STATE OF MIND

Although it’s still a year away, the 500th anniversary celebration of Christopher Columbus’s myth-shattering voyage is shrouded in controversy. One group in particular has a bone to pick with the captain they blame for instigating one of history’s greatest lies. They are the International Flat Earth Society.

Headquartered in Lancaster, the society has 3,500 members across the, er, plane, dedicated to furthering the “fact” that Earth is “Flat, Level, a PlaneWorld.” A infinite plateau with magnetic North at its center, it is circumscribed by the “Southern Ice,” a region so vast that humans have never crossed it.

“There is no such thing as the ‘South Pole,’ ” says Charles K. Johnson, president of the Flat Earth Society for 20 years. “Science is a false religion, a weird, way-out occult concoction of jibberish theory-theology, unrelated to the real world of facts.”

Of course, that “real world” is flat. The Flat Earth-ers have proof, too, such as the following, from the current, quarterly Flat Earth News: “The Mississippi River flows from north to south. According to the accepted theory, it must, therefore, be continually ascending (Earth’s) bulge as it nears the equatorial line. It is contrary to the nature of water to run uphill.”

As for satellites pictures of our planet-- “NASA and the entire carnival is a fake,” Johnson says. “Like taking civilians and schoolteachers to space. They couldn’t do it, had to rub ‘em out, to get off the hook. They can’t take Hubble to space to get the pictures so (they) make excuses. No one has been to the moon.”

As strange as it sounds, the Flat Earth-ers are on the level. Literally.