Here's a surprise, Richard Hoagland was wrong

 From this blog, March 14, 2016:

« When Gale crater was first announced as MSL's destination, Richard Hoagland announced on C2C-AM that Sharp Mountain was obviously an artificial construct, and that everyone at JPL knew that. Even President Obama knew it. ..... When Curiosity finally reveals Sharp to be just a mountain, what will he say then? Why, NOTHING, of course. Glad you asked. »

        Well, Curiosity has been on the lower slopes of Mt. Sharp for quite a while now and of course Hoagland has been silent on the topic.

        Yesterday NASA/JPL/CNES released the largest photo-mosaic of Mt. Sharp yet created. The images were from the ChemCam's Remote Micro-Imager, and the mosaic was created by a team at the University of Nantes, France from 216 overlapping images. Stéphane Le Mouélic provided the detailed explanation in a Marsblog. Here's a screen capture of one part of the huge photo-mosaic, but it's really worth looking at the whole thing.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech /LANL/CNES/CNRS/ IRAP/IAS/LPG

        If you think for one moment that Richard Hoagland is going to see that and publicly announce that he was completely mistaken, you don't know your Hoagland. Admitting error is NOT what he does. Let's face it, if he did he'd be doing so much of it that he'd have no time to plan and compile his ridiculous blogtalkradio show.

        Click on the label "hoagland errors" below to see a partial listing.

No power in ABQ

        Over the weekend, BOTH of Richard Hoagland's blogtalkradio shows were cancelled due to what he claims were power outages. The Big Picture with Georgia Lambert was replaced by a re-run of Kronos Rising with Max Hawthorne, and something-or-other was replaced by Trump's Secret War with Christopher Knowles, about which I commented a month ago.

        I've now lost count of the number of shows that have not gone ahead as advertised, but it's a lot. There are signs that he may be losing part of his fan base because of this. A "Club 19.5" member, Adam Prentice, posted this comment yesterday:

« Yet again. Getting beyond a joke, if Richard can't get the correct equipment in I suggest he hangs up his boots? Do you think I like getting up at 5am UK time on a Sunday morning.»

Another frustrated fan posted:

« I so agree. It’s beyond unprofessional. He could get a generator. »

        Unfortunately, although Power New Mexico has a fine web site giving information about current outages, there doesn't seem to be historical data such that somebody might check whether Hoagland is telling the truth, as opposed to just getting drunk and going to bed when he should be entertaining the members who pay for his service.

Update August 31st

Another replay last night. Hoagland posted:

« The power company continues with its repairs during the hours that most businesses are closed.   »

Update Sept. 5th
        A power outage for maintenance was announced for 11pm July 29th, affecting an area well south of Albuquerque. Nothing posted since then. 

Hoagland vs. Hogue: Word-fight at the Blogtalk Corral

        The Rational-wikipedia page on John Hogue characterizes him as "a woo-meister and bullshit artist." It notes that "In a stopped clock moment of remarkable quality, Hogue had the foresight to title the biography he hosts on his website as An Idiot’s Autobiography.

        Hogue himself says he's a world authority on Nostradamus, and his talents at astrology and other ephemera make him a remarkably accurate predictor of world affairs. He used to claim that he correctly predicted the outcome of the last so-many presidential elections. Since he had Clinton for 2018, he's cunningly amended that to "the last so-many presidential elections by popular vote." Har-har.

        Well, of course, we know how it goes. All these clairvoyant people who appear on the media inevitably predict ghastly things in our futures. I guess they think nobody would pay any attention if they said "I've looked at the prophecies and everything's going to be hunky-dory."

        Richard Hoagland had Hogue as a guest on his blogtalkradio show The Other Side of Midnight, 29th December. The on-demand public audio has just been posted, so I was able to review it (the link will probably expire in about a week). For an hour and a half, the two Hoags discussed the decade to come. We were, indeed, warned about "a decade of destruction" to include catastrophic climate change, overpopulation, famine...bla bla bla. But then things took a different turn, as Hogue (rather reluctantly, I thought,) revealed that he was not an adoring fan of RCH and his whacko ideas. It went like this:

==============================================
[after RCH declares emphatically that Hurricane Dorian was deliberately manipulated to stall over the Bahamas]

1:37:52 RCH: That was not accidental. That was a designed catastrophe. It can't...
JH: That's your belief.
RCH: No, it's technology..
JH: That's your belief.
RCH : It has nothing to do with belief, it's science, John. I have sources.I know there's technology to manipulate hurricanes. I know there's technology to provide unlimited energy with no pollution. I know there's technology to provide anti-gravity lift so we can take giga-tons into space to make...

JH: You've got it all figured out, Richard.

RCH: No, the part I don't have..
(together)
RCH: The part...
JH: ...listening to a guy like me..
RCH: The part I don't have...
The part...
JH: You've got it all figured out.
:::
RCH: The part I don't have figured out in my research is the transition politically, with hope, to a future that we want, and not the terror that you are forecasting.

JH: Well, I'll tell you. I... First off, I definitely would love to see what you're saying. And all the climate change that's coming...

RCH: No, it's here.

JH: No, it hasn't even started yet. You wait, the next five years....

RCH: Have you watched what's going on in Australia lately?

JH: Yes.

RCH: Do you know why it's been Australia?

JH: Well, you tell me what you think it is...

RCH: No, it's based on science, and research The hemispheres... this has nothing to do with the sun  This has to do with the physics of planetary and stellar energy sources. The problem we're facing tonight, John, is not so much greenhouse because of burning fossil fuels—it's because the physics is cyclic, and it's not cyclic together in both hemispheres. The southern hemisphere is going to be hit worse than the northern hemisphere. That's why we're seeing this incredible problem in Australia, in their northern [sic] summer. The only way out of a scientific problem is with a scientific solution. The problem is those solutions have been suppressed in decade after decade after decade, because the élites either didn't believe this was going to happen, or they really want 90% of the world to die.

JH: Richard, this is what I call, um, basically, conspiracy-itis. It is something I've dealt with.... and it's where—you know, I just have to say it for the record. I consider, as brilliant as you are, that you sometimes take a possibility and make yourself believe you have the evidence. And then, when the evidence is questioned, you perhaps do what conspiracy people do, they end up saying "Oh it's been suppressed." And, I mean, I have to go all the way back to the face on Mars. I have to go all the way back...

RCH: (laughs) What does the face on Mars have to do with 90% of the world dying because of climate change?

JH: It has something to do.. Look, I'm sorry I don't want to have to go to...I told you I didn't want to go to..

RCH: You have a choice, John.

JH: I have to.

RCH: You have a choice.

JH: I have.. and I chose to go there. You can throw me off, or you can let me tell it. Hey, it's your show, you wanna do that, that's fine. Wanna kick me off—that's fine. But the reason why I'm going there... it's the only way I can respond to what you've just said. Is that I have a serious problem with your research—patterns of research. I think a lot of it, in my experience, is belief-based, and, you know, all this stuff about all these phantasmagorical things being ...     I think it's a bit over-active, er, over-reactive. It's intuitive, and I have to go back to the face on Mars. I remember in the 70s, hearing you on radio, hearing you talk about all that,  and I ... and I thought "Well, I hope that's true." But when I looked at the pictures,  I wondered...   God the pictures aren't that clear. What if we...maybe  some day we need to get clearer pictures, when our technology is better, when we land on Mars. But, you know, NASA came up with the pictures, and there's no face. But all the years ....
:::
RCH: Let's go back. You looked at the latest imagery from NASA of Cydonia. And your conclusion, based on looking at the pictures—you don't see a face. Right?

JH: There is no face.

RCH: No no no no no, let's talk. To you there isn't a face.

JH: And to you, there is.

RCH: And a whole bunch of colleagues all round the world, who have invested thousands of man-hours and woman-hours in researching not only Cydonia, but all the rest of Mars, and all the other artifacts we've found, and the book we're working on, and the videos we've produced, and the briefings...

JH: [over] ...religion....

RCH: There's no religion, John.

