....one of your most persistent and confident predictions for 2010 crashes and burns? If you're Richard Hoagland, you just declare that it happened anyway, but nobody noticed.
That was the official Hoagland line on Coast to Coast AM last night, confronted with the undeniable fact that "The Year We Make Contact" just ended with a distinct lack of contact unless you count the contact of Lindsay Lohan's hand on a Betty Ford Center technician in December. In a discursive three-hour chat with George Noory, Hoagland said several times that "contact has happened. You just have to look."
The announced topic for last night was astrobiology, but as it turned out arsenic-tolerant bacteria weren't on the menu—Hoagland having perhaps realized that it's not a topic upon which he can hope to shine. Instead we got about an hour of what jolly good buddies Arthur C. Clarke and Richard C. Hoagland once were, then a tour of his favorite bits of nonsense including the robot head on the Moon and the Nazis in space. "Somebody," he said, is preparing us for "something," by coming up with all these science fiction movies (Transformers et al.) This was perhaps a bit of a slip-up, since if contact has already happened what need is there for preparation?
It was a sleep-inducing three hours, ending with guess what? Oh yes, the 800 number.
Of course.
Showing posts with label data's head. Show all posts
Showing posts with label data's head. Show all posts
Monday, January 3, 2011
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Imaginary Masonic rituals and fake star alignments
Yesterday something pretty funny arrived on the Dark Mission "official" blog. Under the title "Meet the New Boss... the Same as the Old Boss," Mike Bara constructed a fantasy of masonic ritual, woven around the second swearing-in ceremony in the Map Room of the White House, served up with an unmistakable whiff of racism. The analysis underlying this ridiculous nonsense was at the level of numerology. I had to comment:
Naturally, Mike Bara blocked publication. He can't stand rational analysis.
I offer the following comments on your post "Meet the New Boss...", which attains new heights of absurdity as you stretch to breaking point in your attempt to find "ritual symbolism" in a small ceremony that was hastily arranged, and that absolutely nobody could possibly have predicted the need for until a few hours before its occurrence.
* You write of the "overwhelming Masonic overtones of this second swearing-in ceremony." Who are you alleging arranged these overwhelming overtones? President Obama himself? I don't think he's a freemason, is he? How about the First Lady? Not a mason, by definition. How about NASA? Think they arranged it, at a couple of hours notice? You might think about obvious facts like these before posting such drivel. "Masonic overtones" were not overwhelming, Mike. They were entirely absent.
* The hour of 7:30 pm is not known as 19:30 in Washington DC. It is not known as 19.5 by anybody on Earth -- with, I guess, the exception of conspiracy theorists with no understanding of science or mathematics.
* Isn't the "ritual significance" of the number 19.5 supposed to attach to angles, anyway, according to your baseless theories?
* There is nothing strange, still less "ritual", about an architect trained in London in the 18th century being a Freemason. It would be more strange to find such a person who was not.
* There is nothing strange, still less "ritual", about re-arrangement of rooms in the White House at the start of a new Administration. It happens every single time, Mike. Like clockwork. You write "what does it imply for our new President and what does this symbolism signal about his true loyalties?" The answer is -- movement of a portrait on the wall of the White House Map Room signals nothing at all.
* The ancient Egyptians would not have measured anything in feet or inches. Neither would modern Egyptians, come to that -- so your teasing out of the "ritual" figure 666 in relation to the Washington Monument is not only meaningless but dishonest as well.
* Your analysis of the positions of stars at the moment of the ceremony is, as usual, meaningless. Actually, even more laughable than your other star alignments, since you admit you were not able to find a significant 'hit.' I wonder why, in that case, you even raise the point. It simply makes you look idiotic.
