Review of Mike Bara on Coast to Coast AM, 28 Oct

        Mike Bara's gratuitous insult directed at Stuart Robbins at the start of hour 4 ("He may be a scientist but he sucks at it") will come back to bite him, as Stuart will now get a guest spot on C2C and quite possibly a chance to debate Mike live. I can hardly wait.

Oh, Ziggy, Where Art Thou?
        Even though the main topic was Mars, Mike couldn't resist attempting to justify his irresponsible promotion of the Daedalus Ziggurat on the Moon. He actually acknowledged that Stuart Robbins and I had done his research for him, but denied he ever doubted that Terry James (kksamurai) had created the original image. Good thing this blog keeps an archive, and I can therefore remind you that on the Inception Radio Network, Friday June 14th this year, he did indeed say that. And he did write on his blog that he "enhanced" the image before passing it to Hoagland, who apparently "enhanced" it some more. The image that finally got posted to the Coast to Coast web site was named AS11-38-5564-Mike-oirginal-enhanced3.jpg.

        Mike's new position on the wiggy ziggy is set out in incredible detail in his new book, now copied to his blog. I can't imagine even his greatest fans wading through all that garbage, and Mike needs to learn the difference between "forward" and "foreword."

Caught by Logic
        As he droned on through the usual accusations of sinister NASA cover-ups, the logical problem that this blog has often mentioned became very clear. Mike and his ilk really have painted themselves into a corner. They come up with these triumphant toldyas all the time -- the sneaker on Mars (titter), the satellite dishes on the Moon, bla bla bla -- but since their sole source of this imagery is NASA itself, they force themselves to claim, simultaneously, that NASA is covering things up and also that NASA photography reveals things that ought not to be there.

        So we have the spectacle of Mike claiming that one Apollo 11 frame, AS11-38-5564, contains incriminating evidence that NASA covered up the ziggy but failed to cover up a crane, a spaceship, a gun emplacement, a jack, a flying saucer, a beach house and a human head (but of course  there's no such thing as pareidolia.) Last night he referred to a feature on Mars which JPL scientists themselves have nicknamed the "Inca City." Are they covering it up? No, of course not, they're even jokily comparing it to a Peruvian archaeological site. Mike, of course, wants to have it both ways.

        Mike last night talked himself right into another logical trap, when describing the "tidal model" of Mars proposed by Richard Hoagland^{note 1}, combined with Tom Van Flandern's hypothesis that Mars was once the moon of a larger planet that exploded. Neither of these is a daft idea per se, but what Mike doesn't get is that they don't work well together. In fact, they're mutually exclusive.

        There are the two claimed tidal bulges, Arabia at the 60° longitude and Tharsis at 240°. They define Mars's orientation in relation to the claimed parent planet. And it's tidally locked, too, so Tharsis is always on the planet side. But then, what happens when the parent planet explodes? Van Flandern observes, correctly, that one hemisphere of Mars is much more heavily cratered than the other. So logically that would be on the Tharsis side, the equatorial west.

        Except it isn't. It's the entire Southern hemisphere that got preferentially splatted. The hemisphere that was not pointing at the planet when the biggie went down.^{note 2} Oops...

"Wait... you mean planets can explode?"
        Kudos to George Noory, for once, for asking Mike a very direct question -- Why would NASA want to cover up evidence? -- and refusing to accept the tired old Brookings Report as the answer. It had Mike scrambling a bit before he came up with what he thought was a scary scenario. A NASA press conference at which they announce that, yes, they have definite evidence that the parent planet of Mars once exploded and wiped out a civilization^{note 3}, all other life, several oceans and an entire atmosphere. Mike seemed to think there would be panic in the streets. Is it me, or is that an incredibly weak argument?


Sexy FB messaging
        Mike reiterated his accusation that his critics (and I assume he includes me) have been sexually harassing his FBgfs. I take exception to that. I say this: Mike Bara, put up or shut up. James Concannon has posted a specific and detailed example of reverse sexual harassment directed at him. Let's see a specific example of a sexual message from any of us. If you can't come up with one, stop saying that. And apologize.

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[1] In the course of the whole four hours, Mike managed to avoid mentioning Hoagland even once. Considering how much of his new book is recycled Hoagland material, I'd say that's remarkably ungentlemanly of him. But then, we know Mike is no gentleman even though he may spend plenty of time in "gentlemen's clubs" in Las Vegas.

[2] Arabia Terra and Tharsis Montes are in fact both in the Northern hemisphere, just to make things  worse for the theory. Tharsis at about 2°N, Arabia at 20°N.

[3] Although according to Hoagland mythology, the civilization had prior knowledge of the impending catastrophe (just like I have prior knowledge of the impending catastrophe of Mike's new book) and escaped unharmed. So it really isn't such a scary proposition after all.