quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:
Since 2007 I have archived and examined about forty thousand images of Mars, no small feet. (I wear ladies' size 11, which is 41-42 cm.)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:
So, when I sent the following link to 20 of my contacts at NASA, I knew they knew I wasn't kidding.

http://www.scienfree.org/marsmap.htm

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Golden Key:
MSHB--

Maybe she meant it as a pun??? YMMV.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:
When I first came here last month, a lot of you decided I was a nutjob, right off the bat.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
Emily - you are quite clearly batshit crazy. You see conspiracies where there are none, and so help to hide the real deceits (of which there are some, just not the ones that everyone gets stroppy about).

---

Schroedinger's cat and all: Just because someone is aware that you feel that way, does NOT make the personal insult okay in Purgatory. Your opinions about other people's mental states are highly inappropriate except in Hell.

Gwai,
Purgatory Host

[ 08. June 2013, 12:33: Message edited by: Gwai ]
 

---

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
Gwai - and Emily - apologies.
 

---

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :
 
Just a reaction to the thread title, which includes the term "corporate media."

Long ago and far away, I got involved in print media at a large university's student newspaper for a couple of years. This led to a year's work at a largish urban newspaper. While by no means an expert, I did learn a little about the "corporate media" while so engaged.

The main job of the media (at least in the U.S.) is (or at least was back then) to report news. News is quite different from reporting "truth" (whatever that is when at home in its slippers, regardless of size ).

"News" consists of events likely to affect a large number of people; or events which may affect only a small number of people, but in significant ways; or that consist of acts by the government; or that represent commercial, technological, or other developments likely to affect people in the near or even long-term future.

"Events" typically unfold over time. Hence, initial reports of "events" sometimes contain factual errors. Remember Hurricane Katrina? First media reports (about rapes and murders at the KingDome) were wildly off-base. Why? Reporters were not actually present at the scene. They were getting second, third, and fourth-hand accounts by phone, often from very frightened people, and could not personally check these accounts to verify them; communications were down, streets were flooded; there was no way reporters could check. Neither could they wait (for why, see below).

Later, many of these initial accounts proved false when reporters attempted to verify them. Corrections got published; verified accounts gave a more accurate understanding of conditions in the KingDome during the storm.

"News" consists of two parts: information released by those making "the news," and follow-up by reporters. Reporters get inundated with press releases by companies, individuals, and agencies who believe they have something newsworthy to offer.

The reporter's job is to use his/her judgment (News Filter 1) to decide which of these items might be most important for the public to know tomorrow, next week, next month, etc. S/he checks this out with his/her editor, someone with more OTJ experience and a deeper knowledge of the values of the community which the paper serves (News Filter 2).

Then the reporter has to follow-up with the releaser of the news, checking and verifying alleged 'facts' by running them past two knowledgeable expert sources independent of the first one, and reporting what these additional sources have to say about the matter.

Over against all this is the simple fact that print media are private corporate enterprises themselves. Every column-inch in a newspaper has to get paid for -- through subscriptions & advertising. A new "budget" gets created for the paper every single day it publishes. Daily revenues determine how many pages the paper can print that day, and how much space on these pages can be devoted to the "news." (Advertising gets first dibs on space, since, along with subscriptions, it pays the bills for the rest.)

This space is the "news hole." It's News Filter # 3. There is always more news material generated by the paper's reporters than can fit into this "news hole." Individual reporters compete for this space. The paper as a whole competes with other media to get information out to the public first, or more accurately, or more fully (hence the need for speed).

The daily budget meeting, where the editors in charge of every section of the paper -- sports, legislature, entertainment, town/city/state/federal government, features, and so on -- decide together which stories will be included, where they'll go in the paper, whether they'll include "art" (photos) and how much they have to be cut (or rarely, lengthened) to fit the space these editors allot them.

At a daily paper, these decisions have to be made quickly, and involve a lot of very precise measurement and planning done very fast.

That said, broadcast news, about which I know almost nothing, may work differently, but the principles are the same, except in broadcast news they deal with time limitations rather than space limitations.

Emily, these calculations are complicated, fast-paced and require judgment, investigation, decision-making, and intense concentration just to get the product out on the schedule expected by the paying public.

There is precious little room or time in these calculations for the "corporate media" to concoct deliberate efforts to deceive the public.

Most real deceptions eventually come to light. Journalists who misquote (or worse, "invent") sources or deliberately skew stories generally end up fired, sometimes publicly disgraced, and unable to continue working in the field. Editors and CEOs who let this sort of thing go on get fired or even close up shop (like R. Murdoch and his phone-hacking scandal and -- was it -- NOTW?).

