Monday, March 27, 2017

Richard Hoagland comes up worse than empty

        Only Hoagland himself knows how many suckers are still paying him five bucks a month for membership in "Club 19.5," whose sole benefit is access to the archives of his radio show. Since there have been no new shows since last October, it's a rapidly vanishing resource--I imagine that members must have, by now, heard all the shows they have any interest in.

        The Great Mr. Hoagland seems to be feeling just a teensy bit guilty about taking their money, since he feels they deserve some collateral compensation. On the Other Side of Midnight web site, this notice appeared last November:
"[W]e are giving the loyal Club 19.5 members that have stayed with us during our recent hiatus, Richard C. Hoagland’s latest and most anticipated work – just recently completed with The Imaging Team from the show. This gorgeous and pioneering new book, “The Hidden History of Mars: A War In Heavennote 1 with a foreword by Dr. Joseph P. Farrell, chronicles the Human Race’s Ancient History on the Red Planet with groundbreaking information that has largely been hidden from the world until now."
Last Friday, this appeared on the Book of Fools:
"Club 19.5 Members!! You've been patient, you've been faithful, and now - the GIFTS will begin! There is a broadcast coming up in the next few days that to even KNOW about you need to be in Club 19.5."
        The chutzpah of the man is world-class, isn't it? He manages to make a notice of an upcoming interview seem like a gift. I hope all those "club members" laughed, as I certainly did.
 
        Well, obviously I'm not a loyal member, but it was not hard to grasp the grapevine and learn that the "gift" was notice of yet another interview with Howard Hughes on talkradio.co.uk. Added to the hyperbolic adjectives "gorgeous,"  "pioneering" and "groundbreaking" we now had "vitally important new discoveries," "revelations,"  "new insights, new information," and "the Ultimate Game Changer." WOW--this must really be something, right?

A Major Let-down
        The interview went on as planned at 11pm BST (Euro-clocks went forward this last weekend, hooray) and I tuned in. I even sent a couple of SMS messages, but they were ignored. Obviously, HH wanted to know right off what amazing revelations this new book contains. My lower jaw hit the ground as Richard Hoagland, instead of showing us game-changing marvels, recounted the whole history of his involvement with pseudoscience, decorated with the name-droppings of Cronkite (3 times,) Roddenberry (twice,) and Sagan (once.) He gave us the detailed history of the so-called Face on Mars (yet again,) and the blow-by-blow drama of the landing of Viking 1 in July 1976 (he was accredited to that event as a writer for an airline magazine.) Pioneering? Insights? Revelations? Not a bit of it. He gave us "The Brookings Report told NASA to hush up evidence of ETs," and "NASA is really an adjunct of the Department of Defense," both well-worn claims, and both wrong. He even repeated his false claim to have coined the phrase "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" (the bon mot rightly belongs to New Yorker cartoonist Peter Steiner.)


        Considering its build-up, this was a lame, lame failure. I took heart from the few tweets that HH allowed. One said quite frankly, and correctly, that there was nothing new here. Another said basically that Hoagland's well-known conclusions from all this are disputed. At that, Hoagland said "This person is obviously refusing to look at the data. It's all there on enterprisemission.com, all free. If you don't do your homework, you'll end up in the dust of history."

        At that, I got mighty annoyed. It's a repeat of what he asserted in September 2013-- "I am sick to death of my stupid critics saying I'm nuts because they won't look at the data." On that occasion I had a sharp riposte for him. Hoagland, if you're listening, it applies just as much today.


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[1] I think the title has now been changed but I can't remember the new one

16 comments:

expat said...

Interestingly, Hoagland made the same point about circadian rhythms that Mike Bara did a week ago with Jimmy Church. He actually had a better example--people trapped in an underground cave with no means of telling time.

I looked up the case of Michael Siffre and found that RCH is right about that. Siffre's "day" lasted a bit more than 24 hours.

On the other hand, the same research pointed me to this controlled study: The circadian rhythms of human subjects without timepieces or indication of the alternation of day and night. The opening paragraph is:
"Seven solitary subjects, and two groups of four, spent from 5 to 13 days in an isolation unit without knowledge of time. Three solitary subjects and one group of four adopted fairly regular activity habits with a period of 25-27 h; one subject adopted a period of 30 h, and one of 27 h initially, decreasing to 24-25 h after a few days. One group of four awoke roughly every 24 h, after a sleep which was alternately about 8 h, or about 4 h and believed by the subjects to be an afternoon siesta. Two solitary subjects alternated sleeps of about 8 or 16 h, separated by 24 h of activity."

