Apps for Flat-Earthers

Some facts:

• the Earth is an oblate spheroid;

• the Earth and Moon orbit the Sun, which is a star approximately 150 million km away;

• gravity holds water, people and animals as well as politicians and accountants to the surface of the planet. It is this force that is also responsible for the orbits of the planets.

If the Earth was flat, then cats would have pushed everything off the edge by now.

Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth in the third century BCE. Later mathematicians then calculated the circumference of Eratosthenes' forehead with remarkable accuracy.

The Earth has been known to be a globe ever since the ancient Greeks noticed that the shadow of the Earth was circular in shape during a lunar eclipse (the only object that can cast consistent circular shadows is a sphere). Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth with surprising accuracy by comparing the lengths of shadows at different places on the Earth. Space agencies from around the globe have been to space and taken photographs of Earth - and, spoiler alert - the globe is spherical.

There are experiments that you can perform yourself. Go to the beach and watch ships sail over your horizon. You will notice that the ships disappear from the bottom up as they sail over the curve (and no, a pair of binoculars will not bring the ship back into view). Watch a sunset from a low vantage point, such as your vacation beach hut, then quickly run up a convenient hill and you will notice that you get another sunset as your higher vantage point allows you to see further around the curve of your horizon. If you ever travel to a country in the opposite hemisphere, apart from the fact that your flight plan will have been calculated to be very close to a great circle on the ball Earth, but there will be some phenomena that cannot be explained on a flat earth, for example, you will see a different hemisphere of stars to your view back home. The sun and moon will appear to traverse the sky in the opposite direction (actually, they still move East to West, but their position in the North or South of the sky will make it look as though they are moving counter to your expectation). This was the first thing that I noticed when I travelled to New Zealand, arriving at night I saw the moon travelling from the East into the Northern sky and then I noticed the large and small Magellanic Clouds which are impossible to see from the Northern Hemisphere.

There are two models for understanding the solar system. One of these models, the helio-centric, globe earth model manages to explain all phenomena that we observe and can be used to make accurate predictions about both celestial events and the motion of objects on or near the surface of the planet.

The other model - the so-called Flat Earth - is not really a model at all as it makes for a poor representation of reality, explains very little of observable phenomena and can make almost no predictions. In fact, Flat Earth proponents cannot even agree on what the model should be although the common themes are a flat (sometimes infinite) plane, with the moon and sun as smaller than scientists think rotating several thousand miles above the surface of the plane. The stars are unknown points of light stuck to a glass dome, and there is an 'ice wall' preventing the oceans from falling off. Even the best Flat Earth explorers have failed to successfully photograph the ice wall or the dome. Flat Earth astronomers do not seem to care that their models do not successfully represent the reality of the southern celestial hemisphere.

Followers of the Flat Earth need to reject almost all of Newton's Laws of motion in order for their model to make even a partial sliver of sense. Neil deGrasse Tyson has blamed the conspiracy theory’s rise on “free speech” and a “failed educational system” which does not promote critical thinking. Gravitational effects are explained as simply 'density' and 'buoyancy', although, in fact, buoyancy is an epiphenomenon of gravity, Flat Earth scientists ignore this whilst simultaneously sticking fingers in their ears and saying 'La La La' very loudly. The existence of satellites and even outer space itself is rejected completely by Flat Earth proponents. The daily motion of the sun and sky is explained away as simply a trick of 'perspective'.

I could go on.

I haven't even mentioned the observation by all Flat Earth astronomers that the surface of a body of water looks flat, or that they cannot feel the dizzying 15 degrees per hour rotation of the Earth at the equator (you would not expect to feel such a slow rotation).

But I decided to do some research that I do not believe anyone else has done before. I shall simply find all the apps in the app store that rely on an helio-centric, round earth model, and then compare them with apps that have been written using a Flat Earth model. Whichever model gets the most high-quality, accurate and useful apps wins!

Apps for Round Earthers

First up is Google Earth.

Based on countless satellite images of a spherical Earth, Google Earth provides a virtual 3D model of the Earth. I am not sure how this would be achieved if satellites did not exist. You can add your own data to the model, such as flight plans, and if the Google were lying to us about the shape of the planet, then it would have have been discovered by countless aeronautics enthusiasts by now.

This is Google Maps, although there are other map applications out there. I am not sure how Flat Earthers think their satellite navigation system works without the existence of satellites, presumably some sort of ground-based perspective magic, however later this week I shall trust this application to navigate me on a 600-mile round journey. I shall expect to arrive at the same place I set off from.

One of many apps that add real-time information to maps. This one lets you track thunderstorm.This one is called Blitzortung Lightning Monitor.

