Sunday, June 21, 2015

Review of Hoagland on C2C Friday 19 June

        The starting point for this night's Hoaglathon was an article in Izvestiya, translated by the online Moscow Times, that gave rise to some notably inaccurate headlines. I can't now find the exact headline from The Washington Post, but it was something like RUSSIA QUESTIONS US LUNAR LANDINGS. Richard Hoagland pointed out that that was grossly misleading — and it was the last true statement he made that night.

        There followed three hours of near-hysterical hyperbole, as Hoagland latched onto that phrase "scientific — or perhaps cultural — artifacts" and ran with it, and ran, and ran, and ran. Naturally, his interpretation was that the Russians know all about the stuff that Apollo astronauts SECRETLY brought back from the Moon. You know, the head from C3PO that somebody carelessly left at the bottom of a crater called Shorty. Such highly advanced technology (from a civilization that wasn't clever enough to survive, please note) as could usher in a Golden Age here on Earth. Hoagland spent a good ten minutes explaining that reverse engineered Lunar technology could act as a total nuclear shield, preventing any nuclear reactions — be they bombs or out-of-control reactors — from functioning. He pulled this one entirely out of his imagination. It hasn't got the slightest basis in anything real at all. Amazing.

        Hoagland, as usual, didn't mince words. "The Russians have driven a dagger into the heart of the NASA cover-up." "This will not go away." Etc., etc. Well, as one who has had to negotiate with Russians three times in my life, I think I recognize this as something very different from Hoagland's interpretation. For a start, Hoagland missed entirely the reference in the original article to allegations of corruption surrounding Russia's status as host for the 2018 World Cup of Soccer. Then, he doesn't have enough experience to interpret the Russian reaction. In my view, this is "So, my fine friend, you question our right to host the World Cup? Let's have a look at your missing Moon rocks, too. Come, let us open another bottle of vodka and discuss these important questions." In other words, just a bit of semi-serious joshing.note 1 It is, by the way, true, that some Moon rocks are unaccounted for. Wikipedia has an inventory. The robot heads are all missing, too. In the sense that they never existed in the first place. The thing to remember about the SECRET artifacts from the Moon is that Hoagland has never produced one single shred of evidence that they exist.

        Hoagland had some images to show. Starting with the Chinese images from the Jade Rabbit Lunar rover that this blog discussed in April last year. Once Hoagland runs these images through Photoshop, they clearly show CCD detector noise that he says is glass structures, confirming his manipulations of Apollo photography. This blog actually got an oblique reference, as Hoagland said that critics (that's us) claim his images of glass skyscrapers  over the Moon are just scratches or contamination on his scanner glass. "Give me a break," he said, "as if I don't recognize scratches or don't know to clean my scanner glass." Well, Richard, here's the evidence.

credit: NASA, with Hoagland contamination

        Next, he turned to the intriguing images of the asteroid Ceres that have been coming in from the Dawn spacecraft. He tried to tell us that this is a city:


credit: NASA/JPL

        A fucking city, on an asteroid? An asteroid whose mass is only 0.00015 that of Earth, and whose gravity at the surface is 0.029g? Very funny, Hoagland.

        Well, the talk then ranged far and wide, through some familiar territory. How the Apollo astronauts had their memories "adjusted" so they don't remember seeing the glass skyscrapers. How JPL totally faked the color of the first Viking images from the surface of Mars. All poppycock. George Noory's attitude ran the gamut from worship to fury. At one point he said "You're amazing, Richard. Everything you say comes true in the end" (you could almost hear rationalists across the nation screaming "ELENIN!!!! GULF OIL SPILL!!!!"). But near the end, when talk turned to plans for Hoagland to guest-host in July on the occasion of the Pluto encounter, it got a little ugly. Hoagland tried to sandbag Noory on the air by arguing for a five-hour extended show. This was obviously something that had already been discussed and rejected, so Noory shut him down in no uncertain terms. Thanks to a Coastgab member using the name Georgie for President 2016, you can hear the audio. Good fun—arrogance squashed.

===============
[1] For a brilliant rendering of this aspect of the Russian character, see the portrayal of Col. Stok by Oskar Homolka in the 1967 movie Billion Dollar Brain (at 45:40)

See also the Rational Wikipedia article on "Whataboutism."