JH: Yeah, I can look at all the people from the Catholic faith, and the Moslem faith, and all the theologians who say "God exists" and all that, but the truth is unless we go on Mars ... unless we actually set foot on Mars and see these things, there's some doubt.

RCH: There's always doubt. Science is nothing if it's not, you know, prediction. The way you know it's...

JH: You've got all this army of people that agree with you.

RCH: People doing independent research coming to the same conclusion.

JH: There's a lot of people who've come to the same conclusion in history, and it's been wrong.

RCH: John, you seem to have an emotional...
JH; (together)...technical enquiry...
RCH: You seem ...
JH: I didn't want to go here.

RCH: You don't have to. Because you're attacking the essence of my science. And what I would like you to do...

JH: No, I'm attacking the essence of your belief system, which is why...

RCH: My work has nothing to do...
JH (together)...
RCH: ...has nothing to do with belief. Believe me, after thirty years,

[Keith Morgan interrupts and makes a point supporting RCH, emphatically]

JH: The difference between you and me is that you're angry about this...

KM: I'm not angry.

JH: Yes you are, you're angry. You're shouting at me now. If you want to be factual, be factual about what's happening between you and me right now.

[Keith Morgan makes another point, even more emphatically]
:::

You're disempowering your argument. That's what I've learned, when I get angry like this, is that it bleeds off my energy, it bleeds off my ability to argue my point because of my attachment to the point.  This is... This is not how you're going to convince me of ...of... of what you're doing, because you're getting angry, and that is disempowering.

KM: Because, you, right now, you're saying all of this is a joke.

JH: Did I ever say it was a joke? You said...

KM: I get the impression....

JH: You said... Hey! Say it right! You're getting impressions that's what it is....  No, you accuse, you said "You think this is all a joke". That's you projecting on me, my friend.

RCH: John, just a couple of minutes ago you accused me of having a belief system as opposed to a scientific process.
(together)
JH: It's my feeling...

[...and general squabbling until Kynthea intervenes]
[ends 1:48:41]

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

        It was classic Hoagland. He was talking bullshit but doing it so eloquently that he made it sound plausible. If his sources promise hurricane control, free energy and anti-gravity, then his sources are rubbish. And my other point would be; if you can't cite your sources, it ain't science.

Questions for Richard Hoagland

         Hoagland's blogtalkradio show this coming Sunday night is billed as "Open Hailing Frequencies — RCH answers questions." I'm not going to be able to listen live, so I sent him these advance questions:

-----------------/ \--------------------

You have stated that NASA has an “obsessive, relentless”^{note 1} preference for scheduling events such as launches only when certain astrological conditions are met. According to your "Ritual Alignment Model," any of five stars has to be at any of five elevations.

There were 135 Space Shuttle launches and, sadly, two fewer landings. Why is it that your published “Table of Coincidence” lists only ONE of these 268 events as coincident? Why is even that one event self-disqualified per your stated criteria?^{note 2}

© Richard Hoagland

You cite four pseudo-coincidences for the launch of STS-88:

1] Encke at -33° seen from Phoenix, 12/4/98 03:36

2] Mars at -3.33° seen from Phoenix, 12/4/98 03:36

3] Encke at 0° seen from the Apollo 12 landing site, 12/4/98 03:36

4] Encke at -19.5° seen from the Viking 1 landing site, 12/4/98 03:36

Richard, there are seven  reasons why these observations do not support your contention that NASA likes to launch when your stated criteria are satisfied.

• Encke is not one of the 5 stars you cite
• Mars is not one of the 5 stars you cite
• -3.33° is not one of the elevations you cite
• Phoenix has no connection to the STS-88 mission
• Apollo 12 has no connection to the STS-88 mission
• Viking 1 has no connection to the STS-88 mission

STS-88 launched 12/4/98 03:35:34. However its originally intended launch was 12/3/98 03:58:19. You have stated that the time to consider for these coincidences is the planned launch time, not the actual. You called it the “birthing” time.^{note 3} Yet you have not cited any coincident star elevations for the planned launch time of STS-88. Why not?

In light of the above, do you think STS-88 should be eliminated from your tabulation, leaving NONE of the 268 Space Shuttle events qualified per your stated criteria? On further consideration, do you still believe that NASA is "obsessive, relentless" about this?

Update:
        The show was cancelled. For the second night in a row, RCH was unable to restore the electrical supply to his office. Pity, I'm sure he would have given a full answer to my questions if he had been able to find the right circuit-breaker..

=======================/ \======================
1] “Dark Mission” 2nd edn. caption to Fig. 5-10
2] “Dark Mission” 2nd edn. p.14. The stars are Sirius, Regulus, and the belt stars of Orion. The elevations are -33°, -19.5°, 0°, +19.5°, and +33°, as seen from the launch or mission control site. Note that this means you give yourself 50 chances of a coincidence every time.
3] Facebook, 19th April 2011

Those faked Corona spysat images of the Moon

Today I sent this to Richard Hoagland:

Greetings.

In the last month you have posted two images of the Moon that you say were taken by Corona (KH-1 – KH-6) spy satellites looking upward. On 17th February, this one:

…and on 11th March, this one.

The first is dated, presumably in European notation, 30-3-66. Accordingly it could not have been taken by a Corona but more likely by a Gambit (KH-7) satellite, perhaps mission  KH7-26, launch date 18 March 1966, NSSDC designation 1966-022A.

The second is dated 08-01-66, a date on which no Corona or Gambit missions were operative.

Both images show identical damage. Both images show horizontal banding typical of an image transmitted by radio rather than one from a captured film magazine.

In addition, from the known geometry of the Earth-Moon system, the field of view (FOV) may easily be calculated as 0.607°. This is inconsistent with the known FOV of Gambit, 2.18°.

I am led to suspect that your data is fraudulent and I invite you to explain the exact provenance of these images.

Regards,

[expat]

Thanks to OneBigMonkey for inspiring this 

Stand by for some flagrant errors on Saturday night

James Concannon writes...

        The announced topic for The Other Side of Midnight Sat/Sun 17/18 February is:

"Did President Kennedy's abrupt decision in 1963 -- to end the "Space Race" ... and go to the Moon together with the Russians -- stem directly from the CIA's sudden, top secret, "Project Corona" confirmation, in 1963 ... of ancient ET ruins on the Moon?"

        Broaching this self-evidently ridiculous topic with Richard Hoagland is none other than frisbee expert Robert Morningstar. Morningstar claims to be "a specialist in photo interpretation, geometric analysis and computer imaging."

        Project Corona was a series of reconnaissance satellites targeted at the USSR and China running from June 1959 to May 1972, initiated and managed by the Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science & Technology. It is the same surveillance project as the one often referenced as Keyhole, and after a series of embarrassing failures 102 missions returned useful information, the film being dropped out of orbit and captured by USAF aircraft.

        Why do I write "self-evidently ridiculous"? Simply because Corona had nothing to do with the Moon. Writing on Facebook today, Morningstar claimed "I know very well that Corona was a USSR-China spy satellite, but it could be rotated and focused on the Moon, as well." What poppycock! If Morningstar truly was any kind of specialist in geometric analysis he would never dare to make that claim.

Data:
Corona camera lens focal length: 610mm
Film frame width: 70mm
Orbital altitude: 160km, later improved to 121km
Distance of the Moon: 370,000km
Diameter of the Moon: 3,474km

From the above data, the field of view was 2 x (arc tan 35/610) = 6.524°
Width of a frame on the Earth surface 2 x (160 tan 3.262°) = 18km, improved to 13.8km

At the distance of the Moon, the image width would have been 42,291km. The entire face of the Moon would therefore have occupied 0.082 of the film width—about like this:

Ancient ET ruins MY ASS.

        I have provided the above information to both Hoagland and Morningstar, but no doubt they will ignore it and treat their audience to three hours of absolute rubbish on Saturday night.

Update:
        I've now seen a technical document indicating that the camera optics underscanned, using only 54.5mm of the total film width 70mm. In that case the field of view would have been 5.04°, and the best ground image would have a width of 10.6 km. At lunar distance the image width would be 32,560km and the Moon diameter almost exactly 10%.

