Alien Worlds Magazine

Stan Friedman on UFO Skeptics and SETI

2008-08-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

Below is an extract of an interview with Stan from issue 4 of Alien Worlds Magazine.

When you are on shows like Larry King, why don’t you hammer the sceptics? You need to be ruder.

I’ve been that. I’ve been strong and harsh. I’m not a namby pamby proponent. I’m a hard hitting nasty guy when it comes to not tolerating crap from idiots like Michael Shermer for example or Seth Shostak when we’ve been on Coast to Coast radio. I give no mercy to those guys because as a scientist I resent somebody standing up and acting as if he was a scientist and yet who knows nothing about the subject. That’s not a good database for a sensible thought if you know what I mean. Bill Nye for example who I’ve recently been on Larry King with is a science educator who’s done a lot of television and he’s worked in aerospace a little bit many years ago, but he’s basically just an entertainer.

Isn’t he a children’s TV scientist?

Yes. He did a lot of that. I was looking on Amazon and I couldn’t find any books by him on UFOs, of course, because that would take some work, just as Shostak hasn’t written one, nor has Shermer. It takes work and you’ve got to look at some evidence and these guys don’t want to bother with that. Whenever I meet them, I always look forward to a nasty, noisy, negative bashing going on. I’ve lost my patience with these guys a long time ago to tell you the truth. I did an interview yesterday with a guy I’ve known for forty years and he was a little surprised about how strong I came on in the new book about the SETI guys and astronomers in general and mostly in particular.

But I’m at an age in my life when I feel no need to be kind. I’m not looking for jobs from any of these people and I’ve got to tell it as it is. This shocks some people and that’s too bad. But I give specifics when I blast these guys. I’ll give you an example of that because it illustrates the difference. When I was on Coast to Coast radio with Michael Shermer he starts off by saying, “Look, there’s nothing to this. You get a 5% residue of crap when you look at anything unusual.” So I blasted him with “That’s obviously untrue. In the biggest study ever done for the Air Force Project Blue Book Special Report 14, 21.5% of the 3,201 examined could not be explained completely separate from the 9.3% for which there was insufficient information. In the University of Colorado study, according to a special UFO sub committee of the world’s largest group of Space scientists, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 30% of the 117 cases studied in detail could not be examined.”

“In the UFO Evidence, 18% of the 4,500 cases examined by the mostly professional members of NICAP could not be explained.” I think I gave them a couple of other examples as well. He never recovered and I got 80% of the vote at the end of the show. But the comment I kept getting from people was, “Shermer didn’t know anything”. I had read two of his books.

But they won’t know anything, will they, because it’s very easy for them to say, “There’s no evidence”. I know that you jump back in and say there is but the bottom line is Stan you cannot show them a UFO and you cannot show them an alien and they’ve got that. Whatever other evidence you can hold up…………..

I’ve got physical trace cases, I’ve got multiple witness radar/visual cases, I’ve got five large scale scientific studies and I also point out there are many other areas where we don’t have a hunk of something. Give me a piece of a neutron star please. Give me a piece of a super nova. They’re real. If a 747 goes by and I look up and say, “Oh that’s interesting. They don’t usually fly by here” and I write it down, well, I can’t prove that it flew over. Will thy ask me to give them the 747? That’s nonsense. Have I got to shoot it down? You have to adapt your method, your evidential method of proof, to the situation at hand.

I think that is a justified comment in relation to the subject of UFOs. But what happens if you are dealing with a scientist who is based in practicality and hard science and who can conduct an experiment and has a result that he can see and that he can test and replicate. How do you convince somebody like that?

Carl Sagan raised that argument the last time I visited him. Reproducibility; that is the essence of science. I sent him a letter with details about this. There are at least four kinds of science. Yes, one is the reproducible, controllable experiment. You set it up and describe exactly what you’ve done and what your results are. You submit it for peer review, you publish a paper and you hope other people can duplicate it. That’s fine. We need a lot of that sort of science.

There’s a second kind of science however where you can predict but you can’t control. If I tell you that sometimes the Moon comes between the Earth and the Sun and makes it dark, well you know that to be true but I can’t control it but I can predict when an eclipse will occur. And if I have equipment and the weather is clear, then I should be able to make some measurements. That’s science even though I can’t control it.