58 comments:

Dee said...

Expat fumes: "A fucking city, on an asteroid?"

Ah yes, the "largest object in the asteroid belt". How could you have missed that obvious yet unspoken reference to Tom van Flandern and his Exploding Planet Hypothesis? That city must have somehow remained safe from the violent break-up and torsion weaponry by ... you might have guessed it ... a total nuclear shield made of unscratchable MOON DOME GLASS (tm) technology, guaranteed to keep all your ancient artifacts of the solar system intact for brave researchers to find until the sun dies its violent death. Only a pity Hoagland's own scanner was not equipped with any of that stuff!

Chris said...

Hoagland's got some cheek trying to steamroller Noory on his own show. Not a clever tactic. I'm glad he was shot down in flames.

jourget said...

Seriously, the extent to which he just kept blithely talking while George tried to shut him up multiple times, and the way RCH said he was going to "insist" on four hours as though he has any say in this matter...simply insane.

George is even on RCH's side here, trying to keep the idiot from talking his way out of whatever show the producers are willing to give him. This is the kind of attitude decades of unrestrained egotism will give you, kids.

expat said...

I wouldn't be greatly surprised if they retaliate by canceling the whole guest-host deal, bet be damned. Hoagland deserves it, he behaved like a total asshole.

Binaryspellbook said...

That was the first time I have hear Noory shut Hoagland up. Brilliant.

Anonymous said...

What motivates a man as old as Hoagland to keep acting this way ?
I believe the man is literally insane.

Chris Lopes said...

Anon, it's all he knows.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Hoagland did correctly note a second statement by the Ruskies, that cultural artifacts are missing. Klepto Neil Armstrong did swipe the souvenir Hasselblad.

The only good reason for your full time job of attempting to discredit factual data is to keep super high technology out of the hands of the general public, which could destroy the Solar System once again.

expat said...

« Klepto Neil Armstrong did swipe the souvenir Hasselblad. »

You mention my "discrediting factual data," but your own facts are highly unreliable. Armstrong didn't swipe a Hasselblad, Mitchell swiped a Data Acquisition Camera, and eventually gave it back.

The cultural artifacts to which Vladimir Markin referred are the films, I believe.

Thanks for taking an interest.

Trekker said...

Armstrong's widow also found a DAC among his things after he died, but I don't think he could be accused of 'stealing' it: http://petapixel.com/2015/02/10/forgotten-moon-camera-found-tucked-away-neil-armstrongs-closet/

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Dear Patrick,

Do you think that everybody ought to have the right to control unlimited free energy, hypothetically, of course? Or do you feel it would be justified to do everything possible, including to fabricate, in order to keep such advanced technology out of the hands of an potentially unlimited number of James Bond, type, villains?

Love 'ya - mean it,

expat said...

Dear Theodora,

It's a meaningless question because there is no unlimited free energy. Solar and wind energy are both free but not unlimited.

This is another of your off-topic comment threads and I'm not going to let it go on very long.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Do you concur with the Ruskies, that the cultural artifacts from the Moon are communal property?

expat said...

Actually no. The nation that went to all the trouble to fetch Moonrocks and make film/video recordings of the process should have dibs.

Russian scientists with appropriate credentials should be eligible to get NASA's Moonrocks for study, and as far as I know they are. Don't forget that the Russkies have 326 grams of Moonrocks they fetched themselves during the Luna program 1970-76. I don't know if they consider those a "common heritage." That would be something else to discuss over yet another bottle of vodka, I guess.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Hoagland challenges that anyone can download the Apollo 14 image of the Domes on Mars and lighten the sky for themselves; that his scanner didn't have scratches.
I don't have access to Photoshop today, and Paint won't do the trick.

Any takers?

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo14/hires/as14-66-09277.jpg

expat said...

He probably means the Apollo 14 shot with the blue flare. I covered this in detail three years ago.

This is his contaminated version of AS10-32-4820, a detail of which I embedded in this blogpost (NOTE: Apollo 10 not 14). Here's the official version. I'd do the brightness boost for you but I couldn't embed the result in blog comments. It goes without saying that NONE of that crap in the lunar sky can be brought out merely by brightening. IT'S SCANNER CONTAMINATION. If you have a back-channel to Hoagland, please tell him.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Coast has posted mislabeled images:

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/pages/hoagland-images-6-19-15

http://download.coasttocoastam.com/pages/hoagland-image061915-01-LARGE.jpg

expat said...

