The monumental arrogance of Richard C. Hoagland

James Concannon writes:

        If I'd done nothing productive other than writing a couple of books since 1983, I think I'd tend to keep quiet about my résumé. But Hoagland is so in love with his achievement of 40 years ago that he proclaims it stridently as though it were current.

        Today marks the first anniversary of my being banned from Hoagland's FB page. I'd been asking questions. Insistently -- not deferentially, but not rudely either. To me they were just the obvious questions that anybody with some training in physics would have to ask after reviewing Hoagland & Bara's work. For example:  

How many shuttle launches and landings conform to your "ritual alignment model"? 

You have said the "castle" is suspended by a cable about 7 miles above the Lunar surface. What are the top ends of the cable attached to? 

You have written that hyperdimensional physics is based on Maxwell's original 20 quaternion equations. Which of the quaternions have you actually used in your calculations?

        I got no answers. Instead, I got a ban. In banning me, Hoagland came up with this utterly breathtaking demonstration of sheer ego (this is absolutely verbatim, from my records):

I"m somewhat surprised that this is seen as ANY kind of "legitimate" discussion point; this is, so Facebook has informed me (by putting MY name at the top of the page)--

My "room."
...
The idea that I should then have to put up with "repeated, malcious assaults on my own character -- in "my room" -- or suffer even more outlandish attacks on my decades-long, demonstrated scientific competence [just how many of these "critics" have consulted for a major television network (and a "living legend" at that network at same time) -- both, BEFORE they were even 23?]--

And then, went on to consult for NASA!

That I should NOT simply "throw these bums out of my 'house' "(to use YOUR apt metaphor ...) ... is simply cracked.

I also will NOT argue"with "fake people" -- whose SOLE reason for coming here ... and then, " hiding under a deliberately false identity," is to AVOID the normal social ACCOUNTABILITY that comes with "face-to-face communication"-- while getting the vicarious thrill of attacking "the Big Man" ... in front of countless thousands of his "fans."

It's the ultimate "ego trip" ... for very warped minds.

I mean, what kind of an "honest, intellectual discussion" can one possibly have ... when one participant is publicly known, but the other is "a shadowy, ANONYMOUS figure ..." -- obviously AFRAID to reveal even his identity, yet spring-loaded to attack the slightest perception of "weakness" in his opponent?

The pretense that, somehow, a "serious, SCIENTIFIC discussion" could be carried out under these bizarre circumstances--

Is a farce!

In setting up the Constitution, the Framers recognized that the SOLE deterrent to the old abuses of Europe, the "whispered innuendo in dark" -- where you could be accused of ANYTHING and (literally) dragged away ... and then, had to PROVE your innocence -- was backwards; that free men (and women) are INNOCENT 'til PROVEN guilty; that the "burden of proof" was NOT on the "accused" ... but on the "accuser"--

Who is impossible to fight ... when your accuser is, by calculated design, "anonymous ....

Shades of "hooded men and secret star chambers ..." -- from our own sad history ... where the "anonymous accuser" is the judge, the jury ... and ... the executioner.

Is someone NUTS?!

So, no, I have absolutely NOTHING to "apologize" for ... on my own page (!) -- and I will continue to eliminate ALL "agent provocateurs" ... whose REAL agenda is to make it IMPOSSIBLE for the overwhelming majority of honest folks (*sopme, ~15,000 now) who come here to have a serious, OPEN discussion ... in these increasingly critical and uncertain times!

Happy anniversary, Hoagland!

-- James Concannon

Mike Bara and the Egyptian Gods

        Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara have written that Dr Farouk El-Baz was "the most powerful single individual in the American space program" (Dark Mission, p. 286, 2nd edn.) Not merely Project Apollo, they assert, but the entire space program. Outranking, presumably, the Adminstrator, the Center Directors, the Apollo Program Manager and all the Flight Directors. Last week's Ancient Aliens echoed this wild misapprehension, asserting (partly with Bara interview material) that El-Baz controlled the sites and times of all the Apollo landings. This, according to the crackpot theory, gave him the opportunity to select sites and times that would pay due homage to the Egyptian Gods Isis, Osiris, and Horus. This blog has commented lavishly about that idea before.