The third kind however is when I can neither predict nor control but I can hope to observe. Earthquakes for example: I can set up a network of seismographs and I can’t tell you when and where one is going to happen but when it does, I can examine the seismographs.

The full interview is published in issue 4 of Alien Worlds magazine.

http://www.alienworldsmag.com.

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Alien Worlds Issue 4

2008-08-13T04:25:00.000-07:00

Issue 4 of Alien Worlds magazine is now out on the newsstands in the UK and will reach foreign climes anon.

You can buy a copy online at our site at

http://alienworldsmag.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=101

FYI, in a week or so, the magazine will also be available as adownload. More on this soon.

Here is a rundown on some of the articles and interviews in this edition:

Interviews

Stan; Why I Hate SETI

Distinguished, eminent and now controversial, Stan Friedman is themost famous UFOlogist in the world. Respected and yet dismissed,lauded, ridiculed, revered, and a general all round punch bag, you love him or you don't, but without his contribution, the world of UFOs would not be what it is today, and there's not a lot of people you can say that about.

Although it always seems like Stan has a new book out,surprisingly there have only been four and the latest, Flying Saucers and Science, is a rampage of revenge and vitriol as he cuts and hacks his way through the stupid, the inept, and the downright dumb unfortunates who have dared to tick him off over the years. And nowhere does he reserve his deepest loathing more for than for dear old SETI and his nemesis Seth Shostack.

Buckle up and hold tight as Stan bounds out of his corner with both arms swinging. Low blows galore.

The Aetherius Society

Still going strong after over 50 years, an anachronism that has adapted and stayed the course, The Society is a throwback to the 50's and the contactee movement that has gone full circle and now finds its popularity on the rise again.

Never one to push themselves forwards and with virtually a negative recruitment policy, they are a deeply spiritual movement that has much to offer the UFO community in the present day. A lot of what they do and believe remains shrouded insecrecy and ignorance and so we were pleased to be given full access to Richard Lawrence, their European Executive Secretary, for a frank and open interview.

Jon Ronson, Gary McKinnon, Albert Stubblebine III, and a Goat

Jon Ronson is a journalist, author and documentary filmmaker and avery talented and funny guy. A Guardian columnist, he writes in a sardonic and wry style and is drawn to the weird and quirky. It is that trait that has pulled him towards UFOs and more importantly, the strange world attached to it. That isn't the sum of his work by any means, but it is an area that he has returned to more than once.

That is not to say that there is anything weird or quirky about Robbie Williams or Gary McKinnon for example, or at least I don't think. He recently made a documentary with Robbie for BBC Radio 4 about UFOs and he is turning the Gary McKinnon story into a screenplay.

He is the man who brought us such wonderful visual dramas as The Men Who Stare At Goats, Them: Adventures with Extremists, The BilderbergGroup, The Satanic Shadowy Elite, and David Icke, The Lizards and The Jews, all documentaries shown on UK Channel 4. We caught up with him as he was out walking……….

For Christ's Sake, Don't Mention the "God" Word

Next to the war in Iraq, the subject of Intelligent Design in the United States has been the most viscous and hotly contested debate the country has known for some considerable years. At its very core lies the fundamental differences between the Old World and the New, and the fight by the philosophical and political Centre and Left of American Society to keep at bay the perceived gradual ongoing intrusion by religious fundamentalists into the day to day lives of American citizens.

Professor Guillermo Gonzalez was Assistant Professor in the Departmentof Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University. In 2004 he published a book called The Privileged Planet which postulated the rare earth argument, namely that the location and conditions and intelligence in and on planet Earth are extremely rare throughout the Universe and possibly unique. He further argued that Earth was particularly conveniently positioned in a prime location for observing the Universe. As a consequence he concluded that the Earth had to have been intelligently designed.

In 2005 and in association with colleagues from other universities in the State of Iowa, over 400 faculty staff members signed a petition opposing all attempts to represent Intelligent Design as a scientific endeavor. Without being named, the petition was obviously aimed at him and in the ensuing uproar, Gonzales was eventually denied tenure and left the University.

In a case that has become a cause celebre, hegives us his side of the story.

