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	<title>Comments on: Crankocentrism</title>
	<atom:link href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/</link>
	<description>I am an astronomer, writer, and skeptic. I likes reality the way it is, and I aims to keep it that way. My real name is Phil Plait, and I run the Bad Astronomy blog.</description>
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		<title>By: Michael Schmidt</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/comment-page-1/#comment-18011</link>
		<dc:creator>Michael Schmidt</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:33:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/#comment-18011</guid>
		<description>Where do you live, Shane? I got one of those brochures, too, and I&#039;m wondering how widespread the distribution is, what it costs, and, most of all, who is paying for it.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Where do you live, Shane? I got one of those brochures, too, and I&#8217;m wondering how widespread the distribution is, what it costs, and, most of all, who is paying for it.</p>
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		<title>By: Alexandra</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/comment-page-1/#comment-18010</link>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Dec 2006 23:51:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/#comment-18010</guid>
		<description>Actually, Leon Kilkenny is right--heliocentrism IS false.

We need to stop being sheeple and just accepting everything we&#039;re told without questioning.

Leon&#039;s site is one of my favorites and I consider him to be a friend of mine!</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Actually, Leon Kilkenny is right&#8211;heliocentrism IS false.</p>
<p>We need to stop being sheeple and just accepting everything we&#8217;re told without questioning.</p>
<p>Leon&#8217;s site is one of my favorites and I consider him to be a friend of mine!</p>
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		<title>By: Shane</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/comment-page-1/#comment-18009</link>
		<dc:creator>Shane</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Dec 2006 23:35:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/#comment-18009</guid>
		<description>In case there remains any doubt as to the sincerity of the &quot;views&quot; espoused on www.geocenticity.com, I received a hand-delivered pamphlet -- beautifully printed on cardstock -- in my mail today advertising the website. In fact, it was this pamphlet, and the mirthful curiosity it engendered, that led me to the site, and thence to B.A.

The pamphlet advertises the third edition of &quot;The Geocentric Bible&quot;, and claims that there are over 57,000 copies in print. It also claims that &quot;The Geocentric Bible&quot; has been &quot;distributed&quot; to more than 57,000 churches. It is notable that these two numbers are the same.

If you wish to a receive a copy of &quot;the Geocentric Bible&quot;, at no cost, mail a request to

The Geocentric Bible Foundation, Inc.
911 S. Van Burn St.
Hugoton, KS 67951-2303.

In summary, if this is a hoax, it&#039;s a rather extreme one. I live a LONG way from Kansas.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In case there remains any doubt as to the sincerity of the &#8220;views&#8221; espoused on <a href="http://www.geocenticity.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.geocenticity.com</a>, I received a hand-delivered pamphlet &#8212; beautifully printed on cardstock &#8212; in my mail today advertising the website. In fact, it was this pamphlet, and the mirthful curiosity it engendered, that led me to the site, and thence to B.A.</p>
<p>The pamphlet advertises the third edition of &#8220;The Geocentric Bible&#8221;, and claims that there are over 57,000 copies in print. It also claims that &#8220;The Geocentric Bible&#8221; has been &#8220;distributed&#8221; to more than 57,000 churches. It is notable that these two numbers are the same.</p>
<p>If you wish to a receive a copy of &#8220;the Geocentric Bible&#8221;, at no cost, mail a request to</p>
<p>The Geocentric Bible Foundation, Inc.<br />
911 S. Van Burn St.<br />
Hugoton, KS 67951-2303.</p>
<p>In summary, if this is a hoax, it&#8217;s a rather extreme one. I live a LONG way from Kansas.</p>
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		<title>By: Mark Martin</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/comment-page-1/#comment-17971</link>
		<dc:creator>Mark Martin</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:27:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/#comment-17971</guid>
		<description>&quot;Wow! I can only say wow to this site. It has to be real. No one would go to the length this guy did and not believe this spew.&quot;

Check out this site. It&#039;s funny as all... hell.

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>&#8220;Wow! I can only say wow to this site. It has to be real. No one would go to the length this guy did and not believe this spew.&#8221;</p>
<p>Check out this site. It&#8217;s funny as all&#8230; hell.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.landoverbaptist.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.landoverbaptist.org/</a></p>
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		<title>By: Tony</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/comment-page-1/#comment-17972</link>
		<dc:creator>Tony</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:20:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/#comment-17972</guid>
		<description>Wow!  I can only say wow to this site.  It has to be real.  No one would go to the length this guy did and not believe this spew.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Wow!  I can only say wow to this site.  It has to be real.  No one would go to the length this guy did and not believe this spew.</p>
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		<title>By: Mark Martin</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/comment-page-1/#comment-17973</link>
		<dc:creator>Mark Martin</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 31 Jul 2006 15:19:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/#comment-17973</guid>
		<description>www.fixedearth.com

The first page is already funny. It starts off with one of those suspended-globe desk toys:

[Levitating Globe

&quot;An electromagnet and computerized sensor hidden in its

display stand cause the Earth to levitate motionlessly in the air.&quot;

Could God have engineered something like that for the real Earth?]

Now let&#039;s look at this. The desk toy is designed to hold the globe in equilibrium against gravity. Is there a force of gravity tending to accelerate Earth &quot;downward&quot;?