Being "found out" in this fashion would wreck -- just as it did Murdoch's paper -- the publication's credibility, and make its product worthless. That's why fraud, deceit, etc. which is deliberate is pretty rare.

Of course, the speed at which the media works results in screw-ups -- sometimes egregious ones. But these are by and large honest mistakes, and these too get reported.

And that's the "truth."
 

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Posted by malik3000 (# 11437) on :
 
Other than non-profit operations, the main job of the media (at least in the U.S.) is to reap as big as possible a profit for the owners (almost always large corporations), period, full stop.

[ 08. June 2013, 15:38: Message edited by: malik3000 ]
 

---

Posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg (# 17687) on :
 
Yes, I subscribe to these three plus half a dozen more.

But it's not their business to investigate scientific lying in astronomy, astrophysics and space science.

I have to work on real data to get at THOSE lies.

emily

quote:

---

Originally posted by Golden Key:
Emily--

Yes, people in authority lie. But there are lots of people who work to tell the truth and to help make the world better..

Here are some you might want to check out:

--Common Dreams progressive news, with great resource links at the bottom of the page.

--Yes! magazine specializes in workable solutions that create hope and good change.

-- The Care2 community has petitions, daily actions, free click-to-donate, and much more.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anglican't:
To clarify, why would they lie? Why would NASA claim that Mars isn't, in fact, only 12 miles in diameter and spend considerable amounts of money pretending that isn't the case?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:
Emily, I'll ask you again.

You say that NASA put false colour on their photos from Mars. One of the things you say they get wrong is that the sky often looks pink, you say it looks blue. How exactly do you know that the sky seen from Mars looks blue, if you haven't been there?

I show their false-color filter at:

http://www.scienfree.org/images/MARS/23_NASAcolorfilter.jpeg

NASA is completely open about this.


(That's the third time I asked that question I think)

Also you do realise, I assume, that astronomical telescopes often show upside-down images because (in some kinds of telescopes) that saves putting an extra lens in the light path, which might lose some light? So asgtronomers have for centuries often printed pictures of planets etc upside down from our point of view? Its no conspiracy, just a tradition. Everyoine who knows anything about astronomical telescopes already knows it. You can read about it in kids books. Usually written by Patrick Moore.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by lily pad:
You have ten pages on Facebook? Gosh, I thought they only allowed one per person. Did you query them as to why you are not allowed to upload photos anymore? Perhaps they have discovered you have more than one account.

They gave me a second personal page when I exceeded five thousand Friends on the first page. The other pages I have relate to Religion, Science and British Monarchy. I had started pages on ecological living and health, but on dial up, I don't have time to do it all, so I let the others go.

Actually, I just went and looked on your Facebook page and all your links are still there. Were you truly being censored, wouldn't they have removed your links?

No, they don't remove links. They block new photos BUT--but--scuttlebutt is, a lot of people are having trouble right now. And we can't pinpoint either the methods or the sources.

[/QB]
Personally, I trust Chris Hadfield and have no reason not to trust him. His photos from space were truly inspirational. I don't see any influence of Corporate Media in his work - in fact, I see the exact opposite. [/QB]

---

The influence of corporate control of Chris' images are in the design of his equipment. Focal length is often a GIVEN, at "infinite." Colors are a GIVEN at Red/Green/Blue so that black-light NIGHTSHOT images don't show up. Resolution set at 72 pixels per inch is plain lousy, when in fact, industry standard is 300 ppi, so focus is always compromised; color usually falsified and skew and scaling are where THE PC-NOT-SEES make their changes. I've been doing this a long time, Honey.

Em
 

---

Posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg (# 17687) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by anoesis:


There is a great conspiracy afoot, which all institutions and powers are bound up in - only a select few (of which I am one) are able to see the truth - although it is everywhere, all around us, and the rest of the sheeple remain blind wilfully because they are either too stupid to see or too afraid to look. This underlying conspiracy explains everything about everything, and emanates from powers beyond our control, and not of this planet... This was my Dad's basic viewpoint on life.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:
Just a reaction to the thread title, which includes the term "corporate media." ...

Of course, the speed at which the media works results in screw-ups -- sometimes egregious ones. But these are by and large honest mistakes, and these too get reported.

And that's the "truth."

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
So what Em ?

---

Martin, you always ask a pithy question.

Porridge's case exemplifies the problem.

Owners of the Media (and the Media Companies now only number five or six!) are in a tight consensus about what they want us to know.

They have control--those few men--over the flow of information that we the people [who must plan and vote and adapt to life's quirks] depend on, for our decision-making.