One of my favourite apps is Sunrise Sunset. The 3D view shown here allows you to track the position of the sun at your location as it conforms to reality. You can go outside and check that the sun is where it should be. Notice the simplicity of the Heliocentric model, yet it perfectly explains all observations from anywhere on Earth. I can't wait to see the Flat Earth version of this application.

One of the achievements of a working scientific model is that it can be used to make accurate predictions even if we do not actually understand the underlying physics. The motion of planets and asteroids can all be predicted far into the future and you can also go outside and check whether the model matches your reality. The screenshot above is from Asteroid Alert.

Your smartphone is essentially a mobile planetarium. There are countless awesome planetarium apps available across multiple platforms. The one shown here is Sky Walk 2 for Android. Again, you can check that the model matches the reality around you. Note for the confused - the picture of the bear is just an aid for your imagination. I am not sure how an accurate astronomy app for Flat Earthers would work (that is dealt with at the bottom of this page), although I imagine it would have to be drawn with crayons.

One of several apps for viewing live feeds from the International Space Station. The one shown is ISS Live. I don't need much more proof than my ground-based observations suggesting a globe Earth being corroborated by a space-based camera. The ISS orbits at a relatively low orbit, but it is high enough for you to see the curvature of the Earth. You would not expect to see any curvature from an aeroplane. My challenge for the Flat Earth movement: start in Australia, get a good telescope and a hot-air balloon. Go up. Take a picture of the Eifel Tower in France. This should work for your 'model'. The interesting thing about ISS and other satellite tracking software is that you can wait for the object to pass over your head as indicated in the app, then go outside and watch it happen yourself. This happens because the software uses an accurate model of reality.

Here some software is written for the BBC Microcomputer, which even though it is thirty years old is still accurately predicting lunar eclipses. It does this because it is based on an accurate model of the solar system.

Here is some BBC Micro software for tracking the position of the day/night terminator on the Earth for any day of the year. Although there are many modern versions of this software, including www.timeanddate.com, I still use my trusty 8-bit version. This works for a globe planet. It does not work for the southern 'hemisphere' of a flat earth. The reason for this is because the flat earth model is nonsense.

I shall conclude this section be simply saying that there are countless apps for various platforms that rely on an accurate model of reality, or technology such as satellites that also rely on an accurate model of reality.

Let's now look at apps that use the flat earth model. I really can't wait to see what the world's best flat earth astronomers and flat earth software engineers have come up with.

Apps for the Flat Earth

um...

Gosh!

Oh!

Oh dear!

Aw!

Well, I'll leave it there and let you make your own mind up. If you liked this post, then you might like to read some other posts about the solar system, or maybe the BBC Microcomputer.

If you really hated this post then you probably think that gravity is a lie told to you by globe manufacturers to promote sales or something. Either way, you can post comments on my noticeboard.

A vision of 1970s Computing

I recently found a pile of books in the back of a cupboard at work. They are a series of books introducing children to the wonderful world of computers written in the early 1970s and published by Chambers. The books have inspiring names, such as "The Useful Computer" (IBSN 0 550 77111 5) and "The Computer Becomes Literate" (ISBN 0 550 77109 3). Throughout the books there are delightful photographs of computer devices being used in business (very few home computers in the early 70s).

Considering the age of the books, let's assume that they are fair use. Which is good because I want to post them here and write faintly amusing things about them.

In this image we can see a person from the 1970s using one of the most up-to-the-date computer systems to update her eHarmony profile. This would then printed out and placed on noticeboards around the building.

In the 1970s it was thought that Babbage's Analytical Engines would become smaller, faster and more portable. It was thought that the main use for these flawfless mathematical calculation machines would be for sending Tweets. This never came to be.

In this image we see an office worker phoning her boss to admit that she has deleted the spreadsheet, again. Yes, all 500 bytes of it.

A typical man cave from the 1970s. This gaming setup includes a tape deck which later evolved into the 'restore point'.

Early Facebook users from the 1970s would print out their friends profile pages and then spend their evening reading through them. If they 'liked' a post they would draw a little thumbs-up or heart next to it in red ink and send it back to them in the mail.

Whenever someone made a copy-paste error in their spreadhseets in the 70s, they would telephone the debug man who would spend his evening rewiring the spreadsheet. Typically, the problem was fixed in time for another working day.

Back in the 1970s storage devices were kept under lock and key. A specially trained technician would feed and train a small zoo of mice whose job it was to keep the spindle rotating high enough to achieve data transfer rates of up to 8 bits per second. It is from this practice that we get the computer terms 'mouse' and 'hard cheese'.

An early storage device from the 1970s. This one was mainly used to store cat photos, as they still are today.

