Free Republic

When last we heard of “Mad Mike” Hughes, the 61-year-old limo driver and stuntman who planned on launching a $20,000 steam-fueled rocket with “RESEARCH FLAT EARTH” painted on the side some 1,800 feet into the air at 500 miles per hour, the gosh darn government had intervened to tell him he couldn’t conduct any such launch on public lands. But Hughes has not been deterred, and in a number of posts on his Facebook page he claims to have a real launch planned for February 3rd. This one will be a vertical rather than horizontal launch, which Hughes believes will...

What explains all of these flat Earth believer stories which keep popping up in the media? Bear with me here, because this may be a bit on the “meta” side as the kids like to say these days. I’m not talking about the phenomenon itself, where people supposedly claim that the planet is shaped like a pancake and the government, no doubt in league with Big Globe, is trying to bury the truth for some nefarious reason. The question I was pondering this week is why the media keeps paying so much attention to it. And I’ve got a theory...

In the stew of false information and conspiracy theories that swirls online, perhaps no idea is as flummoxing as the belief in a flat Earth. Flat-Earthers believe that the Earth is a flat disc ringed by an ice wall. All those elegant models of a round Earth that perfectly explain seasons, eclipses, sunrises and sunsets? Lies and cover-ups, they say. Pictures of the round Earth from space? Government conspiracies. The fact that you can see ships disappearing hull-first over the curve of the horizon with your own eyes? Well, flat-Earthers claim to see something different. It's been a big publicity...

Kyrie Irving appears to seriously believe the world is flat. Or if he doesn’t, he takes some sort of twisted joy in pretending that he does. And now he has Nike on board, spreading ignorance to impressionable youth. First, Nike gave him a flat-Earth cameo in this Christmas day commercial promoting his new kicks. Now there’s this monstrosity on display at Boston’s “Sneakeasy” sneaker event. That is a Kyrie 4 hovering over some sort of Nike-sanctioned display purportedly explaining Irving’s nonsense theory. Feel free to reach your own interpretation. Surely, Nike sees this as all fun and games and...

Support for the Flat Earth movement has been exploding in popularity, with millions believing NASA is trying to dupe us about the shape of our planet. Google Trends data reveals searches for “flat earth” in the past two years have tripled, with a 90 percent surge in interest in the cranky conspiracy theory. High-profile celebrity endorsements have helped grow a community of people who reject “globehead” thinking and insist that the world is in fact flat. Those coming out about their belief include NBA player Kyrie Irving, who said in a podcast that he believed the Earth is not the...

A California man’s quest to prove the Earth is flat will begin sometime next week when he plans to launch himself 1,800 feet in the air in a homemade scrap-metal rocket. “Mad” Mike Hughes, a 61-year-old limo driver who describes himself as a “self taught-rocket scientist,” has spent the past few years constructing a homemade rocket from scrap parts. His ultimate goal is to fly 10 miles above ground to prove the Earth is flat and disk-shaped. Hughes has invested $20,000 into constructing the rocket, which he hopes will travel at roughly 500 mph. Hughes’ initial plan was to launch...

A California man who planned to launch himself 1,800 feet high Saturday in a homemade scrap-metal rocket — in an effort to prove that Earth is flat — said he is postponing the experiment after he couldn't get permission from a federal agency to conduct it on public land. Instead, Mike Hughes said the launch will take place sometime next week on private property, albeit still in Amboy, Calif., an unincorporated community in the Mojave Desert along historic Route 66. “It's still happening. We're just moving it three miles down the road,” Hughes told The Washington Post on Friday. “This...

A California man intends to launch himself 1,800 feet high on Saturday in a home-built rocket to prove that astronauts faked the shape of the Earth. Mike Hughes, a 61-year-old limo driver, said his stunt will be the first phase of the flat-Earth space program, sponsored by Research Flat Earth, a group that believes Earth is, well, flat. He claims to have built the steam-powered rocket out of scrap metal parts in his garage. The project cost around $20,000, including the purchase of a motor home off Craigslist that was converted into a ramp.

Seeking to prove that a conspiracy of astronauts fabricated the shape of the Earth, a California man intends to launch himself 1,800 feet high on Saturday in a rocket he built from scrap metal. Assuming the 500-mph, mile-long flight through the Mojave Desert does not kill him, Mike Hughes told the Associated Press, his journey into the atmosflat will mark the first phase of his ambitious flat-Earth space program. Hughes’s ultimate goal is a subsequent launch that puts him miles above the Earth, where the 61-year-old limousine driver hopes to photograph proof of the disc we all live on. “It’ll...

