If the Earth was flat, there'd be a fucking TON of chewing gum stuck underneath it...
On my Facebook page I have a list of things which I like. Pretty simple stuff. One of the things on the list is ‘I like laughing at people who think the Earth is flat’. Today I got to enjoy that particular pastime when I read an article in the Guardian – an interview with the new president of the Flat Earth Society, Mr Daniel Shenton.
It is a very strange read because, as pointed out in the article, you’d think that Mr Shenton would be a complete loony who adores conspiracy theories and denies many of the scientific findings we have been blessed with today. Not so. Shenton is a fairly normal 33-year-old from the US who now lives and works in London. He is pretty mainstream in his opinions – Shenton doesn’t think the US government plotted 9/11, he does not dismiss climate change as a hoax, and he certainly does not believe the royal family are all actually shape-shifting lizards (one of my particular favourites).
However, Daniel Shenton does believe that “Earth is more or less a disc, with a ring of something to hold in the water.”
Ah yes, a ‘ring of something’. Like Antarctica stretched all around the edge of Earth. Or better yet, a great big magical golden barrier perhaps, which nobody has ever confronted before. Us humans love knocking things down, so why haven’t we smashed the fucker in to see where the water goes when it has the chance to ‘escape’? Shenton and the other Flat Earthers are quick to dismiss all science and current theories, but they also can’t tell you how tall this magical barrier is, what it’s made of, what it even looks like. Would they happen to know where to find an estimated death toll of people who have crashed into this barrier or literally fallen off the side of the planet? I bet they bloody don’t.
Mr Shentons’ brain must have gotten a little zapped when he took that flight from Virginia over to the UK. He’d certainly have been complaining that the pilot was taking the long way and not just flying to their destination in a straight line. From that point, it seems, he’s gone a little mad. Shenton did actually believe in a spherical Earth back in the day, but after reading a few internet forums (notoriously full of total nutjobs) he’s convinced there is no such thing as gravity. He believes that almost all space exploration is fake. He says the sun and moon are smaller than scientists say. And he says the Earth is flat, because “it appears flat”.
It just is. That’s the argument.
I don’t know if I can add much more to this. It truly does make me chuckle. Someone needs to take a big, hard globe of the Earth and batter the dude round the head with it. To top it all off, Mr Shenton conceded that he may be willing to change his views if he was given a personal trip into space to see the planet from a distance, but would still “have to be convinced there weren’t any tricks involved.”
Like anyone would spend so much cash simply to prove that Dan Shenton is being a thick bastard.
Tagged: 9/11, Antarctica, climate change, Earth, Facebook, Flat Earth Society, Guardian, royal family, UK, US government, USA, Virginia
