Down The Rabbit Hole, Said Humpty Trumpty...and we…

There was a famous saying about how people who live by the…

Political Futures: Queensland Election in Rear Vision

By Denis Bright In these times of unexpected election swings at home and…

How can Australia respond to tariffs under the…

UNSW Sydney Media Release With the newly elected Trump administration threatening to introduce…

The Musings of Shigeru Ishiba: Visions of an…

Japan’s new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, is stirring the pot – notably…

Monash Expert: latest poll shows support for Labor…

Monash University Media Alert In the latest Newspoll released today, primary support for…

Number of people impacted by climate disasters in…

Oxfam Australia Media Release Climate disasters are costing the Pacific eight times more…

False Equivalence. Life is full of ‘could be’s’

A young woman was killed at the music festival which was attacked…

Australia US Alliance: Is It Time to Rethink…

By Denis Hay Description Australia US alliance has costs. Learn how this impacts Australians…

«
»
Facebook

Tag Archives: flat earth

Malcolm Turnbull And The Ballad Of The Flat Earth Rapper

Ok, B.o.B makes a lot of sense. He’s the rapper insisting that the earth is flat. B.o.B, real name Bobby Ray Simmons, started Tweeting photos which show the horizon, and, he reasons, if the earth were really round like we’ve been told, then we wouldn’t be able to see objects so far into the horizon because the curvature of the earth would make them disappear.

And yesterday I read how a scientist was disputing his idea. Well, I don’t know what the scientist said, but it doesn’t matter. Just the fact that a scientist was disputing him is enough to make me think that his ideas were worth investigating. One should never trust a scientist, as the US Senate proved with their 50-49 vote telling us that climate change isn’t man-made. I mean, these ideas that climate change could be caused by carbon dioxide is ridiculous because carbon dioxide occurs naturally and nothing that occurs naturally could ever be harmful, right? You could never have too much water, right?

Anyway, I decided to do a little research and I discovered plenty of evidence. For a start the Bible talks about the “four corners of the earth” and the last time I checked spheres don’t have corners. Then when Colombus set out to prove that the world was round by circumnavigating it, he bumped into the Americas, which was the only thing that stopped him getting to the edge. And in past few years, Thomas Friedman released a book titled, “The Earth Is Flat”. And if all that isn’t evidence enough, let’s look at the most obvious thing of all:

If the world really was round and spinning, wouldn’t centrifugal force throw us all off?

Convinced, I immediately gathered all the evidence and rang a publisher suggesting that they give me a book deal, but like poor Ian Plimer who had trouble finding a publisher for his anti-global warming book, Heaven And Earth, I was confronted with a conspiracy from the publishers who wanted to know if I had any scientific – or indeed – any qualifications at all. When I suggested that was the trouble with the world, we give far too much weight to people just because they’ve studied the issue in some depth at formal institutions and far too little prominence to the opinions of those who’ve used the Internet to develop their ideas. Besides, I told them, I have a blog and a degree from a university which gives me one up on Andrew Bolt. At this point, they did ask what my degree was for and when I told them Creative Arts, they seemed rather less inclined to pursue the conversation.

A clearer example of pro-science bias would be harder to find. I mean, publishers are there to publish books and if they refuse to publish one it can only be because of some conspiracy – like the ones in our schools where students are told that it’s compulsory to be gay or how they’re expelled if they doubt global warming. (A friend of a friend knows somebody who was told about a child was given a detention because they tried to show their science teacher a graph showing that temperatures hadn’t risen at all, if you took out all the years with above average data. The school apparently argued it was because of the language the boy used when telling the teacher where to stick his climate change ideas, but we all know the real reason.)

Unable to get a publisher, I decided that the ABC was the next best option. Apparently their charter demands balance, so when somebody tells them something that’s true, they’ve obliged to also present the lies of the current Federal Government in the interest of showing all sides.

So I rang the ABC to try and get a spot to put this perfectedly credible theory to their audience, and talk about the conspiracy of book publishers who print far more copies of books suggesting a round earth than the alternative view. Talk about a lack of balance! Well, that’s exactly what they did when I suggested that I’d be taking this up with Malcolm Turnbull. Unfortunately, it was me that they were talking about, suggesting that I was unbalanced just because I started yelling at them that they were all part of some plot started by Galileo to undermine the authority of the church.

Well, I rang Mr Turnbull, but, unfortunately, he couldn’t take my call as he was busy according to the person on the switchboard. Busy doing what? I asked. I mean, it’s not like he’s actually doing anything like pushing for a Republic, trying to fix the Budget emergency or implementing the Gonski reforms. And now that the US Senate has shown us that climate change isn’t man-made, he has no reason to be PM at all, unless he can find something new to do like push for the flat earth theory to be a part of the Australian curriculum.

The person on the switchboard suggested that I email him which I know is just so that they can store my metadata so I’m not going to fall for that one. No, I intend to write him a letter asking why the flat earth theory is being ignored and why members of his party are being censored because we know that surely there must be several who actually believe it and are just too intimidated to speak out.

And I’m going to send a copy to Tony Abbott. He may be able to use this get the leadership back if Malcolm wins the election for him.