Cherry picking passages out of context to misrepresent serious authors is a common tactic of Flat Earthers. Here are some common examples which repeatedly crop up, even after they have been corrected.
Flerf stupidity knows no bounds. A common claim is that if the earth were a sphere then we’d be using maps printed on curved paper, not flat paper. That they cling to this stupidity and present it as one of their chants shows the level of critical thinking among flat earthers.
The June 18, 2019 edition of Yachting World carried the article ‘Back to basics: Offshore sailing by celestial navigation alone’ by Andy Schell. Flerfs have seized on the following paragraph from that article.
In simplified terms, when we take a sextant altitude of the sun we’re creating a right angle triangle between it, the earth’s surface at the GP, and ourselves. Grade school geometry tells us that the two angles in a right-angled triangle must equal 90°.
They claim that this proves celestial navigation uses a right angled triangle with flat sides in order to measure the elevation angle of a celestial object. One of the sides of this triangle is the earth’s surface, therefore the earth must be flat.
Schell is clearly wrong, so why would he write this?
(more…)