Friday, December 27, 2013

Lies of the year, 2013

        Instead of an end-year blog index, here's a handy reference to the lies of Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara as this year comes to a close. The score is Hoagland 12, Bara 24.

====================
HOAGLAND
====================

There's a Nike sneaker on Mars. (Originally from the Conscious Life Expo, October 2012, popped up on Youtube in January)

During the Mayan Calendar Apocalypse, HAARP was used to prevent the planet from tipping over. (Coast-to-Coast, January)

The scary asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk was a weapon sent by a malevolent extraterrestrial force as a warning. (Coast-to-Coast, February)

I have successfully measured the torsion field. The predictions of the model are overwhelmingly confirmed. (Red Ice Radio, February)

William Shatner's appearance in the Oscar telecast on 24th February, with a "time travel" theme, was a deliberate hint that JPL would contrive a software failure on the Curiosity Mars rover a week later. (Coast-to-Coast, March)

Neil Armstrong likened himself to a parrot in his 25th anniversary speech at the White House. (Awake & Aware conference, Glendale)

The Accutron is a really robust portable field sensor that allows me to monitor the changes in the field strength in and around these sacred sites. (Coast-to-Coast, July)

Someone's living on the Moon.  (Coast-to-Coast, July)

I was the first to publish the hypothesis that Europa might have an ocean under its icy crust. (Coast-to-Coast, July)

The Apollo 15 "Hammer and feather" demo was my idea. (Coast-to-Coast, July)

An image from Surveyor 6 clearly shows a glass dome on the Lunar horizon. (Art Bell on Sirius XM, September) (additional link)

The Chinese Chang'e 3  spacecraft was deliberately landed at 19.5° longitude on the Moon as a message to extraterrestrial intelligence (Coast-to-Coast, December)
====================
BARA 
(not including the additional lies in Ancient Aliens on Mars)
====================

Seven astronauts were killed on the Columbia space shuttle because NASA switched to "green" insulating foam on the external fuel tank. The original foam never broke off.  (January, FB)

There's an obvious red stripe on the Moonrock we call 'Data's Head.' (Youtube, January and Higherside Chats, March)

Dark Mission and The Choice were both international best sellers. (Notes for Conscious Life, January)

When you're in the middle of a meteor shower, they come at you from all directions. (FB, February)

The lunar craters Asada and Proclus A are satellite dishes. They don't look like it on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images (which are far, far, better than the ones Bara shows) because NASA has "sanitized" them. (Fringe Radio Network, February)

Historical flooding on Mars confirms Hoagland's "Tidal Model". (FB, February)

James Webb was the first NASA Administrator. (Dark Matters Radio, March)

It's been 53 years since the invention of the rocket, and we've made no advance since then. (Dark Matters Radio, March)

All the energy in the universe comes from higher dimensions. (Dark Matters Radio, March)

The landing site & time of Apollo 16 were contrived so that the constellation Orion would be at an elevation of 33°. (Dark Matters Radio, March and Higherside Chats, March)

Apollo 13 required an unusual number of mid-course corrections on the return journey because it was not benefiting from the spinning gyros. (Dark Matters Radio, March)

The Moon regulates the Earth's magnetic field. This is not accepted by conventional astronomy but is well explained by hyperdimensional physics. (Higherside Chats, March)

Mars has a really elliptical orbit. (Higherside Chats, March)

Lunar glass is twice as strong as steel. (Higherside Chats, March and Inception Radio, June)

Apollo astronauts brought back technology. (Higherside Chats, March)

During the Apollo missions, 'Santa Claus' was a code word for UFOs. (Higherside Chats, March)

Isis Avenue and 33rd St intersect. Right there is a pyramid and an occult symbol. (Originally from a CEF Research conference, 2008, revived on Bara's blog)

Direct imaging of a large planet 56 AU from HD 95086 "Totally supports the fission model of planetary formation." (FB, June)

There are unmistakable glass towers at Sinus Medii. (Inception Radio, June)

Terry James, a.k.a. kksamurai, was not the originator of the Lunar ziggurat image. (Inception Radio, June)

A newly-discovered exoplanet of star GJ 504 "fits the solar fission theory perfectly." (Bara blog, August)

There is no such thing as pareidolia. (Bara blog, October)

My critics (and I assume he includes me) have been sexually harassing my FBgfs. (Coast-to-Coast, October and also in print, in the foreword to AAoM)

There are gobs of alien bases on the Moon, many of which I document in my recent book. (Bara blog, November)

Thursday, December 19, 2013

No more indexes

        I won't be doing a blog index this year -- or, indeed, ever again. Although the indexes are kinda fun to do, and undeniably useful, they're a lot of work.

        When I want to find something within the blog, I use google advanced search restricting the search to just this blog. Easier than going through the indexes.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Latitude and longitude

        Biggie congrats to the Chinese Space Agency, that successfully landed Chang'e 3 and deployed the Yutu rover at 44.1143°N, 19.5149°W on the Moon. Here's a permalink to the landing site in the ACT-REACT LRO lunar map.

        Richard Hoagland was torn from his nice warm bed to comment on this event with C2C host John B. Wells last night. He went straight for the least useful aspect of it -- the numerology.

Long, not Lat, Richard dear
        For at least 15 years Hoagland has been telling us (screaming, it seems like) that the 19.5° latitude is extra special. Magic. Ritual. Hyperdimensional. In support of this, he has cited Jupiter's red spot, Olympus Mons, Neptune's dark spot and Mauna Kea. All of which are NOT at 19.5°, but that's perhaps a minor detail. Now suddenly it's the 19.5° longitude that's magic/ritual/hyperdimensional, as Hoagland proclaims that the Chinese know all about the ritual and observed it correctly. Richard Hoagland is confused, you might say. If you were less charitable you might say Hoagland is crazy.

The ETs know, y'know
        It got worse. He went sailing off into a total fantasy about how this was China's message to the extraterrestrial intelligences. Something along the lines of "Look you guys, we're the ones to talk to as representatives of Planet Earth. See how LEET we are -- the Americans are crap, basically"

        I would have collapsed laughing if I hadn't already been collapsed in bed at the next bit. He said the choice of 19.5° longitude would have sealed the deal. The ET high command would be thinking "Hmmm, these Chinese really understand. The magic 19.5, WOW!!" This would require that a) The ETs chose exactly the same point on the Moon to designate as the 0° longitude, b) They count in decimals, and c) They also divide a circle into 360 degrees.

        Richard Hoagland is very confused. My message to the Chinese: WELL DONE. To Coast-to-Coast: GET SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT, FOR GOD'S SAKE.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Robert Morningstar on C2C last night

(revised with thanks to 'Trekker' who corrected my first draft)

       Robert Morningstar describes himself as a "civilian intelligence analyst." I think he's a buffoon in the mold of Hoagland & Bara. He says this Apollo image shows a crashed spacecraft on the far side of the Moon:


        The craters in that frame don't have names, but the nearest named craters are Diderot and Delporte. Judging by their known diameters (20 km and 45 km respectively,) the "object" is about 10 km long.