Yes, AS14-66-9901 should be AS14-66-9301. There is no AS14-66-9901. The others might be correct, I can't read the lower two.

Chris Lopes said...

What enhancement did Hoagie claim to do to get that image?

expat said...

AS14-66-9301, you mean? Probably just slammed up the brightness, maybe contrast as well. I can't play around to find out since I don't have the image he started with. Notice it says "Ken's..." meaning from Ken Johnston's collection.

Chris Lopes said...

Ken's originals which were copies that he used in his all important job as a shipping clerk. Whatever happened to those anyway?

expat said...

Some part of Ken's collection was donated to his alma mater, Oklahoma State, where the corn is as high as an elephant's eye. I assume Hoagland returned the ones he had, after running them through his filthy scanner.

Binaryspellbook said...

I listened recently to an old Hoagland interview with Art Bell. It was from 1995. Perhaps one of Hoagland's earliest interviews with Bell. He was in full flow. Self aggrandizing, supremely confident, vibrant. And with machine gun delivery spoke over Art Bell multiple times. Bell at this time clearly had not learned how to control this name-dropper extraordinaire. A fact that was not lost on Hoagland. The more he name-dropped the more Bell appeared to be less inclined to interject. Summarised below is one of his claims on that particular show regarding Mars Observer and Hubble.

:Mars observer went "black" - the failure was a cover, so that the orbiter could take hi-res photographs of Cydonia and the face on Mars

:The Hubble mirror error was a cover up. This enabled Mars observer to use an onboard laser to transmit the "stunning images of ruins etc" back to Hubble. Hubble would then process and store these images onboard via the instrument that was latterly replaced by Storey Musgrave and his shuttle crew with the "optical fix instrument" which was obviously yet another cover up.

I am not making this shit up. I swear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l5A-uEqosQ

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Theadora Minsk
Today at 11:48am

Well, I don't see the scratches but it looks like light is reflected from the background. Could it be Sunlight reflected against atmosphere, from off of the surface of the Moon from beyond the horizon?

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=471431223015406&set=a.229303263894871.1073741825.100004455964768&type=1&theater

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Brightened from:
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a14/AS14-66-9301HR.jpg

expat said...

You've done the right thing -- see? no skyscrapers! The vague patchy light is not coming from atmosphere because there is none. It might be suspended dust, but more likely just a much reduced artifact of the scanning process.

jourget said...

The fact that Ken dropped off the majority of his photos at Oklahoma gives RCH a chance to pull another event into his superconspiracy: see, soon after he met Ken in 1995, RCH tried to get the photos back from the University, only to find that they'd since disposed of them. And during these discussions, the Oklahoma City Bombing happened. He doesn't mention how that event was related, but implied that it was some sort of distraction event, because he's of course the most important person alive (source: RCH on Coast, 1996-03-21).

Oh, and in his 2014-05-30 Earthkeepers presentation, RCH also says that he thinks Ken was being watched when he had the photos in his possession, and that NASA simply snatched them back from the University after Ken left.

What fun it must be to live in a cloak-and-dagger world like this, where every day is like a scene from All The President's Men!

expat said...

Thanks for that Jourget -- details I didn't know.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Could the dusty areas be erasure marks from removing the skyscrapers?

GFP2216 said...

On the 'skyscraper' image: "Hoagland Beard Hair?"

Now that's just good satire :D.

expat said...

Theadora: NO. Any erasure would obviously be pure black.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Why are there about eight bright spots in the sky, as if studio spotlights?

expat said...

Studio spotlights are specifically arranged so as NOT to be directly seen by the camera. Also, they are not generally suspended 500 m above the ground with no means of support.

Also, I do not see eight.

Anonymous said...

Tally-ho

Ripley is at it again :-) I must give it to her....she's an expert in absolutely saying nothing when she is saying something...something like this I suppose :-) Well done

Adrian

Anonymous said...

Hey, anyone else eagerly awaiting what cities and monuments Hoagland and Bara claim to see on Pluto over the next few weeks as New Horizons does actual science?