I wish that you had spent your time addressing the factual objections James Oberg has expressed over your characterization of Ken Johnstone, which appears to be incorrect. Oberg has already pointed out that your description of three failed Mars missions is entirely in error. I have exposed your "Data's Head" image as a fraud, and found a fatal error in the mathematics of "Von Braun's secret." You have conceded that Neil Armstrong never likened himself to a parrot. You have admitted that you have no evidence to support your contention that Apollo astronauts brought alien technology back from the Moon. Farouk El-Baz himself has written on this blog that there were many managers of the Apollo program more senior than him. There's not a whole lot left, even for your ardent fans, to believe in. Why not just cancel the proposed second edition?
Naturally, Mike Bara blocked publication. He can't stand rational analysis.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Informed criticism? Yeah — we got that
Mike Bara censored the following post today, disallowing its appearance on the official "Dark Mission" blog in its entirety:
I was recently re-reading your May 1997 essay "Where is the informed criticism of Richard Hoagland?" I note this sentence, toward the end:
"If Hoagland is wrong then let him be proved wrong. Let the critics who doubt the quality of his work repeat the process, and find him in error."
I have now done that, in relation to:
- The mythical anti-gravity boost to Explorer 1. His calculation is totally in error.
- The photo-processing of the rock called "data's head". His processing was found to be fraudulent.
- Neil Armstrong's 25th anniversary speech. Armstrong actually said the OPPOSITE of what Hoagland claims he said. You have conceded this.
- The allegation that Apollo astronauts actually returned artifacts of a lunar civilisation. You have conceded that there is no evidence of that.
- His characterisation of the Brookings Report as "strongly recommending" concealment of evidence of alien life. It did not.
James Oberg has falsified your allegations of sabotage in respect of Mars Observer, Mars Polar Lander, and Mars Climate Orbiter.
Are you now going to withdraw the 1997 essay?
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
'Data's Head' image proved fraudulent
Background
=========
In "Dark Mission" and on his web site, Richard Hoagland makes much of a certain rock in the lunar crater called 'Shorty', which was Station 4 of EVA2, Apollo 17. Hoagland presents a retouched photograph of this rock, claiming that it is in fact a technical artifact of a lunar civilization that no longer exists. In the introduction to "Dark Mission" he writes that Apollo astronauts brought back samples of the technology of this defunct lunar civilization "for highly classified efforts at back engineering" [sic, he means reverse engineering]. While not specifically claiming that the Apollo 17 astronauts Cernan and Schmitt actually retrieved the rock from Shorty, he wrote that "they could have". I have refuted that claim previously on this blog, citing five reasons why they could not have. Hoagland's claim that it is an artifact will now be examined and tested.
Photo processing
=============
I was interested in Hoagland's photo processing steps because I had seen one of the original Apollo 17 Hasselblad frames and could not understand how the "Data's Head" jpg could have been derived from it. Since Mike Bara, on the darkmission blog, had stated that this was a process that "anybody can repeat" I asked twice for guidance on the steps necessary to get from the whole frame to the highly decorated detail image. On the first occasion Bara replied that he was "not prepared to do your homework for you", and on the second occasion he replied "you don't know anything about how images are processed." Mr. Bara is neither polite nor helpful.
The image is a 7 kb file, 361 x 291 px., containing 34,509 colors (as measured by Paint Shop Pro v7.02 on a 2 GHz Hewlett-Packard Pavilion PC)
This is the information Hoagland offered, in a December 2007 interview for 'Project Camelot':
So the "Data's Head" image was generated from two separate prints that Hoagland himself describes as "really crappy".
For my follow-up analysis, I ordered a very high definition scan from Houston Photo Imaging, a company that is trusted by the NASA photo library and can scan direct from the negative, ensuring highest possible definition. Anything but "crappy".
I don't know where Hoagland gets his count of 14 separate Hasselblad frames. Here is the complete inventory of that camera magazine -- I see the rock only on frames 21000, 21001, 21005, 21006 and 21027. I ordered frame 21000.
The scan was shipped on CD and was in tiff format, 46.1 MB, 5190 x 6175 px., 136,589 colors. It was processed as follows:
At stage 1, a rough crop was performed to isolate the skull-like rock and the feature known as "the turkey". This yielded a tiff of 564 KB, 522 x 560 px., 26,898 colors.
