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News Briefs 14-10-2010

69 days? In Sera, it would have been 69 seconds!

Thanks Kat, Susan & John.

Quote of the Day:

“Be honest, now: who’d really rather go on an adventure with Indiana Jones than be lectured at by Richard Dawkins?”

Henry Gee, senior editor of Nature.

  1. ◦The alien invasion predicted for Oct 13th was… unimpressive.
    Looks like some prankster released a fleet of mylar baloons over NYC.

    You know, the notions that UFOs are the handiwork of extraterrestrials/interdemensional beings/time travelers/cryptoterrestrials are beginning to wear thinner and thinner . . .

    1. Only if you refuse to
      Only if you refuse to actually study the evidence available, in more than a cherry picked few cases. If you rely solely on retired NORAD officers to produce evidence suggesting a non terrestrial origin for UFOs, you will be disappointed when the goods don’t materialize.

      If 99% of UFO cases can be explained as misidentified aircraft, balloons or unusual natural phenomena, wonderful, it’s that 1% we should spend the extra effort to examine, thoroughly and honestly.

      I suspected that psuedoskeptics would swarm all over this prediction, should it fail to pan out. Anyone expecting a smoking gun to result was fooling themselves, there was no evidence to evaluate, no reason to take Stanley Fulham at his word, and thus it was an empty claim.

      Using Mr. Fulham’s failed prediction (which few seriously entertained as credible) to discredit and discount UFO researchers who do provide evidence is wholly dishonest. Try your hand at critically analyzing the strongest cases, rather than picking at low hanging fruit. While easy to critique, such weak cases aren’t an exercise in critical thinking but an opportunity for the skeptic to comfortably confirm his or her own biases and, of course, post unsuitably smug conclusions in Blogland.

      1. Reply
        Sorry to say, I’m moving further and further away from accepting otherworldly explanations for UFOs. Why? It’s become far too easy to hoax a UFO event online and have it go viral almost instantaneously. Therefore it’s being done with increasing frequency.

        I’m currently reading Mark Pilkington’s book, and although in a few instances I think he may be stretching the point, generally it’s a sobering look at how UFO buffs (yours truly included) have been naively buying into deliberate fabrications and disinformation. One of the more surprising (to me) revelations in the book is that we’ve had the technology to fake radar data since the 1950s. Wow, does that call into question some pretty well-established cases.

        Also, I just finished Jacque Vallee’s “Messengers of Deception”, (thanks TDG), which highlights and questions the darker agendas and motivations of many involved in the UFO “movement”.

        I’m no longer an uncritical believer. Now I’m a firmly skeptical one.

        1. Good!

          I’m no longer an uncritical believer. Now I’m a firmly skeptical one.

          It was rather liberating when I “liberated” myself from any preconceptions about UFOs. Ets? Cryptoterrestrials? Ultraterrestrials? I don’t have the faintest idea.

          Not having to defend any belief system allows you to look at the reports with a more skeptical eye —skeptical in the TRUE sense of the word, like you see the term.

          So I don’t believe in any one specific theory… but I suspect many things 😉

          1. And….
            I will join you in your assertions. I would like to believe. I have some suspicions. Years in Navy Aviation also gave me insights about some things, and disabused me of others.

            I am a religious man, and a Pagan. I also support the scientific method, and see no problems between religion and science. Two halves of the same coin.

            But…yeah. I enjoy my new found skeptical freedom. I have no doubt there are other forms of life out there. I’m just not sure they are visiting us just yet.

          2. Oooooh

            Years in Navy Aviation also gave me insights about some things, and disabused me of others.

            Care to elaborate? heard any juicy aviator encounter with a UFO?

          3. Well….
            There are plenty of tales about that sort of thing.

            What i was alluding too, though, is that when skeptics talk about “UFO” stories being a cover for US (or other nation’s) black projects, there is a LOT of truth in that. There’s a lot of funding that is hidden in plain sight. The most obvious, which many folks miss, is the over-charging, the going over budget of other projects. No one really pays $50000 for a toilet seat, or $2500 for a hammer. yes, there were the odd tool sets, like a beryllium socket set that ran $10K a pop. Those, however, were actual needs, and were used by Avionics Techs to adjust and calibrate the MAD (Magnetic Anomaly Detection) gear on the P-3 Orion and S-3 Viking ASW aircraft.

            No, a LOT of the funding for black projects (and other, SpecWar stuff) is put into up-front budgets that are then “let out” to be way over budget, cost over-runs, etc, except that the real dollars are going to the special projects, but being billed as cost over-runs, etc, to mainstream projects.

            I know folks who have seen UFO’s and refuses to say anything about them because it would have been terminal to their careers. I’ve also known of ops that would most definitely been considered UFO events by folks outside the loop who would not have known what they were seeing.