UFOs And The Politics Of Reality

David Cherniack is a major documentary film maker with a mantelpiece full of Gemini awards from Canadian TV, with over 70 films shown onCBC, TVO, VisionTV, Life, History and APTN. He became attached to the flagship programme Man Alive for 13 years where he visited the subject of UFOs and related areas several times. In 1996 he went independent specialising in what are known as long form documentaries through his company All in One Films. He does pretty much all the production work himself to keep costs down.

In May he came over to the UK and while here gave me a screening of his latest film UFOs And The Politics Of Reality. Made over a four year period, he has interviewed some very impressive people and the film has been very positively critically acclaimed. In this interview, he tells us what he thinks about abductions, UFOs, and the making of the film.

The X Files.

The dynamic duo are back and as a homage and acknowledgement of the debt UFOlogy owes, we carry an interview with David Duchovny.

Features

Albion Dreaming

Drugs are a very bad thing as you know. You have read the tragic stories and you have seen the press. You may know people who have had difficulties with substance abuse or you may have had problems yourself. It is consequently a subject that attracts profound emotional reaction and judgement.

There are two problems related to the condemnation of drug taking. Firstly, many millions of people take drugs without obvious problems and enjoy doing so. The pleasure of taking them is something rarely mentioned for obvious reasons but it has to be recognised that people do it because they like it. And secondly, despite the drug problem being a phenomenon that started with the permissive 60s, it didn't. Drugs have been around with Man for thousands of years and there isn't a tribal village in Australia or South America or the Pacific or the Far East or frankly anywhere where hallucinatory drugs haven't play a part or still do in the life and culture of that Society. In short,man has been doing his brains in for thousands upon thousands of years and often, when he has done, he has seen strange things.

Researcher and author Andy Roberts gives us the background of LSD use in the West and explores the drug's connections to alien sightings.

Are Crystal Skulls genuine artefacts or ingenious fiction?

In a balanced and extensive article, Nick Parkins casts his eye over the history and evidence relating to the Crystal Skull myth, including the latest testing by the British Museum, and asks why this story still stays the course with loose ends that just will not lie down and die.

Sci Fi Worlds

In what we hope will become a regular column, Richard Thomas casts his eye over the ongoing phenomenon that is Dr Who, the characters and parallels with real life.

Alien Interview

Remember Glenn Dennis the mortician at Roswell AFB and the nurse who told him to shove off before the MPs got to him because he wasn't meant to be there "or you're going to be in a lot of trouble."? Well here's a stupid question; wherever did that nurse get to?

Lawrence Spencer has written a book called Alien Interview which purports to carry the Roswell testimony of one Matilda O'Donnell MacElroy. The UFO world has had countless bogus stories foisted upon it by snake oil salesmen who insist their stories are true but can it deal with a man who insists that his story is a work of fiction? Frank Warren gives it a go.

UFOs, Crop Circles and Cryptids: What the Hell is going On?

Some people stand still within UFOlogy and hold on to the same set of ideas during the course of their journey. Others change as they process what they experience and discover, and Nick Redfern is one of the latter. He's moved from Hero to a man with a question mark over him in the eyes of some and yet the inability of anybody to nail an explanation to the mast that answers all of the questions, or even some of them, leads Mr. R down a path that not all would wish to follow - yet. Join him and see where he takes you.

War Of The Worlds

Nigel Watson examines the origins of Sci Fi in the build up to Welles' 1938 broadcast and the cultural fall out that has ensued since.

Opinion

Paul Kimball's Above and Beyond

The Myth of the ETH as ETFact
An outstanding, brilliantly argued perceptive piece from Paul who continues to advance the cause of modern UFOlogy with reasoned,provocative thinking. There are few better minds in the subject today capable of considering the subject from an objective perspective.

"By focusing on the idea that little green/grey men have been coming here in nuts and bolts spaceships, ETFacters have done a grave disservice to the search for truth about the UFO phenomenon, and its possible alien origins, in the same way that thousands of years of religious leaders have undermined the search for the true nature ofGod by force-fitting it into a limited paradigm that simply served to reinforce their own worldview. They have not sought wisdom, nor understanding - they have simply proclaimed an "answer" which has been no answer at all."

No Defence Significance

Joe McGonagle examines the weaknesses and reasoning behind the claimfrom the Ministry of Defence that UFOs are of no defence significance.

The Round Files: The Real Truth Behind the Real Truth Behind SERPO

I warned you with Daniel Brenton's first column that you needed to beon your toes and I repeat it again. This man walks the line and when he loses his balance and falls, how and where he lands confuses some people. Stay alert!

