Comments on: Latvian meteorite impact: fake

By: Blob

Blob — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:05:21 +0000

The update to this farce is that the Swedish TELE2 telecoms company has lost its government contract, and the Latvian police are launching a formal investigation that will probably lead to criminal charges.

By: Hmm

Hmm — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:05:58 +0000

I don’t speak Latvian at all, but I am not sure you could convince me that the words at 0:34 are “Oh .. My .. Goodness.”

JC
—-
They also demonstrated their capability to swear in three languages, which equals Oh my goodness here

IMHO even from PR perspective this stunt is weak – they just lost a bunch of clients, starting with government and if they meant to give some message with this it certainly didn’t get through (thought tele2 says that this is launch for their new campaign, which will clarify what was going on here) and they got lots of negative media coverage, picturing them as irresponsible and unethical

By: Lugosi

Lugosi — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:57:44 +0000

The original planned hoax was to claim that a six year old boy had floated away in a balloon, but it turned out that’s been done.

By: Bert Chadick

Bert Chadick — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:52:15 +0000

It would be cool if it actually had happened. Unfortunately Latvia seems to be a nation of con-men, just behind Nigeria in bogasitude and credibility on the interwebs tubes. Every time I’ve been nailed by a stolen CC# the pilferage is done from Riga. Whoever sold the “meteoroids” is in the wind.

By: Science tidbits: Mystery of the Pyramids/NASA gets Augustine report « steve cross loves music and science

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:23:31 +0000

[...] too much time explaining all the obvious scientific inconsistencies because Dr. Phil Plait has done a thorough job of it at his blog Bad Astronomy. The biggest misconception about meteorites is that all of them cause a crater if they make it all [...]

By: Leonardo

Leonardo — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:23:55 +0000

First, take a look at this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8326483.stm

Yesterday night it turned out that it was hoax – a marketing stunt by Tele2, the second largest mobile communication operator in the country. The company has promised to cover all expenses of all emergency services and scientists involved in the case.

Now, a question: what would be public reaction to hoax like this, if it had been staged in your country? Would people just laugh and dismiss it? Would there be public outrage over wasted resources? Would Interior Ministry and subordinated institutions pledge to terminate their contracts with Tele2 and select new operator?

By: Spectroscope

Spectroscope — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:22:51 +0000

@ 30. Franz Says:

Someone requested a translation, so here it is. Nothing earth shaking…

” I don;t know”
“Don’t go closer”
“I want to see”
“It stinks”
“We will never see something like this again”
“Something fell”
“See the hole”
“The hole is huge; it’s too dark”
“It was no plane”
“What are we going to do?”
“We have to call someone, but who?”

Thanks for that.

Thanks to Chris @ 32 too.