The basic story Angus was not disputing the actual lunar landing (although that is a natural follow-on) but saying that the filming of the landing and all the moon photos were a hollywood style production handled by Stanley Kubrick and using the 2001 A Space Odyssey set.

Exactly, moonlit and that's why it had me going in the beginning. To elaborate on what you said; Nixon and Co. feared the Apollo 11 crew might not be able to get back to Earth and because of the amount of money spent, it would be a huge public relations disaster and devastating blow to public morale. To counter any possible problems, they decided to photograph and film fake footage as a back-up measure. They asked to use Kubrick's 2001 moon set but Stanley was not supposed to have anything further to do with it. However, he was so disgusted by the amateurs they had putting on the show, that he ended up directing it for them.

Now, here's where it gets even more elaborate. Even though the Apollo 11 crew made it safely back to Earth, they claim the camera equipment used was inadequate and they returned with no usable footage. Thus, the fake footage was used anyway and that is what we've all been seeing for the last 30 years.

Ms. H, when in doubt, blame Reagan. I'm all about demystifying "national heroes", especially ones who get by on charm.

Another reason why it is often more comfortable to talk from an academic perspective on these ideas/theories/topics is that it leaves less room for miscommunication errors or problems with people taking offense

I dig this. It's like talking in lawyerese: lawyers aren't intentionally obfuscating; they're just being really, really specific about which word means which thing. I'm reasonably following along, except for the part where I feel like I should be jotting down notes.

the whole 'Communism = evil' thing

Oh my lord. You're suddenly reminding me of a classmate I had in a post-colonial literature class. we were reading Ngugi wa Thionggo, who for the record is a very genial -- angry, but genial about it -- Kenyan socialist. And this classmate, who is 3rd generation Cuban (i.e., grandparents fled Castro, grew up in the Cuban areas of Miami, completely brainwashed by her family and/or ethnic enclave-itis *), kept coming back to "How can America possibly be bad?" And finally, after much Socratic dialogue, out comes this winner: "But America is good, and Communism is just evil." Everyone else in the class was just polite enough not to laugh and laugh, but the upshot was that she could not be convinced that political theories have no inherent moral bias.

[*] Cuban-Americans in Miami are somewhat notorious, as a community, for knee-jerk "Communists drink the blood of babies!" sentiment. I thought this was a stereotype, until I met this woman. I really wanted to refer her to the Cuban-American novelist Achy Obejas, who has written a lot about the issue, but I suspect she's the sort who also knee-jerk thinks "Lesbian feminists drink the blood of babies!", so really, she should have just dropped the class at the beginning of the semester.

99% of my formal training in politics is from analysis of nationalist (fictive) literature. Which is a way of saying, I have no formal training at all.

I was only partially watching the first part but at some stage it just clicked that the sentences on their own read very differently to the whole. That was when I starting getting suspicious.

I just really loved the bit about applying the gold leaf to the fins of the rocket for a huge amount, even though it had absolutely no effect on anything but to make it look more expensive.

I just really loved the bit about applying the gold leaf to the fins of the rocket for a huge amount, even though it had absolutely no effect on anything but to make it look more expensive.

See, in hindsight that should've registered as a hoax indicator but it was just insane enough to have a ring of truth about it. I could totally see a Hollywood production designer insisting on that. :)

Re hindsight and 20/20 vision: Jack Torrance, the "Hollywood Producer". All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

heh

sarameg I want to be moonlit when I grow up.

Sarameg, if you've got any sense you'll go for more money. That's another reasons I've been pondering the nunnery option. I figure that you're in a good place to be looked after in your old and infirm years with no real health cover and certainly no special bits like dental, and let's face it, that's one of the things that nuns are good at. (snerk)

Ms. H, when in doubt, blame Reagan

In fact one of the reasons that those in Hollywood who knew about Kubrick and the moon film stuff kept quiet was that they were promised a reward with the next election ....... Bingo! You got Reagan.(that part made me laugh too)

99% of my formal training in politics is from analysis of nationalist (fictive) literature. Which is a way of saying, I have no formal training at all.

Nutty, have you read Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said?

Sarameg, if you've got any sense you'll go for more money. That's another reasons I've been pondering the nunnery option.