Rob Bignell

A subtle examination of just what buttons will be pressed when "life" is discovered somewhere else.

Plus more!!

http://www.alienworldsmag.com

Cardiff UFO Blues

2008-06-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

The events relating to the recent Cardiff police helicopter UFO “attack” aren’t funny. Yet again a major sighting by a seemingly impeccable source turns out to be nothing of the sort and once more we have been taken in by freaking lanterns. It saddens me therefore to say that I have been laughing my ass off ever since.

The reason for my mirth is that this time, people who should have known better got bitten and in doing so, have compromised the ideals by which they stand. In the UK there was much excitement and anticipation at this event for after all, it was the experienced crew of a police helicopter who made the report. Every one of them a trained observer who could spot a balaclava clad Chav from 1,500 feet while eating a prawn sandwich and scratching his crotch.

Yet the value of so called expert witnesses has been called into question in recent years, something with which I whole heartedly concur, but that didn’t stop instant FOIA requests from being thrown in and much telephoning of press offices and a general scurrying around. There was unquestionably a major emotional commitment to this event and the sense of anticlimax and profound disappointment when the denouement was revealed could be felt like a ton of bricks.

Personally, this has been a defining moment for me. I thought prior to this that I had been drifting towards a sceptical perspective. I now realise this isn’t true and that what I really am becoming is a cynic. I was no more intrigued by this sighting than I have been with any UFO report of recent times and my sense of a let down was minimal. What a menche.

Furthermore and as a consequence, The Sun newspaper has taken it upon itself to go on a UFO kick and has been running front page stories on the subject for the last few days, ably abetted and assisted by our good friend Nick Pope. The fact that the Sun is a tabloid and is fundamentally incapable of taking anything seriously, let alone the subject of UFOs, has resulted in much wailing and hand wringing amongst the cognoscenti and aforementioned experts who fell for the Cardiff trick. Why can’t UFOs be taken seriously they cry? Because they’re funny, that’s why. Why can’t the subject be written up responsibly and accurately? Why should it be and frankly, who cares anyway? They’re freaking UFOs for God’s sake. Get a grip.

Rich Reynolds; UFOlogy’s Biggest Pain In The Ass

2008-06-20T01:17:00.000-07:00

A series of extracts from the latest edition of Alien Worlds magazine issue 3

3.The Rich Reynolds interview; Rich just talking……………….

AW: You were talking a few moments ago about Stan Friedman, and in terms of the way you paid tribute to the guy, I have no disagreements. But, somewhat belatedly recently, Loren Coleman gave a reboot to a previous blog posting of yours which went the rounds again and caused a stir. I refer to it as the “Kill them all” piece (in which Rich postulated that UFOlogy wouldn’t move on until all the older researchers and observers had died. Although he never said it, there was a sense within the article of him urging them to get on with it – Ed). Stan would be a perfect candidate for that category. He is one of the old guard. He’s been there since the year dot and really, surely, its people like him that you just want to sweep away in order to usher in a new way of thinking and a fresh approach.

RR: Stanton Friedman is like Moses, telling the story until we’ve had enough of it. But he’s a venerable kind of guy and he’s up there in years, in fact not much older than me, but I would hate to see anything happen to him. He is the ballast in the UFO ship. I think he’s wrong about the MJ12 documents and a couple of other things, but he musters enough evidence to keep things alive and you can’t discount him totally. So I’d hate to see him disappear from the scene, but he is going to at some point which may end up being helpful. There was a debate on a forum recently about the cult of personality in UFOlogy and who could take up the mantle of the movement. You’ve had this problem too. When you start dealing with people other than Stanton Friedman, like Richard Hall or Jerry Clark or Rudiak or a number of other people, they can be so belligerent to outside views that differ from theirs, and I think it’s time to clear that slate.

You have this gorgeous young woman, Brittany Babakioff, who maybe represents a new generation. I have this thing, which I know you hate, that the messengers are so homely that when we see them on the air that we tend to discount the message. She’s so gorgeous that we would tend to discount the message from her. I’d say, “Oh my God, here’s a babe who has something to say” but you’re so taken aback by her beauty, her attractiveness that you discount what she’s saying. You can’t go either way. You can’t have people too ugly or too beautiful.