Well yes, there is. Earth is accelerating toward the Earth/Sun barycenter, and the planet&#039;s radial distance is being maintained by its orbital velocity. The authors of these sites have just no idea what the stuff they say implies.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.fixedearth.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.fixedearth.com</a></p>
<p>The first page is already funny. It starts off with one of those suspended-globe desk toys:</p>
<p>[Levitating Globe</p>
<p>"An electromagnet and computerized sensor hidden in its</p>
<p>display stand cause the Earth to levitate motionlessly in the air."</p>
<p>Could God have engineered something like that for the real Earth?]</p>
<p>Now let&#8217;s look at this. The desk toy is designed to hold the globe in equilibrium against gravity. Is there a force of gravity tending to accelerate Earth &#8220;downward&#8221;?</p>
<p>Well yes, there is. Earth is accelerating toward the Earth/Sun barycenter, and the planet&#8217;s radial distance is being maintained by its orbital velocity. The authors of these sites have just no idea what the stuff they say implies.</p>
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		<title>By: Mark Martin</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/comment-page-1/#comment-17974</link>
		<dc:creator>Mark Martin</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 31 Jul 2006 15:06:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/07/28/crankocentrism/#comment-17974</guid>
		<description>Frank,

You&#039;re right, geocentrism doesn&#039;t solve the elcipse problem any better. From what I&#039;ve read, the guy&#039;s approach leans heavily toward claiming that the &quot;antagonist&quot; cosmology is flawed- therefore his cosmology is correct.

It&#039;s similar to his fixation with the historical figure John Cabot. According to Kilkenny, Cabot was the first European to plant a flag on the North American continent- therefore, the continent rightfully should be refered to as &quot;Cabotia&quot;. This stands in contradiction to the fact that people call things by whatever names they want or find communicative. By his reasoning modern people should be calling the continent by who-knows-how-many names for it that may have been used by the pre-European natives. The name simply is what people call it amongst themselves.

But I digress a little. Getting back to more physical issues, in my short dialogue with Kilkenny, his idea of discrediting Newton&#039;s discoveries about gravity &amp; mechanics is to say that Newton is overrated, that those discoveries were not Newton&#039;s greatest work, and furthermore, that Newton&#039;s personal character pales in comparison to that of Michael Faraday. This consists of irrelevant opinions on the relative importance of Newton&#039;s work and the relative merits of his personality, but no demonstration is shown that Newton&#039;s work itself is unreliable to the extent that&#039;s required to discredit non-geocentrsism.

This is basically consistent with many of the articles Kilkenny has on his site. His strategy for falsifying Foucault&#039;s pendulum experiment is to ramble on about unsubstantiated (and empirically irrelevant) claims that he was in on a plot to deceive people into buying into the master plan of false non-geocentrism. The list goes on.

I think Kilkenny just doesn&#039;t even have all that much actual understanding of how scientists have come to demonstrate the validity &amp; reliability of the modern cosmology. For exmaple, as Phil pointed out at the top, the guy doesn&#039;t seem to even be aware of the Moon&#039;s orbital inclination to the plane of the ecliptic. Over on www.geocentricity.com one author makes the same kind of straw-anthropoid argument about geosynchronous orbits, staying that a GS satellite with even a slight discrepancy in its velocity will wander away from an ideal, stationary position over a hemisphere. Well- this is right. And as it turns out many GS sats do, in fact, wander around the sky due to the slight imperfections in their orbits. So the author of that article did nothing more than to point out something that actually occurs.

These authors are making the same kinds of mistakes as typical conspiracy theorists, especially Apollo Hoax theorists: they think of the world in oversimplified terms.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Frank,</p>
<p>You&#8217;re right, geocentrism doesn&#8217;t solve the elcipse problem any better. From what I&#8217;ve read, the guy&#8217;s approach leans heavily toward claiming that the &#8220;antagonist&#8221; cosmology is flawed- therefore his cosmology is correct.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s similar to his fixation with the historical figure John Cabot. According to Kilkenny, Cabot was the first European to plant a flag on the North American continent- therefore, the continent rightfully should be refered to as &#8220;Cabotia&#8221;. This stands in contradiction to the fact that people call things by whatever names they want or find communicative. By his reasoning modern people should be calling the continent by who-knows-how-many names for it that may have been used by the pre-European natives. The name simply is what people call it amongst themselves.</p>
<p>But I digress a little. Getting back to more physical issues, in my short dialogue with Kilkenny, his idea of discrediting Newton&#8217;s discoveries about gravity &amp; mechanics is to say that Newton is overrated, that those discoveries were not Newton&#8217;s greatest work, and furthermore, that Newton&#8217;s personal character pales in comparison to that of Michael Faraday. This consists of irrelevant opinions on the relative importance of Newton&#8217;s work and the relative merits of his personality, but no demonstration is shown that Newton&#8217;s work itself is unreliable to the extent that&#8217;s required to discredit non-geocentrsism.</p>
<p>This is basically consistent with many of the articles Kilkenny has on his site. His strategy for falsifying Foucault&#8217;s pendulum experiment is to ramble on about unsubstantiated (and empirically irrelevant) claims that he was in on a plot to deceive people into buying into the master plan of false non-geocentrism. The list goes on.</p>
<p>I think Kilkenny just doesn&#8217;t even have all that much actual understanding of how scientists have come to demonstrate the validity &amp; reliability of the modern cosmology. For exmaple, as Phil pointed out at the top, the guy doesn&#8217;t seem to even be aware of the Moon&#8217;s orbital inclination to the plane of the ecliptic. Over on <a href="http://www.geocentricity.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.geocentricity.com</a> one author makes the same kind of straw-anthropoid argument about geosynchronous orbits, staying that a GS satellite with even a slight discrepancy in its velocity will wander away from an ideal, stationary position over a hemisphere. Well- this is right. And as it turns out many GS sats do, in fact, wander around the sky due to the slight imperfections in their orbits. So the author of that article did nothing more than to point out something that actually occurs.</p>
<p>These authors are making the same kinds of mistakes as typical conspiracy theorists, especially Apollo Hoax theorists: they think of the world in oversimplified terms.</p>
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