Today I posted this to Mike Bara's new blog:

"You have incorrect information about Farouk El-Baz, Secretary of the Apollo landing site selection cttee. If he was the powerful progenitor of Egyptian God worship you say he was, how come only ONE of the six Apollo landing sites satisfied your so-called 'Ritual Alignment Model' (Apollo 12)? You'd think he could have done better. In fact, considering you and RCH give yourselves 50 chances (5 stars, 5 elevations, perspective from landing site OR Houston) it is, I would say, fairly surprising that you didn't do better by statistical chance.

"The true situation is as follows: Dr El-Baz, as an extremely competent geologist and selenologist, was very influential in landing site selection but did not take the decisions alone. All spacecraft landing site decisions are a compromise between safety and scientific priorities--in other words, there will be people on the committee who will argue for the most scientifically interesting sites, and those who will protest that it's no good targeting a site of prime geological interest if the spacecraft is going to be destroyed by adverse terrain. I personally attended Viking site selection meetings and I know whereof I speak. Dr El-Baz, being a  scientist, would obviously have been on the science side of those debates. I don't know, but it's very easy to imagine, that he may have been overruled by safety-minded engineers sometimes, especially for the early missions 11-14.

"Now, as to the timing of the landings, that was not in the purview of El-Baz or his committee at all. In every case, landing times were a trade-off between ideal lighting conditions at the landing site and favorable orientation of planet Earth. Ideally, one of the 85ft dishes at Madrid, Goldstone and Canberra needed to be at or near the sub-lunar longitude for most accurate telemetry. Those decisions were taken by specialists having nothing to do with site selection. Moreover, the actual landing times differed from nominal for a variety of reasons none of which would have been under control of an Egyptian God worshiper. Apollo 11, for example, landed at MET 102:45:40 cf. the nominal 102:47:11. There were worse divergences, too -- sufficient for one of your "ritual" stars to have shifted from its "ritual" elevation.

"So you see, the notion that Dr El-Baz dictated the position and timing of every Apollo landing is a bankrupt idea based on misunderstandings. Will you have an opportunity to correct the information on "Ancient Aliens," and apologize for misleading the 2 million viewers?"

Mike Bara misinforms the millions -- again

        TV critic Ramsey Isler wrote of The History Channel's fantasy pseudo-doc series Ancient Aliens "....the ridiculousness of this series, including the black and white art with aliens photoshopped in, and interviews with people of dubious authority." He was actually commenting on the South Park spoof, but the comment was right on anyway.

        Someone of extremely dubious authority popped up last night for Season 4 Ep 5: "The NASA Connection." That someone was cuddly Mike Bara, aerospace technician laid off by Boeing in 2010 and unable to find a job ever since. The show was a very predictable re-hash of all the familiar "What did NASA know and when did they know it?" nonsense that appeals to people who have no relish for facts. As usual, the production values were good to excellent, and Mike Bara's on-screen personality was engaging. It was what he said that gave me the screaming ab-dabs.

Point 1. Right up front, pre-title, Bara tells us "The Brookings Report says very specifically 'Don't tell anybody.'" IT SAYS NO SUCH THING. As this blog has commented before, the report recommends studying whether it might be a good idea to withhold certain information from the public, but does not itself even consider the question. Mike Bara has been told this over and over again, but he just does not take it on board.

Point 2. About 06:30 in, Bara states that 33 minutes after the landing of Apollo 11, Armstrong and Aldrin both participated in a communion service at the moment when the belt stars of Orion were on the horizon. Well, Bara should give himself a refresher course on his own book, Dark Mission. In the first edition, it was stated that Sirius was at 19.5° above the horizon 33 minutes after landing. That was amended in the second edition to Regulus at 19.5° below the horizon, more than two hours later, when Buzz Aldrin performed his little religious ritual. Neil Armstrong was not involved. No NASA official could possibly have contrived to create this dubious piece of astrological theater, even if one had wanted to. On the Aliens show, Bara was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

Point 3. Bara later developed the 33 meme by saying that the figure 33 crops up again and again all through the history of NASA. As examples he tells us that the runway at Cape Canaveral is runway 33, and that the only launch pad at White Sands missile range is pad 33. Well, the orientation of the Cape runway, 330°/150°, was dictated by available space. It was built parallel to the pre-existing State Route 3, now known as the Kennedy Parkway. As for White Sands, my information is that the prime launch location these days is Launch Complex 32. LC-33 was the historical facility, now a National Monument, designated by the US Army in 1945. That's 13 years before NASA was created, Mike. There are also pads designated LC-35 (Navy), LC-37, and LC-38.