AW: Rich, it might be too late in life to try to get you to do this but; you need to focus on the words!

RR: I know but I just get so distracted. Somebody recently said that the message has to have the right messenger. As a psychologist I think there is some validity to that. The problem is we don’t have anybody who stands apart from the UFO crowd; there are just a lot of people within the UFO community who feed off from each other. But from the public standpoint, who is the spokesman for UFOlogy? It used to be Donald Keyhoe who I actually adored, he had personality quirks or whatever but I loved the guy and he was the face of the UFO message. Goofy as he looked, he made the point for us.

AW: A lot of people would say that Stan is that face in the United States.

RR: When you see Stan Friedman, you know he is going to talk about UFOs, and you expect that. But there is a lack of dynamism about Stan and there’s some mystical element there that he just doesn’t have. But I can’t name anybody else who does what he does. I don’t know who’s going to come forward to make the case in the public eye. Who could do this that would be reasonable and sensible and have the austerity and charisma to get the message across?

AW: Why do we need a figurehead?

RR: You think UFOs on their own are valid enough to represent the issue? You don’t think we need a messenger?

AW: Well I wonder if we need a messenger or whether we need a number of competent people that can talk in an articulate manner about the subject.

RR: You know as well as I do that when you get those people together in a room then it can become a cacophony of nonsense. Everybody would be trying to get attention. In the UFO community, that is what everybody does. Everybody wants to be recognised among their peers and they don’t care about the public. The biggest self promoter is Paul Kimball, who I actually like very much. But he’s a self promoter and wants to be recognised. He’s so diverse and has so many things going on, and he doesn’t concentrate just on UFOs necessarily, but he wants to be recognised. Everybody wants to have somebody hang their hat in their doorway so they can be seen as worthwhile, and they don’t give a dam about the public.

A Conversation with Greg Bishop

2008-06-18T02:47:00.000-07:00

A series of extracts from the latest edition of Alien Worlds magazine issue 3

2. A Conversation with Greg Bishop speaking here on American UFOlogy, Project SERPO and cattle mutilations:

AW: You don’t get the same level of theatre in other countries. The current reasoning we are told now for the likes of stories like SERPO is the control and manipulation of belief systems - how easy is it to convince a large number of people via the Internet that such and such a story is true, and so on.

GB: I think there are probably some deep psychological reasons as to why the Americans do this. There’s a culture of secrecy in every country but there’s been one here for a long time. They took their cues from Russian and South African intelligence and a bunch of different people who were really good at it. Britain was involved with it as well in World War 2 and the Germans also because a lot of those people came here after the war. There’s a long culture and heritage of how to mess with people’s minds and on how to keep a secret.

But there are things that developed here that weren’t developed anywhere else at the time as regards weaponry and air craft. I think that the CIA and the NSA, Air force and Naval intelligence, anybody that could, saw an opportunity and seized upon the UFO subject as something to be used to confuse and bamboozle other agents from other countries and to some extent, people here as well because agents from other countries and news people can talk to people that live here. If I’m working for the government and looking for ways to cover things up, I’m going to use anything possible. Let people believe anything as long as they don’t find out what we don’t want them to find out.

As far as SERPO is concerned, I don’t think it was covering up any project. There was no project for it to cover up because nobody was looking anywhere for it. While the whole story was happening, I was talking to Bill Moore and he was giving me his thoughts about what was really happening. And since he knew all the old players, I listened. I asked him what he thought it was. And what I think they were doing was simply passing messages. Victor Martinez, the guy that was first writing about it, he was the point man who this person “Anonymous” - how original - was sending messages to by email, and who was asked to put the things up on his List. I wondered why he just didn’t put the damn things out himself.

If you know about codes and ciphers and things like that, things can be written in a certain way to say a certain thing that has nothing to do with what the text says. I got a hint of this when Martinez got in trouble with Anonymous because he was editing the messages. He was editing them to read properly so they flowed logically and so on. I mean, the guy’s a teacher and an editor and he knew what he was doing. Anonymous said “I’m not going to let you do this anymore. I’m not going to give you the information unless you put it out exactly as I’ve written it. Spelling errors, grammatical errors and all other improper use of the English language to be left intact”.