So there's that.

Trekker said...

I wonder if the Chilean miners also lost track of time, at least in the weeks before they were discovered alive.

expat said...

Some of them would certainly have had wristwatches, so probably not. The 24-hour cycle became very important, since they had a tiny amount of food doled out on a daily basis.

Trekker said...

Yes, that's true, all right!

Anonymous said...

I couldn't find a replay on that uk radio page, nor has HH posted it
to his unexplained.tv website.

Anonymous said...

Hoagland must figure that people are willing to pay for Dick's-closure?

Chris Lopes said...

Since he did this on someone else's show, I'm guessing the dream of radio stardom is over. George Noory can breathe a sigh of relief and go back to whatever it is that he does for a living. Hoagland can return to pretending he's important.

Anonymous said...

Am I the only one who is amazed that HH has had Hoagland on his programme twice in just over 90 days?

I could sort of understand HH putting up with Hoagland on Christmas Eve (after all, who wants to appear on a chat show on Christmas Eve?). But having him on again before the first quarter of 2017 is even over? That I don't understand at all. Surely HH hasn't forgotten what a dull, uninspiring, and generally awful guest Hoagland is in that short a time, has he?

I'm beginning to suspect that HH has the same contempt for his listeners that Hoagland had for his back in the ever-increasingly distant past when RCH was busy talking over guests on his own show. If HH inflicts Hoagland on his audience again anytime in the next six months, my suspicions will be confirmed.

WS

Chris Lopes said...

HH may have had him on for the same reason Noory used to. Hoagland could always be counted on to show up (like what the heck else did he have to do?) if a planned guest couldn't. If you're running an alt-reality show, it's sometimes easier to go with the aging hack then come up with someone more interesting, but less available.

Anonymous said...



Hour Two
"Hoagland's was RIGHT ... BEFORE NASA, 37 Years Ago ... Again!"

Thirty-seven years ago, in December, 1979 (published in January, 1980), I wrote a seminal article in "Star and Sky Magazine" -- picked up and sent around the world by AP, lauded by Dr. Robert Jastrow (one of the founders of NASA), and Arthur C Clarke and (later) Ted Koppel -- scientifically PREDICTING, decades BEFORE NASA--
"The oceans of Europa [one of the four "Galilean Moons" of Jupiter] are the PERFECT habitat [beyond the Earth] for CURRENT non-terrestrial life!"
37 years later -- last Thursday afternoon, April 13, 2017 -- NASA held a national press briefing in Washington DC, sent around the world via satellite and NASA TV, confirming that I had been right all along!!

Here's the link to the CNN story re the NASA "Ocean Worlds" Press Briefing last week.
NASA: Nearby ocean worlds could be best bet for life beyond Earth

My article only dealt with the specifics of Europa's habitability, but it foreshadowed the existence of an entirely new CLASS of habitable worlds DECADES before any NASA scientists or NASA missions had discovered them--
"Ice-covered moons ... housing 'world oceans' ... protected by a tens-of-miles-thick covering of ice!"

'Here's the original "Star & Sky" article where I laid all this out, in 1979 ....
The Enterprise Mission - Europa
http://www.enterprisemission.com/europa.html

If I was scientifically ahead of NASA on this, why could I not be right about Mars, the Moon and everything else I have been saying in the ~40 years since ...!?
THAT'S the subject of our discussion."
Richard C. Hoagland

https://www.facebook.com/OtherSideOfMidnight195/posts/1441033745972144

expat said...

Aaaaarrrggghhhhhhhh not the false Europa claim yet again.

Gary Posner answered that better than I could.

So did Ralph Greenberg.

Chris Lopes said...

That a new show or a repeat?

expat said...

It was Robin Falkov's daily show on freedomslips, yesterday.

Chris Lopes said...

So he still hasn't figured out the 100+ year old technology known as radio. If you can't handle radio waves, you shouldn't be trying to invent a new kind of physics. Just a thought.

Anonymous said...

Are you saying NASAss' full of shit?

Ocean Worlds
Water in the Solar System and Beyond


https://www.nasa.gov/specials/ocean-worlds

Chris Lopes said...

The point isn't that there aren't oceans under Europa and other worlds. The point is that Hoagie didn't invent the idea. There is a science article on the subject that predates his article by 9 years.