[PatrickHenry]

The scientific case against powered flight

1. For thousands of years, powered flight has been known to be impossible.
2. If God meant man to fly, He'd have given us wings.
3. There is no evidence of powered flight. None at all.
4. Those who claim to have flown are liars, in it for the money.
5. Things seen in the sky other than birds are, in truth, evidence of supernatural beings.
6. The Second Law of Thermodynamics rules out heavier-than-air flight.
7. Powered flight upsets the natural order, and leads to sexual promiscuity.
8. Powered flight is not mentioned in the Bible.
9. Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), a highly regarded scientist and president of the Royal Society of London, stated flatly in 1885, "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
10. It takes more faith to believe in powered flight than to believe in the tooth fairy. Teach the controversy!

[VadeRetro]

9. Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), a highly regarded scientist and president of the Royal Society of London, stated flatly in 1885, "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."

You have to wonder if anyone asked Kelvin about birds and insects.

[Liberal Classic]

Lord Kelvin also said "Radio has no future" which turned out to be utter nonsense. However, he also said "When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge of it is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced it to the stage of science."

[Coyoteman]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three laws:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Clarke's Law, later the first of the three laws, was proposed by Arthur C. Clarke in the essay "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination", in Profiles of the Future (1962). The second law is offered as a simple observation in the same essay; its status as Clarke's Second Law was conferred on it by others.

In a revised edition of Profiles of the Future (1973), Clarke acknowledged the Second Law and proposed the Third in order to round out the numbers, adding "As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there."

[longshadow]

7. Powered flight upsets the natural order, and leads to sexual promiscuity.

Ahhh; that would explain the "Hot Nympho Stewardess" erotic film genre...

[MeanWestTexan]

"8. Powered flight is not mentioned in the Bible."

Well, except for Elijah(sp? -- there's two and get the spellings mixed up) episode with the Chariot of Fire.