Forget what you learned in elementary school the earth is flat as a pancake. All that stuff about the earth being round and the sun being the center of the universe is a big joke, insists C.K. Johnson, the one time president of the International Flat Earth Research Society, who died in 2001. The group takes great pleasure in poking fun at "globites." Did you know you were being insulted in that way? "You Globite!"

The organization, backed by 1400 members from around the world...or rather, from across the plane, still gets scads of mail from dedicated teachers and students who blast it as a group of kooks and charlatans. Maybe it is, but Johnson claims the society's largest single group of members is docto…