        My message to Morningstar, Hoagland, Bara: IT ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH to show a 40 year old image whose resolution might  be ~25 m/px, and fail to examine the far better images in the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image library. Here is one of them, from the WAC* to confirm that the same craters are nearby. The crashed spacecraft is in the center of that frame, and looks less like an object and more like a depression.

       That was at 125 m/px. Zooming to 8 brings in the NAC* image and the feature fills the frame.  Oh look --  a 10 km long spacecraft with craters on it!

       Morningstar says this is an Apollo 12 image, but in fact it's from the Apollo 15 pan camera, and therefore would have had a resolution of ~2 m/px. It's frame number AS15-P-96251, one of a stereo pair (with 9630.) Here it is, folks.

Artillery fire
        By the way, Morningstar's discussion of paired lunar craters of the exact same size was too precious for words. There are too many of these to be natural, he asserted. Artillery fire is a more likely explanation. George Noory didn't bat an eyelid.

        Friar Occam, you're needed on the overnight radio. AGAIN.

Cockpit voice recorders
        Data Storage Equipment (DSE) was installed in all Apollo Command Modules (and DSEA in Lunar Modules) from Apollo 8 on. The equipment recorded conversation among the crews, and could be dumped at high speed to the ground whenever Mission Control wanted. The point was to have a record of crew conversation while the spacecraft were behind the Moon, just in case something went wrong. Morningstar mentioned this as though he'd just personally discovered this Great Secret, eliding the fact that it's been well discussed on Internet forums for many years now. He made a total ass of himself by stating that the DSE was installed "without the crews' knowledge." Oh dear, oh dear.

=============================
[1] The P is not an identifier of the film magazine, as Morningstar alleged. It identifies the pan camera (details here, if anyone's interested.) He was also wrong in stating that NASA identifies Apollo film magazines by a single letter. The ID was a number-letter combo.

Update: The Lunar and Planetary Institute does actually use letter-only mag IDs, and there is in fact a magazine P in their nomenclature. However, the filenames of the images themselves follow NASA practice and use a number. So it's still true that AS15-P-9625 means the Apollo 15 pan camera, not mag P.

* WAC and NAC mean Wide Angle Camera and Narrow Angle Camera, on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Hoagland: A (fake) psych. eval.

Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2013 15:01:41
From: enterprisemission2001@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified
To: [expat]
CC: mikebara33@gmail.com


You REALLY need psychological help for your (obvious) continuing pathological obsession;


[...redacted...]

RCH

Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2013
From: [expat]
Subject: Re: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified
To: enterprisemission2001@yahoo.com
CC: mikebara33@gmail.com

Greetings....

I took your advice and sought psychological help for my "(obvious) continuing pathological obsession" (your words). I was referred to Eunice Rufe Snow, MD, PA, of the Institute for Advanced Psychiatry, 6015 Harris Parkway, Suite 110, Fort Worth, TX 76132. Dr Rufe Snow's report, somewhat redacted, is attached.

General
Mr Martin Blaise was referred for suspected Obsessive-Compulsive disorder (OCD). I evaluated this pt over the course of four sessions in November 2013.

Mr Blaise is a [redacted] year old engineering consultant living at [redacted]. A former television documentary producer/writer, he is an expert on the history of spaceflight. He has a bachelor's degree in physics and electrical engineering from [redacted]. He is the author or co-author of the following seven books: [redacted].

Report of pt
Pt reported a persistent desire to point out, in the most emphatic way possible, errors in the work of Richard C. Hoagland. To this end he has maintained a blog since April 2008, and has also engaged in several e-mail exchanges with Hoagland. He reports, however, that this activity is spare-time only and never interferes with his professional life.

Psych. eval.
The standard Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was unremarkable, with low psychasthenia.

The Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire (AGQ) showed low hostility (0.19) and very low anger (0.04).

Score on the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale was 7. I consider that sub-clinical, although some workers would regard it as borderline.

Casework
Richard C. Hoagland is a low-achieving media personality. Since concluding a NASA contract in 1983, his professional activity has been restricted to authorship of just one book and co-authorship of a second. He has made professional appearances at several conferences whose general topic has been paranormal phenomena. In addition, he has contributed hundreds of articles to an amateur web site, many of which have been in the form of never-completed series. I have reviewed all this work.

Hoagland's written work does indeed contain very many technical errors. Pt discussed three of these at length.

1. Von Braun's Secret. This article is invalidated by mathematical error.

2. Ritual Alignment Model. Pt has falsified this proposition comprehensively. The published Table of Coincidence contains 19 errors, per Hoagland's own stated rules.

3. Accutron measurement of the torsion field resulting from planetary alignments. Pt has pointed out that, in all the voluminous work Hoagland has devoted to the topic, not once has an actual measurement been cited. The units in which the torsion field would be measured have not even been stated. Pt has pointed out several other fatal problems with Hoagland's experimental protocol.

Conclusions, recommendations
As a result of my review of Hoagland's work, I detect very strong indications of narcissism and paranoia. Hoagland's description of himself as a scientist, which he patently is not, is highly problematic. Many passages in his book Dark Mission identify him quite positively as paranoid.

I believe Martin Blaise should continue to draw attention to Hoagland's errors, as a public service, as long as this activity does not interfere with his professional duties or family commitments.





Eunice Rufe Snow, MD, PA
12.2.2013



PS. The above is an imaginary scenario whose sole intent is to mock Richard C. Hoagland. There is no such person as Eunice Rufe Snow, MD, PA.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Another entertaining e-mail exchange with an author

Entertaining and character-revealing....

21 nov 12:43pm
From: expat
To: Mike Bara (mikebara33@gmail.com)
cc: Richard Hoagland (enterprisemission2001@yahoo.com)
Subj: That Second Viking Orbiter Image

I note that in your recent book AA on Mars (p.92) you hand-wavingly estimate the "walk" of the Viking Orbiter on successive orbits as "between 15 and more than 20.4 miles." Could you not have been more precise? Here -- allow me to do your math for you:

DATA:
Orbit of Viking 1: Polar, 24.66 hours
Rotation period of Mars: 24.622 hours
Equatorial radius of Mars: 2110 miles
Latitude of Cydonia: ~40°N

During one Viking orbit, Mars rotates 360 x 24.66 / 24.622 degrees.
That's slightly more than a full rotation -- 360.55°.
So when Viking came around to 40°N latitude again, the "face" was 0.55° cross-track

Rotational circumference at 40° is 2.Ï€.2210.cos40 = 2 x 3.1416 x 2210 x 0.766 = 10,636 miles
Walk for 0.55° = 10636 x 0.55 / 360 = 16.25 miles.

