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News Briefs 30-01-2008

Long and bitter, and a touch controversial.

Thanks Greg.

Quote of the Day:

“Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.”

Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, former CIA Director (1960)

  1. Billy Cox’s swipe at Newsweek
    A couple of hours before Monday’s bout with food poisoning struck, I found the Newsweek article Billy’s talking about, as I was searching for news. After copying the url into my list, I revised Newsweek’s headline to more accurately reflect the content:

    Disinfo Demons in the Dark: Scientists offer lame explanations of UFO sightings.

    Here are a couple of the comments under the article:

    solarchariot said:
    Evolution and magnetic fields hardly explains multiple people experiencing the same phenomena. Yeah, I understand that people frame things based on their psycho and sociological paradigms, but just because a hundred years ago people saw demons instead of aliens doesn’t mean that they weren’t experiencing something, it just means they lacked the tools and words to frame the experience. But the magnetic field explanation? Yeah, you can zap people’s brains and they will experience ‘phenomena’ but every person comes out with a very specific, often symbolic symbol or experiences that is individualized and significant to them and them alone.

    Don’t remember any reports of earthquakes in Stephenville. Don’t remember any solar flares that might have screwed with the earth’s magnetic fields. Question is, why did the military originally deny they were in the area? And why now do you publish this quaint little article that dismisses the sightings, slight of hand fashion, by saying, oh don’t dismiss the experience?

    When twenty thousand plus people witnessed the UFO over Phoenix, it took three months before anyone reported it nationally! Why was that? Is it because it’s hard to dismiss 20,000 people, including pilots and air traffic controllers? And when the government finally came out a few years ago and admitted that the supposed bodies found in Roswell were just mannequins pushed from high altitude balloons as an experiment, do you really expect people to believe that a poor farmer in New Mexico was unable to distinguish between something alien and a mannequin? And the best military officers of their time couldn’t distinguish between a balloon and metallic debris? Give me a break. The American public is not as stupid as the media would like to make us.

    rjciardo said:
    “The answer is yes, but it would require 100 million centuries to transfer the data of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bits.”

    This line really amuses me… I remember being in the second grade (I’m 40 now) and reading a story about computers. The question was, could a computer ever hold as much information as the human brain. The answer was “yes, but it would have to be the size of the Empire State building”. Why? Because computers in the 1960’s relied on vacuum tubes. Imagining a technology that can transfer information faster than we can is relatively easy, since they already have it in Japan. But it really isn’t a stretch to imagine that something we’ve never thought of yet could do it by many orders of magnitude.

    I think this whole story, which says “Don’t make fun of people who SAY they see UFO’s” is in fact making fun of them. I’ve never seen one, but if I and twenty other people in the same town see something that we can describe in detail, then it may not be an alien spaceship and we may be putting an explanation together out of known phenomenon, but it is NOT some kind of mental illusion like the demons or angels of the middle ages.

    The man who was judging distances and speeds was a PILOT, who has presumably covered that same distance at a known speed. He was not just wildly guessing or making things up. The underlying tone of the article is that because these people don’t live in New York or Washington, they are unsophisticated bumpkins likely to be having medieval hallucinations. Talk about imagining and believing things that aren’t real. A reporter might try investigating why the US military so consistently comes up with belated and conflicting accounts for UFO sightings in a way that truly strains human credibility. Now that would be an interesting story.

    Ibis said:
    The so-called ‘scientific explanations’ in this article were so lame that they far more convince me of the existence of UFO’s than debunk them as a myth. For all of their stupid alternate explanations, they don’t explain why so many people in and around this Texas town ALL saw the same thing simultaneously. There must have been some real stimuli to make them all see the same thing and this article does nothing to address that or explain it in anyway.

    1. Newsweek article
      Ahahah, I just posted a story about that Newsweek crud. First thing I looked at after posting it was Rick’s news and your comment. Funny stuff.

      Hope you’re feeling better now.

      Kind regards,
      Greg
      ——————————————-
      You monkeys only think you’re running things

  2. New geological epoch
    Yep, found that ‘new epoch’ news too:

    Scientists propose changing the name of the geological epoch we are living through from the Holocene to the Anthropocene.

    Recrimp tinfoil – check.
    Don body armor – check.
    Arm all electronic security – check.
    Move cot, food and water to underground bunker – check.

    Okay, I’m ready. One of you had better go ahead and call the ambulance now, because as soon as you know who reads Anthropocene

    …the apoplexy will surely cometh.

      1. Duh!
        That’s obvious: When giant mutant cockroaches take over the world!

        Then it will be the Roachecene… or the Coprofaguecene… or something 🙂

        —–
        It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
        It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

        Red Pill Junkie

  3. Quote of the Day
    In that article published in the New York Times, Feb. 28, 1960, Roscoe Henry Hillenkoetter, director of the CIA from 1947-1950, also said:

    “The U.S. Air Force has constantly misled the public about UFO’s. I urge congressional action to reduce the danger from secrecy.”

    Excerpts from Air Force Order on ‘Saucers’ Cited – Pamphlet by the Inspector General Called Objects a ‘Serious Business’:

    WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 [1960](UPI) –
    The Air Force has sent its commands a warning to treat sightings of unidentified flying objects as “serious business” directly related to the nation’s defense, it was learned today.

    An Air Force spokesman confirmed issuance of the directive after portions of it were made public by a private “flying saucer” group.

    The regulations, revising similar ones issued in the past, outlined procedures and said that “investigations and analysis of UFO’s are directly related to the Air Force’s responsibility for the defense of the United States.”

    Existence of the document was revealed by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.

    The privately financed committee accused the Air Force of deception in publicly describing reports of unidentified flying objects as delusions and hoaxes while sending the private admonition to its commands.

    Vice Admiral R. H. Hillenkoetter (Ret.), a committee board member and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said in a statement that a copy of the inspector general’s warning had been sent to the Senate Science and Astronautics Committee.

    […]

    The Air Force has investigated 6,132 reports of flying objects since 1947, including 183 in the last six months of 1959. The latest Air Force statement, issued a month ago said, “no physical or material evidence, not even a minute fragment of a so-called flying saucer, has ever been found.”

    Admiral Hillenkoetter said that “behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFO’s.”

    “But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense,” the retired admiral said. He charged that “to hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel” through the issuance of a regulation.

  4. Lonely people believe in the paranormal
    Richard Dawkins must be quite the party animal then 🙂

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

  5. Turkish UFO
    FAKE!

    I viewed both the footage and the reporter talking about the images to the cameraman: the camera had a zoom converter attached, so x40 zoom was used. Ever tried holding a small camera still at this magnification? At the very least you get vision trails from the CCDs.

    In creating thhis footage, it looked like a basic vision mixer was used, moving a UFO graphic around the black screen.

    Very poor attempt, one which will not stand up to proper scrutiny.

    Regards

    Nostra

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