Hoagland stages a double-header for Superbore weekend

        Since I blogged Richard Hoagland's failures on 22nd January, he's had more luck with the demons of internet radio. Both shows over the 27th/28th weekend completed just fine. The subjects were Antarctica with Robert Morningstar (who has no known expertise on the subject) and Wilbur Allen; and a Space Drive with Mike Gamble.

        Both nights of this last weekend, 3rd/4th February, were billed as featuring Ken Johnston and Steve Troy, discussing what Hoagland has already discussed to death over the years, namely Glass Structures on the Moon, and how NASA suppresses evidence of them. Think about that—that's SIX HOURS on a basically non-existent topic. Are these people mad? (don't answer that.) Ken Johnston almost immediately got off topic by telling his old familiar stories about how he saved a set of 10x8 glossy photoprints from the Apollo program. He even repeated yet again the story of how he saw evidence of an alien base in crater Tsiolkovsky, in 16mm film taken from Apollo 14 as it overflew that huge crater on the back side. He didn't explain how a spacecraft in an orbit inclined 14° can overfly a crater at 20.4°, and Hoagland didn't think to ask.

        Steve Troy may have been more compelling (and more original) but since his audio was incomprehensible it's hard for me to say. Hoagland himself, however, was easily audible and he came armed with a set of 13 images, some of which he says confirm the presence of glass structures. Well, I've seen lots of Hoagland's "evidence" since I've been creating this blog, and none of it is remotely convincing. A couple of the images he presented on Saturday night went beyond merely "unconvincing" into the realm of sheer hilarity. Here's one, in which Hoagland mistakes jpg compression artifacts for his precious alien glass houses:

        It's from Apollo 16, and to get that horrible effect he says he had to "enhance" it. What he actually did was FUBAR it, as we technical chaps say.

        Hoagland-style enhancement was also to blame for the worst case of scanner contamination I've ever seen. This one was an Apollo 11 earthrise shot:

        I wasn't sure whether he thinks the horizontal lines introduced by a cheap scanner are the glass structures, or is it the grubby thumb prints on the scanner glass?

        These horrible exhibits, and others like them, illustrate a Hoagland paradox. He loudly alleges that NASA suppresses evidence of glass thingies, yet his evidence is derived from... NASA.

Podcasting
        In addition to the show's presence (sometimes) on Blog Talk Radio, there is now a podcast stream available to members only. Which is just as well, since on Sunday night the BTR stream crapped out after a few minutes. Hoagland complained that his computer mysteriously switched itself off—cast-iron evidence that some sinister conspiracy is devoted to sabotaging his chat-show. Personally, I'm not too sure about that last part. Once again, FUBAR could just as easily be the problem.

        The podcastery only works while the show is actually "on the air," but for the time being the Saturday show can still be heard at this link.

Update 21 February:
        Here's Bret Sheppard's hand-drawn Apollo 14 ground track, referenced by James Oberg in a comment today. He has the maximum southerly track passing Tsiolkovsky X, at 15.25°S. In reality Apollo 14 could not have gone further South than 14°. The small crater Dobrovolsky R, right by the A of the label "Apollo 14 ground track" is at exactly 14°S.

        The Apollo 14 photographic index map shows that the nearest photo target was near crater Necho P, at 7°S. It's the one only party seen on Sheppard's map to the North.

The volcanoes of Io: No joy for Richard Hoagland there either

        Io [pron: EYE-o] is a moon of Jupiter, just a little bigger than our own Moon (mean radius 1822 km, cf.1737 km.) Io's orbit is somewhat eccentric (.0041), and this is enough to cause continual flexing in the colossal gravitational field of Jupiter. The heat this generates has created over 400 active volcanoes, making little old Io the most volcanically active object in the solar system.

credit: Sky and Telescope

        On Monday, Space.com reported on some exquisite work by Katherine de Kleer and Imke de Pater of UC Berkeley, tracking volcanic hotspots on Io over more than two years, from 2013 to 2015. The astronomers used two of the world's largest telescopes, the 10-meter Keck II and 8-meter Gemini North, both located on Mauna Kea. The work produced this stunning image:

Credit: Katherine de Kleer and Imke de Pater, UC Berkeley 

        The hotties aren't identified by name, but I bet that biggie is Amirani, at 24.46°N.   A 2001 JPL/Caltech report wrote that Amirani "is responsible for the largest active lava flow in the entire Solar System, with recent flows dwarfing those of even other volcanos on Io."

        Too bad for Richard Hoagland,^{note 1} who regularly includes Io in his erroneous list of solar system objects that support his claim that excess "hyperdimensional" energy is available at 19.5° latitudes on a spinning spheroid. The list is Table 1 of Hoagland's web page The Message of Cydonia, including the Io volcanoes Loki, Maui, Pele and Volund. He says that Loki, Maui and Pele are all at 19°, while Volund is at 22°. In fact the latitudes are 18.22°N, 19.53°N, 18.71°S and 28.62°N respectively.^{note 2} So he gets one right, but this recent work from UC Berkeley puts paid to any idea that the 19.5° latitudes are volcanically special. The Keck observatory happens to be quite close to latitude 19.5°N, but that's no help. Note, too, the biggest volcanic events in Earth's known history:^{note 3}

Yellowstone, three massive events - 44° 24' N

Huaynaputina, 1600 - 16° 36' S

Krakatoa, 1883 - 6° 06' S

Santa Maria, 1902 - 14° 45' N

Novarupta, 1912 - 58° 16' N

Pinatubo, 1991 - 15° 08' N

Ambrym Island, 50 - 16° 15' S

Ilopango, 450 - 13.67° N

Santorini, 1610 BC - 36° 25' N

Tambora, 1815 - 8° 14' S

        None of the top ten earthquakes in Earth's known history has been at 19.5° either. So much for hyperdimensional energy upwellings.

Behind the Black
        I would never have noticed this brilliant report if I wasn't a regular reader of Bob Zimmerman's blog Behind the Black. Zimmerman^{note 4} always keeps it concise and accurate. He's solid on spaceflight history (author of Genesis:The Story of Apollo 8) and he knows more about the commercial space industry than anyone I know. Bob was nominated Science Adviser of Coast to Coast AM after Richard Hoagland drastically overplayed his hand in July 2015.


=============================/ \===========================
[1] A second setback this week for Hoagland. In the early hours (Pacific time) of this morning, he failed to get his radio chat show back on the air as promised. See last blogpost.
[2] ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volcanic_features_on_Io. There's a list similar to Hoagland's on p. 47 of Mike Bara's book The Choice, but he simply skates over this with a hand-waving "...the erupting volcanoes of Jupiter's moon Io." Useless.
[3] ref: http://www.livescience.com/30507-volcanoes-biggest-history.html
[4] Not the Bob Zimmerman who recently scored a certain Nobel Prize, of course.

RECAP: Richard Hoagland's appalling mathematical blunder

        Today I'd like to remind my readers of the dreadful mathematical blunder that Hoagland point-blank refused to discuss with Howard Hughes on 2nd June. I covered this rigorously back on 25th August 2008, but this time I'm going to use a more narrative format. So here's an account of how badly Hoagland botched the rocket equation—but without the equation.

Altitude and velocity
        To achieve Earth orbit, you have to accomplish two separate tasks. First, you have to raise your satellite high enough that it's above the atmosphere. Secondly, you have to propel it horizontally fast enough that it's unable to fall back to Earth under the influence of gravity. The minimums are roughly 120 km and 7 km/sec respectively. Explorer 1, America's first satellite, did much better than the minimums. It went into orbit at an altitude of 357 km and a velocity of 8.215 km/sec. It achieved this with a four-stage rocket. The first stage, a liquid-fueled "stretched" version of the Redstone missile, took care of all of the altitude problem and a little bit of the horizontal velocity. Then, three separate solid-fueled stages took over the task of boosting Explorer to orbital speed.