Given that the width of the frame on the ground is 34 miles, quite clearly you are in error when you write that there could have been no second image of Owen Mesa. Please see that the book is corrected for any second edition.

Regards,
expat

21 nov 2:36pm
From: Mike Bara
To: expat

It was after dark at Cydonia, you fucking shitheap of an idiot

21 nov 2:50pm
From: expat
To: Mike Bara

Not so, the planet had completed a full revolution plus a bit, so the sun angle would have been only slightly different.

Your insults, as ever, are of no interest.

Please see that the book is corrected at 2nd edn, if there is one. Thank you.

22 nov 10:49am
From: Mike Bara
To: expat

Eat shit and die

Sent from my iPad

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Now Mike Bara is a "professional UFO investigator"

So much the better -- the more he pontificates about UFOs the less time he'll have to fuck up astronomy and the history of spaceflight. I wonder what kind of exams you have to pass to get credentialed as a real pro?

        What am I talking about? Mike's new TV show, Uncovering Aliens. Derrel Sims, Maureen Elsberry, Steve Jones and MB will be doing their level best to breathe some new life into this very tired topic as they trudge around hotspots like Sedona and Rendlesham Forest. I can practically write the script in  my head. Every sequence will end with a question like "COULD THIS HAVE BEEN the work of ALIENS?" Conjecture will substitute for fact, and nothing resembling science will ever raise its head.

        The show is scheduled on Animal Planet in December, at air times well past peak hours, and it'll probably repeat as endlessly as Ancient Aliens. Good luck in your new profession, Mike!! You were a total nincompoop at writing about astronomy — UFOlogy is a field in which incompetence doesn't even get noticed. I think you may have found your niche.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Alien Moon bases: Mike Bara hopelessly wrong as usual

Mike blogged today "No Virgina, It's Not an Alien Base on the Moon." I commented, but I might as well repeat it here (links added) because there's not a chance Mike will allow it to be seen over there --->

>>There are gobs of alien bases on the Moon, many of which I document in my recent book...<<

Checklist:
"The Castle" -- Photo fault. You say it's held up by a sagging support cable. What are the top ends attached to?
"The paperclip" -- Scanning error, curled fiber
Satellite dishes in Asada and Proclus A -- LRO NAC strips prove they don't exist
Glass skyscrapers -- Contamination on Hoagland's office scanner
Strut on East Massif -- Scanning error, confirmed by Davide de Martin, the Italian enthusiast who did the scan
Ziggurat -- LRO NAC strip and Selene image prove it's in your imagination.

Mike, it is self-evident that a lunar "alien base" would have had to erect solar energy arrays large enough to be clearly visible to Earth-based telescopes, let alone the 0.8m/px images of LRO NAC. Until you can find at least one such array, your fantasies do not stand a chance of being taken seriously by anyone who understands the lunar environment.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Point-by-point critique of 'Ancient Aliens on Mars' PART TWO

        As before, comprehension will be enhanced by loading the Picasa image gallery. Unfortunately the frame numbers aren't visible when the full gallery is displayed -- you have to select a specific image in order to see its frame number.

        I didn't plan it this way, but I'm picking up Part 2 at the exact mid point of the book -- p.107 of 214, chapter 4 of 8. A simply enormous majority of the second half is a straight lift from Hoagland. I wouldn't know what arrangements (if any) those rascals Hoagland & Bara have for profit-sharing but, at a rough guess, I'd say 40% would be a fair share for Hoagland. Not that there will be truckloads of money anyway. When first listed the Amazon ranking was 1,040,783. The day after Mike Bara's appearance on Coast to Coast AM it improved to 6,055 (and #1 in Books > Professional & Technical > Profesional Science > Astronomy & Space Science > Mars). When it actually went on sale it improved further to 4,666. Today it has slumped to 9,228 (still no competition in > Mars) and it's discounted from $19.95 to $16.50.

8. pp. 107-120 You might think that Ralph Greenberg, professor of mathematics at Univ. Washington, had killed off the sheer insanity of Richard Hoagland's pseudo-mathematical analysis of Cydonia with his 2002 epic debunk. Apparently not, for here it is resurrected in its entirety by Hoagland's acolyte Mike Bara, and Bara even attempts to refute Greenberg. He's outclassed. Picasa frames #106-132 tell the story, and if they don't leave you utterly confused I don't really know what would. What's going on here is that Hoagland starts off with a presupposition that the marsography of Cydonia contains a hidden mathematical message, and then "proves" it by cherry-picking features and angles, and in some cases outright cheating.

What would Hoagland know about math anyway? This is the man who abjectly failed to apply the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation correctly and consequently produced a huge web page that was totally useless and invalid. He refuses to correct it, so you can still see it. Read it and weep.

There are mathematical absurdities here, like declaring that 2.720699, which is Ï€ × (√3)/2, is close enough to e, the base of natural logarithms, that it can be used as a substitute. The value of e is actually 2.71828.

What strikes me as I see all this nonsense again is not just that kind of comedy performance, but the overall sloppiness of the diagramming. Compare Picasa frames #107 and #113. In #107, a vertex of the D&M pyramid is shown to be pointing fairly accurately at the "face." Fair enough. But then the pointer to the center of the "tholus" does not follow a vertex and appears to be random. In #113 the whole pyramid has been rotated and suddenly one of the vertices is pointing directly at the "tholus." In #130 the same vertex again points at the "tholus" but suddenly the important point is not the center of the tholus but a spot on the north-west crater rim.

Better men than me have rejected this entire exercise because an orbital photograph has too much unknowable distortion to treat it as though it were a product of an accurate survey. Hoagland & Bara maintain that it's all OK because their images have been meticulously orthorectified. Actually, on p.107 Bara writes "orthographically rectified." That made me giggle -- it can only mean that the images were spell-checked. Mike Bara's spelling of the word "foreword" needs some orthographic rectification. Huuuurrrr...

9. pp.121, 125 (Picasa #123-127) Oh, here we go again. Another straight "lift" from Hoaglandiana. They want us to believe that there's something magic about the 19.5° latitude, and in support they cite all the wonderful instances of "energy upwelling" at that latitude throughout the solar system. On p.121 Bara specifically makes the claim that Jupiter's red spot, the giant Martian volcano Olympus Mons, and Mauna Kea are all at that latitude. Usually Hoagland writes "at or near," but here Bara says "at."

Such a pity that their data is dead wrong::
Jupiter's red spot is at 22°S
Olympus Mons is at 18°N
Mauna Kea is at 19° 49' N (if he'd written Mauna Loa he'd have been almost spot on)

On p.125 he makes the same claim about the Great Dark Spot of Neptune, adding for good measure that Hoagland specifically predicted it would be found at that latitude. Well, guess what? It's not true. Neptune's dark spot was first observed at about 25°S and it then wandered northwards before disappearing altogether. I believe there's a new one now, in the northern hemisphere.

