jake abf wrote:
Badger.
Greetings Weasel, hope you're well.
I've got to break some really bad news to you, and I know this will come as quite a shock so please brace yourself... oh, and *please* don't shoot the messenger! Here goes. Ready?... Jake, T H E....E A R T H....I S....N O T....F L A T. Yes, I know, you're going to dispute that, I fully understand. I really did not want to be the one to disabuse you -- a devout Flat Earther -- of a quaint and deeply cherished notion. However, I do not recommend that you cancel your membership with the particular Flat Earth Society to which you so earnestly contribute with your inane, utterly worthless paranoid-conspiracy-nutcase-garbage, because you'd be sorely missed by the Brethren, and I wouldn't want you to be deprived of so many like-minded friends.
Anyway, now that you are finally aware that the Earth is not flat (or do you still dispute that?), and is in fact an oblate spheroid, perhaps you'll now be better-placed to understand the rest of what I've written in this post. If not, then I'm sure you'll find some comfort in these links:
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublons ... ociety.htmjake abf wrote:
The coincidental happenstance of Bornholm, which is not that far from me, being in a convenient masonic numerical fix is truly remarkable. Roscoe + jb did a bang up job getting that fix from a google earth algorithm. They get their well-deserved kudos on this one.
So, the assertion is essentially this: A straight line drawn between Østerlars Church and Nylars Church (on Bornholm), and which is then 'projected' southward passes somewhere close to or through the village of Rennes-le-Château. That, at face value at least, would seem quite astonishing.
To make things easier for myself, using fabulous Google Earth, I drew a straight line between Østerlars Church and Rennes-le-Château in order to see how close to the said line Nylars Church was. Are you with me so far, Weasel? See the diagram below (hope it's colourful enough for you -- lots of nice colours).
So, if I'm right, Nylars Church lies at 380 metres (give or take) from the Østerlars-RLC line. "
Not too bad" I hear you struggle to think. Of course, constructing the line in this way is actually cheating and, as I mentioned to Roscoe, leads to a meaningless and illusory result since we're dealing with a highly distorted 2D representation of a 3D (spheroidal) surface.
What we have to do (so as not to cheat and ultimately delude ourselves) is to compute the precise forward azimuth from Østerlars Church to Nylars Church and then compute the projected point along that azimuth a distance of, say, 1,642,312 metres (approx. distance Østerlars Church to RLC Church) and see where the projected point ends up. It should be in or around RLC. Unfortunately, it's not. Very much not, in fact. See the diagram below:
The projected point lies some 28 miles northwest of RLC.
Sophisticated, high-precision ellipsoidal computation was used to obtain the position of the projected point, not fart-arsing about with 2D maps.
Now then Weasel, you're predictably going to say something really dumb like "
Duh... but the ancients never had high-precision ellipsoidal computation" or words to that effect, but this - whilst true - would be missing the point entirely, as well as showcasing your own stupidity. The point is, RLC does not lie in the same 'direction' as the Østerlars-Nylars line as asserted by Roscoe, unless you believe an error of nearly 30 miles is acceptable.
Regards,
David.