Modern Activities
In 2004, Daniel Shenton (not related to Samuel) resurrected the Flat Earth Society, basing it around a web-based discussion forum. This eventually led to the official relaunch of the society in October 2009, and the creation of a new website, featuring the largest public collection of Flat Earth literature in the world and a user-edited encyclopaedia. Moreover, the society began accepting new members for the first time since 2001, with musician Thomas Dolby becoming the first member to join the newly reconvened society. As of March 2012, around 420 people have become members. Shenton has also conducted several interviews since the society's relaunch, including in The Guardian newspaper.
A related forum of the International Alliance of Flat Earth Groups is currently inactive. The Flat Earth Society is also represented on Twitter and Facebook.
Current proponents of the Flat Earth Society do not have a central alternative theory; different members have unique ideas on how the Earth is constructed. Some claim that it is a finite plane of unknown extent accelerating upwards at 9.8 m/s2, whilst others claim it is an infinite plane.
Read more about this topic: Flat Earth Society
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or activities:
“All that remains to the mother in modern consumer society is the role of scapegoat; psychoanalysis uses huge amounts of money and time to persuade analysands to foist their problems on to the absent mother, who has no opportunity to utter a word in her own defence. Hostility to the mother in our societies is an index of mental health.”
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“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)