What neither Hoagland nor Bara have ever addressed is the sad (for them) fact that NONE of history's top 100 volcanic eruptions or top 100 earthquakes has been at 19.5°.

10. pp.130-2 Here we go again, again. The claim that NASA suppressed the positive results of the Labeled Release biology experiment on both Viking landers. Untrue. The judgement of the experts (Gerry Soffen, again, and Harold "Chuck" Klein) was that, on balance, the enigmatic LR data could not prevail in the face of decidedly negative results from three other tests for life. That's not the same thing as suppressing the data -- in fact, the entire data set has been available on a NASA web site for 30 years. To be sure, Dr Gil Levín, the PI of the labeled release experiment, has protested pretty loudly over the years. Good luck to him, he's made some good points. His view has not found acceptance, particularly since the Phoenix lander found so much perchlorate hanging around Mars in 2008.

11. pp.132-5. More recycled anti-NASA propaganda. This is the one about how Mars really has a blue sky and sandy soil, but NASA artificially reddens it all. In particular, Bara tells the old, old story about the day JPL changed its mind and re-issued a bunch of Viking surface images making them redder.

I dunno, are these old fables really worth trotting out again today? Look -- here's what happened. The first few Viking images didn't capture the color wheel so the camera team just had to make a wild guess (Jim Bell has written about this.) When they were eventually able to get a look at the color wheel they realized the images they'd distributed were way off. So they reissued them with the correct color balance. It's as simple -- and as scientifically justified -- as that.

The space artist Don Davis has a very nice online resource dealing with the difficulties inherent in representing color on Mars. He knows what he's talking about. Mike Bara doesn't.

12. pp.147-67, Chapter 6, Picasa #151-182. Mars Pathfinder. Up pops the magic number 19.5 again, and also the almost equally magic 33. It's magic, you see, because of the masonic significance of the 33rd degree, and also because the sine of 19.5 is 0.333. Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.

Up pops another example of the blatant dishonesty of Hoagland & Bara. We see on p.148 that the designated landing site of Pathfinder was 19.5°N, 33.3°W. Actually according to the Press Kit it was 19.4°N, 33.1°W. OK, it's pretty close, but Bara's text is still a lie. And there's not the slightest reason in the world to think that there were any masonic or tetrahedral reasons for the choice. All planetary landing sites are a compromise between safety and scientific value. The actual landing site was 19.13°N, 33.22°W (and Bara reports that correctly.)

Take a look through the Picasa frames. Most of them are features Bara wants to persuade us are Martian technology. I want to persuade you that that's bullshit. #166-171 and #174-5 depict what Mike Bara calls the Sphinx. He writes (p.160) "this Martian sphinx has all the classic earmarks of its Egyptian counterpart." No it doesn't. He also writes that it faces due East, like the one at Giza. No it doesn't, it faces North.

("earmarks"???? Maybe he meant "hallmarks." Is anybody editing this rubbish?)

13. pp.169-179, Picasa #187-191. The famous catbox. I'm not going to write much about this because, frankly, it gets me annoyed. Mars Global Surveyor arrived overhead the so-called "face" at the worst possible moment for imaging. The mesa was basically fogged in. Picasa #187 is what came back from Mars. What gets me annoyed is when people like Hoagland & Bara fail to appreciate the effort Malin's boys exerted to process the image to #188. Instead they scream that it was a deliberate cover-up.

Ask yourself these simple questions: If Malin couldn't bear to let us see what was really down there at Cydonia, how come he was happy to go back when the fog had cleared and shoot a clear picture (#198)? The maximum resolution of the camera was 1.5 m/px. If NASA/JPL/Malin are so desperate to keep the "face" a secret, how come they later presented us with the magnificent image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at 0.5 m/px?

Well, I will just make one other comment because it's amusing. On p. 177 Bara protests that only 42 of a possible 256 levels in the gray-scale were present. My mind went back to that night on the Art Bell radio show (it was Art who christened the image "catbox") when Richard Hoagland was practically screaming "Somebody stole 200 gray levels!!!!"

Dear Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara, I have some information for you. Not every gray level has to have a value for an image to be faithful. It's perfectly possible for many gray levels to have a value of zero, in fact it's expected for an ultra-low contrast scene such as MGS saw that day.

Here's an actual concrete example of gray levels in a space image:


Levels 0-11 and 170-256 are zero. Only 157 of a possible 256 levels have information in them. Yet the image is perfectly readable, if low contrast.

Know what that histogram comes from? Thank you Stuart Robbins, it's the histogram of the original "ziggurat" image that Mike Bara got from Call of Duty Zombies.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Point-by-point critique of 'Ancient Aliens on Mars' PART ONE

        I don't propose to write much about the nauseating Foreword to this book -- an exercise in adolescent petulance whose main target is Dr Stuart Robbins. Robbins is a well qualified working astronomer who knows infinitely more about planetary astronomy than Mike Bara. The foreword (which Bara inexplicably calls a "Forward") is available on Mike's blog. This is not quite the same as the book version -- it includes a ridiculous juvenile cartoon depicting me driving a bus over Stuart Robbins, plus other cringe-worthy excesses.

I'll just write two things:

ONE: Mr Michael Bara, you wretched, ignorant, belligerent man, if you're going to accuse me of sending sexually harassing messages to your female FB friends, LET'S SEE THE EVIDENCE. James Concannon has provided a specific and clear example of sexual harassment in the other direction. Unless you can show a similarly specific example of what you mean, SHUT THE FUCK UP.


TWO: You never did get around to explaining why the ziggurat does not appear in images that are far, far more up-to-date and with far, far better resolution than the Apollo frame. Now's your chance. WHERE IS THAT ZIGGY, BARA?

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Wide Angle Camera
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Narrow Angle Camera
Japanese Selene lunar orbiter

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

So, now to the book. There's a Picasa gallery containing all the figures from the book (plus some that got trimmed out,) and you might like to have that handy as you read on.

1.  p.40 "In Egyptian mythology, the Sphinx God Horus was also frequently associated with the planet Mars, and in fact the Sphinx was at one time painted red in honor of this connection. They also shared a name in the ancient Egyptian tongue, Hor-Dshr, literally 'Horus the Red.' "

This is pure Graham Hancock, and therefore unreliable. As is now well known, Hancock was a major fan of recreational pharmaceuticals, and they are what largely inspired his work Fingerprints of the Gods ( see Hancock's page on the Rational Wiki.)  As far as I know, the ancient name of the Great Sphinx of Giza was Hor-em-Akhet (trans: Horus of the horizon) but then I make no claim to any expertise in Egyptology. I was able to find some corroboration for the claim that the Sphinx was once stained red. Interesting. -ish. Nothing to do with Mars, though (just like the foreword.)