        The interesting part, to Hoagland, was that the three upper stages over-performed. The overspeed was 0.197 km/sec (roughly 650 ft/sec in old money). Hoagland suspected that this was more of an over-performance than could be accounted for by variability of normal factors like rocket fuel performance and high-altitude winds. So he sat down to do some calculation.

        The "rocket equation" enables accurate calculation of the velocity contribution of a rocket stage (known as delta-V,) given knowledge of the power of the fuel (measured by what's called the specific impulse) and the mass of the rocket before and after the fuel has done its job. Hoagland's first mistake was that he did one single calculation grouping all three stages together, instead of figuring delta-V stage by stage then adding them up. You can't do that because your result will then ignore the very important point that rocket staging progressively drops off empty stages along the way. That's the whole point of it, really. His second mistake was that he failed to evaluate a logarithm which is at the heart of the equation. It's as if he didn't even notice it.

Howling error
        Well, obviously, he got entirely the wrong answer and it enabled him to state, quite incorrectly, that the velocity excess was more than could be accounted for by those conventional uncertainties I mentioned. He said it was 17%, but the real answer is 4.2%. What that means is that Hoagland's proposition that Wernher Von Braun had "an anti-gravity secret" is pathetically, irretrievably, wrong. Back in 2012, when he was still contributing to his Facebook, he actually acknowledged that his math was faulty but claimed that it didn't matter because the velocity excess was still more than could easily be explained. That, of course, is a lie. And what is truly reprehensible, for someone who has claimed to be a scientist, is that he has never amended the "Von Braun's Secret" web page. Today, it's still as wrong as when he first wrote it in August 2008.

Report on what Richard Hoagland has described as his "new book"

        During Richard Hoagland's"interview" last Friday night with Coast-to-Coast host Richard Syrett, I lost count of the number of times he plugged what he called "my new book", Pluto: New Horizons for a Lost Horizon. (I place "interview" in quotes because Hoagland's obnoxious arrogance was front and center, as he talked over Syrett and basically attempted to take over the whole show.^{note 1})

        Well, I don't usually blame C2C guests for plugging books—they get no other compensation for giving up most of a night's sleep (and by the way, it really works, as I have reported passim.) But in this case the plugging was strident and the problem is that IT'S NOT HOAGLAND'S BOOK. It's Richard Grossinger's book. Grossinger was the original publisher of The Monuments of Mars after Simon & Shuster reverted Hoagland's contract for non-performance. Grossinger wrote at some length about his pal Hoagland in 2010. Here's an excerpt:

"Hoagland is a unique mixture of amateur scientist, genius inventor, scam artist, and performer, blending true, legitimate speculative science with his own extrapolations, tall tales, and inflations. He is a brilliant and glorious myth-maker and a evidence-based scientist at the same time."

New Horizons for a procrastinating author
        The book is 300 pages long and contains 31 essays by a smörgåsbord of writers. None of the names ring a bell with me except Jason Martell and Grossinger himself, who contributes #2 in addition to a 44-page introduction (which is quite well-written, in fact.) Hoagland himself is #3 up, strutting around the book for 64 pages. His chapter title is New Horizon ... for a Lost Horizon, and it's recognizably Hoagland but ever so slightly toned down. We get lots of "extraordinary," "astonishing" and "stunning." There are the unmotivated italics and the bizarre ellipses, but no all-caps overemphasis and no exclamation points. Deo gratias.

        Well, here's a flavor of the sheer mendacity of this material, as Hoagland tries to substantiate his thesis that the solar system is replete with evidence of a now-dead advanced civilization:

"Our research has now revealed that this stunning, new solar system reality first became known to the U.S. Department of Defense under the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s—in part via a pioneering, top-secret JPL (U.S. Army) effort at a first unmanned circumlunar reconnaissance mission, "Project Red Socks." We believe the shocking results of this clandestine mission formed the real reason behind NASA's sudden public emergence after Sputnik, and the rapid congressional authorization, only one year later in 1958, of NASA as the loudly-proclaimed, lead "civilian space agency of the U.S.A."

"This was the perfect cover—in the 1950s world of perpetual Soviet pursuit of any and all technological supremacy over the West—for NASA's real, long-term covert mission:
To secretly ascertain ... from NASA's inception ... the full extent of (potential) military threats (or benefits) of these long-abandoned, ancient ET derelicts ... as well as those ancient surface installations still partially preserved on various planets and moons (Cydonia et al.); the surviving riches of an entire, astonishing Type II Civilization in our own backyard—whose extraordinary legacy and scientific potential was only fully accepted (even within NASA) when Apollo astronauts fulfilled their real Kennedy Mission and clandestinely returned, beginning in 1969, unquestionable intelligently-designed and manufactured ET artifacts to Earth—from the Moon."^note2

Ahem.

        He writes of "the shocking results" of Project Red Socks. The most shocking result was that the project never happened. It was way too ambitious for a group of people who would not even succeed in orbiting a tiny 14kg satellite for another three months. Red Socks was a panic reaction to the Soviet success with Sputnik 1, conceived as a series of nine lunar orbiters which would, at a minimum, return photographs of the far side. It was even suggested that they might deliver a nuclear weapon to the surface, then wait patiently for some of the debris to come flying back to Earth by sheer good luck (I almost added an exclamation point there, tsk tsk.) Some vestiges of Red Socks were folded into the Pioneer 4 mission in 1959, but basically, it was a non-starter.

        As for that utterly daft allegation that Apollo returned the technical artifacts of a lunar civilization—he made the same claim in the introduction to Dark Mission. He did not then, and does not now, produce one scintilla of evidence for that assertion. On the contrary, the evidence is all against him. We know what was brought back from the Moon. It was meticulously catalogued in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where Hoagland's pal Ken Johnston worked. Surely Ken could set the Hoaxster straight on that. It's all very well him saying "Ah well, that's what they want you to think"—without some evidence, he just looks like a buffoon. In Dark Mission he further alleged that the lunar goodies were then subjected to reverse engineering. Well, where are the results, Richard?

        I love the fact that Amazon categorizes this work as Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Folklore & Mythology. Yes indeed, Amazon.

Update 10th April:
        Oy veh, Coast to Coast saw fit to give Hoagland yet another two hours last night to mention "my book" a dozen times. He talked at some length about private enterprise Moon landings, then added:

"Another reason to buy the book is that part of the proceeds will go toward funding this enterprise."

        FACEPALM. There are 31 authors to pay. After publishing costs the book might generate as much as $50,000—probably less. How much use does Hoagland think the residuals would be to a manned lunar landing mission?

Liar.

======================================
[1]  Everything in the show is recycled Hoaglandiana, but it's worth following that Youtube link, just to enjoy the mocking comments.

[2] That second half is all one sentence. That's Hoagland for you.

I have a dream today

"A stunning validation..."

"World-changing...."

"Revolutionary..."

"Amazing..."

"Paradigm-changing..."

"History-making..."

"This changes everything..."

        My dream today is that I did not hear all that ridiculous hyperbole on Coast to Coast AM last night, as Richard Hoagland returned after a six-month absence to present his latest cock-and-bull story, a manipulated lunar image from the Chinese soft-lander Chang'e 3 that Hoagland claims shows glass skyscrapers on the Moon.

image credit: CNSA, stretched by Hoagland

        My dream is that I imagined all that, and what really happened was this:

Noory: "Welcome back to Coast-to-Coast, Richard, it's been a while."

RCH: "Nice to be back. Look at this amazing, stunning, history-making image from Chang'e 3. Glass skyscrapers on the Moon, just as I've been saying for 20 years."

Noory: "That's just noise in the camera, Richard. Anything else?"

        That would have taken less than a minute -- about all the silly image was worth. I'm afraid, though, the reality is that Hoagland stretched this to a full hour. He did it first by saying the same thing six times, with increasing hyperbole, and then by developing a whole fantasy of geopolitical intrigue. He even managed to make a connection to the fact that President Obama gave a gift of carrot seeds^{note 1} to the Pope.

S - T - R - E - T - C - H
        What the incompetent pseudoscientist did to arrive at this travesty was to grab the image from the Chinese National Space Agency site, load it into Photoshop, and apply the Equalize tool. "Equalize" might have been better described as "Stretch," because that's what it does to the image's dynamic range.

