Even Hoagland's own procrastination, it seems, is a "stunning confirmation...."

Today's comedy routine.

        Three days ago Richard Hoagland called an end to his two-week absence from his Facebook page (during which the Branch Hoaglandians had flagrant separation anxiety) in order to plug the "Cruise into 2012" which he's participating in as a guest speaker. He's been engaged to talk nonsense on a ship for eight straight hours.

        OK, that last part was an exaggeration — but perhaps not much. He promised that This multi-hour, multi-media Enterprise Mission Presentation will address the stunning, rapidly unfolding "consc-iousness changes" now demonstrably occurring worldwide. Whatever that means. And no, I'm damned if I'll put in a link to the cruise details. He can do his own plugging.

        Anyway, yesterday a few commenters expressed some impatience that they'd be forced to wait until next Spring and/or fork out $1200 in order to receive the next dose of wisdom from The Great Hoagland-Master. They wondered if a little preview might be in order.

Hoagland replied:

"Now" is not the time to present this developing information; it will not be "ready for Prime Time" until next Spring ....

"Make no wine before its time." :)

...and then, you could almost hear his brain clicking into auto-mode: HOW TO END THIS IN A WAY THAT AFFIRMS HYPERDIMENSIONAL PHYSICS???

...then it was "Ah, got it!"

"Timing" is a KEY component of Hyperdimensional Physics -- because of the constantly changing astronomical alignments.

        It remains to be seen whether this will satisfy the throngs of disciples. It sounds suspiciously like another nod to astrology to me.

Hoagland says he can't post to his own website

(I originally posted this as a comment but it's worth a separate thread)

       Richard Hoagland has written more than once on his FB page that he's unable to post anything to his web site because of a hackathon that's been denying him access since last April.

       He repeated that claim last night on Coast to Coast AM, adding that even the talented network admin Keith Rowland had been unable to penetrate the diabolical conspiracy.

       James Concannon is in touch with Keith, and checked out the story. Here's Keith's reply:

Keith Rowland November 17 at 10:48am
The site has been operational and available for update all along. I know RCH has had problems on his own computer that may have limited his own access to the site. But the website is and has been functional all this time.

       Keith Rowland has a good rep among long-time netizens and it would certainly be a surprise if he was unable to debug a simple web site for seven months. Once again, Hoagland is trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

This just in: Mike Bara explains he's being stalked

       Apparently, posing a challenge to a very inaccurate statement about planetary astronomy counts as stalking in Bara's mind.

Bara reflects on his 3-hour radio show.

       Just in case Mike ever reads this, or in case a reader can get a message to him, here's a science note:

       The sidereal period of a planet (also known as the "true" period) is a function of the semi-major axis of its orbit only. The eccentricity of the orbit does not feature in the equation¹. In the special case of an orbit with eccentricity zero — perfectly circular, in other words — semi-major axis is simply another way of saying radius.

       It follows that, if the orbits of Earth and Mars were zero-eccentric, the period of Earth would still be one year exactly and that of Mars 1.88 years. There is, therefore, no possibility that they could remain at the same distance from each other over time, as Mike claimed today.

[1] The equation is T = √r³ where T = period in Earth-years, r = semi-major axis in astronomical units.

Update:
Peter Uwira of the Final Frontier FB page has very expertly compiled the Coast-to-Coast confrontation. Thanks a bunch, Peter. Very well done.

Further update: 
 Mike has now left my comment on his blog for about a week without deleting it. I may be entirely misinterpreting that, but it's possible that this is as close as we're ever going to see to Mike Bara conceding a point.

====================================================

       On another topic, I'm genuinely interested in the proposed mass consciousness experiment in conjunction with the Princeton GCP. I hope they go ahead with it.

The sheer sales power of Coast to Coast AM

       Last night, at 8pm EST, Mike Bara's book The Choice was ranked 90,418 in overall popularity at Amazon. Overnight, Mike did three hours on C2C and today (8:30am) it's at 1,049.

       Mike can do all the pseud-psych radio in the world, but this is where the gold is. This is why authors willingly give up a night's sleep.

       As to what Mike actually said — it seemed like gobbledegook to me (and to at least one commenter on this blog.) I think he mentioned that hyperdimensional physics is the direct path to God. That might explain why he and his buddy Richard Hoagland have such a hard time explaining it.

Comet Hartley 2: Oh so predictable

        The EPOXI flyby of Comet Hartley 2 yesterday was another brilliant success for JPL, and the images were extraordinary. The body of the comet looks like a two-kM-long jet-propelled peanut.

        In less than 24 hours, Richard Hoagland had figured out a highly unoriginal way of using this scientific triumph to draw attention to himself and his crackpot ideas. OF COURSE! CLAIM IT'S AN ALIEN SPACESHIP!!! He posted this:

Just look at the regular, tiered GEOMETRY of the lower end -- like a cutaway, 3-D view of a large skyscraper ... with many exposed "floors" ... after a massive internal explosion.

It's those subtle, interior SYMMETRIES that "give the game away."

And then, OF COURSE, NASA is hiding the true story.

[S]tudies (at MIT, I believe) some years ago, with cats, demonstrated that the human visual/brain mechanisms (cats are CLOSELY related to humans, genetically) ONLY see such 3-D regular geometry--

At CERTAIN ANGLES ....

NASA releases its images so those ANGLES are specifically NOT "triggered."

        Oh yes, sure, JPL scientists were up all night figuring out how they could release the images in a deceptive way. Never mind that Hoagland has, as usual, got the science totally wrong. The cat vision study was at UC Berkeley, and showed that the retina-brain interface acted far more rapidly for horizontal motion than for vertical motion. Nothing to do with seeing angles in static objects, and nobody said that the same applies to humans in any case.

        I wonder if the NASA/JPL scientists who work so hard and so effectively to bring us news from the Cosmos ever hear about Hoagland's ravings and unfounded accusations? I assume not, but you never know.

        Meanwhile, back on the FB page, even some of the gullible disciples apparently find this tale hard to swallow. Several of them have expressed doubt.

        James Concannon posted this, and of course Hoagland deleted it immediately:

To all the Branch Hoaglandians and True Disciples:

Now look, you guys... your NASA-hating and science-ignorant guru has spent most of the summer assuring you not only that Phobos is an alien spaceship but that ESA scientists will DEFINITELY confirm that at the EPSC conference in October.

IT NEVER HAPPENED.

Your glorious leader wrote, in mid-July, that the attempt to cap the Macondo oil well was certain to end in failure and make the oil gusher worse.

HE WAS DEAD WRONG.

Now he comes at you with this cock-and-bull story about Hartley being an alien spaceship, and some of you are willing to believe him.

WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOUR JUDGMENT??????

[Reprinted by permission]

Useful links:
EPOXI/Hartley quick image gallery
Full resolution images
Morph animation by Daniel Machacek
EPOXI fact sheet (pdf)