A Solution from Atheists

Yes, indeed, he does!  I've had to contend with a bit of the interest in the estate thing, too, but that part of the family is on my father's side.  Only one of my mother's blood relatives have stayed in touch with her, and he is still fairly distant.  My Dad's relatives are local and occasionally try to pry or in some way establish a connection, but I am really the only person my mother can count on, and the demands are growing as she ages.  My best friend, a retired accountant, has been more help than any of the 'relatives'.

"Two hands working do more than a thousand clasped in prayer."

the soaring twenties




recalling
when flappers wheeled shirts
around
revealing
no underwear to be found
surely has to be
better than
mitch mcconnell
once again going down
on a president who thinks being profound
lies in
dragging one's stomach
inches off a ground
we earnestly refer to as
zero
all the while dancing
around
in blood raked hospital gowns
we now see as
the business of getting down.






sjw 09/11/18 inspired at this very moment in time by who lit the basement on fire.





from the 'blitzkrieg series' of poems

Slap the taste out of immorality 's mouth!

Projecting much?



Orientation of the earth.  I thought this was trivially obvious but I'll spell it out for Mr. Projector: a lunar eclipse can happen at any time of the day (in a given spot on Earth), so if the earth were coin shaped, a lunar eclipse at 6 pm would not be circular but shaped like a slot (elongated rectangle).  The only shape that casts a circular shadow no matter how it's oriented (there are 2 degrees of freedom here, spin and axial tilt) is a sphere.



Nope, it's lunar eclipses (see above).



Occam's Razor has some utility when evidence is lacking to make a selection among competing theories.  Clearly that does not apply to the question of the shape of the Earth.  Neither you nor I need to prove that the Earth is a sphere, that was demonstrated by scientific inquiry beginning with the Ancient Greeks and the work of others later.  All we need to do is understand their reasoning.  I do, not sure about you.



Your talking out your ass again, and assuming that you're the only one here that has "excellent grades" (which, given your sloppy thinking, I have some trouble believing).  Well, guess what?  You're not!



Edit -- correction: there are actually 3 degrees of freedom for rotation of a body in 3 dimensional space.  For the Earth example that would be spin and two axial tilts: axial tilt moving the North Pole toward the sun and axial tilt moving the North Pole in the direction of Earth's orbit (assuming, of course, that the Earth has a North Pole. )

The Greeks didn't make their observations comparing results with those in distant location, they made them by observing multiple eclipses at different times of the day.



You seem to be being deliberately obtuse.  You may have noticed that in the summer the sun spends quite a bit more than 12 hours in the visible sky.  Something like this happens for all objects in the sky.  It's not at all unlikely to observe a full lunar eclipse at 6pm. Also I already mentioned earlier in this thread that the Greeks didn't achieve any accuracy with this type of observation; it only suggested to them the shape.  The first good size data came from Eratosthenes' experiments comparing summer soltice Sun angles at Alexandria and Aswan (as I also mentioned earlier)


Ridiculous argument.   The earth, whatever its shape, has an extent of thousands of miles, while mountains don't even reach 10 miles in height.  Your argument is like saying that a Lincoln Penny could always cast a circular shadow if only the bas-relief image of Lincoln were exaggerated enough.  As for the rest of your argument, it's irrelevant since the only shape observed was an arc.

Then why did you bring up Occam's Razor?

~~~~~===*===~~~~~


Perhaps not, however your statement "You seem to forget, or perhaps you never knew, I made excellent grades in all of my quite many classes" reminds me of the point in Lawrence of Arabia where Sherif Ali boast to Lawrence that he can "both read and write"!



I read it about 50 years ago when I was a kid in this book (which is unfortunately out of print).  If you have any curiosity about how we understand the scale of the universe and aren't an astronomy major (or perhaps even if you are) this book is highly recommended.


In my earlier response to you question of my opinion of Occam's Razor, I said



And that remark applies to Antarctica as well.  I could do a Google search to find out the history of the discovery of Antarcica, or of America, or of Greenland, etc., and if I followed the links to Wikipedia I'd get the same answers as if I looked it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica or in the national archives of the countries involved in those explorations (except the case of Greenland).  Your suggestion that penguins prove the existence of Antarctica is as ridiculous as your "mountainous Greece" suggestion.

How about this: you elaborate on how you would prove the existence of Saskatchewan or that Oliver Cromwell was a historical figure?



I'm prepared to believe the contrary when someone can provide some evidence.

Maybe on Planet Arlon the Greeks were unaware of India and Gibraltar.  In the real world that is not the case, and they knew well the distances to those parts.  Why not grow a pair and admit that you made a ridiculously lame argument.

You didn't address the part of my previous post most pertinent to the assertion that prompted our dealings in this thread.

Let me recap:

Here you said (replying to baldwombat)



And in my last post I said



If you don't have a mind to address my last sentence, that's fine.  I'm sure on Planet Arlon they have plenty of trophy shops --- go out and buy yourself a nice shiny bowling trophy.