Ahira's Hangar

For those of us (like me) who surf channels a lot, I figured a thread like this might be of interest. So here goes.

Watched a new episode of Mythbusters today. They investigated conspiracy theorists' claims that the Apollo moon landing was fake. Now I generally don't waste my time listening to this particular conspiracy as I think it's one of the most idiotic ever dreamed up, but I was glad that the Mythbusters finally tackled it. The guys said that 20% of Americans apparently do believe the landing was a hoax. That is appalling to me. If it had been, say, 0.1% of the population, I could handle that. But 20% of America...that's several small countries right there. What reality are such people living in??

Anyway, the Mythbusters chose the most common of the moon hoax ideas and - do I even need to say it? - emphatically busted them. Of course, we know this won't stop the conspiracy morons, but the Mythbusters and others before them have demonstrated time after time that these half-baked "theories" always fall apart in the face of simple experiments.

I saw the advertisements for that episode and really wanted to see it. Haven't caught up with it yet on reruns. (The original was on when I am at work).

Moonwatcher, a basic misunderstanding of and can I say - flat out distrust and hatred for science - is very popular with a large number of Americans right now. We have a vice presidential candidate who believes in evil witchcraft and who thinks that humans shared the Earth with dinosaurs. And she revels in and is proud of her ignorance. And tens of millions of people revel in her ignorance and think "she is one of us".

There is a huge multimillion dollar museum down in Kentucky that is devoted to just such views - it has a dinosaur with an English riding saddle. If you google around a bit, you can find cartoons featuring Jesus and other important Biblical figures riding dinosaurs around the Egpyt and the Holy Land. Didn;t you know that the Egyptians gad a cavalry made up of dino riders?

Sometimes my mind boggles and my heart weeps for my country.

The fact that huge numbers of people do not believe in the Moon landing is a part and parcel of the willfull ignorance and chosen stupidity of a far too large number of people in my country.

It just baffles me why a significant number of people seem to have this burning desire to dismiss and try to prove false one of the greatest achievements in human history, not just American history. If their insistence on rebuking the moon landing does stem from, as you say, a basic misunderstanding and distrust of science, then I have to wonder where science education went wrong. (In the US and here as well.)

You'd think the Apollo landings would be something everyone could look up to as an example of what human imagination and ingenuity are capable of. I guess that's my naivete showing.

I comfort myself in thinking that things like the dino-riders (and the attendant disbelief in the moon landings and the hand-in-hand disbelief in government) is a desperate last stand on those parts of the Christian religion which are still based in a Middle Ages/early Reformation mindset - centuries out of date, and knowing that most people (including the majority of Christians) have no problem celebrating religion AND science together.

In trying to claim things like dinosaurs for themselves, they are on the road to admitting that the Earth is older than they are willing to admit, and that Genesis is/was a parable explaining origins to a primitive desert tribe who did not have the background to understand evolutionary biology, cellular and molecular biology, plate tectonics, geophysics, or cosmology.

Well, I have heard that nearly 60% of Americans believe in a literal biblical creation...

--A

A delayed response, but I am not sure how to respond to that statistic, if true. Maybe a fair reply is: people should be able to believe whatever they want in the privacy of their thoughts, but if strong personal beliefs come to be manifested in public policy in a negative, vindictive way, then there is a problem. Egad, I just have no heart to get into a science vs religion debate. I'm just saying I'm glad the whole stinkin' moon landing conspiracy has been given the Mythbusters treatment.

I've been watching another very interesting show on the Discovery channel, a new one called The Verminators. The show follows a pest control company that tackles the worst cases of infestation around - and wow, they aren't kidding. Some of the places were so horrifically infested that it made me just a tad paranoid about my own apartment. It's the kind of show that makes you want to spray Raid into every dark corner, and take a hot shower afterward.

While I love Dirty Jobs, I cannot bring myself to watch Verminators. I just cannot bring myself to watch it...

I hadn't watched PBS's Nature series in a while, but last night I caught an excellent episode titled The Wolf That Changed America. It followed the story of Ernest Thompson Seton, a paradoxical man who was both naturalist and hunter, who in 1894 had come to New Mexico as a hired gun to eliminate wolves that were killing cattle. He was a paradox in that, on the one hand, he loved nature and its creatures...but on the other, he had the old belief about wolves, that they were evil and deserved to be destroyed. Yet Seton's pursuit of the most legendary of all wolves, Lobo, down in New Mexico profoundly changed him. Though he eventually captured Lobo, Seton came to realize what a noble and dignified creature the wolf was, and became a fierce advocate for wolves and wildlife conservation in general for the rest of his life. Seton wrote a book about his pursuit of Lobo called Wild Animals I Have Known which became a publishing sensation. The really remarkable thing was that Seton portrayed himself as the villain in his own story.

I had not known the story of Seton and Lobo, but I'm glad I do now. I also had not known that Seton was such a towering figure in the conservation movement in America at the turn of the century. Apparently, Seton was one of the key people who influenced President Teddy Roosevelt's decision to establish America's great national parks. Seton was also one of the founding members of the Boy Scouts of America.

Wow! All that from his remorse over his capturing of the great wolf Lobo. It's a tremendous story, and very moving.

Yesterday we caught a James Bond movie marathon on one of the cable channels. I saw two Bond movies I had never seen before. Do not ask me the titles, but one was set in China with a stealth tech ship trying to start a naval war between China and Britain, and the other was in the Stan countries and Constantinople with an oil pipeline and a nuclear submarine. They had the guy in between Roger Moore and the current one. I cannot remember his name, either. (Was that Pierce Brosnan? Did I get his name right?)

Today we watched a couple of episodes of Cities of the Underworld on the History Channel. I like that show. They had episodes in Los Vegas and Sicily.

Timothy Dalton actually. One of them at least...thought for some reason he only made one...guess not...

--A

I believe Duchess is correct - the two she mentioned are Brosnan films. The one with the hi-tech stealth ship must be Tomorrow Never Dies. The one with the oil pipeline is The World Is Not Enough. I really enjoyed the former, while I thought the latter was Brosnan's weakest Bond film.

Timothy Dalton made two Bond films, but in my opinion, his first - The Living Daylights - was a snoozefest. I much preferred his second, Licence To Kill. I actually came to like Dalton as Bond. His replacement, Pierce Brosnan, turned out to be a terrific 007 himself, imo. And I prefer both of them to the current Bond, Daniel Craig. There, are we all properly confused now?

Oh, and a final point of trivia: Brosnan made his Bond debut in Goldeneye, but I remember the awesome Nintendo 64 game that was based on the movie more than the movie itself, not to mention the game was a whole lot more fun! Goldeneye N64 remains one of the best first person shooters I've ever played. And its deathmatch mode was intensely addictive, even though I sucked at it.

Sheesh, I missed the Brosnan ones altogether I think...sorta stopped watching after the first Dalton one. (At the time, I foolishly thought Moore was the best Bond. Now, I realise it was Connery of course.) Oh, Goldeneye...I never watched it, but I remember its release.

--A

I liked the one with the stealth ship in China - mainly because I really liked that particular Bond girl. I tend to like the Bond girl characters who are his equal in espionage/fighting skills. The oil pipeline one was, IMHO, pretty lame.

Over the last few days/nights another cable station has been playing the original Star Wars trilogy on repeat. Unfortuantely, they are the revamped versions. Everytime we get to the end of Jedi, I find myself yelling "Get emo teen Ani out of my movie!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Seriously, though, why did they go from a normal looking middle aged man Ani to emo teen Annikin in that scene? Makes no sense.