The Flat Earth Society
I’m not sure if this site can justifiably be called crankery, since I’m almost certain that everyone in the forum is only there to practice their debating skills.* But I wouldn’t be surprised to find that some of its supposed adherents actually believe it, so I’m including it here.
At least some humans have known with a fair degree of certainly that the Earth was mostly spherical since the 4th century B.C., and it’s probably safe to say that most of us are pretty well convinced. This is not true of the Flat Earth Society, and they have an impressive array of unintuitive arguments to back up their position in the FAQ.
Here ends crank week! Hopefully you’ve enjoyed these delightful nutjobs. If you’d like to learn about more cranks, I recommend the always-entertaining crank.net. I especially endorse their “Crank of the Day” feature. If you’re more interested in the process of identifying and rating cranks, you may find John Baez’s Crackpot Index to be a useful tool. Simply sum up the relevant points to gauge your crank!
* I’m also not entirely convinced that “crankery” is a word.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 11:00 pm and is filed under cranks, maps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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