2. p.41. We know we're in trouble with this book when we read this as early on as p.42:

"Because of its highly "eccentric" ... orbit ... Mars' distance relative to Earth varies a great deal. In fact, Mars' orbit is so elliptical that its distance to the Earth can be as much as 249 million miles at its farthest to as little as about 34 million miles at its theoretical closest approach."

This, of course, is almost word for word the same catastrophic error that Mike Bara made in his earlier book The Choice. I got on his case about it, so did an Amazon reviewer, and so did Stuart Robbins. In case you're wondering why it's such a dreadful howler, Robbins explains.

3. pp. 42-43. It immediately gets worse, much worse. Mike Bara reveals such incredible ignorance about simple astronomical terminology that I really had to force myself to keep reading. On p. 42 we see an illustration of Earth and Mars at conjunction, which Bara labels as aphelion. On p. 43 an illustration of opposition is labeled as perihelion. You can see these images as #7 and #8 in the Picasa gallery, along with snarky comments mocking Stuart Robbins. Can you possibly imagine anything more embarrassing for an author than ridiculing his critics and getting it wrong??

It doesn't stop. He writes "[Mars and Earth] are at their closest to each other when they are on the same side of the Sun and both at their perihelion points." (p.43)

Not true. They're closest when Mars is at perihelion and Earth is at aphelion. What an unmitigated disaster these two pages are.

4. pp.53-56 At the end of an exposition of a device called the Jenkins Radio Camera, Bara shows us one of its prints. This apparatus was a far-fetched idea used during the 1924 opposition. In some way that Bara doesn't make quite clear, this thing detected radio signals from Mars and made them into crude and very fuzzy images. You can see the three images Bara shows as #60, #61 and #63 in the Picasa gallery, plus a better pic of Voldemort (#62.) Mike is saying "Oh look, doesn't this radio transmission from Mars look like a J.K. Rowling character?"

...which is a very strange fantasy for someone who has repeatedly insisted that there's no such thing as pareidolia (and he says it yet again, on p.99)!


5. pp. 60-63  Mike Bara really loves the astronomer Tom Van Flandern, for some reason -- possibly because Van Flandern is the only professional astronomer Mike ever met.  Van Flandern, who died in 2009, was a very bright spark who had some ideas that are considered eccentric by the mainstream. One of them was that the accepted theory about how the solar system was formed is wrong.

The accepted theory is that planets are left behind in orbit as a circumstellar accretion disk shrinks and coalesces. Van Flandern said "No, the star forms first, then spins off planets in pairs in a process called solar fission." Fission is depicted in Picasa gallery #38.

In vigorously supporting this now discredited theory, Mike once again shows ignorance. On p.61 he writes "The accretion model ... requires the planets to have highly eccentric (elliptical) orbits during their proto-planet phase." On p. 63 he writes "Only the fission theory can explain why all the planets are in the so-called 'plane of the ecliptic,' the equatorial plane of the Sun. If the accretion model was correct, planets would form all over the place and have orbits at all different angles to the Sun."

As far as I know, both those statements are what is technically known as poppycock. The second one, in particular, simply contradicts common sense. If planets form from a spinning disc, it's pretty obvious that all their orbits will stay in the same plane as the disc that gave them birth. Duhhhh. (Pluto is a different story).

6. pp. 69-78 Another Van Flandern idea that both Bara and Hoagland love is that Mars was once the moon of a larger planet that exploded. Hoagland has also proposed that Mars was tidally locked to this planet that he calls Planet V or Maldek. I previously blogged about how these two ideas, not by any means silly in themselves, don't sit well together. I'll just quote myself (ref. Picasa gallery #28-34):

        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. Oops...

I'm obliged to my commenter Dee for pointing out that Hoagland himself cited this problem in his web article. (Load this page into MSIE, the only browser that will render it readably.) He writes:

"the authors acknowledge that this presents some serious problems for this entire model."

He has a wriggle-out which begins...

"We propose that as it was approaching Planet V toward its ultimate collision, Planet K passed close by Mars in its orbit around Planet V (Figure 19).  This close encounter gravitationally interfered with the tidal lock between Mars with Planet V.  In fact, it began a radical, gravitationally induced reorientation of the entire Mars’ spin axis relative to Planet V."

It's all very hypothetical and, to me at least, not at all convincing.

7. pp.90-105 This is really bad writing -- or perhaps more accurately, bad book planning. Fifteen pages (of a total 216) about the early discovery of the so-called Face on Mars. It reads now, in 2013, like a piece of discarded history that some old codger wants to reminisce about (Mike is 53 and not yet a codger.)  We have so much better imagery available for inspection now that, really, who cares what DiPietro, Molenaar and Carlotto did to enhance the image?

However, I can't resist once again coming to the defense of someone I admired greatly -- Gerry Soffen, Chief Scientist of the Viking missions to Mars in 1976. It was the Viking 1 Orbiter, of course, that took the picture that Richard Hoagland built a career out of -- Frame 035A72 (#99 in the Picasa gallery.) Gerry Soffen presented the image to the press on 26th July, and added "When we took another picture a few hours later, it all went away; it was just a trick,  just the way light fell on it." Mike Bara has been saying for years, and repeats here on p. 92, that Soffen was lying. This blog previously discussed this in September 2012. Picasa gallery #101 is the actual announcement, showing left to right Jim Martin, Viking Project Manager, Tobias Owen (who first spotted the "face") and Gerry Soffen.

The basis of Bara's accusation is that there was no second picture, and could not have been because by the time the orbiter hit that latitude again the "face" was rotated out of range. How far? Bara, very math-challenged as we know, cannot be more precise than "between 15 and more than 20.4 miles." (p.92)

Well, let's see. I prefer to work in kilometers but for the purpose of explicit comparison with Bara, let's do it in miles. The difference in longitude on successive passes of a satellite is known as the "walk."


DATA:
Orbit of Viking 1: Polar, 24.66 hours
Rotation period of Mars: 24.622 hours
Equatorial radius of Mars: 2110 miles
Latitude of Cydonia: ~40°N

During one Viking orbit, Mars rotates 360 x 24.66 / 24.622 degrees.
That's slightly more than a full rotation -- 360.55°.
So when Viking came around to 40°N latitude again, the "face" was 0.55° cross-track

Rotational circumference at 40° is 2.Ï€.2210.cos40 = 2 x 3.1416 x 2210 x 0.766 = 10,636 miles
Walk for 0.55° = 10636 x 0.55 / 360 = 16.25 miles.

So in fact that does fall within Bara's "between 15 and more than 20.4 miles" (which is a very strange way of expressing a range, actually.) But why couldn't he have done the math himself?

