Monday, July 5, 2010

Review of RCH/C2C 4th July

        Richard Hoagland's campaign to wrest the mud logs (see previous post on this blog) from Deepwater Horizon's owner, BP, didn't work. Or at least, it clearly hadn't worked by end-of-business (end-of-barbecue, perhaps?) on the National Holiday. For there he was, on Coast to Coast AM for two solid hours, taking another bite of the same cherry pie.

        In tones that ran the gamut from shrill to outright ranting, he exhorted his disciples to storm the gates of the US Congress metaphorically with e-mailery. He added an equally Stentorian plea for somebody to get him access to James Carville, who is apparently some magic component of the campaign. ONLY IF WE GET THOSE MUD LOGS, he explained again, can we solve this catastrophe.

        In a remarkable act of self-contradiction, he went on to propose two separate technical solutions to the gusher problem — and the solutions did not apparently depend in any way on those damned logs.

        FIRST, he wants BP to use nuclear technology to insert a high-energy emitter of radiation so powerful that it would plasticize the rock at some depth around the well-bore and so pinch it off. He was perhaps unaware that the bore is lined by a strong steel casing that would surely frustrate such an approach.

        SECOND, he believes the gub'mint has secret access to a fearsome "torsion field weapon" which would be capable of freezing the entire 3-mile column of oil solid. "They could then," he explained breathlessly, "pour in the heavy mud and concrete and seal the well for good." Host George Noory missed an opportunity to ask how on Earth mud and concrete could successfully be poured into a frozen column of oil. But then, listeners to George Noory are quite accustomed to his habit of letting utterly illogical propositions slide right on by.

        In a further display of shameless self-contradiction, Hoagland then announced that the gusher we've all seen gushing away in video for 70 days is not the main event in the Gulf of Mexico. It's "a sideshow — a distraction." THE BIG DEAL is a gash in the Earth's crust 10 miles away and some hundreds of feet long, leaking proportionately copious amounts of oil without, apparently, anyone paying attention to it. Again, the hilarious illogicality of that idea didn't seem to occur to Noory.

        RCH then turned to the plight of the millions of people on land who are already being subjected to near-toxic levels of methane and hydrogen sulfide in the air. "Go and buy gas masks and ozone generators," he urged them, "or simply move house." This was quite possibly sensible advice, albeit from the mouth of one who is utterly unqualified to pronounce on such matters.

        Possibly he felt he was qualified by proxy to his girlfriend, Robin Falkov, who he revealed uses an ozone generator while flying on commercial airlines. Given that almost everyone can detect ozone at a concentration as low as 0.1 part per million, and that most people's response is mild to severe headache, it's quite hard to imagine anything more inconsiderate to fellow passengers than such a device. Mustard gas, perhaps.

        All in all, a classic example of Richard Hoagland attempting to position himself to be able to claim that he was a key player in this disaster and its aftermath. It was, of course, totally despicable and C2C-AM would be ashamed of allowing it if they had any sense of shame at all. Alas, they don't.

Update:
        Today, July 10th, somebody possibly called Roo Reindeer posted this link on Hoagland's FB page, making it seem that he could get what he says he wants just by plonking down a few dollars. So what would he do then?

10 comments:

Chris Lopes said...

Expat, you are talking about a show who's main sponsors include sellers of seed banks, gold futures, and radios that will work without a power grid. The show is designed to sell paranoia, and Hoagie fits right in.

I missed last night's madness because I already knew the kind of silliness that was likely to be presented. On his FB page, Richard has made quite the spectacle of himself with regard to the gulf oil spill. Since his expertise in geology is only exceeded by his knowledge of astrophysics and planetary science, you can expect he'll be equally successful with his predictions in that area.

From your review, I'm guessing I missed another prime Hoagland performance. Too bad. Might have a prime candidate for the MST3K treatment, though my wife wouldn't have appreciated such color commentary at that hour of the night/morning. Anyway, thanks for listening so we don't have to. :)

Chris Lopes said...

This is a bot off topic, but with no where else to post it, I'll mention it here. Some time ago (May 22 to be exact), Richard and company were having a discussion about the "meaning" of a crop circle on his FB page. (the thread starts here: http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=213984790088&share_id=125305780820422&comments=1#s125305780820422)

During the course of the thread, Richard flippantly asked a poster why he thought the value of Pi wouldn't change, and asserted that in the realm of HD physics it was bound to change. I sorta called him out on that and his (eventual) reply (after his defenders, who know less about math than he does, tried to defend this nonsense) was to repeat the "it happens when you increase the dimensions" mantra.

This silliness ticked me off enough that I started thread about it on the forum at James Randi's site called "Hoagland and the Land of Pi". It lasted about days and 2 page, since no one was really willing to defend this stuff. It was at this point that listening to Richard became a lot less entertaining.

expat said...

Thanks, Christopher, highly amsuing. I particularly loved "That's the central theme of Carl's movie Contact." As a fan of Sagan and the movie, I can say that that's as accurate as "The artificiality of Phobos is the central theme of Sagan and Shkloskii's Intelligent Life in the Universe" -- another recent Hoaglandism.

Chris Lopes said...

And you can just see the thought process as it happened. The obviousness of it being a "clever comment" was (to coin a phrase) stunning. :)

Chris Lopes said...

"The artificiality of Phobos is the central theme of Sagan and Shkloskii's Intelligent Life in the Universe"

I think one piece of evidence in that meme is that Sagan had the license number of PHOBOS at one time. Yes, his "old friend" Carl "knew". It couldn't possibly have been that Sagan had been interested in the planet Mars (and the phrase "The Moons of Barsoom" in particular) since childhood and simply wanted to express that interest with a personalized license plate. Oh no, he was trying to send his "old friend" Richard a secret message. Lucky for us, Richard is smart enough to figure such things out.

Chris Lopes said...

A little update on the BP thing. Apparently (according to Richard), the republican filibuster of a BP investigation is a sign that things are heating up. They are risking reelection for something bigger. What could be bigger? Stay Tuned....


LOL

bmar2112 said...

Ahhh, at last. A forum dedicated to ridiculing Richard "Hoaxland". I have grown so weary of listening to his complete fabrications based on hyper-dimensional physics nonsense. That sinister face, that glib disposition and those exaggerated / bogus credentials really chap my a**.

I'm a long-time listener to C2C and have always listened with the 'grain of salt' mentality. My interest in the show began as a pass-time for a night shift worker like me. Over the years I have heard countless hours of RCH's extreme hyberbole and shameless self-promotion. So much BS is shoveled at a light-speed pace that the weak-minded and unintelligent masses either just give up and think "this guy must know what he's talking about" or are so baffled / confounded / angered by his bullsh**t that they just tune in to sports-talk.

This guy is so full of himself-- completely convinced of his own brilliance. Comfortably smug, he rambles on-and-on absolutely unchallenged. What a turd.

Ok, enough of my ad-hominem attack. I'll check in here periodically to indulge myself in a little "Hoaxland" reality check and reassure myself that he's as ridiculous as I thought he was.

Chris Lopes said...

Welcome to the club Brent. Be sure to check out expat's archive, it's full of fun stuff.

Chris Lopes said...

On that last update Expat, I visit Hougie's FB page all the time and I missed that. I found it once I knew it was there, and gave the poster a pat on the back. It was right there in front of everyone if they wanted to look. Of course Hougie will either ignore it completely or ask for the "real" logs. :)

expat said...

Oh, he'll ignore it. My main point is that he wouldn't have a clue what to do with these logs if they fell into his lap. He's totally unqualified to interpret them.