Freebie Film Tip #17: What Shape Is Your Planet?
Created | Updated Nov 17, 2015
Get out the popcorn. It's November.
Freebie Film Tip #17: What Shape Is Your Planet?
We shall ignore the theological arguments that are going on in other journals. To each his own interpretation of the Eternal. However, cosmology is of more general interest, both philosophically and scientifically, and besides, these people are driving NASA nuts. They are filling Youtube with titles such as 'US Navy Missile Instructor Confirms Flat Earth', the gloriously alliterative 'The Flat Earth Masonic Matrix Manipulators', and the challenging 'Earth Is Flat, You Have Been Fooled!'1
Today's Short Subjects: I searched long and hard to find you a short 'Flat Earth' video. It's difficult. Those people really love to hear themselves talk. If you've got a spare 90 minutes or so, you can find extensive rants, but frankly, I couldn't do it to you in good conscience. After all, my brain is sore from the 'logic'. Anyway, here's a mercifully brief one, called Fake Moon seen from the ISS - BAM, right in your face FAKERY. Maybe Galaxy Babe could explain this, but we are content to gasp in awe.
Flat Earthers believe that not only are NASA and the other 'space agencies' involved in a massive conspiracy against them, but so are globe and map manufacturers. (Personally, I think they overestimate the lengths to which people would go to mould their 'thoughts'…) And we do realise that they have a point about the cartographers, right? I mean, Amerigo Vespucci has a lot to answer for… Do you remember this wonderful, classic scene from The West Wing? That's not fake, folks: that's just our perceptual problems. And the geopolitics of geography.
NOW you're ready for PTerry.
Today's Feature Film: Today's feature tells Flat Earthers and NASA alike that they are wrong, wrong, wrong: the planet is a disc, and it rides on the back of the great turtle A'Tuin. We love the people who live there: humans, trolls, dwarves, the Librarian… This is a rare Youtube find: a video of a live-action play version of Guards! Guards!. I love the Guards, personally, especially Carrot and Nobby. Who wouldn't? Now, the play is in four video segments, and nobody made a playlist – maybe they didn't know how – so here they are, in order:
I hope you'll watch this when you have the time. The video quality isn't what you're used to in these HD days, but it's worth the aggravation. The actors are simply amazingly funny. And the live audience adds to the experience. Personally, I enjoyed this much more than the films.
Discworld fans are special people, I think: and they're MUCH cooler than Flat Earthers. (Better humour, too.)
