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Rods. What the hell is wrong with people?

Sledge

Grammaton Cleric
Sledge
Joined
Oct 4, 2009
Messages
7,114
Had a virus for a few weeks now, and find myself awake at odd hours. This morning, whilst flitting through the channels, I saw a show called "Rods!" was on. This is an hour long documentary about the phenomenon of rods, mysterious flying rods that appear sometimes on videos people have recorded.

I made it about two minutes in before thinking "this is all pish." I honestly cannot see how anyone can look at this footage without thinking "that'll be an insect causing motion blur as it flies past the camera." So I check the Wiki article and it seems that not only is this the common consensus, but that people have tested it by setting up nets where these "rods" have appeared and capturing them!

Really, why are people so desperate to believe in any old tosh? Is the wonder of the world not already enough? Is it not enough, as Douglas Adams said, to see that a garden is beautiful without also having to believe their are fairies at the bottom of it?
 
I can understand wanting to believe there's something more. I just can't understand why someone would settle for so little as their "proof." At least the UFO folk have stuff that is unidentified.
 
The fun thing is that there's a really easy test for this. If I recall, it's one of Bill Beatty's ideas, from his 'amasci' website, which is always a fun read. The idea is to put an x made of thin pieces of black tape over the lens. It'll be out of focus and won't show up on any part of the image that's focused. It will however show on the unfocused parts of the image, like rods or 'orbs'.

I found the link! http://amasci.com/freenrg/ideas.html#orbs

On another note, my brain goes in strange directions, and my first thought was 'rods from god'. Google it if you want to see the future of warfare. It's enough of a weapon for Sledge Hammer himself.

A
 
Don't talk to me about rods from god. I had a lengthy debate on another forum with someone who thought the recent NASA LCROSS mission was a test of just such a weapon. He couldn't comprehend the notion that firing part of a rocket into the moon would give pretty much no useful data for a system firing tungsten rods to Earth. I think that contributed to my frustration with people being prepared to believe anything in spite of the evidence.
 
I have been amazed that people seem to prefer magical explanations for rather mundane phenomenon. I was out with a friend one day and his 11 year old kid was sitting on a step with his friend and this woman walks up to us with a dog and the dog immediately goes to the kids sniffing them and seeking attention. My friend asked the women if she thought the dog was going to the kids because it sensed there "innocent" energies or some claptrap. The women responded blithely, no I think its because they are low to the ground and non-threatening. I didn't say anything but it took some effort not to laugh at my friend.
 
I saw a documentary about them where they had a regular film camera and a high speed camera together. On the regular camera, what appears to be a classical rod appears. On the high speed, you can clearly see the moth without the motion blur.

The real question is, why are there still shows about rods that don't show that?
 
Sledge said:
Had a virus for a few weeks now, and find myself awake at odd hours. This morning, whilst flitting through the channels, I saw a show called "Rods!" was on. This is an hour long documentary about the phenomenon of rods, mysterious flying rods that appear sometimes on videos people have recorded.

I made it about two minutes in before thinking "this is all pish." I honestly cannot see how anyone can look at this footage without thinking "that'll be an insect causing motion blur as it flies past the camera." So I check the Wiki article and it seems that not only is this the common consensus, but that people have tested it by setting up nets where these "rods" have appeared and capturing them!

Really, why are people so desperate to believe in any old tosh? Is the wonder of the world not already enough? Is it not enough, as Douglas Adams said, to see that a garden is beautiful without also having to believe their are fairies at the bottom of it?
Click to expand...
People like to believe in thinngs like rods, ghosts, bigfoot, etc because to them it makes the world a more interesting place. It must be traumatic to have a "haunting" scientifically explained like James randi does from time to time. It must be frustrating to go looking for an eight foot tall bigfoot and find nothing but tracks which are fake.

No ghosts, no rods, no bigfoot is very boring for a significant number of people.
 
Andrew Wiggin said:
The fun thing is that there's a really easy test for this. If I recall, it's one of Bill Beatty's ideas, from his 'amasci' website, which is always a fun read. The idea is to put an x made of thin pieces of black tape over the lens. It'll be out of focus and won't show up on any part of the image that's focused. It will however show on the unfocused parts of the image, like rods or 'orbs'.

I found the link! http://amasci.com/freenrg/ideas.html#orbs

On another note, my brain goes in strange directions, and my first thought was 'rods from god'. Google it if you want to see the future of warfare. It's enough of a weapon for Sledge Hammer himself.

A
Click to expand...

It is a shame that the production value of that website isn't any better. The author seemed to put a lot of thought and execution into the information.
 

This is a picture I took last year and it shows insects flying near streetlights in London. I saw the insects and knew how they would appear on the picture. That's Tower Bridge in the background. I watched some of the programme but it was rubbish.
 
Sledge said:
...
Really, why are people so desperate to believe in any old tosh? Is the wonder of the world not already enough? Is it not enough, as Douglas Adams said, to see that a garden is beautiful without also having to believe their are fairies at the bottom of it?
Click to expand...

I suspect that some portion of everyone's life is lived in a form of a fantasy role-playing game, where they're not fully aware when they move between the two.

And some people have become VERY high level and expert players.

But as you noted, the keyword I think is 'desperate'. Thoreau said "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Allowing one to be suckered into beliefs like rods I think is like primal scream therapy in a desperate attempt to break that silence.
 
The programme is on at the moment on Virgin 1.

Dramatic music and references to "conspiracies of silence" and "watching the skies". And a total lack of any explanation other than from the believers.

Oh well, Police Academy 27 (or whatever) is on Fiver...

ETA ITV4, not Fiver - sorry about that.
 
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This show particularly struck me because it's such an easy one to test. You set up a camera, you set up some nets. As soon as you've seen a rod on camera, you check the net. Case closed.

I can kind of understand UFO nuts, because sometimes there are unidentified things in the sky. Ok, they almost always turn out to have a mundane explanation, but there remains those few cases you can point at and say "No one knows what THAT was! It COULD be an alien spaceship!" And the rest of us have to acknowledge that it's not completely impossible, whilst knowing that the chances of it being ET are tiny. But at least it's something that can't be disproved by someone with a video camera, some net and a day or two to kill.
 
I saw about ten minutes of Rods! earlier this evening and had a similar reaction. When they showed the first rods I instantly though "oh, it's a insect."

Interestingly, the show had a card and voiceover at the start along the lines of "This is one possible interpretation of the evidence and there may be other views."
 
Careyp74 said:
It is a shame that the production value of that website isn't any better. The author seemed to put a lot of thought and execution into the information.
Click to expand...

He actually writes his HTML to the lowest common denominator on purpose, according to him. He's actually got a note somewhere, linked off the front page, about why his site looks so crude. It makes it platform and browser independent, and lets him edit it anywhere without special software. I actually do much the same as he does on some websites I maintain, but I do put a bit more time into background, images, layout, and such.

Bill's theory of webpage design:

http://amasci.com/mistake.html


A
 
Sledge said:
Don't talk to me about rods from god. I had a lengthy debate on another forum with someone who thought the recent NASA LCROSS mission was a test of just such a weapon. He couldn't comprehend the notion that firing part of a rocket into the moon would give pretty much no useful data for a system firing tungsten rods to Earth. I think that contributed to my frustration with people being prepared to believe anything in spite of the evidence.
Click to expand...

I just want to be the one to press the button when they get around to testing it, and watch a convenient mountain or something disappear.

Rods: woos wax poetic about faeries and such
God: woos get all warm and fuzzy about faith
Rods from God: Woos sprint away from ground zero while soiling themselves

A
 
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