I think we need to level the playing field and increase--by Law--the fragmentation of ownership of print and electronic media.

Too much consolidation results in too much top-down control over innocent, well-meaning souls.

Emily
 

---

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by malik3000:
Other than non-profit operations, the main job of the media (at least in the U.S.) is to reap as big as possible a profit for the owners (almost always large corporations), period, full stop.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:

quote:

---

Originally posted by anoesis:


There is a great conspiracy afoot, which all institutions and powers are bound up in - only a select few (of which I am one) are able to see the truth - although it is everywhere, all around us, and the rest of the sheeple remain blind wilfully because they are either too stupid to see or too afraid to look. This underlying conspiracy explains everything about everything, and emanates from powers beyond our control, and not of this planet... This was my Dad's basic viewpoint on life.

---

The REASON conspiracies are going on all the time under our noses is very simple:

corporate statutes that mandate Confidentiality, Need-to-know, Compartmentalization of knowledge, Secret Classifications of Data, and Human Resources' Job Descriptions that eliminate all cross-talk within whole industries.

"Conspiracy" is how the West operates. The civil set of procedures that make up civil "advise and consent" have been abrogated and trash-canned.

Nobody is allowed to know anything who is not in the chain of command for specific data.

So, of course, whatever gets planned ... is secret.

Emily

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:
Porridge's case exemplifies the problem.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:
Owners of the Media (and the Media Companies now only number five or six!) are in a tight consensus about what they want us to know.

---

While you're right about the shrinking number of corporate owners, and the deleterious effects this is having on journalism, the apparent 'consensus' you think you're seeing is accidental; it's due to the fact that those in the media business know what sells "news." The "consensus" is among the consumers, not the owners. These corporations are competing against each other for the largest market share (and hence bigger profits), not conspiring with one another.

QUOTE]Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:
I think we need to level the playing field and increase--by Law--the fragmentation of ownership of print and electronic media.

Too much consolidation results in too much top-down control over innocent, well-meaning souls.

Emily [/QUOTE]

In other words, the U.S. needs to undo the Telecommunications Act of 1996. I personally think this is an excellent idea, but how precisely could this be implemented?

I doubt either Congress (and certainly not those who elected them) understood what they were doing when they passed this.
 

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Posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg (# 17687) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Emily, ... Even with good data the quality of conclusions nowadays is probably far more variable than it has ever been. ...

Your opinion is noted.
[QB}
*A good example of how restricted the media was in 1936 when the European papers were full of news about the events leading to the abdication of King Edward VIII, which the UK press and the BBC said virtually nothing until December. But you know all about that. [/QB]

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:
No, the Moon is NOT 2100 miles in diameter, No, it's not 226K miles out there.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:


I worked and taught for the Department of Communication & Journalism at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, for five years, 1988-1993. Emily

---

quote:

---

posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg
The story is that of a Father who could not convey to his son, the Role and Function of KING [for personal reasons], so he cooked up a scheme to prevent the son from marrying until he could find a completely "inappropriate" mate--and hang his son on that matrimony. George fixed Edward UP WITH WALLIS, through Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon's coterie of acquaintances. Wallis was MI-5 who worked for George during WWI, knew Hitler personally. So, what got into the papers had nothing to do with the reality of the situation. ... Edward only figured it out when the Buck House switchboard REFUSED HIS CALLS ever after, at the behest of the Queen Mother.

And THAT is the Truth.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
And ?

---

I like the way you prod me ... to think.

Perhaps at the level of Angels and God, what they're doing is sifting and sorting among the people.

There are people who don't know what is true, who don't care. This is what sheeple do.

There are people who care about what's true, who have no access to it, so they're frustrated. This is what conspiracy theorists do.

There are people who do know what is true, but they don't care. This is what our leaders do.

And there are people who do know what is true and what is false because they did the homework, and they've chosen to share what they know with others. This is what prophets do.

And I figure, God and His Angels can look at the human aura and SEE what a soul is ABOUT so that soul can be judged and placed in an appropriate setting in the future.

That's my belief about the function and reason for Judgment Day ... to sort humans into herds for further management decisions.

Emily
 

---

Posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg (# 17687) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by L'organist:
By the way Emily, Magna Carta (1215, actually, not 1200) had bugger all to do with speech, free or otherwise. ...

Magna Carta was not the great success that people assume: it led directly to civil war and rebellion since neither John nor the barony kept to its conditions and terms.

And nowhere does Magna Carta mention freedom of speech or freedom from censorship.

---

You got me! I didn't have all my facts straight!

I'm shot through the heart!!