        If there are no black pixels in the image, it finds the darkest pixel and says "let that be black."  If there are no white pixels in the image, it finds the lightest pixel and says "let that be white."In this case, there was plenty of black around, but no peak white, so the pseudoscientist's manipulation had the effect of driving every part of the image toward white. He called it "just like turning up the gain," but that's not what it is. It's not revealing anything except random noise.

         Such is the extent of Hoagland's incompetence that he didn't even think to perform the most obvious cross-check that any honest investigator would have done immediately -- if there's anything there, it would show on the 0.5 m/px high-definition images from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. I don't care how "flimsy" he claims this structure to be, something would be visible if it's real. Even if the structure itself is transparent, we'd see the robots that he claims are standing around waiting to repair holes.

        Here's a permalink to the landing area. Have a look around. See anything? No, of course not.

Crimes and misdemeanors on the www
        Hoagland accompanied this performance with a web page -- the first contribution to his ghastly web site for a year or more. He says it took him four months to write it, but it's also a demonstration of his incompetence. The page is WAY too big, with far too many large inline images -- it should have been broken up into at least six pieces, and the images reduced in size.It only renders correctly in MSIE -- in more advanced browsers, such as Firefox, the background tiling runs out 60% of the way through and the last 40% is rendered in white text on a white background. The W3C markup validation service reports 136 markup errors and 23 warnings. The text includes crazy, crazy stuff like opals falling out of the glass domes and lying around on the ground. He asserts that Emily Lakdawalla is "a member of the NASA community", which is untrue-- she's a senior editor at the Planetary Society.

        Hoagland's fans will no doubt have loved all this. Personally, I hated it. Gross errors in bringing space science to the public is what I'm here to fight.

Update
        I grabbed a different moonscape from the CNSA site and equalized it (Paint Shop Pro rather than Photoshop, but it's the same algorithm). This is my result:

image credit: CNSA, stretched by me

Voilà! Exactly the same noise pattern.


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

[1] The Chinese lunar rover is nicknamed Jade Rabbit. "And what do rabbits eat?" asked Hoagland conspiratorially. Noory didn't even laugh. In the second hour, he came up with the notion that the latitude of the Chang'e landing site, 44°N, was a coded message "To the 44th President, give us what we want or else." It's a good thing Hoagland isn't a politician -- his insane ideas about geopolitics would get us all in  trouble very quickly.

Three years since Richard Hoagland showed his abject ignorance

• Magnitude 9.0
• Epicenter 142° 22' E 38° 19' N
• Time 05:46 UTC 11 March 2011

• 5,884 deaths
• 6,148 injured
• 2,633 people missing
• 127,290 buildings totally collapsed
• 272,788 buildings half collapsed
• 747,989 buildings partially damaged

• Level 7 meltdown, three reactors, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

        Those are the facts about the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The pseudoscientist Richard Hoagland saw past the human tragedy and economic catastrophe, to an opportunity for promoting himself and his bankrupt, discredited, ideas. On the Book of Faces, and on Coast-to-Coast AM (24th March) he proclaimed that this was not a natural event but an attack, contrived by "somebody." His "evidence" was that the longitude of the epicenter was 120° East of the Great Pyramid at Giza. As I blogged at the time, he was out by  8° 46', or 765 km. Not that this pseudo-fact would have had any actual meaning even if he'd been spot on.

        His follow-up, a few days after the main event, left us all in no doubt of his ignorance of geophysics. It was this:

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

The man is incompetent. No further comment needed.

An engineer accuses Hoagland & Bara

        Derek Eunson Ph.D., who comments here as binaryspellbook, believes in calling a spade a spade. Better still, a fucking spade, if the adjective seems appropriate. Derek totally shares my contempt for Hoagland's faulty mathematics and Bara's "insult as a substitute for rebuttal," and he laid into those two fawlty boys by e-mail this week. Nothing back from Bara or his sweetly passive manager, but a little fantasy back from Hoagland. Since both of them are keen to see this material disseminated as widely as possible, it's my pleasure to republish here, unedited except for one teensy copy-edit.

==========^^^===========

Subj: Lunar anomalies, lies, and disgraceful mendacity.
To: RCH, Mike Bara
Cc: Henrik Palmgren, Richard Dolan, Mike Bara Mgmt
From: derek james eunson 8/21/13

Dear Richard and Mike,

This is an open letter which will be plastered all over every piece of social media myself my colleagues, and our children can find. Isn't it truly amazing how many people you can reach on social media when you get teenagers and young adults involved. Don't you find it astonishing how our children have taken to such things.

Now on to the truth. I realize that this is something that both of you are unfamiliar with. Nevertheless, shall we press on regardless.

To document the bare faced lies you two bandits have been perpetrating over the years would require a ridiculous amount of time. However, since I actually have a real job as a real engineer I will have to cherry pick. And oh my, how big the cherry tree is.

Hoagland's preposterous lies about Von Braun and Explorer1 have been exposed because he couldn't even fill in the numbers and crank the handle on one of the most well known (and simple) rocket equations. I refer of course to the equation derived by K.Tsiolkovsky. Yet this utter garbage is still on his utterly shambolic 1990's style webpage after all these years. Even after multiple instances of Hoagland's atrocious mathematical skills being pointed out. The man has no shame. You couldn't even paint a red nose on this clown. His hubris knows no bounds.

The torsion waves Hoagland pretends to measure with a 40 year old wristwatch and a laptop computer don't exist. Even if they did exist Hoagland has done nothing to prove it. In fact his method is so far short of the scientific method that it is simply laughable. No baselines, no controls, no calibration and no fucking data. Hoagland even refuses to share his data with what he calls "complete strangers." This is what we real engineers and scientists do all the time you dimwit. It is called peer review.

Hoagland told us that comet Elenin was a spacecraft with a hyperdimensional shield generator on board. He attempted to prove this by faking yet another image. First by legitimately stacking frames and then using photoshop to manipulate the final image. True to form Hoagland refuses to tell anyone what frames and in what order he used them.

 He also told us that Elenin had a message for humanity sent from 13,000 years ago by our highly advanced ancestors the Shem Su Hor (the followers of Horus) who apparently had something important to tell us. I must have missed it. Although Hoagland tried to tell the world that the Arab spring was due to Elenin's influence.Yes he really did say all that stuff, and he calls himself a scientist. Stop laughing, he really did say that.

 Comet Elenin disintegrated, everyone with an interest in comets saw it. Hoagland lied about this too, and tried to show an earlier picture as "proof" that Elenin was still intact. He milked that one big time, before being caught rotten on Facebook by many critics. He was caught so rotten that he had to abandon his facebook account (although it still exists he hasn't posted there in well over a year) as he was being made a laughing stock. Not that he already wasn't.

The whole disgrace is catalogued in a wiki page dedicated to Hoagland's spunk-trumpetry.

Hoagland insists that the wiki page is invalid because NASA edits it and are out to get him. Yes he really did say that too. Fucking clownhat.

Mikey boy Bara is simply a thoroughly disagreeable little man. He has no flair for mathematics, lies uncontrollably, and likes to refer to his critics as homosexuals or douchebags. Unless you are female in which case he will ask you not to reproduce because you are too ugly.
I will simply refer you to this rational-wiki page dedicated to the one and only Mike 'Homophobe' Bara.

DJE

 ==========^^^===========

From: RCH
Date: Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 10:49 PM
Subject: Re: Lunar anomalies, lies, and disgraceful mendacity.
To: ....


Derek,

Now, now ... temper ... temper ....             :)

And please ... DO post this as far and wide as possible -- gratuitous obscenities included (of course)!

It will ONLY drive more folks to read what you (literally) are "raving about" ... and, to find out what we ACTUALLY have said (and written) ....

And, thanks to YOU, to finally "open their eyes."