A rare photograph showing early Tumblr memes being uploaded.

There was always much excitement in the office whenever a new Linux distro came out.

Back in the 1970s it was thought that the office of the future would involve desk after desk of office workers staring at their computer screens all day. Thankfully, this never happened.

If you liked this post, then do please share it with your friend if you have one, alternatively you could look at this other post which has nothing to do with the one you just read, or look at a home computer from the 1980s.

Weird things spotted in Whitby today

I went to Whitby today.

Whitby is a lovely town on the North East coast of England. Whitby is a place where you can be who you want to be. Whitby is home to the famous Lucky Duck; was the place where Count Dracula first arrived in England; and is home to the superdecade games chatbot - Mac.

You will see many strange things in Whitby. Today I saw some, and managed to get a few on camera.

Kleptoparasitism is a thing. This is how gulls feed. Just because you bought the chips doesn't mean that the seagull respects your property. I saw this gull trying to break into someone's car. When it realised that it couldn't peck through the roof, it decided to try and eat the aerial instead. Then it saw my chips and wanted some. It didn't get any. I am not sure why this fellow looks like it has a mustache, it just does.

There are many junk shops in Whitby. This one is selling a sarcophagus. The shop was closed, but there was a phone number to ring if you wanted to enquire about anything. I want to ask how much this costs, because, you know, you need somewhere to sleep at night.

Errr, what? I don't know what the actual flip this is. Moving on....

This shop selling LPs from some of the worst vermin of society.

Sorrrrrrrry

Taken from a poster by the authorities, encouraging us not to feed the vermin of the sea - the rats with wings, the aerial-munchers, the chip thieves. Is it just me, or does it look like that photograph of Theresa May? You know the one....

....Do NOT feed (or vote for unless you can afford to sell your house to pay for your health care).

If there was a programming language for Yorkshire

Being a typical Yorkshire lad, I do often struggle with the strict syntax of most modern scripting languages.  The solution is 'Ayup' - a programming language for Yorkshire folk.  It is powerful enough to quickly parse web pages when you are half way up to your neck in mud; need to run a regular expression when lost on Ilkley moor, and is easy enough to write even when you are steaming from an afternoon in the Dog and Ferret in Harrogate.

Starting a script in Ayup requires the shebang line:

#!/usr/bin/ayup

This provides a path to your Ayup interpretter.

Writing 'Hello World' to the terminal is as simple as:

#!/usr/bin/ayup
wri'aht("Ay up, World!")

It is useful to use a pragma to eliminate unsafe constructs in the dialect.  The following code demonstrates this.

#!/usr/bin/ayup
use none o' thy nonsense
wri'aht("Ay up, World!")
cop aye

All scripts in Ayup return 'aye' (true).

Iteration.

Iteration can be performed in a number of ways.  Consider the following code fragments.

Displaying all the elements of a list:

#!/usr/bin/ayup
use none o' thy nonsense
fer apiece o'these i' t' (ham):
wri'aht( thi' )
cop aye


Obtaining an iterator from an iterable list:

#!/usr/bin/ayup
use none o' thy nonsense
fer peas in (ham):
wri'aht( peas )

cop aye

Repeating until a condition is met:

#!/usr/bin/ayup
use none o' thy nonsense
repea':
#do something useful
keep buggerin' on until (<condition>)
cop aye

Selection

Boolean statements always evaluate as either 'Aye' or 'Nay' in Yorkshire.  Consider:


is (foo > nowt):
aye:
wri'aht("champion")
nay:
wri'aht("eeh by gum")
cop aye


Breaking out of a loop.  You can break out of any iteration simply with the pack it in statement.

Consider:

#!/usr/bin/ayup
use none o' thy nonsense
fer apiece o'these i' t' (ham):
wri'aht( thi' )
is (thi' is "peas"):
aye:
pack it in
cop aye

User defined functions

Functions are defined using the keyword mek.  Note the use of exception handling in this example.

#!/usr/bin/ayup
use none o' thy nonsense
fram maths impoart random

mek addition( thi' ) wang ValueErrorException:
a = thi' plus t'random.randa(1)
cop a

wri'aht( addition(5) )
aye

That's all for today.  Join us next time when we will look at object-oriented Yorkshire, and global (you're not from round here) variables.

Random Movie Titles

Do you suffer from writer's block?  Need to get a new block-buster written in a hurry?  Let the Random Movie Title Generator help you...

Let the Random Movie Title Generator give you inspiration when you write the next killer script.

Tabloid journalists use this app

Introducing a satirical look at the tabloid news - the Tabloid News Generator app(!)

Follow this link to load in your browser.

#satire
#tabloidnews