Flat Earth

http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1324

Dear diary,

A strange thing happened at work last week. Neil from Personnel dropped by and told me that the Earth is actually flat, and that there's been a huge conspiracy for centuries to keep people from realising the truth. And now I am part of it, apparently!
I asked him if that meant that we were the 'them' that conspiracy nuts go on about it. He said that no, they are the them and we are the us, and that there are hundreds of thousands of us and we are everywhere, which is how we keep it all up, and that 'they' weren't actually nuts, or if they were nuts they were actually right.
I asked him if 'they' were right about the UFOs too, and he told me not to be silly, since there was nowhere for flying saucers to come from, and even if there was we were going too fast for them to catch up with us, so of course I said sorry for being so foolish.
This is obviously all going to take some getting used to.
I then asked him the question why we did this - why hundreds of thousands of people would keep this hoax up - and he said he wasn't sure, and that he supposed you had to be pretty upper echelon to find that out, but he thought it was 'probably something to do with money'. I asked if any of the thousands of people who were approached had ever decided they didn't want to join, and had then told other people it was all a lie, but he didn't think that had ever happened. He didn't think anything bad would happen to you if you did, because it 'wasn't that kind of conspiracy', but he didn't reckon anyone had ever let on, even if they decided not to join.

I asked him about gravity, and he gave me a pitying but not unkindly look and said that when he told me we were travelling too fast for UFO's, he meant that the 'Earth disc' was actually travelling upwards at '1G'. I said did he mean like a lift, and he thought yes, that was probably about it, but he started looking in his pockets for his glasses right then.
I asked him then for proof about the whole 'flat Earth' thing, and he did look at me and asked me straight out what I'd accept as proof. Well that stumped me, because photos and film footage can be faked [apparently we do a lot of that]. The only thing I could think of was a trip into space to look at things from the edge, but apparently there aren't really such things as spaceships anyway, so that's out.

So I then had the thought that if it was difficult to prove one way or the other, then what actual difference does it really make, if the world is round or flat, in a practical sense? But when I looked at his animated face, and saw the conspiratorial glances he shot at me when we looked out at the people - at 'them' - going past the office, I didn't really have the heart to say it.
So I said, "OK, I'm in."

Apparently the sun and moon are both the same size, and they are flat too, and only a few thousand miles away. Fancy.

So now it's the weekend, and I watch my daughters playing in the garden, with them little suspecting that there is no such thing as antartica but just an ice wall around us, at the edge of thought, 150 yards high. Or was that 150 miles high? And won't they ever be surprised when I tell them; - when they are old enough to really understand.

_________________

Thecla is hungry

... even though I have just fed her.