Well now let's see what that means for the camera, and a possible second shot. Here's the dataset for 035A72 (the designation means the 72nd image taken on the 35th orbit by Orbiter A.) Data from this source.


035A72

VO75 1B PICNO= 035A72 
FILTER 4 (CLEAR) EXP 34 MSEC FGD 111 
FSC 26588045 OET-GMT 76 207 15 25 14 TPER +00 12 05 
RNG= 5239 KM HFOV= 55 KM VFOV= 50 KM SCL= 46 M/PXL 
NOR AZ 154 DG SUN AZ 88 DG S/C AZ 323 DG INA 79 DG EMA 10 DG 
PHA 86 DG SUNS LS= 99.2 DG EDR= CN1244 01 MAX-D= 
LAT C= +40.90 UL= +41.14 UR= +40.28 LL= +41.52 LR= +40.65 
LONG C= 9.52 UL= 8.76 UR= 9.28 LL= 9.77 LR= 10.28 

HFOV means Horizontal Field of View -- the width of the image on the ground. It's 55 km, or 34 miles. It follows that, since the "Face" was only 16.25 miles cross-track, it was in range. Now, I'm not saying I know that second image exists, only that it could have been taken. Mike Bara is mistaken, and I call on him to withdraw the accusation.


There's much more detail on the Malin Education page. Pseudoscientists like Hoagland & Bara hate Michael Malin because they think he keeps too tight a control over the imagery his technology creates, but he certainly releases plenty of info. And yet the ignorant Mike Bara has the nerve to write (p.170) of "Malin's well-documented hostility toward the Cydonia issue."

On to PART TWO

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

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 Hoaglandnote 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 civilizationnote 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.

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

[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.

Friday, October 25, 2013

You didn't think Mike Bara was going to get this right, did you?

        ...No, of course you didn't. I'm surprised he's still alive -- you might think he'd make mistakes every time he tries to feed himself.

        Today he proudly announced a Picasa gallery which we can all admire -- the 223 figures from his new book, plus the front cover. I have a few comments. Numbers are his frame numbers.

4. I think his numbers are correct. It pains me to see a mixture of kg and miles. Perhaps I'm over-trained.

7.


    This illustrates opposition, but not perihelion. Perihelion and opposition are totally unrelated.

8.


   This illutrates conjunction, but not aphelion. Aphelion and conjunction are likewise totally unrelated.

Dr Stuart Robbins has hit his keyboard about this, producing a very informative blog making this terminology clear. Bara's snarky comments to Robbins in the captions to 7, 8, and 9 are so childish they make me reach for the vom-bag.

Let's be perfectly clear about this: If the orbit of Mars were perfectly circular, its  distance from Earth would still be variable from 47 to 236 million miles. Bara is totally wrong.

30. I think I understand the intent of this diagram (stolen from Hoagland,) but lunar gravity is not shown by blue arrows anywhere. I guess it's the arrow labeled 12 micron/s/s but lunar gravity should also be shown on the opposite side. Centripetal acceleration should be the same on both sides. I hope his text makes this a lot clearer.

37. I like this one because it neatly falsifies Bara's contention that large eccentricities are common in the solar system. He takes this as support for the solar fission model, but it isn't true. If Pluto is disregarded, only one planet has eccentricity >0.1.

41. Much of Bara's artwork has copyvio problems, none more than this one. It's ripped off from solstation.com -- a site that clearly states that its data is free for personal use. NOT for commercial use, Mike Bara.

43. More flagrant copyvio.

63. Isn't this a perfect example of the pareidolia that Bara says doesn't exist?

74. A perfect match? No way.

77. Carl Sagan mis-spelled.

79. Nice to see Gil Levín getting some exposure, he deserves it. IT IS TOTALLY UNTRUE that NASA suppressed his findings. What part of "The Labeled Release data has been publicly available in its entirety on a NASA-sponsored web site for 30 years" doesn't Bara get?

82. Incorrect sky color. The best description of the color is "butterscotch."

86. Ridiculous. Just because the discoloring on the Mars rock reminds Bara of lichens, it doesn't mean it actually is lichen. More pareidolia.

90. Bad sky color again.

97. Extremely unconvincing.

101. The gentleman on the left is Jim Martin, Viking Project Manager, not Arden Albee.

NOTE: Bara has now (2nd Nov) removed Arden Albee's name in the online version.

114-117, and 128-133. This fantasy has been well debunked by better men than me.

124. I hope his text doesn't claim that Neptune's dark spot is at 19.5°. It isn't. It appeared at about 25°S then wandered north before disappearing completely. Then a new one appeared in the Northern hemisphere.

125. Olympus Mons isn't at 19.5° either. It's centered at 18.65°N.

153, 168. No, it doesn't look like a sphinx. It isn't a sphinx.

212. No, these don't look like structural ruins.

217. Hilarious. TOTALLY UNCONVINCING.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Mike Bara: As wrong as it's possible to be

James Concannon guest-blogs:

        Well, that was pretty funny.I've been contributing to a lively discussion about the so-called "Face" on Mars, on the Final Frontier Farcebook page. My posts today amounted to the following:

Features claimed by the gullible, when the resolution was 125 m/px:

- Headdress
- 2 eyes
- A tear duct in one eye
- Nostrils
- Teeth
- Lateral symmetry

Now that the resolution has improved to 0.3 m/px, all those have gone away. All they have left is lateral symmetry of the BASE, which is striking but not too unusual.

You'd have to be really, really gullible or really, really obstinate to persist in claiming artificiality.
=============================
Mike Bara's new book "Ancient Aliens on Mars" is due out 1st November. We can confidently expect fresh claims that this is a large artwork made by ancient aliens, since Bara falls into both categories "really, really gullible" and "really, really obstinate." He also belongs in the categories "really, really inaccurate" and "really, really obnoxious."

        Well, behold, just minutes later Mike Bara posted this utterly wrong, utterly hilarious essay to his blog.

How wrong is Mike Bara? Let me count the ways...

º "In recent years, as better and better images of the Face on Mars and other anomalies on the Red Planet have become increasingly recognized as artificial..." No, Mike, the "Face" is increasingly recognized as just an eroded mesa. See my text from FB.

º "Debunkers ... never ... use the far more accurate and more directly overhead views, of which there are now many. " Oh yes we do, oh yes we do. In fact, the excellent image taken in 2007 by the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is the very first thing I would use if explaining this controversy to someone who didn't already know about it.


credit: NASA/JPL/Univ. Ariz.
        That's the one whose resolution is 0.3 m/px. The full version is here. Anyone see any tear-ducts or teeth? Headdress? By the way, it's upside down. They did that to annoy George Haas.

º Bara states, emphatically, that no scientific or medical literature exists authenticating pareidolia. Oh yeah??