At stage 2, the image was rotated to match the orientation of Hoagland's image. It was discovered that Hoagland had rotated his image 45° counter-clockwise. The crop was then matched as closely as possible. The stage 2 tiff was 40 KB 181 x 145 px., 9,179 colors.
At stage 3, the image was enlarged by a factor of 2 to produce an image with the exact pixel dimensions of Hoagland's. The file was 111 KB, 18,439 colors.
For stage 4, the image was given to a trained Photoshop operator (Hoagland himself does not say what training he has had in photo enhancement. The safest assumption is 'none'.) The operator was asked to use any available image enhancement techniques to approach the style of Hoagland's manipulations. Software version was Adobe Photoshop CS2, v 9.0.2, on a 3 GHz PC running Windows XP.
- Tonality, color and contrast were altered using the 'Curves' feature. Input: 167 Output: 91.
- Shadows, midtones, and highlights were adjusted using the 'Levels' feature. Levels: 69, 1.00, 238.
The operator commented as follows:
The reference jpg is shown below, with the Hoagland original for direct comparison:
The photoshop file was 2,254 KB, 31,869 colors. The reference jpg is 60 KB, 18,907 colors. Note that this compares with the 7 kB of the Hoagland jpg, attesting to a high degree of compression (and consequently low fidelity). It's possible that a higher-quality master file was used for the book -- however, the overall quality of image repro in the book is so appalling it hardly matters.
Conclusion
=========
It is plain that Hoagland manipulated this image in ways that go far beyond what is considered legitimate image enhancement. Despite the monochrome general appearance of the moon's surface (and notwithstanding the famous orange soil that was discovered on the rim of this very crater), there is color in these images. However, the 34,509 colors of Hoagland's image bear witness to his artificial colorization. If you inspect a de-rotated version of the 'Data's Head' image, it becomes obvious that rectangular patches have been independently colorized and then re-superimposed on the frame.
It's not so obvious on the rotated version, and this may explain why he performed the rotation (which has no innocent motive that I can determine).
I do not see the "camera lenses" that he says he sees, but if they are there, they are far more likely to be the result of an imperfect superimposition of his two scans rather than anything real. Hoagland's superimposition technique is dangerous because any slight change in perspective from frame to frame can make true matching impossible.
The bright red jaw-piece that has been described as "anodized" is simply not there. It's an artifact of processing, whether by design or incompetence.
I can't help wondering whether Hoagland enlisted the services of the Minnesota design studio that designed his web site -- VA Graphics. This company offers expertise in photo restoration, especially "facial reconstruction" and addition of "special effects and fantasy art". The name under which this company operates that business? Glad you asked. It's FIXYOURPHOTOS.COM. How very, very apposite.
My conclusion is that Richard Hoagland's image is fraudulent, and I call on the publisher, Adam Parfrey, to delete it from future editions of the book.
=========
In "Dark Mission" and on his web site, Richard Hoagland makes much of a certain rock in the lunar crater called 'Shorty', which was Station 4 of EVA2, Apollo 17. Hoagland presents a retouched photograph of this rock, claiming that it is in fact a technical artifact of a lunar civilization that no longer exists. In the introduction to "Dark Mission" he writes that Apollo astronauts brought back samples of the technology of this defunct lunar civilization "for highly classified efforts at back engineering" [sic, he means reverse engineering]. While not specifically claiming that the Apollo 17 astronauts Cernan and Schmitt actually retrieved the rock from Shorty, he wrote that "they could have". I have refuted that claim previously on this blog, citing five reasons why they could not have. Hoagland's claim that it is an artifact will now be examined and tested.
