Mass Delusions

I think a panel on famous mass delusions would be really cool; things like the mad gasser of Matoon, penis thieves in Africa, the monkeyman in India, the Orson Welles War of the Worlds panic, etc. We could cover those and then talk about the ways people can get swept up in things like that.

Ah the mob mentality...To bad you cat throw Virgin births and divine descendants in there.

Well, lets throw this one in there too

http://theflatearthsociety.org/

Their essential belief is that the earth is round, but not spherical in shape, as to these people there is no such thing as true three dimensional representation on a 2D plain so photographs are fallacies, and as they have never truly rounded the earth in a spherical manner it must not be true as they as individuals have no personal physical proof saying that it is truly spherical.

At least that's what I gathered...there's more "information" to contradict the more logical thinking...but...yeah there's plenty to go after in this bullshit

How about the "expanding earth" folks? They are kinds fun too. They think the earth is increasing in size, and that's what drives continental drift, not tectonic plates.

Oh, good god. After hearing that Neal Adams interview on the SGU, my head hurts whenever I think about the expanding earthers.

I love the expanding earth theory, it almost makes sense, as long as you are willing to ignore several important problems.

It's basically like: given the assumption that everything we know about science is wrong, the hypothesis that the earth is expanding has some explanatory merit. It's genius is a remarkably crackpotted kind of way.

My favorite of those goofy theories is the hollow earth, the one that says there are aliens who live inside the earth and their UFOs exit the inner sphere through holes at the poles. Then there's the one that says WE live inside the hollow earth. Those ones are just awesome in their lunacy.

We live inside a hollow earth? How does that one even work?

Search me. I never figured it out, either.

I remember in middle school reading in a book of "unexplained" things that when shown photos of the globe taken from high orbit, a dude who was either an inside-the-hollow-earther or a flat-eather responded by saying "You people just don't get it."

Check and mate, sir. I am bested.

Ah well...that explains it all then...