Flat Earth loonies

[mr blur]

The Flat Earth Society has become a byword for sticking your head in the sand, whatever the scientific facts. David Adam tries to make sense of its new president, Daniel Shenton.

Daniel Shenton should be the most irrational man in the world. As the new president of the Flat Earth Society, you'd imagine he would also think that evolution is a scam and global warming a myth. He should ­argue that smoking does not cause cancer and HIV does not lead to Aids.

Yes, that Flat Earth Society, a group that has become a living metaphor for backward thinking and a refusal to face scientific facts. Yes, it is still going, and no, this isn't an early April fool.

In fact, Shenton turns out to have resolutely mainstream views on most issues. The 33-year-old American, originally from Virginia but now living and working in London, is happy with the work of Charles Darwin. He thinks the evidence for man-made global warming is strong, and he dismisses suggestions that his own government was involved with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He is mainstream on most issues, but not all. For when Shenton rides his motorbike, he says it is not gravity that pins him to the road, but the rapid upward motion of a disc-shaped planet. Countries, according to him, spread across this flat world as they appear to do on a map, with Antarctica as a ring of mountains strung around the edge. And, yes, you can fall off.

<snip>



http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2010/feb/23/flat-earth-society

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. My great-great grandfather wrote a book 'proving' the earth is flat

One of the posters at the Flat Earth Society forum even has a quote from him as a signature! It's a sad mixture of biblical literalism, strawmen and hopeless ignorance of basic science, even for someone who grew up in the 19th century.

I can't work out the forum. The Flat Earthers there say they are genuine, but some of their arguments are so pathetic (while being written in quite good English) that I can't really believe that in most cases. I still think most are doing it just to see how much they can argue and goad 'Round Earthers' into evermore detailed attempts to convince them of the error of their ways.

The forum: http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/ (though, in classic fringe belief style, they have a splinter group too: http://theflatearthsociety.net/talk/ )

[Q3JR4]

2. I had a friend who joined the

flat earth society. When I knew her she was getting her B.S. in physics and was going on to study astronomy with the hope of eventually getting a PHD.

She was pretty happy when she signed up and made sure everyone in the department knew.

So...yeah...UFO version of http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Poe%27s_Law">Poe's Law.

Q3JR4.