Photo processing
=============
I was interested in Hoagland's photo processing steps because I had seen one of the original Apollo 17 Hasselblad frames and could not understand how the "Data's Head" jpg could have been derived from it. Since Mike Bara, on the darkmission blog, had stated that this was a process that "anybody can repeat" I asked twice for guidance on the steps necessary to get from the whole frame to the highly decorated detail image. On the first occasion Bara replied that he was "not prepared to do your homework for you", and on the second occasion he replied "you don't know anything about how images are processed." Mr. Bara is neither polite nor helpful.
The image is a 7 kb file, 361 x 291 px., containing 34,509 colors (as measured by Paint Shop Pro v7.02 on a 2 GHz Hewlett-Packard Pavilion PC)
This is the information Hoagland offered, in a December 2007 interview for 'Project Camelot':
Kerry: (laughing more) You found a robot head in the bottom of a photograph...
Hoagland: In 14 photographs. It was photographed again and again and again and again as part of the panoramic sequence. We are trying now to go - we've gotten two copies of film - not just the web but film, (which is really crappy copies that were sent to us), and what I was able to do was a computerized robot comparison with C3PO.
....
I need higher resolution, but I've done some playing around on the computer even with those frames, and you get very interesting results. The two frames that were actually film that we used, we were able to superimpose them and that's when the eyes popped out.
The round irises, the camera eyes, that tell me this is not a desiccated human being lying there on the moon, one of the lunar colonists that we were positing was there at one point. This is an artificial life form, a robot.
So the "Data's Head" image was generated from two separate prints that Hoagland himself describes as "really crappy".
For my follow-up analysis, I ordered a very high definition scan from Houston Photo Imaging, a company that is trusted by the NASA photo library and can scan direct from the negative, ensuring highest possible definition. Anything but "crappy".
I don't know where Hoagland gets his count of 14 separate Hasselblad frames. Here is the complete inventory of that camera magazine -- I see the rock only on frames 21000, 21001, 21005, 21006 and 21027. I ordered frame 21000.
The scan was shipped on CD and was in tiff format, 46.1 MB, 5190 x 6175 px., 136,589 colors. It was processed as follows:
At stage 1, a rough crop was performed to isolate the skull-like rock and the feature known as "the turkey". This yielded a tiff of 564 KB, 522 x 560 px., 26,898 colors.
At stage 2, the image was rotated to match the orientation of Hoagland's image. It was discovered that Hoagland had rotated his image 45° counter-clockwise. The crop was then matched as closely as possible. The stage 2 tiff was 40 KB 181 x 145 px., 9,179 colors.
At stage 3, the image was enlarged by a factor of 2 to produce an image with the exact pixel dimensions of Hoagland's. The file was 111 KB, 18,439 colors.
For stage 4, the image was given to a trained Photoshop operator (Hoagland himself does not say what training he has had in photo enhancement. The safest assumption is 'none'.) The operator was asked to use any available image enhancement techniques to approach the style of Hoagland's manipulations. Software version was Adobe Photoshop CS2, v 9.0.2, on a 3 GHz PC running Windows XP.
- Tonality, color and contrast were altered using the 'Curves' feature. Input: 167 Output: 91.
- Shadows, midtones, and highlights were adjusted using the 'Levels' feature. Levels: 69, 1.00, 238.
The operator commented as follows:
All other adjustments to the photo, from reshaping the eyes, to darkening the shadow under the rock (and making the edges much more defined), and including adding shadow around the nose area, plus the odd color additions were made by someone, and not part of the original image.
The reference jpg is shown below, with the Hoagland original for direct comparison:
The photoshop file was 2,254 KB, 31,869 colors. The reference jpg is 60 KB, 18,907 colors. Note that this compares with the 7 kB of the Hoagland jpg, attesting to a high degree of compression (and consequently low fidelity). It's possible that a higher-quality master file was used for the book -- however, the overall quality of image repro in the book is so appalling it hardly matters.