 RCH

==========^^^===========

Subj: Lunar anomalies, lies, and disgraceful mendacity.
To: RCH, Mike Bara
Cc: Henrik Palmgren, Richard Dolan, Mike Bara Mgmt
From: derek james eunson
Date: Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 11:46 PM 

Hi Richard 

Obscenities are a favourite of your former co-author. I have the screenshots to prove it. Mikey boy likes to call female critics "cunts."

Both you and I know this is unacceptable as a man. We may have our differences Richard, but you will agree that speaking to a lassie in such terms is not the actions of a man. Bara would do well to stick with the rudimentary grunts and gestures he was obviously taught as a fledgling.

Moving on. Please respond to specifics. For example Von Braun's secret. You can't, can you. Because you have been proved wrong. Big time. 

Yes the teenagers have been unleashed. Bad for you mate,  good for the sheeple rednecks you plan to fleece.

Please delete the thoroughly discredited Von Braun's secret. It makes a respected scientist like yourself look like a tit.

Oh and can you please state what units torsion waves are measured in. And hows about some data for we real engineers to discredit. 

You know, baselines and stuff like that. Bring it on man, you v me on C2C. You can make it happen. But Noory must not be allowed to moderate since he is under your spell, and therefore biased as well as a dunce.

Kindest Regards
DJE.

==========^^^===========

Editorial comment:
        I can't imagine what Hoagland means by "what we ACTUALLY have said (and written)". Does he think there's SOME OTHER VERSION of Von Braun's Secret that does not contain unpardonable errors? Does he think all his writings about the Inaccutron will magically yield some actual science, if you just look hard enough? I don't think that's how it works, Richard. I join with Dr. Eunson in asking you to retract. Demanding it, actually.

Tenth anniversary of Hoagland lies

==== R.I.P. ====

Rick D. Husband, Commander

William C. McCool, Pilot

David M. Brown, Mission Specialist 1

Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist 2

Michael P. Anderson, Payload Commander

Laurel B. Clark, Mission Specialist 4

Ilan Ramon, Payload Specialist 1
==============

        I've already commented about the colossal error made by Mike Bara, who asserted mistakenly that it was the decision to use "green" insulation that was the death sentence of the above seven heroes.

        Ten years ago today, Richard C. Hoagland made a bad situation worse by comprehensively misinforming the audience of Coast to Coast AM about the Columbia tragedy. This was well before the true cause was known, and his "angle" was that the likely cause was sabotage. "Somebody," he said, had interfered with the thermal protection system. He told the following lies:

All the thermal tiles are replaced between Shuttle flights

Nonsense. Some tens, or at most hundreds, of tiles are replaced.

The tile replacement is done by low-paid workers any one of whom could “easily” be a Moslem saboteur. 

Nonsense. The grade of these workers was increased in 1999 as a specific result of a review by a safety oversight committee. Background checks are carried out, and, while obviously not infallible, that procedure would make it far from easy for a saboteur to be in a position to cause harm to the Shuttle.

Tile replacers are known to have spat in the bonding compound, weakening it. 

That’s impossible — the silicon RTV bonder is not water-soluble.

Responding to a question about the possibility of meteorite damage, Hoagland dismissed it totally, declaring that “the likelihood of a meteorite strike at the exact moment of re-entry is just too remote”. 

He doesn’t understand that a meteorite strike at any time during the mission would be capable of causing failure of the thermal protection system.

        I was able to save myself some keyboard time in making the above list, since I was quoting myself in a letter to the radio show's executive producer, Lisa Lyon, dated 8th February 2003. I added the following:

I would ask you, therefore, to consider replacing Richard Hoagland with somebody who’s qualified to discuss and report on spaceflight. There is no shortage of articulate space enthusiasts, and it seems a pity to feature somebody like Hoagland who has no standing in the space community whatever. Because of his ignorance, your audience has been seriously misled on important questions.

I got no response from Ms. Lyon. Her e-mail address is lisa@coasttocoastam.com.

The planes: J'accuse!

        According to James Concannon's log, on 11th May 2011 at 03:00 Richard Hoagland wrote:

"The planes were NOT "hijacked commercial flights"; they were COPIES of those planes ... equipped with a "few extra frills.""

        All rise! This blog-court is now in session, Justice Expat presiding. Richard C. Hoagland, you are accused of grandstanding a tragic event in order to draw attention to yourself and your outrageously callous and inaccurate ideas. Please face your accusers:

FLIGHT UA175
Captain Victor J. Saracini, 51, Lower Makefield Township, Pa
First Officer Michael Horrocks, 38, Glen Mills, Pa

Attendants
Robert Fangman, 33, Claymont, Del.
Amy Jarret, 28, North Smithfield, R.I.
Amy King, 29, Stafford Springs, Conn.
Kathryn LaBorie
Alfred Marchand, 44, Alamogordo, N.M.
Michael Tarrou, 38, Stafford Springs, Conn.
Alicia N. Titus, 28, San Francisco

Passengers
Alona Avraham, 30, Ashdod, Israel
Garnet ''Ace'' Bailey, 53, Lynnfield, Mass., pro hockey scouting director, Los Angeles Kings
Mark Bavis, 31, West Newton, Mass., pro hockey scout, Los Angeles Kings
Graham Berkeley, 37, Wellesley, Mass.
Touri Bolourchi, 69, Beverly Hills, Calif.
Klaus Bothe, 31, chief of development, BCT Technology AG (Germany)
Daniel Brandhorst, 42, Los Angeles, Calif., lawyer, PricewaterhouseCoopers
David Brandhorst, 3, Los Angeles, Calif.
John Cahill, 56, Wellesley, Mass., senior executive, Xerox
Christoffer Carstanjen, 33, Turner Falls, Mass., computer research specialist, University of Massachusetts
John ''Jay'' Corcoran, 44, Norwell, Mass., merchant marine
Gloria de Barrera, 49, El Salvador, exporter
Dorothy Dearaujo, 82, Long Beach, Calif.
Lisa Frost, 22, Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., sales and marketing associate REMAINS FOUND
Ronald Gamboa, 33, Los Angeles, Calif., store manager, The Gap
Lynn Goodchild, 25, Attleboro, Mass., Putnam Investments
Francis Grogan, 76, Easton, Mass., priest, Holy Cross Church
Carl Hammond, 37, Boston, Mass.
Christine Hanson, 3, Groton, Mass.
Peter Hanson, 32, Groton, Mass., software salesman REMAINS FOUND
Susan Hanson, 35, Groton, Mass., student
Gerald F. Hardacre, 62, Carlsbad, Calif.
Eric Hartono, 20, Boston, Mass.
James E. Hayden, 47, Westford, Mass., chief financial officer, Netegrity Inc.
Herbert Homer, 48, Milford, Mass., corporate executive, Raytheon Co.
Robert Jalbert, 61, Swampscott, Mass., salesman
Ralph Kershaw, 52, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass., marine surveyor
Heinrich Kimmig, 43, chairman, BCT Technology AG (Germany)
Brian Kinney, 29, Lowell, Mass., auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Robert LeBlanc, 70, Lee, N.H., professor emeritus of geography, University of New Hampshire
Maclovio ''Joe'' Lopez Jr., 41, Norwalk, Calif.
Marianne MacFarlane, 34, Revere, Mass., customer service representative,
Louis Neil Mariani, 59, Derry, N.H.
Juliana Valentine McCourt, 4, New London, Conn.
Ruth McCourt, 45, New London, Conn., founder, Clifford Classique
Wolfgang Menzel, 60, personnel manager, BCT Technology AG (Germany)
Shawn Nassaney, 25, Pawtucket, R.I., American Power Conversion
Marie Pappalardo
Patrick Quigley, 40, Wellesley, Mass., partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Frederick Rimmele, Marblehead, Mass., physician
James M. Roux, 43, Portland, Maine, lawyer
Jesus Sanchez, 45, Hudson, Mass., off-duty flight attendant
Kathleen Shearer, Dover, N.H.
Robert Shearer, Dover, N.H.
Jane Simpkin, 35, Wayland, Mass.
Brian D. Sweeney, 38, Barnstable, Mass., business consultant
Timothy Ward, 38, San Diego, Calif., information technology project manager, Rubio's Restaurants
William Weems, 46, Marblehead, Mass., commercial producer



FLIGHT AA11

Captain John Ogonowski, 52, Dracut, Mass
First Officer Thomas McGuinness, 42, Portsmouth, N.H.

