Malice and homage

        I do declayah, I don't know what to do about y'all blog readers and commenters. I go away for a few days (and the wine wasn't too bad, thanks James—there was even a bottle of Picpoul de Pinet to be had) —I go away for a few days and first you let Mike Bara post 20,000 words of ad hominem drivel, then you go and let one of my all-time heroes die from surgery that should never have been attempted in the first place. Then to cap it all you let Mike make an utter drooling nincompoop of himself by calling that hero a liar. Now I suppose you expect me to clean this place up. Well, I will—first things first.

The day I met Neil Armstrong

        The occasion was a small press conference announcing his appointment as Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cincinnati University. I was there as producer of a BBC TV documentary about the Apollo program 10 years after Apollo 11. Prof. Armstrong had just recently slammed one of his hands in the door of a pickup truck. He'd had surgery on two fingers, and was very noticeably rubbing at the stitch-line as he spoke. On the one hand it humanized him, but on the other it seemed to emphasize the nervousness he always had when speaking in public. During question-time his answers were brief but not in any sense evasive. I was able to use about a minute of the tape in my production.

        Afterwards I approached him personally and he was pleasant, asking about my project and which other Apollo astronauts I was going to interview. He even signed a photo for me—a practice he later discontinued after he learned how much $$$ his autograph was worth.

        R.I.P., world-class hero. James Oberg was a guest on a short NPR obit show.

Mike's blogpost malice

        An extraordinary performance, wasn't it? According to Mike Bara, I'm a dumbass and an obsessive nutcase. Stuart Robbins is a NASA shill "on the take," and James Oberg is a bloated sack of protoplasm. Well, I say Mike's tutorials on image editing are inaccurate, irrelevant and needlessly rebarbative. All that matters for him to truly make his case is the Kaguya imagery. If the ziggy exists, he should be able to show it. He cannot do that. In fact, he conspicuously tries and fails. In public.

It's not there, Mike

        Mike's attempt to make a direct comparison with the features of the Ziggurat at Ur shows, in my opinion, the exact reverse of what he intends. Since there's no conceivable way anyone outside a loony bin would believe an exact copy of the Urzig was built on the Moon, it simply shows that if you badly want to see something in a jumble of lunar craters, that's what you will see.

        Anyway, as usual Stuart Robbins has done a far better job than I could rebutting the rebuttal of the rebuttal (it's not RUBUTTING, Mike), I'll direct you to read that and just say "Yes, I agree." It's here and here and here and  here.

More malice

        First we had Richard Hoagland using the anniversary of Apollo 11 to launch a wholly specious attack on NASA. Then Mike Bara commemorated the death of Neil Armstrong by calling him a liar. Malice seems more natural than homage to these two specimens.

        Hoagland & Bara don't seem too good at reading their own work, either. Nowhere in the oeuvre have they ever said that glass domes and technical artifacts were present at the Apollo 11 site. Unless I misunderstand, the only Apollo sites they are claiming are under glass are 12, 14 and 17. So what are Prof. Armstrong's "secrets" supposed to be?

On p. 541 of Dark Mission, we find this:

"[O]n the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Apollo 11 ... Armstrong himself had seemed frustrated. He started his highly emotional address by first comparing himself to a parrot—saying only what he had been told to say."

         In fact, Armstrong said the exact opposite. His words were "Wilbur Wright once noted that the only bird that could talk was the parrot, and he didn't fly very well. So I'll be brief." Quite obviously, he's apologizing for not being a good speaker because his talent, UNLIKE A PARROT, is for flying, not talking.

        Anybody can judge for themselves whether he seemed frustrated, or whether this speech was "highly emotional." I personally don't find it so. That's what Armstrong is always like as a public speaker. And remember, I have personal knowledge of this.

Are we done?

        There, that's cleaned this place  up a bit. It's nice to be back, congratulations to Catriona for joining the ranks of the banned douchebags, and I sincerely hope this is the last time I write about the damned ziggy. Mike Bara, SHAME ON YOU.

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

Bara bragger

On April 19th 2008, Mike Bara posted:

"I live on Redondo Beach, California, I drive a 2007 BMW 5 Series, I’m a New York Times bestselling author, and I hang out with strippers and porn starlets half my age. I really don’t need to “edit” this blog to make myself look cool."

Perhaps understandably, he did not allow this reply to be seen:

That has to count as among the top ten most nauseating things I've ever read in Blogistan.

I might have added that Mike Bara is, in fact, NOT a New York Times bestselling author. "Dark Mission" came within one ranking point of making the list but never took that extra step. I don't dispute the strippers and porn starlets, however.