[ 09. June 2013, 01:25: Message edited by: Emily Windsor-Cragg ]
 

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Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:
Resolution set at 72 pixels per inch is plain lousy, when in fact, industry standard is 300 ppi, so focus is always compromised; color usually falsified and skew and scaling are where THE PC-NOT-SEES make their changes. I've been doing this a long time, Honey.

---

Emily:

You claim to be an expert in digital image processing, so I'm surprised that you don't know that this is nonsense.

A digital image just has pixels. DPI has nothing to do with the resolution of the digital image - it has to do with how the image is rendered.

The relevant quantities for digital resolution are the image width, in pixels, and the angular acceptance of the camera, in milliradians. Or, equivalently, by the pixel density on the sensor and the focal length of the lens.

72 pixels per inch is a standard assumption for the resolution of a computer monitor. Whether that assumption comes from Apple or from XEROX PARC, I can't tell you, but it does make one pixel equal to one point (no, I'm not going to digress into the history of the point), which makes text rendering calculations easier for the normal case.

300 DPI is the print resolution of a typical commercial photo printer - for example, the ubiquitous Fuji Frontier (so if you're printing 6x4 photos, you may as well rescale your image to 1800x1200 pixels, because the printer isn't going to make more dots than that on the paper).

But this is irrelevant - you're looking at digital images, not prints, so you just care about the number of pixels and the field of view.
 

---

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Martin, Anoesis, and Rowen.
 

---

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Porridge:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:


I worked and taught for the Department of Communication & Journalism at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, for five years, 1988-1993. Emily

---

Did you? Interestingly, GMU's current website shows that it offers degrees in Communications, but has no journalism program.

---

They're in the same department. "Communication" is just the current umbrella term.

I have no knowledge of whether or not she worked there. But your post raised a red flag for me, because the two fields are often bundled together. So I checked.


 

---

Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :
 
Bear with me, I'll eventually get to a point of some sort.

My uncle was a great man
I know he was, he told me so himself.

So starts(from memory) a poem by Spike Milligan. The humour in those words comes from making a circular argument obvious. You cannot be expected to believe something about someone just because that person said it themselves, you need an outside independent source. That way what a person says about themself can be corroborated.

There is a big problem here. What you are saying, Emily, is that the proof you have is in web pages you put up yourself. Circular argument, sorry, I cannot believe it. Where is the independent evidence? Before you say it, "the independent evidennce is taken down" is not a valid argument, if it was you site would have been removed.

Over to you.
 

---

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
Think I'm going to take a different tack.

Emily, what do you think are the causes of self-deception?
 

---

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:
Resolution set at 72 pixels per inch is plain lousy, when in fact, industry standard is 300 ppi, so focus is always compromised; color usually falsified and skew and scaling are where THE PC-NOT-SEES make their changes.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:

When my little baby turned up with PKU at the age of 7 months, I delved into food tables and created a diet for him (never mind the Official formula!) that spared phenylalanine and provided sufficient protein for his needs.

I wrote the diet up as a class project in one class where the professor was a high-ranked member of the Dietary Officialdom. I SAVED MY BOY'S INTELLECT, because PKU results in massive retardation and ungovernable behavior. THAT BOY graduated from West Point and is now a Captain in the USArmy at the age of 27. So, the diet worked.

THAT PROFESSOR, obsessed as she was with dogma and doctrine, gave me a "C grade" on my paper, which was "barely passing," but she awarded "A grades" to other students who were more compliant with her dogma.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Correct Em. It's 239,000 miles. As any smart 10 year old can follow. I mean, it's forgivable that the ancient Greeks were 8,000 miles out. Which ejits were 13,000 miles out the other way?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:
5,000 rather than 50,000 if it is really only 20 miles across.

That's less than the radius of the Earth so the Moon would be invisibly low in the sky quite often. Her hypothesis ought to be testable by making observations over a few nights with a couple of sticks and a watch.

And if it was true then either orbital mechanics is wrong (which would mean secondary school physics was wrong) or else the gravitational constant (G) and/or the mass of the earth (M) isn't what it says in the textbooks. Which, come to think of it, also means secondary school physics is wrong. And you can test that with a pendulum. And very helpfully there are quite a few Foucault's pendulums in public museums. If the period of one of them is what the textbook equations say it should be then we know what the acceleration due to gravity (g) is locally, and that gives you the ratio between the gravitational constant and the mass of the earth and from that you can work out the orbital period of a relatively small satellite at any given distance. And we know how long the Moon takes to go round the earth because we can see it. So, if it was only 20 miles across, we can work out how far away it has to be to take that long to orbit. And the sums aren't even hard.