Hadjikhan et al. "Early (M170) activation of face-specific cortex by face-like objects" in Neuroreport 2009 Mar 4;20(4):403-7. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e328325a8e1

Uchiyama et al. "Pareidolias: complex visual illusions in dementia with Lewy bodies" in Brain 2012 Aug;135(Pt 8):2458-69. doi: 10.1093/brain/aws126. Epub 2012 May 30.

Maranhão-Filho et al. "Neuropareidolia: diagnostic clues apropos of visual illusions" in Arquivas de neuro-psychiatria 2009 Dec;67(4):1117-23.

º Bara cites prosopagnosia as a well-documented and medically-established disorder, "unlike pareidolia." He should have followed his own hyperlink, and actually read the text. It reads, in part,

"The specific brain area usually associated with prosopagnosia is the fusiform gyrus,[2] which activates specifically in response to faces. Thanks to this specialization, most people recognize faces much more effectively than they do similarly complex inanimate objects."

º Bara might usefully have followed, and read, the hyperlink in his own footnote.

"In 1978, some 8,000 people made pilgrimages to the home of a New Mexico woman who discovered a picture of Jesus in a burned tortilla. And in 2001, thousands saw the face of Satan captured in a CNN video and Associated Press photos of smoke billowing from the World Trade Center."

        Bara cited this article from Wordspy to establish that the earliest citation was from Skeptical Inquirer 1994. True. But it also establishes that, regardless of what you call it, it's REAL.

º One final point: If the ancient aliens built a 2 km long sculpture to resemble a face, weren't they relying on pareidolia (regardless of what they called it) for us to recognize it as a face?



--James C (thanks to Chris Lawrence for speedy research and Photoshoppery)

Update: 

This just in from Mike Bara to me:

"As to the papers you cite (we all know there is no "James Concannon") the first only measures how fast a portion of the brain responds to visual stimuli, and nothing more. The 2nd only makes subjective conclusions about patients with dementia, and the 3rd is a study of animals. None of these establishes that there is any such thing as "pareidolia" in humans. So once again, you have nothing to stand on. Good luck finding a real medical study on the subject. There isn't one. It doesn't exist.

Nice touch turning the image of the Face upside down. All it does is prove how desperate and pathetic your arguments are.

Not that anybody's paying attention to you anyway."
A study of animals??? Yes, the pareidolic images of animals IN THE HUMAN BRAIN. Sheesh...

Sunday, October 13, 2013

"Ritual Alignment Model" falsified

        To put it simply, Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara have long made the claim that NASA preferentially times mission events when certain stars are at certain elevations as seen from some relevant vantage point. In November 2009 Mike Bara said "NASA always seems to want to land or launch when the stars are in favorable positions, at least according to their mythology." 

       This blog has commented many times, starting with this post in December 2010 and continuing with this one and this one. I pressed Hoagland & Bara further on 16 September this year:

To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 16 Sept 2013
Subj: Ritual Alignment Model

Greetings...

I've been asked to do further analysis on what you have called NASA's "obsessive, relentless"[1] drive to pay homage to the Egyptian Gods Isis, Osiris and Horus. The idea would be to either confirm or falsify your proposition.

I need to know what tolerance you allow on the times of alignment. Also, please confirm that it's the launch and landing times as planned, rather than as occurred, that should be considered. I believe you said that at the time of the final Shuttle mission.

The latter point is extremely important, given that only 55 of 135 Shuttle launches were on time. However you do seem to have been inconsistent with this, since you cite the landing of Apollo 16 at a time when Sirius was at 33°. As you know, the landing was delayed 6 hours and the entire mission was delayed a month.

That assumes great importance since 16 was one of only two Moon landing you cite in Ritual Alignment. If you are forced to abandon that one, your "hit rate" reduces to one in six -- hardly "relentless" or "obsessive."

Please provide the information I need to confirm your work. Thanks.

Regards,....


[1] Caption to Fig. 5-10, Dark Mission
=================================================

To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 11 Oct 2013
Subj: Ritual Alignment Model
 
Let me try one more time, perhaps you're in a co-operative mood today:

- What tolerance do you allow on the star elevation?

- Do you take the time of an event as planned, or as occurred?

If you refuse to provide this information, how do you expect other researchers to confirm or falsify your work?

Regards,...

========================================================
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 13 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified

In the face of your steadfast refusal to give the information that would be needed to confirm or falsify your so-called Ritual Alignment Model, I have done some research and found the answer to one of the questions.

On 19 April 2011 you posted to Facebook as follows:

    "You're forgeting[sic] 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. :)"


I also notice that you refer to a "two-minute window" in association with a few of your events, and that is perhaps the answer to the other key question.

Accordingly, I have re-analyzed your Table of Coincidence. My guide is the following passage from p.14 of "Dark Mission" 2nd edn:

    "only five stellar objects ... have any significance ...: the three belt stars of Orion, ...Sirius, ... and Regulus. And only five narrow bands of stellar altitude (19.5° above and below the horizon, 33° above and below the horizon, and the horizon itself) have any significance."


I find the following errors in the table:

1. Inauguration of George Washington

    New York inappropriate as vantage point

2. Newt Gingrich's resignation

    EQ Pegasi, Comet Encke not allowable

3. Launch of Ranger 7

    Moon not allowable

4. Landing of Surveyor 3

    Moon not allowable

5. Launch of Freedom 7

    51° not allowable

6. Launch of Friendship 7

    Encke not allowable

7. Apollo 13 planned landing site/time

    Pegasus not allowable

8. Apollo 16 landing

    Landing 6 hours late, not "as birthed"

9. Apollo 16 landing seen from Houston

    Ditto

10. Ascent of Apollo 17

    Apollo 12 site irrelevant

11. Mars Pathfinder landing

    Earth not allowable

12. MGS imaging Owen Mesa

    Giza plateau irrelevant

13. Release of MGS Viking 1 landing site image

    Giza plateau irrelevant

14. Launch of STS-88

    Encke not allowable. Mars not allowable. -3.33° not allowable. Phoenix irrelevant. Launch not "as birthed"

15. Docking of Zarya and Unity

    Mars not allowable. Encke not allowable. Phoenix irrelevant. Apollo 11 landing site irrelevant

16. STS-88 EVA-1

    3.33° not allowable. Not "as birthed". Mars not allowable. Apollo 11 landing site irrelevant. Encke not allowable. Viking landing site irrelevant

17. ISS activation

    EQ Pegasi not allowable. Phoenix irrelevant. Apollo 11 landing site irrelevant

18. Loss of contact with SOHO

    Mars not allowable. Giza plateau irrelevant

19. Closest approah of J1 comet

    Giza plateau irrelevant

20. World premiere of Armageddon

    Totally irrelevant


Twenty errors in a table of that size is unacceptable. I am now declaring your "model" falsified and void.

