Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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27 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Convincing work. Perhaps the tides have turned., 31 Jan 2008
The most important and aspect of the book is suprisingly not the case made for ancient ruins on both the Moon (incl. an ancient skull of either a humanoid or android origin) and Mars, nor NASA and JPLs unscientific behaviour, nor the explosive last chapter about the Apollo 17 mission and its' classified elements.
Instead, it is the slam dunk case for NASA as an agency that is ultimately part of the vast defence strucure of the United States and powerful aerospace firms. It appears non-scientific in operation, has the structure of an intelligence agency and is ruled by politics. This wasn't news to me but I have never seen it presented this convincingly, and it just goes to show what both Martian Anomaly and UFO researchers have been saying all along: These things are covered up by provisions of the national security state, and it is the greatest threat to our freedom and future.
The chapters that detail the suppression of free energy, the lost discoveries of Faraday, Tesla and Maxwell are most interesting. It has been documented elsewhere how Oliver Heaviside pretty much destroyed the important 'scalar' and 'torsion-field' elements that were the original intention of Maxwells equations. The authors of Dark Mission however, also make a connection between the geometric relationships of the Cydonia artifacts, and mathematics of higher dimensinal space and how it can be tapped by us and is in fact tapped by all rotating bodies. They even give examples of this model on the planets of our Solar System.
As far as the argument for a delibarate "occult" reference system of NASA launches and landings (particualrly based on the celestial motions of the constellation Orion, the star Sirius and the so-called "Northern Swastika"), I don't feel like I know quite enough to say that the writers are right on that one. Certainly, there are elements in the early days of NASA that have some curious belief systems related to Osiris/Seth/Horus of pre-dynastic Egypt, but do those currents survive to this day? Decide for yourself, and perhaps look into some of Joseph P. Farrell's work.
Certainly there are things in this book I dont think are true, such as the proposed "mind wipe" by hypnosis so that the astronauts would not reveal certain things they allegedly saw on the moon. As far as I am concerned, and I know that Edgar Mitcell agrees because he said so at a convention I attended, this is baloney. Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? No.
The authors make lazy (and thus, irrespinsible) use of italics which can be annoying for experienced readers - I know didn't like it.
I really recommend this book, just know that the repetitions and the long descriptions of the troubled relationship betweenn NASA and independent researchers is very much worthwile. I also recommend that you check out the very interesting discussion of this book on the US Amazon site.
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15 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A loon writes..., 2 Nov 2008
I've read many books about UFOs and the like, and have considerable sympathy for the subject. This, however, is a rather embarrassing example of the lunatic fringe - in which it is revealed how NASA is just part of some giant unclear conspiracy to cover up all kinds of stuff to do with Mars, the Moon, alien civilisations, Egyptology, fourth-dimensional physics, oh and also a bunch of other conspiracies and sinister organisations.
The main author, one Richard Hoagland, writes of himself in the third person throughout, as if giving a gloss of drama and objectivity, yet this is a self-serving document, recounting the history of his brilliant ideas and his lame, biased or malign detractors, peppered with overuse of italics and shudder quotes in case you don't get the message.
But it is the wild extrapolations from extremely flimsy evidence that make this book just embarrassing and annoying to read. For Hoagland, blurry photographs of the Moon or Mars are a kind of Rorschach inkblot test: to his eye, ordinary rocks are 'mechanical debris' from some advanced but now-extinct interplanetary civilization. A rock with two dents in it is a 'robot's head' (and I suspect that a significant proportion of rocks look more like a robot's head than the example we are given). Mountains are 'pyramids'; a blurry row of rocks is a 'sphinx'. Inevitably, the not particularly face-like 'Face on Mars' gets much attention. These objects are rather more irregular than an advanced civilization ought to be able to produce - actually they look just like rocks and mountains - but this of course is explained by 'erosion' (even though no erosion takes place on the moon, not having an atmosphere or surface water).
Add to this a heavy dose of unconvincing geometry: draw enough straight lines on a photograph and you find some of them seem to connect these mysterious objects - or rather, they do if you draw enough lines and make enough use of wiggle room, such as saying a line connects to an object when actually it goes a bit to the side. (Ley lines, anyone?)
Then measure the angles produced, and with a bit more jiggling you can come up with something close to numbers that don't have any mathematical significance, like, say, e/pi, or e/root 5 - but why not more obvious constants like e or 5? Well, we are told, this is obviously an alien 'message' about hyperdimensional physics which tells us that the planets all contain a fourth-dimensional spinning pyramid or something...
Other photographs of the moon landings have even more bizarre interpretations: anything looking like a scratch on the negative is actually a 'buttress' supporting one of many giant glass domes over craters; these domes are naturally invisible in the photos (being made of glass), but hey, they're obviously there, aren't they? (Hoagland's inability to get any scientific journals to publish such results are naturally all part of the conspiracy.)
But wait, there are more dots to be connected. It's all something to do with not only the Masons, but also the Nazis (I kid you not). As shown by all kinds of things which turn out to be mysteriously symbolic: e.g. a particular moon launch occurs on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday (a date which after all only arises once every year). Quite why NASA would choose a launch date on such a cryptic yet symbolic basis, rather than - say - to do with the relative position of the earth and moon, is not clear; perhaps to send a secret message? To whom, and why? Some NASA announcement occurs three years to the day after JFK's assassination - all very suspicious and symbolic, so clearly is another secret message telling us we're-not-quite-sure-what. After all, the anniversary of JFK's assassination only comes round every year. (Come to think of it, isn't almost every day the anniversary of some more or less important historical event?)
NASA also uses strange symbolism in its official patches for space suits etc - for example, the Apollo program patch has a big letter A on it, secretly denoting (in the mind of Hoagland) not Apollo but Asar, an ancient Egyptian word for Osiris, i.e. the constellation Orion, which has something important to do with Egyptian mythology and hence pyramids and YOU SEE HOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE.
Quite how this book made it to the New York Times bestseller list is a mystery to me, and one rather more disturbing than the contents of this deranged and tedious book.
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4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
How stupid i am - for buying this book!, 22 Nov 2008
How stupid i am - for buying this book!
I enjoy the odd conspiracy books, and the odd alien/ufo book too, mainly to laugh at the loons i have to admit, but still they can be entertaining.
Not this book however. One thing is the constant use of italics and "quotes" where they are not needed - the pages are so heavy with them that sentences actually become hard to read. Another problem is the flimsy conspiracy evidence, mainly that on important occasions, any one of several stars could be 19.5 or 33 degrees above or below the horizon as seen from any one of dozens or 'ritual sites' on the earth, moon or mars. I'm sure you could make any date or time fit that pattern. Maybe I was born during an important conjunction?
It also seems that events are re-presented during the book, changing just a little each time they are mentioned until they fit nicely into the authors belief system. For example at the start of the book it's noted that Buzz Aldrin takes communion (a catholic religious rite) on the moon. Doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Later it's said that communion is based on and earlier ritual used by the Egyptians, which seems reasonable. Pretty soon though we get references to Egyptian rituals on the moon, and by the end of the book the authors are saying that Aldrin is a Horus worshipper whose first act on the moon was to perform his ancient rituals.
The biggest problem though is the author's ego. The book is full of self-promotion, and I'd say nearly half the book is devoted to putting down the authors critics, even going so far as to point out his critics spelling mistakes. It really is very petty, especially as one of the authors slides misspells night as 'nite' a few pages later.
If you still want a copy of this book, you'll find mine in the bin tomorrow morning if you're quick.
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