At time of writing, BoB was citing Genesis
Would this be the biblical one or the musical one?
A US rapper has embarked on a mammoth tweet fest to correct at least 500 years of misinformation that the world is not flat, slamming amateur and professional astronomers in the process. BoB, also known as Bobby Ray Simmons Jr, has occasionally pontificated on matters astral in the past, but some time on January 24 kicked into …
No me neither. Genesis, in any of it's "phases" didn't seem to say much about the earth being flat or otherwise and I can't remember those who left the band saying anything on the subject in their solo careers.
As for the Bible I can't think of a reference in the book of Genesis. The only reference I, not a bible scholar, can think of is Isaiah 40:22 which refers to the circle or possibly globe of the earth so I think Mr BoB will have to go it alone on this one.........
"He'll be someone who thinks he's a musician too."
Next he'll be saying something like...oooh, I don't know....imagine something completely ridiculous, you know, absolutely totally fuckwitted, like, erm, he's the greatest living rockstar or something...
"He'll be someone who thinks he's a musician too."
Do rappers consider themselves to be musicians? I'm not sure but they might not, based on a statement, if I correctly recall it, from Public Enemy, "we're not musicians and we don't respect musicians."
I like to use then as ammo for arguments with other kooks (I think there was an xkcd comic along those lines). For instance, when the local member of the tinfoil hat brigade was filling us all in on the Russian soldiers that Obama (whups, sorry "Bama" ) had living in the secret tunnels under the Denver airport, you point out that they couldn't possibly do that because the Ebola that Bama genetically engineered to wipe out 80% of the US population would have killed them.
"The thing to do with these kooks... I like to use them as ammo for arguments with other kooks"
Whether flat-earthers or 9-11 Truthers, creationists or "alternative-medicine" enthusiasts, they aren't going to change their minds, and you aren't change their minds for them. So why do you bother?
"'[... they aren't going to change their minds, and you aren't change their minds for them.] So why do you bother?' Everybody needs a hobby."
That's a shitty excuse. It's scarcely better than having gone to see Wesley Willis perform, or going to a David Icke lecture. And you end up being... not too different from them.
Find a better way to reinforce your self-esteem.
"You're not one of those gullible people who believe there are no conspiracies are you?"
Obviously there are conspiracies - the word wouldn't exist without the concept. What do you think PRISM and TIA and Ed Snowden's whistleblowing was all about? Those were real conspiracies.
But like many other things they run the gamut from the real to the ridiculous. There's the proven ones, like the NSA spying regime and the corruption of tax-evading corporate cartels; then there's the unprovable but questionably plausible ones like the CIA being behind Kennedy's assassination and the Bush administration knowing about 9/11 before it happened but doing nothing about it; and finally there's the outright Stan Deyo-level woo, such as the world being secretly ruled by chemtrail-spraying reptoids and NASA covering up evidence of polar holes leading to a hollow-world Agharti.
How far up that tree you want to carry your beliefs is entirely up to you of course, but if you want to retain any degree of credibility I recommend looking up the 7 warning signs of bogus science as a starting point to establish whether a given conspiracy is feasible or not.
+1 for the link to Dr Park's "Seven Signs". My hobby now: posting that link on a metric shedload of kooky YouTube videos :)
More seriously, a proper sociologist could have a field day with conspiracy theorization [1]. Why are such ideas so attractive to certain individuals, and so enduring? It must be something to do with the gloating pleasure that the believer gets from feeling superior to the "sheeple". The very existence of that word is a data point. It would be interesting to know how many people believe in two or more scientifically unrelated conspiracy theories.
[1] Pedant warning: may not be a real word
We know that the Moon disappeared, after a vast explosion in 1999. What we now see, is merely a projection, put there in order to reassure us. Done by NASA in conjunction with Roscosmos, ESA and I'm sure that the Lizard-Person himself, Brian Cox, is also involved.
"Who the hell cares?"
That is an excellent question.
Although a few of these comments are genuinely funny, when some of these people see someone with Down's Syndrome, for example, do they then go home and point out to their friends and family how much smarter they are?