Attendants
Barbara Arestegui, 38, Marstons Mills, Mass.
Jeffrey Collman, 41, Novato, Calif.
Sara Low, 28, Batesville, Ark.
Karen Martin, 40, Danvers, Mass. REMAINS FOUND
Kathleen Nicosia
Betty Ong, 45, Andover, Mass.
Jean Roger, 24, Longmeadow, Mass.
Dianne Snyder, 42, Westport, Mass.
Madeline Sweeney, 35, Acton, Mass.

Passengers
Anna Williams Allison, 48, Stoneham, Mass., founder, A2 Software Solutions
David Angell, 54, Pasadena, Calif., executive producer, NBC's ''Frasier''
Lynn Angell, Pasadena, Calif.
Seima Aoyama
Myra Aronson, 52, Charlestown, Mass., press and analyst relations manager
Christine Barbuto, 32, Brookline, Mass., TJX Co.
Carolyn Beug, 48, Los Angeles, Calif.
Kelly Booms, 24, Boston, Mass., PricewaterhouseCoopers
Carol Bouchard, 43, Warwick, R.I., emergency room secretary, Kent County Hospital
Neilie Casey, 32, Wellesley, Mass., TJX Co.
Jeffrey Coombs, 42, Abington, Mass., security analyst, Compaq
Tara Creamer, 30, Worcester, Mass.
Thelma Cuccinello, 71, Wilmot, N.H.
Patrick Currivan
Brian Dale, 43, Warren, N.J.
David DiMeglio, Wakefield, Mass.
Donald Ditullio, 49, Peabody, Mass., Smith and Nephew
Albert Dominguez, 65, Sydney, Australia
Alex Filipov, 70, Concord, Mass., electrical engineer
Carol Flyzik, 40, Plaistow, N.H.
Paul Friedman
Karleton D.B. Fyfe, 31, Brookline, Mass., John Hancock
Peter Gay, 54, Tewksbury, Mass., plant manager, Raytheon Co.
Linda George, 27, Westboro, Mass., TJX Co.
Edmund Glazer, 41, Los Angeles, Calif., chief financial officer, MRV Communications
Lisa Fenn Gordenstein, 41, Needham, Mass., TJX Co.
Andrew Curry Green, 34, Los Angeles, Calif., director of business development, eLogic
Paige Farley Hackel, 46, Newton, Mass., spiritual counselor
Peter Hashem, 40, Tewksbury, Mass., salesman
Robert Hayes, 37, Amesbury, Mass., sales engineer, Netstal
Ted Hennessey, 35, Belmont, Mass., consultant
John Hofer
Cora Holland, 52, Sudbury, Mass., Sudbury Food Pantry at Our Lady of Fatima Church
Nicholas Humber, 60, Newton, Mass., owner, Brae Burn Management
John Jenkins, 45, Cambridge, Mass., corporate office services manager, Charles River Associates
Charles Jones, 48, Bedford, Mass., computer programmer
Robin Kaplan, 33, Westboro, Mass., TJX Co.
Barbara Keating, 72, Palm Springs, Calif.
David Kovalcin, 42, Hudson, N.H.
Judy Larocque, 50, Framingham, Mass., founder and CEO, Market Perspectives
N. Janis Lasden, 46, Peabody, Mass., General Electric
Daniel John Lee, 34, Los Angeles, Calif.
Daniel C. Lewin, 31, co-founder, Akamai Technologies
Susan MacKay, 44, Westford, Mass., TJX Co.
Chris Mello, 25, Boston, Mass., analyst
Jeff Mladenik, 43, Hinsdale, Ill., interim president, E-Logic
Antonio Montoya, 46, East Boston, Mass., housekeeping worker, Boston Harbor Hotel
Carlos Montoya
Laura Lee Morabito, 34, Framingham, Mass., national sales manager, Qantas Airways
Mildred Naiman, Andover, Mass.
Laurie Neira
Renee Newell, 37, Cranston, R.I., customer service agent, American Airlines
Jacqueline Norton, 60, Lubec, Maine, retiree
Robert Norton, 82, Lubec, Maine, retiree
Jane Orth, 49, Haverhill, Mass., retiree, Lucent Technologies
Thomas Pecorelli, 31, Los Angeles, Calif., cameraman, Fox Sports and E! Entertainment Television
Berry Berenson Perkins, 53, Wellfleet, Mass., actress and photographer
Sonia Morales Puopolo, 58, Dover, Mass., former ballet dancer
David Retik, Needham, Mass.
Philip Rosenzweig, Acton, Mass., executive, Sun Microsystems
Richard Ross, 58, Newton, Mass., Ross Group
Jessica Sachs, 22, Billerica, Mass., accountant, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Rahma Salie, 28, Boston, Mass.
Heather Smith, 30, Boston, Mass., Beacon Capital Partners
Douglas Stone, 54, Dover, N.H.
Xavier Suarez
Michael Theodoridis, 32, Boston, Mass., consultant
James Trentini, 65, Everett, Mass., retired teacher and assistant principal
Mary Trentini, 67, Everett, Mass., retired secretary
Pendyala Vamsikrishna, 30, Los Angeles, Calif., project manager for consulting firm, DTI
Mary Wahlstrom, 75, Kaysville, Utah
Kenneth Waldie, 46, Methuen, Mass., Raytheon Co.
John Wenckus, 46, Torrance, Calif., tax consultant
Candace Lee Williams, 20, Danbury, Conn., student
Christopher Zarba, 47, Hopkinton, Mass., software engineer, Concord Communications

Open letter to Richard Hoagland (bcc: Mike Bara)

        On your FB page today you wrote "And, the NUMBERS associated with Elenin were overwhelmingly arificial [sic]; science is determined by NUMBERS ... not "opinion." "

         The pseudo-statistical analysis you presented at Leeds and Awake & Aware has been adequately falsified.

1. You say the probability of a comet having any given orbital inclination is 1 in 360 divided by the inclination in degrees. What, then, is the probability of an inclination of zero? Comets with zero inclination do occur, but by your reckoning they are impossible.
2. The probability of a comet having an orbital inclination of 360° is, by your calculation, a certainty. Why do all comets not have this inclination?
3. What would be the actual meaning of an inclination of 360°? The same as zero degrees?
4. You say that the probability of a comet arriving at perihelion on the anniversary of a world-shaking event is 1 in (the anniversary year.) It follows that the probability of a comet arriving at perihelion on the FIRST anniversary of a world-shaking event is 1 in 1, or a certainty. Why do all comets not arrive on first anniversaries?
5. You will say that the repeated occurrence of the number 19.5 is a certain indication that Elenin was under intelligent control. I point out, first, that the number 195 IS NOT THE SAME as the number 19.5; and second, that we only have your word for some of those occurrences, and you have not said how they were measured.

        You are a highly unreliable source of such angular information. You lied about the latitude of the Port-au-Prince earthquake and about the longitude of the Tōhoku event. You said that the April 7th tremor proved that the original earthquake was artificially generated, because it was in the exact same place as the original seism. Everyone except you realizes that aftershocks are entirely normal after such a huge quake.

        I would have posted these observations to Facebook if you had not banned me for telling the truth.

Regards, expat

Nikolai Alexandrovich Kozyrev (1908-83)

        Today, one of the Hoagland cult on FB asked:

"[W]hy are there more Sun spots on the nothern[sic] hemisphere of the Sun than the Southern at this time?"

        Of course, Richard Hoagland loves playing the part of the learned professor teaching his eager young students, even though he himself is devoid of a science education and has shown himself on many occasions to be essentially ignorant in any branch of science.

