Nixta Sinks

Watch out! They're using science on us!

This brief spout of drivel at NPR (via, of all people) talks about defining the height of things as being closer to the moon than above sea level. Fair enough, and interesting, unless you get it all utterly wrong...

I haven't had a chance to think much about it, but the argument is full of such arbitrary nonsense as would shame a thirteen year-old student flicking elastic bands and bogeys around a physics lab.

Therefore people in Ecuador, Kenya, Tanzania and Indonesia are all a bit closer to the moon (not much, only about 13 miles closer) than people standing at the North and South poles.

Allow me to elucidate: For example, what do they mean by "closer to the moon" and "closer to outer space"? I thought the moon followed a largely equatorialish orbit (i.e. it doesn't pass over the nasty cold poles by any stretch, preferring to race around the hot equatorial middle of the earth - mmmm toasted cheese). Given that, and the diameter of the earth of about 7,900 miles, a tiny bit of imagination (imagine a nearly spherical sphere), I fail to see how the poles can be 13 miles further away from the moon than the equator.

In terms NPR *might* understand.

I should have known when they got "sphere" confused with "circle" (interesting, but largely irrelevant). Let's hope no impressionable kids or NASA engineers read or heard that "report" - it could cause untold damage to future generations of English-speaking spacefools.

Until now, I thought only the moon was an alabaster retard

Labels: Mighty Boosh, Moon, NPR