Conclusion
=========
It is plain that Hoagland manipulated this image in ways that go far beyond what is considered legitimate image enhancement. Despite the monochrome general appearance of the moon's surface (and notwithstanding the famous orange soil that was discovered on the rim of this very crater), there is color in these images. However, the 34,509 colors of Hoagland's image bear witness to his artificial colorization. If you inspect a de-rotated version of the 'Data's Head' image, it becomes obvious that rectangular patches have been independently colorized and then re-superimposed on the frame.
It's not so obvious on the rotated version, and this may explain why he performed the rotation (which has no innocent motive that I can determine).
I do not see the "camera lenses" that he says he sees, but if they are there, they are far more likely to be the result of an imperfect superimposition of his two scans rather than anything real. Hoagland's superimposition technique is dangerous because any slight change in perspective from frame to frame can make true matching impossible.
The bright red jaw-piece that has been described as "anodized" is simply not there. It's an artifact of processing, whether by design or incompetence.
I can't help wondering whether Hoagland enlisted the services of the Minnesota design studio that designed his web site -- VA Graphics. This company offers expertise in photo restoration, especially "facial reconstruction" and addition of "special effects and fantasy art". The name under which this company operates that business? Glad you asked. It's FIXYOURPHOTOS.COM. How very, very apposite.
My conclusion is that Richard Hoagland's image is fraudulent, and I call on the publisher, Adam Parfrey, to delete it from future editions of the book.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Dork's Head?
There's been some discussion on the darkmission blog about the image that Richard Hoagland calls "Data's Head". This is a rock inside 'Shorty' crater, Station 4 of EVA2, Apollo 17 (the final moon mission).
The rock is skull-sized and has a superficial resemblance to a face of some kind. Hoagland maintains — on the basis of no evidence whatsoever other than his own intuition — that it is in fact a replica of the head of the robot C3PO from the Hollywood movie "Star Wars", made in 1977. Superficial resemblance is good enough for the authors, it seems. Mike Bara wrote on 22nd May "It's there (or it was there before they retrieved it), it looks like a head, it's the right size for a head, it looks like C3-PO's head. Period." According to Hoagland, an ancient lunar civilization anticipated the imagination of a 1970s special effects designer (Tony Dyson) and created a similar robot. Also according to Hoagland, either of the two Apollo 17 astronauts "could have" descended into the crater and retrieved this rock. In the Introduction to "Dark Mission", Hoagland goes further than the "could have" position and asserts that Apollo astronauts actually did bring back artifacts of the lunar civilization "for highly classified efforts at back engineering" [sic, he means reverse engineering]. Mike Bara conceded on an internet discussion in December 2007 that neither he nor Hoagland has any actual evidence to support this astoundingly bold claim.
The fact is that the Apollo 17 astronauts could not have retrieved this rock, for the following reasons.
1. It cannot be recognized as being "face-like" with the unaided human eye from the position the astronauts were in, at the crater rim. This was their view, as recorded by the hand-held Hasselblad camera.
2. They had no means of descending the steep side of the crater — not to mention getting back up, carrying a rather heavy object even allowing for reduced lunar gravity.
3. Even if they had wished to do so, they would undoubtedly have been forbidden to by Mission Control. The EVA was already running late, and the transcript shows clearly that Mission Control was constantly reminding them of walk-back constraints at this station.
4. No discussion of this is heard on the tapes of this station. It's inconceivable that the astronauts would have contemplated such a risky venture without discussion. It's impossible that such discussion was edited out because this was happening on live TV all across Planet Earth.
5. They had no means of picking up a skull-sized rock. The hand-held scoop was sized for "fist-sized" rocks only, and the rake was completely inadequate (see pp 52-54 here). It is not possible to bend down and pick up such a rock by hand when wearing the lunar spacesuit.
In addition, the "Data's Head" image is suspect. In the book, the authors write vaguely that it was arrived at by "processing and color enhancement" from the Hasselblad frame. What exactly does "processing and color enhancement" mean in this context?
