit’s end.

It takes something to haul you out of that bad place – a loved one, a steely determination that lies deep within yourself.

I’ve managed throughout my life to somehow find something to cling onto when I am lost – so I have always had somewhere to go.

I still have.

Rush – Witch Hunt

Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand. 
Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand.

Of course – there had to a song from Rush, my favourite band.

The thing I like about Rush is that most of their songs have amazing lyrics.

And this one is all about prejudice. The basic message is that some people are terrified of things that they don’t understand and lash out rather than trying to overcome that barrier. I’ve always been tolerant of differences between people. The human race is a marvel and rather than blaming other cultures and for the ills of the world, we ought to try to embrace those differences. This is one of the primary reasons I love travelling; to immerse myself in a new country and its customs. I may not always like what I see but that’s no reason to hate people for it.

We are all different – why not enjoy those differences?

Nine Inch Nails - Every Day Is Exactly The Same

I believe I can see the future, cos I repeat the same routine.

We’ve all been there, living a life that seems to be like a scratched record, repeating itself over and over again. Work is like that for me sometimes; I go to work on Monday, feeling pissed off because I still have five days of frustration to go and gradually as the week reaches its peak on Wednesday lunchtime, I start to feel better. It’s like climbing a mountain and then launching yourself off it towards the weekend when you can relax for a couple of days – before Monday morning blues slap you in the face again.

The good news is that although there are tedious aspects to my mundane work life, I do occasionally find the work interesting and the prospect of a trip abroad keeps me interested enough to cope.

But I would dearly love to break the cycle and just escape; one day it will happen. I can see the future – and the future looks good.

Well, that’s it. Thanks to Pandora for the idea. I might do this again in the future.

I have provided links so you can listen to the songs; of all of them, the Def Leppard and Metallica songs will surprise you as they are uncharacteristically mellow songs that do not conform to the stereotype.

Have a listen – and tell me what you think.

There's Something Weird Going On In My Head

Today as I left work, my mind wandered to a weird place. I don’t even recall why it went there or how it got there. All I know is that it found an indescribable something there.

I have no idea what it was, but it manifested itself in a really strange way; as I was walking down the stairs I found myself singing this:



I wasn’t just singing it – I was singing it loudly and accompanying myself with whistling.

Thankfully nobody heard me, apart from perhaps the security guard (who will now keep a very close eye on me). As soon as I realised what was happening I started to question my sanity and asked myself one simple question:

“Where in the name of Thor’s Hammer did THAT come from?”

Why was I singing an old Tom Jones song? I don’t even like the song (though I am secretly worried that a weird part of me DOES like it).

Does this ever happen to you?

It happens to me all of the time. I can find myself wandering through the city centre and my mind just vanishes into realms unknown, sometimes with music (and usually crap music at that).

Thankfully my mind leaves behind the autopilot; you know – the device that kicks in when you are drunk and somehow gets you home (via the beer scooter or whatever).

The result is a zombie-like imbecile wandering around Manchester heading vaguely towards a shop but with no concept of his surroundings, who might be watching and most importantly, what he might actually be saying or singing.

I must look like a total dope.

I’ve heard the phrase:

“I’m sorry! I was miles away.”

I tend to say:

“I’m sorry! I was light years away fighting an intergalactic war accompanied by Lady Ga Ga and her poker face.”

Sometimes, I have even found myself openly cringing such is the weirdness of my mind’s odd location. Once my mind vanished into my past as I was walking through the city and it chanced upon the time when I flew over the handlebars of a bike and cracked my front tooth on the road. The feeling of enamel hitting concrete resonated through my head and I found myself saying:

“URRRGHHH!!!!”

Sadly, I realised that I was walking past innocent and unprepared Mancunians who presumably thought that I was expressing revulsion for their appearance or odour. I’m surprised I wasn’t whacked. And of course I apologised unreservedly for any offence that might have been caused.

“I’m sorry!” I said. “I was decades in the past!”

I hope that I am not the only person inflicted with this problem. I have just realised that by confessing to this to you, dear reader, I might lead you to believe that I am a nutter. Imagine if I really am the only person who finds himself lost in his own mind while in a crowd of people.

“Er – sorry to tell you, Dave, but I don’t know anybody whose mind wanders like that.”

Writing blog posts about such things is dangerous, dear reader. You might be thinking:

“Who is this bloody idiot?”

Thankfully, I know of others who have the same problem so I feel that I can confide in you. I know for a fact that Mrs PM has the same problem – only far worse.

I’ve lost count of the number of times she has been so lost in her own thoughts that she has driven to work when she has meant to just pop to the shops.

If I ask her for a lift to work I have to constantly remind her that I am in the car.

“Why are you heading down the motorway? You’re supposed to be giving me a lift.”

The phrase she uses is:

“I’m sorry! I was away with the fairies.”

And I guess she probably was (as opposed to me flying a space ship into the oncoming Tharg war fleet with Doris Day serenading me as my co-pilot.).

So, if you see a gormless man walking around Manchester singing a truly horrific song like:



please be kind and tell me.

Better still, dear reader, please put my mind at rest and confess if the same thing happens to you.

You can lie if you want.