Yeh, he was a UFO nut. But he was also a member of a very exclusive (and dwindling) club: humans who have walked on the moon.
 
Sadly, it won't be long before there are none. And in another 30 years there'll be no one alive who'd even witnessed that unprecedented adventure. It will become a footnote in history books.
 
Assuming, of course, that there will still be history books in 2046. Could be that in 2046 all history will be gleaned from YouTube.
 

I still have a copy of life magazine from 1969 that covers the landing. But hey, we have Facebook, Instigram, Twitter and the rest of it. Why have a space program when you really want a thinner phone. 

It still cracks me up when people think the moon landing was faked.  Mythbusters did a whole episode about it but, really, all you need to do is use a very high-powered telescope and you should be able to see the stuff left or, if that's too hard, have an observatory bounce a laser off of the mirror that was put there.

When I was in high school a teacher told us about the Flat Earth Society. We thought it was a funny joke, even though its founder was serious about it. We thought it was a quaint holdover from more ignorant times, kept alive as an ongoing jab at the scientifically-challenged.
 
But now, thanks to YouTube, millions of impressionable (and ignorant) young people are being led to believe it once again. Or at least to consider it a premise equal in merit to conventional science.
 
Type in "Flat Earth" in the YouTube search box. It says - no kidding - "about 4,540,000 results". I haven't looked at them all, but quick perusal of the first few pages shows that this is a popular topic (many have hundreds of thousands of views) that a scary number of rubes seem to take this seriously.
 
Check out this surprisingly civil conversation between a genuine flat-earther and a reasonable skeptic:
 

 
 

Not a word of a lie, I've had people on my Facebook posting the following photo along with comments like "an amazing photo of our home, cradled by clouds, taken by the Hubble telescope." 
 
Not quite on the same scale as flat earthers, but still very worrying. Critical thought is not as important to some people as the rest of us. 
 

 
 

bitflipper
When I was in high school a teacher told us about the Flat Earth Society. We thought it was a funny joke, even though its founder was serious about it. We thought it was a quaint holdover from more ignorant times, kept alive as an ongoing jab at the scientifically-challenged.
 
But now, thanks to YouTube, millions of impressionable (and ignorant) young people are being led to believe it once again. Or at least to consider it a premise equal in merit to conventional science.
 
Type in "Flat Earth" in the YouTube search box. It says - no kidding - "about 4,540,000 results". I haven't looked at them all, but quick perusal of the first few pages shows that this is a popular topic (many have hundreds of thousands of views) that a scary number of rubes seem to take this seriously.
 
Check out this surprisingly civil conversation between a genuine flat-earther and a reasonable skeptic:
 

 
 

I would say 'astonishing', but nothing about people's stupidity surprises me any more. Saddens me, yes.

I'm the e-pity-o-me of stoop-idioty.

Saw the movie Idiocracy a month ago.  Very scary because I can see it happening!

Electrolytes!

Wow Bit... this is just one thing (flat earth). Imagine how many other really ignorant things are believed. The scariest thing about it to me is knowing that these people vote. We are surely doomed. Welcome to the new Dark Ages. Has no one ever sailed around Antarctica? This reminds me of the "hollow earth" people. There was a respected WW II pilot who swore his plane was grabbed by a tractor beam and pulled into a hole at the north pole. He believed it (or he certainly seemed to believe it) and lots of other people do. Search "hollow earth" on YouTube. You'll find "proof" of it too!
 
"A lie travels half way around the world while the truth is putting on it's shoes" Mark Twain
 
Why do people go off on tangents like this caller? I have a friend I've known since high school. He isn't what I'd call dumb, in fact he is talented and works at a pretty high level tech job doing some government related work BUT.. he is convinced that the government was behind the 9-11 attacks. He has gone off on some other tangents that I won't get into here but they are definitely tangents. I don't understand.
 
Still, what worries me most is that these people vote.
 
J