Mike Bara has written twice that this process can be repeated by anyone. When I asked for details of the "processing and color enhancement" so that I might attempt to repeat it, Bara went into his "scorn and insult" mode and wrote (May 22nd) that "you don't know anything about how images are processed."
I wrote in reply that I was not going to comment on my level of expertise in image processing for the simple reason that it was beside the point. On May 28th, marsandro wrote "Okay. So...the point is...?"
Mike Bara's wishful use of the word "Period" on May 22nd makes it clear that superficial resemblance is all the evidence he needs to draw his conclusion, and no further discussion is necessary or permissible — a position so profoundly unscientific that it makes one gasp. And in fact, he used his veto as moderator of darkmission.net to suppress the following answer to marsandro's question.
>>"Okay. So...the point is...?"<<
....that Mike Bara refuses to specify the processing steps required to get from this to this. It's clear that it was enlarged x7 approximately, but what else was done? Here are some of the processing techniques that might have been used:
Adjustment of brightness, contrast, color balance, gamma.
Correction of highlights, midtones and shadows independently.
Correction of hue, saturation and lightness.
RGB adjustment.
Sharpening, edge enhancement, gaussian blurring.
Despeckle, moiré removal, fade correction.
....and that's before you even think about the so-called "artistic" effects like posterization.
The rock is skull-sized and has a superficial resemblance to a face of some kind. Hoagland maintains — on the basis of no evidence whatsoever other than his own intuition — that it is in fact a replica of the head of the robot C3PO from the Hollywood movie "Star Wars", made in 1977. Superficial resemblance is good enough for the authors, it seems. Mike Bara wrote on 22nd May "It's there (or it was there before they retrieved it), it looks like a head, it's the right size for a head, it looks like C3-PO's head. Period." According to Hoagland, an ancient lunar civilization anticipated the imagination of a 1970s special effects designer (Tony Dyson) and created a similar robot. Also according to Hoagland, either of the two Apollo 17 astronauts "could have" descended into the crater and retrieved this rock. In the Introduction to "Dark Mission", Hoagland goes further than the "could have" position and asserts that Apollo astronauts actually did bring back artifacts of the lunar civilization "for highly classified efforts at back engineering" [sic, he means reverse engineering]. Mike Bara conceded on an internet discussion in December 2007 that neither he nor Hoagland has any actual evidence to support this astoundingly bold claim.
The fact is that the Apollo 17 astronauts could not have retrieved this rock, for the following reasons.
1. It cannot be recognized as being "face-like" with the unaided human eye from the position the astronauts were in, at the crater rim. This was their view, as recorded by the hand-held Hasselblad camera.
2. They had no means of descending the steep side of the crater — not to mention getting back up, carrying a rather heavy object even allowing for reduced lunar gravity.
3. Even if they had wished to do so, they would undoubtedly have been forbidden to by Mission Control. The EVA was already running late, and the transcript shows clearly that Mission Control was constantly reminding them of walk-back constraints at this station.
4. No discussion of this is heard on the tapes of this station. It's inconceivable that the astronauts would have contemplated such a risky venture without discussion. It's impossible that such discussion was edited out because this was happening on live TV all across Planet Earth.
5. They had no means of picking up a skull-sized rock. The hand-held scoop was sized for "fist-sized" rocks only, and the rake was completely inadequate (see pp 52-54 here). It is not possible to bend down and pick up such a rock by hand when wearing the lunar spacesuit.
In addition, the "Data's Head" image is suspect. In the book, the authors write vaguely that it was arrived at by "processing and color enhancement" from the Hasselblad frame. What exactly does "processing and color enhancement" mean in this context?
Mike Bara has written twice that this process can be repeated by anyone. When I asked for details of the "processing and color enhancement" so that I might attempt to repeat it, Bara went into his "scorn and insult" mode and wrote (May 22nd) that "you don't know anything about how images are processed."
I wrote in reply that I was not going to comment on my level of expertise in image processing for the simple reason that it was beside the point. On May 28th, marsandro wrote "Okay. So...the point is...?"