Laughing rather hard here. If I had any sense, I'd stay in programming, where there is money. But I hate it so.... ANd I understand the appeal of nunneries. Except the pesky religion thing keeps tripping me up.

One thing I know about NASA: too bureaucratic to ever, ever, ever be able to manage a fakeout of hoax. Some days I'm surprised we manage to produce the results...

Right. The problem with conspiracies is that it takes two people to conspire. Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead. I mean, for crying out loud. If the Mafia leaks like a sieve, how can you imagine the bland, plain federal government can keep secrets? I mean, have you seen government buildings? I'd be broadcasting secrets on a CB radio, just in hopes of getting the perks of being interviewed on Dateline.

Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said

Not in a long time. Or actually, I think I read several of his essays, or selected chapters, rather than the whole book. I tend to think that Said is pulling a certain amount of his thesis out of his butt, or rather, that he's taking a very limited point of view on the conceptsof empire and ethnicity and political-cultural identity. But then, I tend to feel that way about 90% of recent post-colonial analysis: it's too narrowly modern in scope, and doesn't have any anthropological distance.

Remember that all of this shit I've been spouting started as an attempt to seriously discuss some of the issues that are behind the rise in anti-murrican sentiment that is being displayed in increasingly graphic detail on all our TVs night after night. Well the period and events are most closely associated with the end of Cold War bipolarity and the moves toward a system of so-called ‘global governance’, and the involvement of concepts central to Western political theory since the Enlightenment necessitate consideration of the normative and historical implications involved. Indeed, it is the threat to liberty, equality and fraternity, solidarity, citizenship, political identity and obligation posed by the current challenges to the existing world order that fuels and publicly legitimates the continuously expanding forces of resistance.

Exacerbating these tensions are global crises such as worsening environmental degradation and resource scarcity, rising levels of poverty, HIV-AIDS, drugs, terrorism, war, and a plethora of other problems that threaten to explode our already divided world into a world of conflict. That many of these crises are worldwide, or at the very least, unconstrained by national borders, rendering nation-state sovereignty increasingly vulnerable to external attack or internal fragmentation, and dominating the vast network of international relations, is not disputed. Nor is the fact that they have permeated the entire ecological system whose rapidly disintegrating equilibrium seriously threatens the relative stability of centuries of national and international economic and political development.

What is highly contested (and heavily politicised) is the phenomenon which has been labelled ‘globalisation’, and all that it entails. The controversy surrounding the nature, meaning, age, origins, history, and significance of, as well as resistance to, the phenomenon has seen it put forward not only as the solution to the world’s problems, but also as responsible for causing and perpetuating them.

This confusing and contradictory state of affairs has been largely brought about by two separate, but interrelated, sets of circumstances. Firstly, there is a dearth of clear, relevant and substantive globalisation theory, even amongst the recent surfeit of globalisation literature. International relations (realpolitik) for example, has little to say that accounts for the social reality of the contemporary world, failing to acknowledge the connection between social practice and the constitution of social knowledge (the moral dimension of politics), and between the international and the domestic. In fact, international theory in general has long viewed ethics as applicable to the kind of community that international society cannot be and the world system as one that is incompatible with moral philosophy.

I say, however, that an understanding of globalisation, anti-globalisation, and their significance to world order is not possible without considering the normative implications of world system models. This necessitates looking beyond the hegemonic institutions and social and power relations, to their origins and how and whether they might be transforming, and also involves paying careful attention to the opening up of public space to moral and ethical concerns that is a prevalent feature of this interregnum.

And this is what is happening in many and varied places around the world. The Internet is a huge part of the opening up of public space to allow discourse on subjects that up until now were largely relegated to the non-real world types working in the ivory towers.

Someone else found this and posted it over at PF and I'm just throwin' it in to be ornery.

War of the worlds

It has become synonymous with the terrorist attacks of September 11 - but what is the origin of the name al-Qaida? Giles Foden on how Bin Laden may have been inspired by Isaac Asimov's Foundation

[link]

Isn't a nunnery an obscure term for place with women the opposite of nuns? :)

Isn't a nunnery an obscure term for place with women the opposite of nuns? :)

Yes, which is why Hamlet saying "Get thee to a nunnery" to Ophelia was actually a shocking statement, intended to hurt. Oddly, Hamlet is not always taught that way.