Review of Mike Bara on Coast to Coast AM, 25/26 April

        C2C gave Mike the dog watch last night—midnight-2am Pacific, 3-5 Eastern. It seemed particularly cruel to use the physicist Michio Kaku as opener—it was like "Here's this distinguished professor from CCNY, joint originator of string theory, rational but bold thinker, Ph.D. from Berkeley. AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT... Mike Bara."

        Mike is thoroughly confused about personal consciousness vs. collective will. To be sure, there is some evidence that intense application of mass human will can achieve surprising results—some of it from the C2C radio show itself—but Bara, while obviously very aware of this, also writes "We have, each of us, enough energy to make this world into anything we wish it to be." [The Choice, p.217.]

The Backster Effect
        He trotted out that same idea last night. YOU CAN PERSONALLY CHOOSE what the coming apocalypse means, he assured his audience. Did he provide any evidence to support the idea, or say how he comes by such knowledge? Well, no and no. He spoke of two "experiments" which we must assume he thinks are relevant. One was his former co-author's foolery with an Accutron watch, which apparently showed periodic anomalies. The other was Cleve Backster's "terrified plant" trick of 1968. What do these two hobby activities have in common? They were both done without controls, and are therefore trash science.

                Late into hour 2, Mike removed all possible doubt that he knows nothing about psychology by assuring us that "everything has consciousness." I waited for some follow-up that would show he was speaking metaphorically, but I got the converse of that. No, he really means everything. Tables, chairs, granite.... George Noory's comment was "Oh yes."

        If the contrast between Kaku and Bara was striking, another contrast also comes to mind—that between Bara and another very recent guest on C2C, Maurice Cotterell. He's the nutcase who said that we can oh-so-easily get all the energy we could ever want by simply lining up little containers of the elements in order. Start with hydrogen, helium, lithium.... keep going until you have 120, the last one presumably containing the purely theoretical element unbinilium.

        Cotterell's theories are entirely wrong but kind of hilarious. Bara's are entirely wrong and kind of boring.

Ceci n'est pas une blogpost

        Last night on Coast-to-Coast AM, Richard Hoagland made reference to me specifically as one of his principal critics. Although this would ordinarily be a fine topic (or excuse) for a blogpost, if I responded we would very quickly descend into the topic of patent law. I think we may all agree that would be BORING. So I'll spare you, chers lecteurs.

        You can listen, if you must, here (04-20-11, hour 3, at 25:15). Take delight in Hoagland's many errors, as when he states that the launch of STS-134 was deliberately postponed to clash with the Royal Wedding (at 8:47pm London time?????)

Mike Bara and the JFK timeline

        On his blog, Mike Bara just posted a piece about the recently declassified memo from JFK to the CIA Director, John McCone, on the subject of "unknowns"—assumed to refer to UFOs. The memo was the subject of a prominent article in the London Daily Mail, among other media.

        Bara repeated what he had said during a brief spot on Coast to Coast AM, and on this he is perfectly correct (in content if not exactly in grammar):

The Daily Mail as well as other news sources citing this story have unfortunately mischaracterized the content of the memos. They have been presented it as if Kennedy was asking about UFO’s – or “unknowns” as he called them—and implying that alone may have gotten him killed. In fact, it’s clear from the memos that Kennedy already was well briefed on the “unknowns,” at least enough to know that there were “high threat cases” which needed to be included in the information sharing with the Soviets.

        It's in extending that idea to a motive for assassination that he let his imagination run away. He continues:

What we have argued, and which now seems validated, is that it was the putting into motion of his plan to share not only our technology, but what would be discovered on the Moon that got him killed. If the Moon actually held the secrets of a long dead and highly advanced civilization, then protecting those secrets from a nation that most perceived to be our arch enemy would have been justification enough to kill Kennedy 10 days later in Dallas.

        So, let's see... this plot was hatched and Lee Harvey Oswald was recruited and trained in 10 days?

        Slight problem, here... Oswald started work at the Book Depository on 16th October, nearly a month earlier. Oops...

        Of course, there's also the problem that there's no such thing as "the secrets of a long dead and highly advanced civilization" on the Moon. But nobody's going to convince Mike or his former co-author of that. It's their cash cow.

NASA's Egyptian God-worship examined, Part IV -- or, 3+5 = 7

        Yesterday, in a near-unbelievable display of mathematical incompetence, Richard Hoagland demonstrated the difficulty he encounters when faced with a complex equation such as x=3+5. The full dialog is here (thanks once again, Christopher) but the gist of it is that Hoagland wanted to force the time of the launch of STS-134 to fit his fantasy of ritual numbers.

