People actually believe we did not land on the moon:

I belong to a football chat room and I cannot tell you how many times I have seen a post asking if we really landed on the moon (The idiots at FOX news stoked the flames by showing television "documentaries" like Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? in 2001). The premise mystifies me. It is like these people have lost their senses. It would be funny if it were not so tragic. I guess I should try to explain some things that will help try to put this thing to rest.

1) Gravitational effects of soil being kicked up, rocks being thrown, astronauts jumping around would have to be faked. Circa 1960s it would have taken as much technology to fake the lower gravity of the moon than it did to put us there.

2) Rocks on moon have been analyzed (I have actually met and talked with many of the original geologists and geochemists that analyzed the rocks through my own research). They are nothing like rocks on earth. Totally unique because the moon has undergone a completely different history than earth. However the geochemistry clearly is in line with what we suspected about the moon before we even landed there.

3) Age of the moon rocks are all older than the vast majority of the older rocks found on earth. And many of the moon rocks are older than the oldest rocks on earth. How are you going to make a rock older than anything found on earth? It means you would have to figure out a way to selective remove radioactive elements from an earth rock to make it seem older. That technology is not available even today as far as I know. It is almost impossible to separate isotopes of the same large elements. If you know anything about uranium enrichment you know it is an expensive and time consuming process (U235 is enriched relative to other uranium isotopes). And even if you could get the correct proportion of isotopes one would have to inject them into a rock somehow (that is not possible without melting the rock which destroys textures). It is crazy talk to think that someone would spend decades doing this when they could just figure out how to go to the moon.

4) New minerals have been found on the moon - not surprisingly, many are water-free varieties of those found on earth. Did NASA make these new minerals?

5) The flag that was placed on the moon actually looks like it is moving in a breeze (a pole makes it stick out but it still flaps a bit). That breeze is from the solar wind (particles coming from the sun). I suppose people think that a fan was put on the set to fake the solar wind? Really?

6) The soil brought back consists of meteorite fragments mixed in with glass (melted rock that formed during bombardment) and elements that are not found in high abundance on earth (such as Ir from the meteorites). That soil was clearly formed from meteorite bombardment over hundreds of millions of years. And rock formed from the soil (breccia) is a common rock on the moon (but not on earth (breccia on earth is sedimentary). If you believe in a fake moon landing then you must also believe that a few knowledgeable geologists told NSAA they how to fake rocks to fool a whole generation of geologists?

7) Other countries tracked the capsule leaving and entering the earth's stratosphere. That must have been a tremendous achievement to fake.

I could go on and on. You have to be selective in what your read or you will end up in a huge morass of intellectual nonsense.

Movie review: Capitalism: A love story

The best line from Capitalism: A love story is when Michael Moore goes to Wall Street and asks for advice on how to get America's money back from big business. "I need some advice please?" he yells. Some bright investor or broker walking by says: "Stop making movies!"

I have a love-hate relationship with Michael Moore. How many of us can avoid being amused at his provocative blank stares, wrapping Wall St. in yellow crime scene tape with his funny gate and odd body, and his tongue and cheek remarks? On the other hand, those of us that have functioning gray matter, find him to be a bit intellectually destitute. I don't know whether he is playing a role aimed at an audience from the middle to lower class or he actually lacks the intellectual depth to pursue his subject on a more sophisticated level.

For example, is Michael Moore really the socialist he dramatically claims to be as he skewers the wealthy corporations and politicians? Balderdash! How ironic that Moore refers to the rich as "them" when he has made millions on his movies. Moore pontificates about forming socialist corporations that share earnings with their workers. Raise your hands. How many think all the profits from his movies are shared with his film crew and other minions? I want to see Michael Moore's plan for disseminating his wealth among the masses.

Has he forgotten that the greatest socialistic experiment of all times failed miserably with the collapse of the Soviet Union? For about 70 years, Russians and their enslaved neighbor states suffered the tragedy of economic failure where highly trained and hard working intellectuals were paid the wages of ordinary street sweepers. Socialism is quite a deal if you are a street sweeper, but if you are a doctor, lawyer, engineer, entrepreneur, etc., you may wish to rethink your career options in the socialist state. And where there is no incentive, there is only average which tends to destroy nation states not to mention Walden Pond. Moore, of course, knows all of this, but portrays American capitalism as something the evil empire does on its way to a plutocracy. There is not one minute of recognition that world capitalism and free trade monitored properly by a democratic society has increased the average living standard of the entire planet by leaps and bounds. Instead he focuses on the mistakes and failures of the US government that enabled the banking system to improperly use derivatives and other market instruments. By the way, it is pretty clear in the movie that Moore does not have the foggiest idea of what a derivative is and further confuses his audience (purposely in my opinion) by taking time for convoluted explanations. Yes derivatives can be complex and dangerous, but they can also be relatively safe ways to protect investment. Anyone that has ever bought an option knows something about derivatives. But Moore tells us that Wall St. is simply the Las Vegas of the state of New York. Does anyone with an IQ higher than a snail think that investing in the stock market is a worse idea than spending the weekend at a craps table in New Jersey or Vegas?

I confess I am not sure of the ultimate reason for our economic failure of the last two years and was in hopes that Moore might explore the factual information. But instead the audience is talked down to as Moore opines about his personal conspiracy theories. Maybe the failure was due to the greed of corporations or maybe not. We will never know from Moore's movie. But not once does Moore point a finger at socialism as the problem. Yes socialism or at least those that promote it. There is an argument that suggests that the economic morass that we went through (and maybe still are in) was due to leftest democrats (Marxist socialist by another name) destroying banking regulations to make it easier for the lower classes to buy homes on borrowed money.

Was it ethical to allow the poor and/or brain stunted to take out loans or refinance their homes with non-fixed interest loans? It was certainly not ethical (and might even be considered criminal). And if the suggestion is correct, there are many socialist democrats in this country that have much to answer for (have some splainin to do). And what about the poor and middle class that took out these loans? There are some circles that say that if it is too good to be true than it probably is - how much responsibility does the borrower share here? We see in the movie a farmer and his family outraged at being forced out of their home, because apparently their interest rates skyrocketed while the value of their home plummeted (Moore never tells us what has happened to the fellow nor does anyone ask). It must be the banks fault we are assured. Of course the farmer, with a tree-frog mentality, apparently could not grasp the implications of a non-fixed loan or he did not care to. Moore assumes that we will all agree that it is certainly not the farmer’s responsibility that he lost his home? It must be all those right wing politicians and big corporations taking advantage of the stupid. No one argues for the possibility that the farmer would never have been able to get a loan had it not been for deregulation of the banking industry by the democrats to enable the lower middle class and poor to get easy loans.

I honestly do not know who is at fault and neither does Michael Moore - clearly. But he thinks he knows, and that is what is so bad about this movie. If you are looking for a movie where you would have enjoyed seeing all of the blame options explored before coming to a conclusion, this movie is not for you. It is vintage Michael Moore. I am reminded of his first move – Roger and Me. Flint Michigan's economy was destroyed, and it must be the fault of Roger who moved GM industry away to get cheaper labor so GM could sell cars at competitive prices. My my. Dastardly capitalism everywhere.