            I also know that’s it’s pretty doggone hard to keep a secret in the US Military, even when you are trying to. There are just too many folks in the loop to keep things quiet. that’s why you make cover stories, partial news releases, etc. The idea is to keep the lid on the project as long as possible, but understand that, eventually, news is probably going to get out.

            I still believe we will discover life on other planets. I still believe we MAY have been visited by other races. However, I believe that Project Blue Book was a great cover for US black projects, and that this sort of thing will continue for generations to come.

          4. Secrets in the military

            I also know that’s it’s pretty doggone hard to keep a secret in the US Military, even when you are trying to. There are just too many folks in the loop to keep things quiet. that’s why you make cover stories, partial news releases, etc. The idea is to keep the lid on the project as long as possible, but understand that, eventually, news is probably going to get out.

            Well, the Manhattan project is a good example that the Military CAN keep a tight lid on things.

            Then again, many investigators suspect that, if there really is some sort of reverse-engineering of UFO technology currently applied, that the secrets are being protected by private corporations, where secrets are easier to maintain. And in reality that’s the way the black budget operates, as you yourself pointed out.

            No, I definitely do not discount the idea that many UFO sightings are secret American spy planes, and that the US might have the means to simulate some aspects of the UFO phenomenon.

            If I were a serious UFO researcher, I would avoid UFO organizations and bulleting boards like the plague! I would conduct my investigation in utter secrecy until I found some substantial evidence. I would then present the evidence, and immediately leave the UFO field —forever! 😉

          5. Red Pill . . .
            I’ve been feeling for awhile that some “UFO activity” could be covert domestic survellance by the military/intelligence community. Since general surveillance of this magnitude would be illegal, it would have to be covered up or obfuscated at all costs. In some situations (e.g., immediately post 9/11) there might have been some justification for this. Or maybe, they were just testing and calibrating spy toys (ever the optimist, moi).

            I’m not a paranoid person or into conspiracy theories, but this could explain some UFO events, if you think about it.

          6. downtown New York City
            The Manhattan project is a good example of how highly important secrets leaked to a known enemy in a fairly short time.

          7. really?
            Even after the detonation of the first atomic device at Trinity, not even the vice-president of the United States was aware of it.

            And on top of all that, Roosevelt himself authorized the first “black budget” with it, allowing the “financial alchemy” that covered all tracks from its funding, even from Congress.

          8. That’s true, but…….

            The Soviet union knew of our Atomic weapons program before Potsdam. In fact, thanks to their spies such as Klaus Fuchs, Stalin knew of the bomb before Truman did. The Soviets detonated their first nuclear device in August of 1949.

          9. Soviets
            Acquiring the bomb was probably more the result of Oppenheimer’s doing, than the cunning of Soviet spies.

            From Wikipedia:

            General Groves during the war had thought Oppenheimer too important to the ultimate Allied goals to oust him over this suspicious behavior; he was, Groves reported, “absolutely essential to the project.”[48] However, by 1947, Oppenheimer had now told two conflicting versions of this story, had both of them taped without his knowledge and importantly was taped in a later interview as admitting to have made up a deliberate lie in this first report.

            So yes, the Manhattan project was not only an experiment in atomic fission, but also on how to establish a National Security State.

            After that the branches of military separated, the CIA was created, and later the NSA —an agency the American people did not learn of DECADES later.

        2. (Hiccup)
          [quote=purrlgurrl]Sorry to say, I’m moving further and further away from accepting otherworldly explanations for UFOs. Why? It’s become far too easy to hoax a UFO event online and have it go viral almost instantaneously. Therefore it’s being done with increasing frequency.[/quote]

          While I personally disagree with attaching non-phenomenal reasonings to so many UFO sightings, I find the concept very intriguing and loaded with potential.

          For instance, if there has been any kind of long-term conspiracy to control the subject of aerial phenomena, would the controllers be just as intent to prevent opinion from swinging the other way?

          This (of course) assumes that the UFO is (for one reason or the next) actually nothing more than an en-mass mind f**k, so that keeping the bubble of belief between the lines would be just as important coming from one direction as the next.

          So, if we (the public) were to begin leaning away from UFOs being so otherworldly and more towards something more mundane, then we may begin to see an uptick in sightings in order for the belief to be rebalanced.

          Hmmm…

    2. Anything but…
      Actually, after first arriving at that same conclusion… I have since been forced to consider the nearly unanimous eyewitness reports that these objects either hovered stationary, unballoon-like… or performed maneuvers that would make an F-16 look like a Model T.

      But then again, I do tend to accept what I hear from the MSM so… it was probably balloons… or Chinese lanterns, or Venus, or temperature inversions,… or maybe even gas from the Hudson River.

      Anything but the unusual.

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