Point 4. Bara trots out the fallacy that NASA is really part of DoD. He says "A lot of people have the idea that NASA's a civilian science agency -- it's not." This is not just wrong but irresponsible. The history records again and again that the relationship between NASA and DoD is contractual, not dependent. Look it up. Ending the show, Mike says "NASA's core mission was to go to the Moon and retrieve evidence that there was a prior civilization." Oh, what nonsense.

        It's really a bit disgusting that this misinformation should be pumped out to a couple of million suckers on their sofas, plus who knows how many more that will be sucking it up from Youtube. The only thing that cheers me up is the thought that Richard Hoagland must be eating his heart out not to be part of it. So much of this trash is his own personal mythology. As he sat there in New Mexico last night, watching Erich Von Daniken explain that there's a face on Mars, he must have contemplated getting out of the woo-woo business immediately. I wish he would. I wish Mike Bara would get a job and stop torturing us with mis-info.

Update: Mike has a brand new blog. I took advantage and posted this comment:

re: "Ancient Aliens: The NASA connection"

Buzz Aldrin's communion ceremony did not occur 33 minutes after the landing of Apollo 11, it was an hour or so later. Neil Armstrong took no part in it.

Also, if the belt stars of Orion were on the horizon at Landing +33, why wasn't that mentioned in "Dark Mission"? Instead you wrote that Sirius was 19.5° above the horizon. Strange.

My jaw dropped when I read Mike's reply:

I don't control the content of their show, dumbass.

 Well, now we know. He can't control what comes out of his mouth. That explains a lot.

The seismic ignorance of Richard C. Hoagland

James Concannon writes:

        Believe it or not, folks, next Sunday will be the first anniversary of the Fukushima earthquake/tsunami—formally known as the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, although not many of us round-eyes would recognize it under that name. The epicenter of the main shock was 38° 19' N, 142° 22' E.

        Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind when remembering that tragedy is the suffering of the local population—almost 20,000 dead, 6,000 injured, 100,000 children made homeless, 200,000 buildings destroyed. But the second thing that comes to my mind is the shameless and despicable way in which Richard Hoagland sought to exploit the event to promote his utterly baseless theories involving occult influences, nazis in space, and "hyperdimensional" geography. This blog noted his performance on C2C-AM at the time.

        On his Facebook page, Hoagland declared that the earthquake was deliberately triggered by "someone." In support of that ridiculous statement, he flat-out lied, stating that the latitude was twice 19.5, and the longitude was 120° East of the Great Pyramid. I posted as follows:

Hoagland: I notice you want to force the Sendai earthquake into confirming your nonsensical theories by falsifying its longitude, just as you falsified the latitude of the Port-au-Prince event. FYI, 120° east of the Great Pyramid is the 151° 08' longitude -- a full 8° 46' out into the Pacific Ocean away from the epicenter.

I also notice that you attach significance to the 38° 19' latitude of the Sendai earthquake as double 19.5. Your theory as published predicts energy upwelling at 19.5°, NOT twice that or three times that or any other multiple of it. 

Hoagland's rejoinder was particularly weak, I thought:

mar 25 04:30
Remember, we are NOT talking about precise longitude and latitude "lines" ... but "bands of activity" -- as with any physical process ....

        But the best was yet to come. After the additional 7.1 magnitude tremor at 38° 15' N, 141° 38' E on 7th April, Hoagland posted this gob-smackingly ignorant piece of poppycock:

That "Fukushima" was a Planned Event -- by "someone" -- is almost a certainty now; I mean, what are the odds of ANOTHER major quake (the 7.1 a couple days ago) -- complete with similar tsunami warnings -- with an epicenter (and depth!) only a few miles different from the earlier, devestating [sic] 9.0 quake ... and all, by "acident?!"

        What are the odds? Almost 100% certain, Richard. It's called an aftershock. Duhhhh...

--James Concannon