Anonymous said...

...." It is, by the way, true, that some Moon rocks are unaccounted for. Wikipedia has an inventory. "

Well. that is by no means the only thing "curious" about those moon rocks. Lots of them are proven fakes and that in itself is a clue as to the "fishiness" when it comes to these rocks. An astute question would be...why fakery? Did Neil and Buzz know they where giving away fake rocks as genuine? Are the it petrified wood pieces all the way from Arizona a hint as to the who, what and why? You know the Ari-zona where they tested the moon landings etc.? Interesting topic one way or the other :-)


Adrian

Binaryspellbook said...

Can't wait to hear what shite the Hoaxmeister will pour forth regarding Pluto.
Remember Hoagland never fails in an experiment or a prediction. So he is guaranteed to see "stunning ruins, ancient arcology and fuck knows how many 19.5's."

Unknown said...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/26/mars-pyramid-nasa-curiosity-rover-video_n_7665080.html

I wonder what the Hoaxmeister will say about the newly discovered pyramid on Mars. Yes, this is in the original photos.

Trekker said...

I bet he'll ignore the fact that it's about four inches high...

Unknown said...

He did run with 4 inch high "apartments" on Mars. Maybe it was the same tiny wee Martians that built the pyramid. Yet the "face is miles in dimensions. Odd that isn't it. Wee tiny guys living alongside giants......Oh yeah I forgot, "it's the changing physics."

Trekker said...

I see Hoagie's starting his own radio show later this month - at least that's what he claims on his website. That should supply you with bucketloads of guff for this blog, Expat!!

http://www.enterprisemission.com/plutoflyby.htm

expat said...

Yes, and it seems that he'll be doing his marathon "Night of the Encounter" on DMDN July 14th. I wonder if that means his double hosting stint on C2C is canceled?

He starts the new 5xweek show on 20th. As it's by subscription, I won't be tuning in. I comfort myself with the thought that, since Hoagland has a famously short attention span, he'll likely get bored and walk away from the show, as he has walked away from the Enterprise Conference, his FB page, the new book about Mars, the Moon With a View... etc.

jourget said...

I'm sure the shows will be up on Youtube or Torrent sites not long after they air, anyway.

How much effort RCH puts into any endeavor is probably driven by money. He abandoned Facebook not long after the faithful fell through on funding his desired Egypt trip back in 2012 (not that he gave any of the money back-what, you think this is Kickstarter?). And if the Enterprise Conference was giving him any substantive lucre, he undoubtedly would have kept doing it. He'll think up stuff to talk about on the new show for as long as he needs to keep it coming-as long as it's worth it to him.

It probably won't be that long. I'm sure he thinks he's got the same draw as Art Bell, but who's going to seriously pay to hear RCH ramble on for five days a week? Besides Bill the Astronomer, that is. Hi Richard! Hi!!!

I get an absurd amount of amusement in watching these petty political squabbles within the woo community. Since "science" is whatever you say it is in these circles, they don't even have the basic unifying connection of using the scientific method. This is so much fun. I wonder if we got to hear RCH and George's final breakup live on the air...

expat said...

Another thing that's a bit of a puzzle... Is Hoagland going to do this show from his trailer in the New Mexico desert, or is he going to schlep to somewhere there's a professional studio?

I know Robin does her freedomslips thing from home, so obviously they have a DSL setup. But there's much more technology involved in a proper call-in show. Art Bell did it from home, but Art is Art, and a one-off.

Dee said...

Expat: "But there's much more technology involved in a proper call-in show"

I wouldn't be so sure, I've heard well made live call-in shows with a couple of open lines made through turnkey online solutions like blogtalkradio and it's not the only game in town. It's all software and "cloud" driven these days and real open phone lines easily can be arranged and patched through into the software console. I've seen the tools and it's really easy to operate alone or with a buddy. What always surprised me is that Bell & Hoagland never went this road before but I suspect they always hoped for the bigger contracts and the lesser amount of work. Also, Bell, is a wire & dial sort of guy while Hoagland prefers reading the time from his 40 year old Accutron. So, well, perhaps it's not a surprise after all. But for $5 a month with a thousand fans perhaps, well at least it would pay for that trailer. But what are the operating costs?