        Be that as it may, he played the role as follows:

"Because, HD/torsion Physics is NOT equal in both hemipsheres[sic] of rotating planets/stars -- as Kozyrev demonstrated ~70 years ago, with his hemispherical experiments on Earth. :)

GREAT question .... :)"

        Hoagland quoting Kozyrev makes me giggle. A lot. Why? Because although poor old Kozyrev, in the Gulag from 1936-46 during what would otherwise have been the peak of his career, believed in torsion fields, he had a view of them that was totally in conflict with that of Hoagland & Bara.

        Those two rebarbative ignoramuses Hoagland & Bara loudly and frequently tell us that torsion energy is preferentially manifest in a rotating sphere at latitudes 19.5° north and south, and that torsion energy is entirely independent of electromagnetic fields. Kozyrev said that torsion energy increases with latitude, is most pronounced at the poles, and, yes, is stronger in the northern hemisphere of planet Earth than the southern.

        He reasoned that torsion fields follow magnetic fields, which are more concentrated at the poles. The north-south asymmetry he ascribed to greater oblateness of the northern hemisphere, leading to an extremely subtle increase in the gravitational field. Thus he linked torsion not only to electromagnetism but to gravity—a scandalous heresy in the Church of Hoagland/Bara. He should really be at least excommunicated and probably subjected to some posthumous Auto-da-Fé, if that is possible.

        Please note: KOZYREV HAD NOTHING WHATEVER TO SAY ABOUT ASYMMETRY OF THE SUN.

        More notes: The notion that Earth is more oblate in the northern hemisphere has been disproved by satellite measurement.

        Kozyrev maintained that the white areas at the poles of Mars were clouds, not surface ice.

        He performed a series of laboratory experiments that seemed to show changes in mass due to rotation, or effects of moving masses on nearby pendulums. These have all been discredited.

        So I guess we should welcome endorsement of Kozyrev. Boosting that victim of Stalin is, for Hoagland, self-disproving.

Further reading: Divine Cosmos, Chapter 1.

Probabilities and nincompoops

        Well, now we know why that fellow Mark Ward, attender at the Leeds Conference, exclaimed "Get this... the chances of the comet's data being naturally occuring coincidences is 44 billion to one!" He was citing Richard Hoagland's presentation on Comet Elenin, of course.

        While I was on my Spanish beach, on August 29th, Hoagland went through the pseudo-arithmetic that allowed him to make that claim, on Coast to Coast AM (hour 4.) He did it by cascading the probabilities of a given apparent magnitude, a given date of perihelion, a given anniversary, a given time of closest approach to Earth, and a given orbital inclination. Here are his figures. (CAUTION: Reading this may cause severe nausea and heart palpitation in anyone familiar with mathematics and/or statistical analysis. Proceed at your own risk.)

STEP 1: Apparent magnitude
        The first recorded magnitude, by Leonid Elenin himself, was 19.5. Oh, what a gift for the "theory" of hyperdimensional physics—even though, of course, an astronomical magnitude is totally irrelevant to an angle measured in degrees.

        Hoagland asks "WHAT ARE THE ODDS of a comet having this particular magnitude?" He answers himself "The brightest comet ever recorded had a magnitude of -17. The dimmest was +28.2. That's a range of 45.2. So the odds are 1 in 45.2."

STEP 2: Date of perihelion
        Hoagland still insists that the date is September 11th even though it's the 10th everywhere except Japan and Australia. He says the odds of that date occurring are 1 in 365.

STEP 3: Anniversary
        Even though he has the wrong date, he still insists that the attacks on 9/11/01 are important. He says that fact that this is not JUST ANY anniversary, but the tenth, allows him to factor in odds of 1 in 10.

STEP 4: Time of closest approach to Earth
        The time is 19:50 UTC on October 16th. Hoagland confuses the time of 19:50 with the decimal 19.5, but let that pass. He asks WHAT ARE THE ODDS of that particular time occurring and, multiplying 24 x 60, he arrives at 1 in 1440.

FINAL STEP: Orbital inclination
        Elenin's inclination is 1.84°. Hoagland figures the odds of that occurring are 360/1.84 or 1 in 195. (and of course he can't resist pointing out the magic 195 again.)

The odds are...
        Hoagland multiplies 45.2 x 365 x 10 x 1440 x 195 and arrives at 45,000,000,000. Stunning. Or not.

What's wrong with this picture?
        I feel sure many readers of this bloggery are ahead of me, and WAY ahead of Hoagland. Let's see what would happen if the figures were different. How about if the magnitude were 14.6, the date of perihelion were 3rd July, the anniversary were the 20th, the time of closest approach were 07:21 and the inclination were 2.02°?

Let's see... tap-tap-tap-tap... Oh, tens of billions.

        How about if the magnitude were -2.0, the date of perihelion were 10th June, the anniversary were the 21st, the time of closest approach were 21:21 and the inclination were 11.7°? Wow, tens of billions again.

        Hoagland has fallen slap bang into the ex post facto fallacy that so many other untrained and ignorant people have fallen into before him. This is like throwing snake eyes in a casino and claiming that your throw is unique in human history. It's true that you only have one chance in 36 of throwing that result, but the odds of the other 20 possible results are also long. WHATEVER you throw has a low probability—until you throw it, then the probability is 100%. Likewise, the parameters of Elenin have to have some values, and multiplying them out as though they were unique is going to yield nothing useful.

        Every single time someone throws a pair of dice, a long shot is pulled off, in other words. Using Hoagland's own perverse ideas, every single time a comet comes through, an event whose odds are 40 billion to one against also happens.

        Are you listening, Mark Ward? IT'S RUBBISH, MARK. HE'S A NINCOMPOOP AND YOU WASTED YOUR MONEY.

Hoagland gets it wrong five ways

        Another two hours of Coast to Coast's so-called science adviser last night, and he managed to cram in more falsehoods than facts.



        He insisted, as he has been doing to his faithful disciples in Facebookistan for many days, that he sees geometric forms on the latest image of Vesta sent back by the Dawn ion-propelled space explorer. It does not seem to concern the faithful that he has yet to show one single example of what he's pretending to see. At one point he wrote on FB about seeing 90° angles, but backed off when he was reminded that angles are not what they seem on a photograph of a sphere.

Fact: There is not the slightest evidence of any such geometry.

        He remarked that perhaps this photo-sequence (only in its very early stages now) represents "NASA being honest at last," noting that NASA has never before released space images in .tiff format.

Fact: .tiffs of the entire JSC photo archive have been available for at least a decade. Images from the HiRISE telescope orbiting Mars are available in .jp2 format which is equivalent.

        Moving on to the tiny long-period comet C/2010 X1, known as Elenin after its discoverer, Hoagland insisted again that "the numbers" prove Elenin has a special message for us.

        He reiterated that Elenin's perihelion will occur on the very significant date of September 11th. He allowed that "there's some controversy" since if you're in Greenwich it will be September 10th, but he emphasized that it will be the 11th in India and Sri Lanka, the country in which Arthur C. Clarke wrote Rendezvous with Rama.

Fact: The time is given in the official JPL database as 2011-Sep-10.71930992. This means "Sept. 10 plus .71930992 of a day." 24 x .71930992 = 17.2632 so it's 17h plus .2632 of an hour UTC (same as GMT.) .2632 x 60 = 16 so the official time is 17.16. September 10th, NOT ONLY IN GREENWICH but anywhere in Europe, Africa, the Middle East or the Americas.

The time in Sri Lanka will be 22.46. Still September 10th. What Arthur Clarke wrote and where is totally irrelevant. Astronomers use UTC.

        Hoagland dug himself deeper by proclaiming triumphantly that Elenin's closest approach to Earth will be at the hyperdimensionally magic hour of 19.5, and this time he didn't insist on shifting the time zone to somewhere his favorite author wrote something vaguely relevant 50 years ago. UTC suited his daft theory just fine.

Fact: The time is 19:51 UTC (see "close-approach data" at the foot of the JPL database page.) 19:51 in decimal would be 19.85.

        It all added up, he said breathlessly, to the obvious fact that Elenin has a message that will save the world. We should listen on radio (he didn't say what frequency) for this message from 13,000 years ago.

Fact: Unmitigated poppycock.