I befriended and consequently wished I had never befriended my first Green Beret at seminary. Suffice it to say, going from US Special Forces immediately to four years of Christian undergrad followed immediately by three years of Christian graduate studies is a bad idea. (All curious souls should be asking, “How does one pay for 7 years of schooling?” Good question. The answer is, “Post 9/11 GI Bill has 36 months of coursework and if you are collecting at least 10% disability ((most vets are)) you get another 48 months!”)

As I had flown operators like him around Iraq, while the rest of the seminarians hadn’t, he and I naturally bonded easily. (I fully aim to cause you to think of the Tesla Green Beret as I relate this experience with one.) He was intense. So am I. Yet I couldn’t help but feel weird around him knowing that at any time he had the upper hand and I was quite literally at the mercy of his mental faculties. He expressed once that one of the softer professors displayed a fear of him, which my friend chuckled off as if he was perfectly harmless.

But then the moment came when he texted me a flat earth meme. From that SMS until a mere couple of weeks later, he couldn’t release. My last text to him was, “I do not care what conception of the universe is in your mind, but I do believe that we should be able to change topics.” And his last text to me (in response to mine) was, “We cannot talk about anything else until you get that (effing) ball out of your head.”

Faithful readers know that I have posted either two or three anti-Flat-Earth-Lunatic posts on here with the purpose of giving easy to use conversational strategies to destroy these lunatics. The first post posited the employment of economics, first question being, “Have you ever started a business?” Last question being, “So you’re telling me hundreds, no thousands of workers (concrete for a rocket pad itself requires the use of Quickbooks to run accurate payroll for all involved) are being duped to work for nothing, but you can’t persuade anyone to give you their money?”

A second post offered, “Have you ever looked at the night sky through a telescope?” And if miraculously they answer “yes” you move to, “At your convenience, I am available these dates, please show me how to identify a planet from a star. They all look the same to me.” And today, I would offer a slight variation to this angle by suggesting we ask, “So, which brand of telescope you rocking these days?”

Recently, with all my reading, I am more and more anti-FELs. Not just for your reading pleasure, then, here is a third method of attack (or consider it training for your children and family).

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Me: “It’s not the stars that baffle me. It’s the dark.”

FLE: “Huh?”

Me: “I’m talking about the night sky. People are always ooooing and awwwwing at the stars—even creating horoscopes to this day based on them—but that’s not the awe-inspiring part of the night sky by my thinking.”

FLE: “Hmm. Umm. You know the earth is flat though, right?”

Me: “No it’s not. But seriously, think about the dark part of the night sky. The part in between the stars. You can see it right?”

FLE; “Sorry, I was looking at my phone. There’s this video right here that proves the earth is flat. What? Sure. Yes. Well, no. I mean, have I showed you where the Bible says the earth is flat? What do you do with that? You’re a Bible-believing Christian, yes?”

Me: “I think you did. But just look at it all. All that dark. What do you suspect accounts for it? Is it the black paint on Ptolemy’s sphere? Is it countless tubes of nothingness pointed from the bounds of infinity directly at the earth of all places? I mean, it stands to reason that since we can only ever see more and more stars with bigger and bigger telescopes—wait a minute. Have you ever looked through a telescope?”

FEL: “Gee. Look at the time!”

Me: “You want me to believe the earth is flat and yet you believe the dark you see unaided is actually darkness, even when using a telescope? Ha. Haha. Aaaaahahahaha. Okay. I’ll stop. Now what were you saying about some video?”

FEL: (Crickets. And then assuredly they return to not looking through telescopes.)

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You’re welcome, Blog-O-Sphere.