Flat Earth Promotion: Why is 'Flat Earthism' Being Pushed?
• 'Jєω Shock'
Written by Rerevisionist   16 Nov 2015   &   29 Feb 2016; Youtube note 18 July 2016

'Flat earth' theory appears to be promoted at present, for example on Youtube. These seem to be mass-produced (same sounds, same images, similar voice-overs, similar logos, similar lies; reminiscent of many mass-produced Jєωιѕн junk propaganda campaigns). Why is this? Here are a few unflattering notes (2011) on the Flat Earth Society in England: Flat Earth Society notes. Their forum deleted some comments of mine on the 'h0Ɩ0cαųst' fraud; I can't take them very seriously as skeptics/sceptics or thinkers.

    www.flatearthsociety.org's site leans heavily on A hundred proofs the Earth is not a Globe, by William Carpenter, published in 1885. According to my notes, the International Flat Earth Society was founded in 1888.

    I met the late Ellis Hillman, who was (I think) President of the Flat Earth Society. His background was geology; he knew about earthquakes, underground rivers, and also Wegener's Theory which students were told definitely was nonsense. He'd been Mayor of the London Borough of Barnet, and on the LCC, and GLC. He also was President of the Fairy Society, and founded the Lewis Carroll Society. He wrote a book on 'Underground London' which he told me he would never have started if he'd known how much work would be involved. His motive appeared to be simply to keep an open mind.

    The US group of the same name seems to lean on Biblical 'evidence' rather than science.

My previous contact with such ideas was Martin Gardner's book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1957; an earlier version was In the Name of Science, 1952). Chapter 2 is 'Flat and Hollow', and lists in laconic style Gardner's New York Public Library findings: Voliva, from Zion, Illinois, believed the earth is flat, with the South pole round circuмference, based on Biblical and common-sense pre-Newton arguments. Capt John Cleves Symmes, who retired after War of 1812, thought the earth is five concentric hollow spheres with water flowing through polar holes. Cotton Mather in 1721, had similar beliefs, 'taken from an Edmund Halley essay of 1692'. Marshall B Gardner, in 1913, Aurora, Illinois, had a hollow earth theory. Cyrus Reed Teed, in 1870 said we live inside a hollow space, with nothing outside. Germany has a 'Hohlweltlehre' theory. And no doubt there are other theories.

I've met one flat earth believer, whose name I'll spare, who thought gravity was an effect of the flat earth accelerating upwards at 32 feet/sec/sec. Apparently because after one year the earth would move at the speed of light.

Why should non-round earth theories be promoted now? I don't have a definite solution; here are a few possibilities:
• Copyright may have lapsed on some works
• It's an intentional distraction from serious matters—timewasting at a dangerous time
• Maybe a money-making attempt at sales?
• Maybe training for unemployable Jєωιѕн liars, spam sites to see how they get on?
• Possibly aimed against NASA; could it be someone's little joke against 'infirmative action' and/or NASA's black head?
• ... Added a bit later: possibly to do with NASA's absurd 'space station'? Possible connection with 'Eric Dubay'? 'Jeranism', apparently Dave something from New York, is another 'flat earther'; probably part of the cunning scheme of discrediting critics of NASA by showing themselves, or acting, as idiots.
• Could it be a psychological test for conformity? Maybe to see the effect of multiple online people saying gee, I sure believe in a flat earth now?
• An anti-Christian fundamentalist move to ridicule some US Protestants? Jєωs certainly fund many of the ridiculous loud-mouthed clowns in the USA, to simultaneously discredit whites, Christians, and scientific evolution. Why not expand this to flat-earthism?
• More dumbing-down to make people, well, dumber?
• Perhaps a nuclear science issue, to try to show up incompetence in nuke skeptics? What seems to be a joint Youtube by 'Eric Dubay' and Edmund Matthews may be intended to suggest, because Dubay seems to be a flat-earther, that nuke skeptics aren't competent. If so, it's playing a risky game by drawing attention to the issues. On the other hand, NASA has done something very similar. I haven't watched carefully enough to check on possible misdirections and planted mistakes.
      [I was amused to see this comment in eurofolkradio.com on 18 Aug 2017, after a chat with A C Hitchcock was posted online: Davy of old England [anonymous nickname; very few posts] West is a crackpot. He promulgates the idiocy that nuclear weapons are fake, they don't exist, that nuclear power is a fraud and the world is flat, and a whole slew of phuctardery. This lie suggests, as might be expected, that the promotion is part of the defence of nuclear frauds]
• Something to do with Antarctica; I like the idea that Jєωs are planning a mass move to a splendid underground Antarctic city—with nuclear power heating.
•   Possibly the flat earth idea is from the Quran. It may be the push is to try to normalise the garbage of Islam, and pretend it was a leader in science, which of course is a tendency amongst 'thinkers' funded via Jєωs and their Arabs. 

The conventional view is backed by evidence from the moon (curved edge shown by foreshortened craters, and curved shadow), the sun (sunspots), Jupiter (bands of cloud, Red Spot). And day/night, seasons, pillars in Athens and Alexandria with different shadows, constellations different in the hemispheres, and so on. But there are some apparent problems: why should the moon and sun be very nearly the same apparent size, and the moon always show more or less the same face to earth?

Common Errors
• Puzzles based on flat maps. For example, people are so used to one form of map—Americas in the middle, north up, Europe right, Asia left) that they can't understand the shortest path from New Zealand to South America is east. Another example is equal area projections: some maps show unfamiliar shapes, but the areas are constant.
• Puzzles based on gravitation. It's natural enough to expect people upside-down from any location on earth to fall off. Tides are another puzzle; the successful correlation with solar and lunar regularities is not explained very well. The cycloidal nature of the moon's motion relative to earth puzzles many people.
• Puzzles based on refraction of light over long distances. Wet air is denser than drier air. There have been legal challenges of light along canals—Alfred Russel Wallace was a victim of this.
• Puzzles based on air movement and mixing and the vacuum of space. People think of vacuums as sucking, not as air pressure pushing.
• Puzzles based on unfamiliarity (or, less politely, ignorance). Eclipses, meteors and meteorites, comets, phases of planets, tides, local tidal effects, and winds blowing around the earth are common sources.
• Optical puzzles. A good example is the photographic 'proof' that the sun is nearer to earth than clouds, where the sun is so much brighter than cloud cover that it appears normal on a photo.

Maybe in a few centuries confused-looking old men in sky-blue suits with obsolete logos, calling each other 'astronaut', will emerge from NASA buildings, as from an ancient monastery, the guardians of treasured moon relics, such as fossil wood. Some readers might like my summary of the life work of Martin Gardner, who helped establish much of the detail of the US 'Skeptics' movement, both when it made sense and when (usually under Jєωιѕн influence) it was used as a pressure group.