Mike Bara's wishful use of the word "Period" on May 22nd makes it clear that superficial resemblance is all the evidence he needs to draw his conclusion, and no further discussion is necessary or permissible — a position so profoundly unscientific that it makes one gasp. And in fact, he used his veto as moderator of darkmission.net to suppress the following answer to marsandro's question.
>>"Okay. So...the point is...?"<<
....that Mike Bara refuses to specify the processing steps required to get from this to this. It's clear that it was enlarged x7 approximately, but what else was done? Here are some of the processing techniques that might have been used:
Adjustment of brightness, contrast, color balance, gamma.
Correction of highlights, midtones and shadows independently.
Correction of hue, saturation and lightness.
RGB adjustment.
Sharpening, edge enhancement, gaussian blurring.
Despeckle, moiré removal, fade correction.
....and that's before you even think about the so-called "artistic" effects like posterization.
Monday, April 21, 2008
No errors in "Dark Mission"?
On April 18th, "jjrakman" posted this:
"take expat for instance...it's almost like it is his lifelong ambition to divert the attention away from any presented data..and then start arguing in a manner like "...well, oke so you think you have found an apple...but since there's no appletree in the picture...it can't be an apple"."
Mike Bara suppressed this response:
"No, what I'm saying is much simpler than that. I'm saying that verifiable errors in a published work should be corrected in subsequent editions, that's all. Here are some examples from "Dark Mission":
* NASA is a direct adjunct of DoD
* NASA concealed the results of the Viking biology LR experiment
* Neil Armstrong likened himself to a parrot
* The Brookings Report recommended concealment of evidence of alien civilizations
* Cernan and/or Schmitt could have retrieved a skull-sized rock from Shorty crater
* Farouk El-Baz was the most powerful figure in the entire Apollo Program
* Failure of the 1993 Mars Observer mission was the result of sabotage
All of the above statements are false. They are errors, mistakes. They are non-factual. Thanks to the magnificent resources of the world-wide web, any of us can verify that for ourselves in about 5 minutes per factoid.
In addition, there are a number of statements in the book that are not so easily falsified but are nonetheless highly problematic. One such is the statement in the Intro that Apollo crews brought back from the moon "not just rocks, but actual _samples_ of the ancient technologies they found -- for highly classified efforts at "back engineering".
Very hard to prove a negative, but since in that particular case Mike Bara has conceded that he and Hoagland know of no evidence to support the statement, common sense says that the passage should be deleted.
"take expat for instance...it's almost like it is his lifelong ambition to divert the attention away from any presented data..and then start arguing in a manner like "...well, oke so you think you have found an apple...but since there's no appletree in the picture...it can't be an apple"."
Mike Bara suppressed this response:
"No, what I'm saying is much simpler than that. I'm saying that verifiable errors in a published work should be corrected in subsequent editions, that's all. Here are some examples from "Dark Mission":
* NASA is a direct adjunct of DoD
* NASA concealed the results of the Viking biology LR experiment
* Neil Armstrong likened himself to a parrot
* The Brookings Report recommended concealment of evidence of alien civilizations
* Cernan and/or Schmitt could have retrieved a skull-sized rock from Shorty crater
* Farouk El-Baz was the most powerful figure in the entire Apollo Program
* Failure of the 1993 Mars Observer mission was the result of sabotage
All of the above statements are false. They are errors, mistakes. They are non-factual. Thanks to the magnificent resources of the world-wide web, any of us can verify that for ourselves in about 5 minutes per factoid.
In addition, there are a number of statements in the book that are not so easily falsified but are nonetheless highly problematic. One such is the statement in the Intro that Apollo crews brought back from the moon "not just rocks, but actual _samples_ of the ancient technologies they found -- for highly classified efforts at "back engineering".
Very hard to prove a negative, but since in that particular case Mike Bara has conceded that he and Hoagland know of no evidence to support the statement, common sense says that the passage should be deleted.
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