        Not finding any joy with the actual launch time, 3:47 pm or 15:47, he hit on the idea of reckoning the time in London, where some sort of wedding will, I understand, take place on the same day. London being 5 hours ahead of Florida, the time will be 8:47 pm or 20:47. To Hoagland, however, the answer is 7:47 pm or 19:47 which of course is the same as 19.5. Bingo! Or rather, non-Bingo.

        One interesting fact arose from the ensuing discussion. Hoagland posted as follows:

You're forgeting one important detail ... regarding "symbolic rituals":

It's NOT when they "eventually" happen ...; it's when (and how) they're first PROPOSED (birthed) that's critical. :)

        He apparently didn't notice that, in that case, he should have been calculating his magic numerology based on a launch time yesterday, when the launch date of STS-134 was "birthed." But it answered a general question I posed in Part III of this analysis: Which launch time is considered "ritual"? The planned time or the actual time?

        Now that we know the answer to that question, it further disqualifies the only space shuttle launch time that is claimed as "ritual" in Hoagland's 'Table of Coincidence.' That launch time is STS-88 at 03:36 EDT, 4th December 1998.



STS-88 is already disqualified on the following grounds:

- It references the planet Mars, not one of the 5 specified "ritual" stars
- The elevation is -3.33°, not one of the 5 specified "ritual" elevations
- The observation point is Phoenix, not a site associated with the launch

        To that we must now add that the launch time itself is wrong. STS-88 was originally scheduled to launch a day earlier at 03:58.

Could anything possibly be MORE WRONG???

True, Richard, but then the Red Cross are there to HELP

        An amazing exchange of opinion took place on Richard Hoagland's FB page over the weekend—or perhaps nauseating is a better adjective than amazing. Hoagland has been claiming that the seismic events off the coast of Japan are caused, not by simple plate tectonics, but by DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS in the hands of unspecified EVIL PEOPLE. Believe it or not, at one point he posted that the 7.1 quake about 3 weeks after the main 9.0 PROVED the point, because "What are the odds of ANOTHER major quake ...with an epicenter ... only a few miles different from the earlier, devestating[sic] 9.0 quake ... and all, by "acident?![sic]" (somebody replied "The odds are 100%, Richard. It's called an aftershock. Look it up".)

        Anyway, back to the thread that was generated over the weekend. Gavin James posted as follows:

There`s evidence for earthquakes since the dawn of time. I don`t know if you genuinely believe this crap Richard, but as someone whose family has strong Japanese links, I find your use of this humanitarian tragedy to sell your crank theories to desperate people quite sickening. Shame on you.

Hoagland replied:

Are you upset when the police, or the rescue workers, or the Red Cross ... or the media ... show up for a disaster?

And, if not ... why NOT!?--

After all, they're being PAID!

They LIVE off "disaster and human misery," do they not?

        The thread continued for over 160 posts, although if you discount a torrent of utter rubbish from someone called 'Ed BordSoHere' it'd come down to about half that.

        It quickly became obvious that Hoagland's main motivation was, indeed, marketing. He repeatedly reminded the faithful followers that this is all part of the SEEKRIT SPACE WAR that Judy Wood DEFINED, that he lectured about 15 days ago, and that will be the subject of A DVD -- COMING SHORTLY. He stopped just short of posting an 800 number.

        Gavin James stayed with it, keeping his cool. Another of his rejoinders was:

Yes people need to be prosecuted for 9-11, the JFK case needs to be reopened etc, but by putting out these wild theories first we condemn the movement to an existence of inactivity. The establishment don`t need to worry about putting out misinfo, when there are attention seakers and charlatans who crawl out of the wood work, and claim to have been to Mars, room shared with Elvis in the 90`s, that they`re Marilyn Monroe etc etc etc.

Precisely.

        Thanks to Chris Lopes for bringing this to my attention. The full nauseating thread is here.

Update: The sub-title on Hoagland's FB page used to identify him as a "Public Figure." Suddenly it's changed to "Aerospace/Defense." It figures that his elephantine arrogance would have wanted the "Public Figure" label. Maybe FB slapped his wrist?

Richard Hoagland, Judy Wood, and Adam Parfrey

        Latest victim of Hoagland's contempt for copyright[1] appears to be Dr Judy Wood of Where Did the Towers Go? pseudo-fame.

        I don't propose to get into analysis of the startling case that Dr Wood has made and Hoagland has now latched onto, hoping to make a buck out of it. Others have already pointed out some absurdities.

Two planes not enough
        We all saw two fully loaded Boeing 767s fly into the World Trade Center on 11th September 2001. In a nutshell, Wood and Hoagland say that this was not what caused the towers to collapse. I can't help giggling over Hoagland stating, last night on Coast to Coast AM, that the WTC towers collapsed "at escape velocity" — but OK, let's assume that was just a slip of the tongue.