And if we know how far away it is we can work out how big it is just by looking at it and measuring how wide it seems to be at, say, arms length, and multiplying.

Come on Emily, do the experiment! I dare you!

You can work out roughly how far away the moon is, and therefore roughly how big it is with a trip to a museum, a watch, a tape measure, and some high-school phsyics and grade-school arithmetic. Do the sums! You don't have to believe NASA or even look though a telescope. No cameras involved. You can see it with your own eyes.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hawk:
This Bad Astronomy page seems to give a good overview of the problems.

---

There goes my awe at seeing the Mars sky as blue.

And it nicely summarises my problem with this thread. I think Emily's explanations are fruitcakey, but in terms of being properly able to interpret the media, she has a point.

Managing to pick up on that part - and only that part - of what everybody (or almost) says that is sense despite running contrary to accepted wisdom is a real challenge (but a good one for the truly unrestful).
 

---

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Re: seeing things differently than the common version--

I've been thinking about this lately. ("Oh, noes!" ) When someone differs from the consensus view of reality, when they think There's Something Going On That Most People Don't Know, they're considered crazy.

Sometimes, that might be true. But IMHO it's more complicated than that. ISTM many/most narratives of Life, the Universe, and Everything are based on the idea that this is what's going on, and everyone else is wrong. Politics, economics, science, religion, why the vending machine happily feeds everyone else but always jams when you are desperate for a Mars bar.

Christianity, for example. Epic battle between Good and Evil, involving unseen forces. That battle taking place inside us, and throughout Creation. Lots about "the world does this or that, but God/Christ...". Be in the World, not of it. Walk the narrow way, not the wide one that's clogged with everyone else. Believe that God exists; created everything; was heart-broken when Things Went Wrong; worked through a particular group of people to get to the point of becoming a human being (specifically male) through a virgin mother; gathered a rag-tag group of buddies, as well as mockers and frienemies; taught truths that weren't readily accepted; did miracles; walked on water; was crucified "for us and our salvation" to save us from a real, literal hell;, died;, was buried; paid a visit to the waiting dead*; was resurrected from the dead (!); hung out with his buddies, including walking with them incognito (probably trying very hard not to crack up with laughter!); physically and visibly ascended to Heaven; helps us from there; and is going to come back some day.**

Consensus view of reality--not.

Believing differently from the rest of the world isn't necessarily bad. Depends on what you believe, how you hold that belief, what you do with it, whether it makes you more compassionate or less, and whether or not it helps you really live.


*In Mike Warnke's words, Jesus strode up to Satan and said, "Hand over them keys, turkey!"

**Bumper sticker: "Jesus is coming. Look busy!"
 

---

Posted by Hawk (# 14289) on :
 
Except I don't think beleiving a worldview shared by over 2 billion other people, for over 2 thousand years, can be considered seeing things differently from the consensus.
 

---

Posted by deano (# 12063) on :
 
Personally I think Emily is right on the money! Surely you can all see that the Bilderberg Group is behind the conspiracy!

I think WE should BE Told!!!!!
 

---

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doublethink:
Would you all please a) code correctly & b) use bold and italics for emphasis rather than capitalisation.

The UBB thread in styx is available for practice if needed.

Doublethink
Purgatory Host

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hawk:
Except I don't think beleiving a worldview shared by over 2 billion other people, for over 2 thousand years, can be considered seeing things differently from the consensus.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Golden Key:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hawk:
Except I don't think beleiving a worldview shared by over 2 billion other people, for over 2 thousand years, can be considered seeing things differently from the consensus.

---

By definition, "consensus" means what most everyone believes. TTBOMK, most people since Jesus haven't been Christians. And, given that we've got something like 7 billion people in the world right now, your figure of 2 billion over 2,000 years is nowhere near a consensus.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lothiriel:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emily Windsor-Cragg:

When my little baby turned up with PKU at the age of 7 months, I delved into food tables and created a diet for him (never mind the Official formula!) that spared phenylalanine and provided sufficient protein for his needs.

I wrote the diet up as a class project in one class where the professor was a high-ranked member of the Dietary Officialdom. I SAVED MY BOY'S INTELLECT, because PKU results in massive retardation and ungovernable behavior. THAT BOY graduated from West Point and is now a Captain in the USArmy at the age of 27. So, the diet worked.

THAT PROFESSOR, obsessed as she was with dogma and doctrine, gave me a "C grade" on my paper, which was "barely passing," but she awarded "A grades" to other students who were more compliant with her dogma.

---

There's always the possibility that the paper was not written well enough to merit an "A", despite the apparent success of the diet itself. You weren't being graded on saving your son, but on how you presented your work.

---

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