As the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) is striving to achieve its goals to advance the country's technology and aeronautical field, it is facing an anachronistic problem that has been emerging recently: Flat Earth believers. The group, which became a social media phenomenon last year, believes the Earth is flat instead of round. They often cite modern conspiracy theories, as well as literal, non-mainstream readings of the holy scriptures, as the basis of their statements. ... First expressed during the time of the Ancient Greeks, the flat-earth misconception has often reared its head over the centuries. The latest...

Shaq, a college graduate, defended Kyrie, saying: “It’s true. The Earth is flat. Listen, I drive from coast to coast, and this sh*t is flat to me. You mean to tell me that China is under us? It’s not. The world is flat.” One of Shaq’s podcast co-hosts refuted his assertion by saying, “We’ve seen the Earth from satellite imagery.” Shaq replied by saying that could be manipulated. To buttress his statement, Shaq pointed to the inaccuracies taught in school, such as the theory that Christopher Columbus had discovered America.

Maybe Kyrie Irving would have benefited from a few more years of that pricey Duke education. The Cavaliers point guard, who has established himself as one of the premier players in the NBA, caused a stir by saying he believes the earth is flat, not round, while participating on the podcast “Road Tripping with RJ and Channing.” “This is not even a conspiracy theory,” Kyrie said. “The earth is flat.”

The words “Google Flat Earth” were found carved into Mount Rubidoux this week in letters that were approximately ten feet tall and visible from the air. An aerial photo posted to social media by the Riverside Police Department’s air support unit showed only the “Google” portion of the message was still discernible as of Feb. 4. While the Riverside Parks Department brought in crews from a CAL FIRE camp in Norco to re-seed the area so the grass can grow and cover up the letters, a man believed to be behind the message reportedly encountered a city employee at the...

When I first heard that rapper B.o.B apparently believes the Earth is flat, I sighed the weary sigh of a science writer facing down an anti-science culture. Evolution, climate change, vaccines, and now #FlatEarth? “Are you kidding me?” I thought. Will Americans insist on rejecting everything that 100 percent of scientists agree on? Aside from B.o.B’s delightful diss track aimed at Neil deGrasse Tyson (and Tyson’s equally delightful response), this latest dustup just felt like more of the same. But then I clicked through and read B.o.B’s original arguments, and they stirred my very soul.

...Bundy naturally just disavowed the militia movement in solidarity with the migrant caravan, suggested that nationalism is actually the opposite of patriotism, and said that Trump’s America resembles nothing so much as 1930s Germany. Last week, Bundy posted a video to Facebook in which he criticized President Trump for demonizing the Central American migrants who were traveling in a caravan to seek asylum in the United States. “To group them all up like, frankly, our president has done — you know, trying to speak respectfully — but he has basically called them all criminals and said they’re not coming in...

WEST POINT, Va. (WRIC) -- Students and parents in West Point, a town roughly an hour east of Richmond, are rallying behind a teacher put on paid administrative leave following a transgender controversy at the school. A French teacher at West Point High School, Peter Vlaming, is currently on paid administrative leave for not using a student's preferred identity pronoun. 8News reached out to the school for comment but West Point Public Schools cited the incident as "a personnel issue" and declined to respond about the status of Vlaming's case. Students told 8News that Vlaming won't use male pronouns for...

I wrote about my family’s and others’ experiences in my upcoming book, Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission. These are stories every Christian should know because the people affected by this system failure need our help. The church is equipped to advocate for and walk alongside people with mental illness. Our shame and abandonment are the last things people affected by such illness need. In general, the church tends to handle mental illness in one of three ways: ignore it, treat it exclusively as a spiritual problem, or refer people to professionals and wash our hands of their...

Sit down and read this essay in The New York Times by Andrea Long Chu. It is, inadvertently, an icon of our radically disordered culture. Here's how it starts: Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don't expect it...

Amber Tamblyn shared her grim-sounding story from the 2016 presidential election as well as the impact the aftermath had on her as an expectant mother. The star revealed that she had brief thoughts of having to give her child away to Canada or Sweden in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. [Snip] “A dark realization swallowed me: I was going to bring a baby into this world. And not just any baby: a girl,” she said, revealing that’s when she had the thought about having to give her daughter away to Canadians or Swedes to save her from whatever perceived...

In February 2017, Trump repealed an Obama-era rule to strengthen the federal gun background check system after the 2012 shooting of 20 young students and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. There are laws in the United States regarding the sale of weapons to some mentally ill individuals. It is unlawful to sell a firearm to a person who "has been adjudicated as a mental defective" or "has been committed to any mental institution." Obama's regulation would also have required the Social Security Administration to send the names of some people unable to manage their disability...