        Andrew Johnson, another fringe investigator, is pretty annoyed with Hoagland for hijacking Dr Wood's research, lecturing on the subject for a couple of hours, and preparing to sell an edited DVD of that lecture, all without having contacted Dr Wood. In my opinion, although it was outrageously unprofessional of Hoagland, in the end Wood will have little to complain of, since she's going to be invited to C2C-AM pretty soon. As we know, that sells books rather efficiently.

Dangerous and stingy
        It was the story of the publication of her book that got my attention. According to Johnson's page, Wood signed a publisher's contract in early 2009 and accepted "a small advance." Two years of acrimony then followed, with the publisher refusing to publish 540 pages and protesting that he couldn't afford color illustrations. Eventually Judy Wood bought out her contract and self-published.

        So who was this intransigent publisher? Step forward Adam Parfrey, Univ. Calif. dropout and possibly the most dangerous publisher in America according to a HuffPo piece from last December.

        Others have wondered if Parfrey is the stingiest publisher in the world, since he published Hoagland & Bara's Dark Mission without an index and with totally inadequate photo reproduction, despite making a very large pile of $$$ with the first edition (55,000 copies sold.)

        In comments on an Amazon user's review titled "Where Did the Book Go?" a few of Judy Wood's fans took Parfrey to task over his handling of the contract.

Kim Greenhouse wrote:

Let me tell you this: You have no interest in this book becoming known or in the 10 years of her courageous work being fulfilled. Your comments are totally inappropriate about how you desperately wanted the book published, about how you were working to get high resolution images, about how Dr. Wood was upset about the idea of this and that.

She left you people because you are unprofessional, you refused to publish the book and you air your issues in a way that stinks. Stop urinating on her book launch.

As for saying that the book was quite stressful for Dr. Wood, you are simply condescending and so out of touch with the nature of the project that if you had an ounce of class and professional decorum, you would take yourselves off of the amazon page falsely representing that you are her publisher, since you are not.

Parfrey replied:

The commentary here has no relation at all to the reality of the situation, which would not reflect well on Ms. Wood. That said, I willingly relinquished rights to Ms. Wood after she disappeared from communication with me for months at a time. I'm glad the book finally appeared.

False book promo
        I'm on Kim Greenhouse's side on the question of Parfrey's lack of professionalism. Even now, 18 months later, the Product Description of Dark Mission 2nd Edn on both Amazon and Borders includes this:

Authors Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara include a new chapter about the discoveries made by ex-Nazi scientist and NASA stalwart Wernher von Braun regarding what he termed "alternate gravitational solutions," or the rewriting of Newtonian physics into hyperdimensional spheres.

Buyers of the new edition will be provided a code that will enable them to log on to DarkMission.net to download hundreds of images discussed within the book.

        The interesting thing about those two statements is that NEITHER IS TRUE. Adam Parfrey knows this, it has been brought to his attention, and he takes no action. It's even possible that commentary right here on The Emoluments of Mars in August 2008 was the reason the Von Braun chapter was killed.

        About the only good thing I can think of to say about Parfrey is that he refused to publish Mike Bara's God-awful book The Choice. Deo Gratias.

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

[1] Other notable victims are Keith Laney and Walter Myers.

Numerology? Or is this dog poo?

        Richard Hoagland was in breathless form yesterday in Facebookistan, explaining to the faithful that ritualism was ruling the day. He built his case on pure numerology, featuring his favorite number 19.5.

Congress and the White House FINALLY agreed on "$39 billion dollars" (39 = 2 X 19.5!) in budget cuts.
The full Congressional vote is set for April 14, 2011.
195 DAYS From the beginning of "the 2011 Fiscal Year" -- October 1, 2010!

...a "budget agreement" that STARTED at $33 BILLION ....
And, ended at $39 BILLION ... at ~11:04 PM (President Obama is the 44th President of the United States )... on 4/8/11 = 23 = SIRIUS!! :)

        Don't ask me why 23 = Sirius. At some point he also confused Syria with Sirius, predicting dramatic events in Damascus (a fairly safe prediction, one might think.)

        There was more insanity to come...

Encoded now, in the events of Friday night -- at 11:04; Saturday's "surprise visit" to the Lincoln Memorial by Obama; and his repeated references to "George Washington" (3 times!) ... while standing in front of an Open Window in the Blue Room, at 11:04 PM ("his" Number" -- 44) ... to SPECIFICALLY show off the WASHINGTON MONUMENT behind him!

