If there's one peeve of mine, it's cranks.
All cranks, whether they insist 9/11 was an inside job, or we never reached the Moon, or there are UFOs that kidnap people, irritate me to no end.
There is one theory that actually is pretty interesting to me, the idea the earth is in fact hollow and there are gigantic openings at the poles. There's something so outlandish and 19th Century and improbable about this theory that it's actually a little charming.
The biggest booster for this crank theory was a guy named John Cleves Symmes, who in the 1850s petitioned Congress for three ships (like Columbus!) to head to what he thought were the openings at the polar regions into the center of the earth. He actually was about to get it, too, until the Civil War happened, which put an end to the whole thing.
Symmes's father was actually a great man, a signer of the Declaration of Independence for New Jersey (which to my mind, explains everything!) and his first cousin was the wife of President William Henry Harrison. Further proof that in Washington, it's possible to fail upwards really spectacularly.
Still, Symmes had made a fabulous one-of-a-kind globe detailing his crank view of what the earth looks like. Perfect for the crazy collectors among us.
4 comments:
Hah hah hah! You go, Grrl, you go! Even though we see eye to eye on certain things, e.g. our admiration for C.A. Tripp, you'd think me too cranky, and not based on my age, at that. Green (unlimited, renewable, GRATIS) energy proponent, world explorer, & co-author w/ his gal pal, E.J. Clarke, on several 2012 titles, Dr. Brooks A. Agnew, has launched the North Pole Inner Earth Expedition, whose site is located right here. All applications must be in no later than December of this year. I'd've loved to've gone, but my commitments to a wonderful husband & family here on the surface & not in Terra Incognito have precluded my involvement w/ it.
Granted, Esperanto Grrl, it sounds nutty. See my comments elsewhere (from whom I was given the heads-up to your article here). But, personally? Methinks it's a Rosicrucian plot, one that goes far back in time.
VISITA INTERIORA TERRA RECTIFICANDO INVENIES OCCULTUM LAPIDEM ~ Anadæ Effro (•8-)}
As for the Hollow Earth expedition, as tempting as a purposeless trip on a rusty Soviet-era icebreaker in the Hyperborean nether-regions of the earth sounds, sealed in with a bunch of crackpots and Mormons for months at a time, my doctor would advise against it, as I've been diagnosed with a terminal case of sanity.
As for the apocalyptic theories, the easiest way to prove them wrong is to outlive them. Anyway, if the Mayans really could predict the future, wouldn't they have known not to trust whitey when he came around with smallpox blankets?
As for the website itself, I must confess, after the sixth elementary science error, I just plain started to skim-read. Still, this reminds me of the story of the father that tried to cure his son of optimism by giving him a pile of manure for his birthday.
The boy started to scrounge around the manure, saying "why, with all this manure, there has to be a pony around here somewhere!"
For instance, this one was in the first paragraph and it's a doozy:
"If the Aurora Borealis can be affirmed to originate from the inner Earth, the entire field of planetary physics may be rewritten."
On a similar note, if chimpanzees can be affirmed to spontaneously originate from my nostrils, the entire field of primatology may be rewritten.
The origin of the Aurora Borealis is definitively proven: it's created by the interaction between the solar wind and earth's magnetic field. We know this because the center of all Aurora phenomena happens to be the magnetic north pole, which is always changing. If it emerged from a fixed hole opening, the center of auroral displays wouldn't move whereas Auroras follow earth's magnetic field as it moves in a northwestward direction. Likewise, Aurora displays line up with lines of magnetic force.
Likewise, the intensity of solar wind activity causes the Aurora Borealis to increase and decrease. Why would that be true if the cause of the Aurora is an inner sun?
And finally, if the cause of the Borealis is an inner sun, why would it only occur in the atmosphere at altitudes of above 50 miles, in the magnetosphere? If you turn a night light near the ground, the ground would be illuminated much more than the ceiling.
And that's just one statement in the opening paragraphs! No wonder my friends that debate creationists get exhausted. You have to set the record straight on some illiterate statement like "if people evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" and have no time to actually debate.
That's part of why I kind of like this particular hollow earth theory: it's so charmingly overengineered and out of date that the only way to take it seriously is to pretend the 20th Century never happened. Which is why the Mormons love it: ignoring the 20th Century is their specialty.
Though I will admit, that whole science page must look very impressive to people that don't actually know science.
….wait, Esperanto Grrl, wait! Then there's the Metal band trading off the name.… (•8-)}
I almost used to weep with envy when I heard about the Flat Earth Society, because in a flash I realized that was the coolest name I'd ever heard for a band, hip and ironic and the album cover art just suggested itself.
One of the great crank collectors items that I've always wanted to get for myself (besides Symmes's globe, of course) is a roll-out map of the Flat Earth.
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