Regards,....


================================================
To: expat
From: RCH
Date: 13 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified


You REALLY need psychological help for your (obvious) continuing pathological obsession; and, the idea that you "declaring" ANYTHING "falsified and void" ... means ANYTHING -- is only final confirmation of your sad pathology.

One obvious example:

Your "definitive" statement that "New York is inappropriate" as the optical "vantage point" for celestial alignments around Washington's First Inaugural -- thus revealing a (apparent) TOTAL LACK of basic knowledge, that George Washington was sworn in as the First President of the United States, April 30, 1789--

In NEW YORK CITY.

NOT ... Washington, DC (which didn't EXIST yet!).

With this as a RANDOM example of your "careful scholarship" and "research rigor" in trying, relentlessly and obsessively, to attack every aspect of this work, your continuing delusion -- that your prejudiced opinions on our research MATTER in the slightest -- is only further evidence for just how "separated from reality" you really are.

NO ONE'S listening.

Enterprise "out."


RCH


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

To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 13 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified

I apologize. I certainly didn't know about George Washington's inauguration. I withdraw that one, reducing the number of errors in your table to 19.

This is not, however, a RANDOM example as you claim. It's one mistake made by me, for 19 made by you. My analysis of your research is not opinion, Richard, it is fact.

Regards,...

Update 1:
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 14 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified

You quite rightly took issue with the first of my error list yesterday. My mistake.

So that's one down, 19 to go. In a table whose total entries are 42. CAN THERE BE ANY DOUBT that this belief of yours is false? CAN YOU POSSIBLY justify your contention that NASA has an "obsessive, relentless" preoccupation with Egyptian ritual?

Regards, etc.

Update 2:
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 15 Oct 2013
Subj: Failure of your Ritual Alignment Model, by program

Ranger: Zero hits of a possible 18 (9 missions, events are launch and lunar impact)
Surveyor: Zero qualified hits of a possible 28 (7 missions, events are launch and lunar landing, vantage point either The Cape or JPL)
Lunar Orbiter: Zero hits claimed of a possible 20 (5 missions, events are launch and lunar orbit insertion, vantage point either The Cape or JPL)
Mercury: Zero qualified hits of a possible 14 (7 missions, events are launch and splashdown)
Gemini: Zero hits of a possible 48 (12 missions, events are launch and splashdown, vantage point either The Cape or Houston)
Apollo: 2 hits of a possible 94 (11 manned launches, 6 lunar landings, 6 lunar takeoffs, 9 Lunar Orbit Insertions, 9 Trans Earth Insertions, vantage point either The Cape or Houston, or the lunar landing site where applicable)
Shuttle: Zero qualified hits of a possible 536 (135 launches, 133 landings, vantage point either The Cape or Houston. NOTE: If -- as in your Table of Coincidence -- events could include EVAs, possible hits would be in the thousands)

Aggregate: 2 hits of a possible 744.

If you have any integrity at all you will withdraw the Table of Coincidence in addition to Von Braun's Secret.

Regards, etc.


Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Mike Bara plays "My gf is prettier than yours"

Part 1

        He cheated!! His "girl" is Shana Eva, a married actress he met at Conscious Life Expo. I don't believe she's ever been a girlfriend in any truly satisfying sense. What does it say about a man that he attempts to rebut a Ph.D. astronomer with this drivel, and then cheats into the bargain??

There's more...

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

        Amazingly, Bara allowed two of my comments to appear, and counter-commented with what look like death threats. I'm not sure if Google's ToS cover those...

Two more comments of mine were suppressed:

You write that your statement about the eccentricity of the orbit of Mars is FACTUALLY CORRECT. However, it is not. The reason is that the disparity between closest and furthest approaches to another planet IS NOT A MEASURE of eccentricity.

You may have forgotten that, on 12th November 2010, you made it FAR WORSE by writing this:

"I was simply using the example of the wildly varying distance between the Earth and Mars as an example of how eccentric, meaning eliptical [sic], Mars orbit is. If both orbits were circular, there would be no such variation. They would maintain basically the same distance relative to each other. It is Mars' orbital eccentricity which creates this 200 million mile variation."

It's good that you showed the histogram of planet eccentricities. It makes the point that, discounting Pluto, ONLY ONE planet has eccentricity > 0.1. That falsifies your opinion that high eccentricities throughout the solar system are good evidence for solar fission.


Later...
You write here that orbital eccentricity "has nothing to do with the Solar fission theory." Please re-read The Choice, pp.33-37 from "The problem we face today..." to "....got there in the first place."

THEN PLEASE ISSUE A RETRACTION.

Derek Eunson's comment was also suppressed:

Why won't you allow a discussion on your blog regarding your attempted rebuttal of Dr Robbins' critique? You are exercising extreme moderation.

Why do you refuse to debate me 1v1 ?  Instead you tuck tail and run like a chickenshit, yellow bellied wee pansy. What's up Mike, scared of engineers ?
        All readers are encouraged to post comments themselves. Ya never know, ya might get lucky.

Update:
        I sent Mike another message informing him (politely) that If Mars' orbit were perfectly circular its distance from Earth would still vary from 47 million miles to 236 million. His reply was as follows:

"You're a complete fucking idiot."

        I'm seeking clarification. That's where we stand for the moment.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

A birthday card for Mike Bara

photo credit: Jonathan Daly

        Actually, it isn't Mike's birthday. And actually, this isn't really the intersection of 33rd and Isis. Don't believe everything you see on the internet.

        Casual readers who have NFI what this visual joke is about can get enlightenment here and here.

Typo!

"An annular eclipse means that the Moon and Sun are in perfect alignment, but the Sun is not totally blotted out because the Moon is a little too close to the Earth..." --The Choice, by Mike Bara, p.214

        Mike Bara the pseudo-author recently wrote that that passage was a "typo."

        The expression typographical error is misused so often these days that there's probably no hope of ever retrieving its real meaning. A true typographical error belongs to a bygone age when typographers used linotype machines to set hot metal in forms for printing. In other words, some person other than the author or the editor had to repeat the keyboard work the author had already invested, in creating the manuscript. Obviously this process was not error-free, and so mistakes could creep into the press form that were truly not the responsibility of the author or the editor. For book printing, galleys were provided for the editor and author to check, but always under pressure of time. Journalists would not generally even see galleys, such was the pace (and still is) of the daily newspaper grind.

        These days there is no such process as re-keying of book or newspaper text. Once the author has composed his or her thoughts into a text file, it simply flows from one computer to another until it ends on the printed form. There is no possible way in which an author could write "far from" and the text could somehow come out as "close to."

        So when Bara the incompetent author says that passage on p. 214 was a "typo," he really means it was an "error." HIS error. At least he admitted it, in a cack-handed way.