It seems to have been arranged by loyal technician Keith Rowland using a combination of streamguys.com & tunein.com, perhaps some other tools and it might be a good, high quality set-up, able to handle large operations. All very clever but I'm worried about the financing to cover all of this. There must be some investor or advertising contracts made up for the first period to cover for this kind of set-up.

Personally I don't believe the revenue in terms of traffic and interest will be as big as the megalomaniacs involved seem to be thinking. But before they will accept it, some scapegoat will be invented to prop up their own increasingly irrelevant public existence. Or health issues. And we'll never find out how successful it might have become if it only would have lasted...(and this is by the way how actually happened with Art at Sirius XM but he blames something else of course)

Dr. John Dee, woo forecaster.

Chris Lopes said...

What makes you think Hoagie will be taking calls? No one that in love with the sound of his own voice is going to share the stage with mere mortals. It's going to be all Hoagie all the time.

Like others here, I doubt Hoagie will stick with it long. It takes him a year to come up with those 3 hour snore-fests he does at conferences. A regular 5 night a week job is not his thing. So I expect it to crash and burn after a couple of months.

As an aside, I find it amusing that he has named his show after a trashy (is there any other kind?) Sydney Sheldon novel.

Dee said...

Chris, it would have been way better for him to go with "Long after midnight" from Ray Bradbury, the name of a wonderful short story as well as a whole bundle of his stories I happen to own, one of my favorite little books. Anyway, aren't they tired by now with references to the night and dark things in general? But now it sounds more like a séance show where your medium guide will introduce you to the Other Side....

Trekker said...

Hoagie's actually just posted again on his Facebook page. I wonder how long that little burst of activity will last? :D

jourget said...

-Hoagie's actually just posted again on his Facebook page-

Because there's something for him to gain. When his fans wouldn't finance his Egypt trip, he left them twisting in the wind. As long as he can dredge a few bucks for show subscriptions out of the few people who are left, it's worth it.

Even if you leave aside pretty much all of his hypotheses and methodologies, this is another huge red flag that separates Hoagland from actual, you know, real scientists. He's got more in common with infomercial hosts than anybody else...which is pretty fitting, considering that's where he first began to present himself to the public eye back in the 80s.

Chris Lopes said...

Is he saying anything beyond "I'm gonna be on this here show"?

expat said...

Yes -- FOR SIX FUCKING HOURS.

Chris Lopes said...

I mean on his fb page. As in is he sticking around to talk to fans?

Trekker said...

Chris, I take it you can't see his page. Here are three screenshots, including the sycophantic comments to date:

http://imgur.com/BWHr9CL

http://imgur.com/vIVwkls

http://imgur.com/tIAQAXm

Trekker said...

Uh oh! New Horizons has suffered a glitch. What do you bet Hoagie will run with this as some sort of evil conspiracy?

Unknown said...

http://www.nasa.gov/nh/new-horizons-responds-spacecraft-anomaly

NOW HEAR THIS!

New Horizons just had a "BLACKOUT". This is "STUNNING CONFIRMATION" of an "ASTONISHINGLY CONFIRMATORY EVENT" like an alien encounter or something that NASA is hiding from the public.

Stay Tuned.....

Chris Lopes said...

Yeah I thought that too when I heard the news. Just as Hoagie pokes his head out from under the rock he's been hiding under, the universe pulls a fast one. If it weren't for the loss of real scientific discovery, I'd be cheering Mr. Murphey on.

Chris Lopes said...

BTW, after seeing the pix Trekker provided and later visiting the FB page itself, it looks like another Hoagie drive-by at the fan base. I think that's a mistake on his part, as this is a subscription radio thing. He needs people with more than just a passing interest in his BS to make this a positive career choice. He needs intensity of a kind that he used to generate when he was on the page 24/7.

Bill said...

Expat, I can't wait for the next instalment of RCH productions, Pluto mission and the polygonal features being linked to his hyperdermic physics....and the 19.5 degree saga which he hasn't peddled for a while. I can just imagine Mr hoagie bear sitting at his command centre of one waiting with his fingertips to use the brightens slider on Paint....or possibly the free ware more aptly named Gimp. Regards Bill