Which represents-
"Isis!"
On a day when "women" were extraordinarily "attacked" -- only to be "rescued" by--
Obama's "Horus Forces" .... :)
At 11:00 PM ("Code" for "19.5) ... announced in a budget agreement of--
39 billion (2 X "19.5")!

        Don't ask me why 11:04 = 44. To show how willingly the faithful swallow Hoagland's Kool-Aid, a disciple named Abby Hudgins chimed in:

When I viewed this it had 19 "likes" and 39 comments. I will be the 20th, right in between 19 and 20, to "like" it. :-)

        No, Abby, 20 is not right between 19 and 20. Hoagland was delighted, naturally:

Abby,
Ah ... then you're "19.5" .... :)
This developing "Obama Symbology"--

        Only if you read him closely could the true motive be discerned. Guess what -- selling books.

The background to all this is in "Dark Mission." :)

        So, it was numerology in the service of base commerce.

        I always loved a comment by an editor called "Cromulent Kwyjibo" on the wikipedia discussion page for numerology (this was back in September 2005, it's now archived.) Crom wrote that the hierarchy of mathematical disciplines, in descending order of rigor, is

advanced math
legitimate math
recreational math
coincidences
dog poo
numerology

Castles in the air, by Hoagland & Bara

        On FB yesterday, James Concannon asked about the "lunar anomalies" that Hoagland & Bara refer to as "The Castle," "The Tower," and "The Shard." All three of them are depicted on this page from the now-defunct Lunar Anomalies web site, once managed by Mike Bara.

        James pointed out that the huge library of images from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has now been assembled into a user-friendly web interface called the ACT-REACT Quick Map. If the latitudes and longitudes of these so-called anomalies could be provided, we could all go see them for ourselves -- IF they actually exist, as opposed to being artifacts of 1960s-era photo processing.

The Castle
        As it so happens, I can help. The "Castle" was taken from a manipulated version of Hasselblad Frame AS10-32-4822 from the Apollo 10 mission. Numerous photographic imperfections are seen on that frame. The crater is Triesnecker, named for Austrian astronomer Franz de Paula Triesnecker, and its coordinates are known: 4.2°N, 3.6°E.

        ACT-REACT has no "search by name" feature, so here's how to find Triesnecker.

1. Ensure that the drop-down menu at center top is set to 'Equidistant Cylindrical Map.'
2. Set the radio buttons top left to 'Navigate.'
3. Set the resolution to 125 m/pix using the pop-up selector at lower left.
4. Enter the latitude & longitude of Triesnecker in the text fields bottom center.
5. Click the 'Recenter' button to the right of the Lon:/Lat: fields.
6. Having centered the display on Triesnecker, use the navigator at left (or drag the image around at will) to search for the Castle.

        LRO has two narrow-angle cameras, resolution 0.5m, and one wide-angle camera, resolution 100m. The entire Moon has been covered by WAC, and this is the image you see in ACT-REACT by default. Swaths outlined in red indicate where NAC imagery is available, and two of them overlay Triesnecker. By zooming in, the difference in resolution is very apparent.

        So did you find the Castle? No, me neither.

The Tower
        This is also derived from an Apollo 10 Hasselblad frame, AS10-32-4856. It comes from the very same monochrome magazine, Mag S. The crater is Blagg, named for astronomer Mary Blagg, and its co-ordinates are 1.3°N, 1.5°E. Some people see Blagg as a breast, with the tiny crater right on Blagg's East rim serving as a nipple. Personally, I've seen better. Craters and breasts.

The Shard
        This one is from the 1967 Lunar Orbiter 3 mission. The camera was capable of a resolution as good as 1m but because of its peculiar photo-processing method, artifacts on Lunar Orbiter images are ubiquitous. Hoagland & Bara spotted the Shard on frame LO-III-84M -- download the 1 megabyte .tiff to get a better look. The crater is Bruce, named for philanthropist Catherine W. Bruce. Coords 1.1°N, 0.4°E. This is very close to Blagg, and it's easy to fit the two craters into one frame.

No Answer
        Hoagland offered no reply to James's query yesterday, unless you count summarily deleting the thread as a reply. Christopher Lopes reposted and that's where things stand over in Facebook-land.

Hoagland in Europe

        Our favorite pseudo-scientist is in Europe for the purpose of being paid to spout nonsense about the Seekrit Space Program. While there, he explained to his FB fans that he wouldn't be able to pay much attention to the page (mostly deleting awkward questions) because, among other things, he had scheduled media interviews.

        I'm having fun imagining a European newshound prepping for an interview with The Big [sic] Man:

Reporter: Hang on a minute Richard, I've been reading up on you. You reckon there's a robot head in a Moon crater, right? You reckon NASA times all its launches and landings to conform to a ritual of Egyptian God worship, right?

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?