Some Extra Comments

This week in Episode 9 - Cold War II, we mentioned a couple of images that we really wanted you to see. The first one is of windmill hating John Yancey standing with "his face contorted in anger and pain" as he is forced to endure the presence of wind turbines that he himself helped build and install even though he opposed them from the beginning. For the sake of copyrights and such, the turbine images and the previous quote all came from CNN.com.

Here we see Mr. Yancey making the classic pout face. His father signed a deal with Big Wind allowing a number of turbines on Yancey land. Though he earns something along the lines of six grand per turbine per year just to have them on his property, the fact that they are "unsightly," noisy, and cast unacceptable shadows at different times of day all outweigh the benefits. (Did I mention he helped build and install them?)

Also, just throwing this out there again, how many of you actually like the look of turbines strewn across the landscape? I personally enjoy the scenery. This photo here makes me a little melancholic, but in a good way, if that makes sense. I'm reminded of my childhood back in Indiana. We weren't farmers but we had scenery like this all around (minus the wind turbines). Looks like a calm, cool, lonely day.

The other fun photo we talked about comes to us from modern day believers in the flat Earth idea. Fascinatingly, they are still around and even host a forum style web site. Although the brotherhood of flat Earth supporters apparently does not have a cohesive set of philosophical tenets, there are a few things that must be agreed upon because of observable phenomena. For example, if one travels far enough south from any point on the "globe," one will inevitably end up in Antarctica. How might the FEers explain this? I draw your attention to exhibit A:

What we see here is that Antarctica is actually a giant ice wall that encompasses the disc, making sure the water doesn't flow off the side... or something. Since in this digital creation obtained from Foxnews.com we have more than doubled the generally accepted distance of over 6000 miles between Chile and Australia, the flight time can only be explained by an extremely fast jet stream running around the Earth's circumfrence. Why that jet stream doesn't double your return flight time, I'm not quite sure...

Another interesting point we could make here is that most of the "science" of the FEers depends heavily on conspiracy theories such as the notion that "the government" won't allow you to explore the ice wall. I think in order for you to be kept in the dark, the airlines would have to be in on the conspiracy. In that case, I wonder why airlines go bankrupt every now and again. We've all seen what the government did for Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. I suppose if my company was in on the conspiracy, I'd have some pretty good leverage to make sure the government saved me from any financial trouble I might be in.

Funny thing by the way, planes always take the shortest distance from one point to another (unless of course they're purposely avoiding the shortest distance so they can utilize a super jet stream and keep the masses in the dark). On a globe, the shortest distance from Caracas, Venezuela to Melbourne, Australia runs entirely through the southern hemisphere. However on this diagram, the shortest distance would take you right over the North Pole.