And to me that means that there’s something written in there that gets screwed up when you change the message. So what I think was happening was that somebody was passing messages back and forth that were meant for only a certain number of people and also a number of people who would try and crack the code and act upon it. For example, you conceal in a SERPO email a message that X is bringing this to Y and it’s going to be delivered here, and then you watch and see who shows up. That would mean that if someone turned up who shouldn’t have been there, then they had figured out your code. It was a way to flush people out.

That is speculation. If I keep going down that road then I don’t know where it ends but I do think that at the core base of it, it had to do with passing messages back and forth about some project or other, or people. I could be totally wrong but it has the hallmarks of that to me. And all the other stuff was hung on top of it I guess as a show, to get people interested. I think it’s a case of hiding in plain sight. Make a big noise about something so that nobody in the mainstream culture or media wants to pay any attention to it and make it as ridiculous as possible.

Also, I think I irritated Doty when I went on Art Bell with him. I didn’t know he was going to come on but two days before the show the producer called me and I mentioned that I had an idea to bring Richard Doty or Bill Moore on as well and the only person who said yes was Doty. I called him the day of the show to check on him, and he was apparently out at Kirtland Air Force Base. Well he supposedly had been retired for about ten or fifteen years. What was he doing over at Kirtland right before going on national radio? He was probably being told what he could and couldn’t say. All these years later……….. That was interesting to me when I found this out.

I wrote about it in that SERPO piece on my blog. And also because he got more and more involved in the UFO subject and in the public eye a little bit, I think he was sort of getting back into the business of counter intelligence at somebody’s behest because they thought he was good at it. I don’t know if SERPO worked or not, it kind of came and went, and now the only person left talking about it is Bill Ryan. I talked to Bill Moore about Ryan and he said, “You know what? I think I’ve seen him before but I can’t tell when, and it was a long time ago.” He’s apparently, possibly, not just somebody that came out of the woodwork.

AW: In the last few years, since I last spoke to you, have your views or opinions on what cattle mutilations are all about changed? Where we last left it, you thought it was almost certainly some sort of government programme designed to check on the food chain either to protect against bio warfare attack or because something nasty escaped from a laboratory a long while back and the Feds are checking to see whether it got into the cattle stock.

GB: I’m sorry, no new news, and no, it hasn’t changed! It’s only been strengthened actually. I had gotten to the point where I had wanted to write a book about it but nobody wanted it, which mystifies me. I think publishers want books where UFOs and aliens are abducting people and mutilating cattle. And because I don’t think that’s what’s happening, therefore it doesn’t fly with them.

Think how many people would buy a book that said, “You may be ingesting some horrible thing and somebody is very worried about it and has been since the late 1960s.” The subject directly affects everybody that eats beef, which is a pretty big segment of the population! I’m part of that! Even knowing this I still eat meat.

My opinion hasn’t changed and as time passes, it makes more sense. I’m not saying it explains all things that have been observed with regards to cattle mutilations. There have been some weird lights that have been doing things that aircraft that we know about don’t do, and there are mysterious aspects to it. But to me, 90% of what’s been going on can be explained by that theory.

Something horrible happened somewhere and somebody or some company or entity have been trying to keep it from the population because it would cause a huge panic and ruin the beef industry. That’s a pretty strong motivation to be quiet about what you’re doing. Then people say, “Well why don’t they just keep their own stock of cattle and test them? But you can’t do that because if it has spread everywhere you have to go and check it out.

The full interview is carried in issue 3 of Alien Worlds. Please see
http://www.alienworldsmag.com

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http://alienworldsmag.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=101

Famous Cosmologist Professor Paul Davies claims “I Was Abducted By Aliens”

2008-06-16T07:46:00.000-07:00

A series of extracts from the latest edition of Alien Worlds magazine issue 3

1. Professor Paul Davies interview.

Actually, the Prof doesn’t quite make the claim in the headline, but almost does. This is what he had to say about UFOs and abductions:

I was, as a closing question, because I was told, and I don’t know how accurate this is, that at the very beginning of your career, there was a period of time when you had some truck with UFOs in that you were prepared to consider that they might have some interest.

I’m always prepared to consider and evaluate ideas, however out of the ordinary they might be. I knew Allan Hynek, who was the Chief Scientific Advisor to the US Air Force Project Blue Book, and so I visited him and looked at some of his data and investigated a few cases myself because they were fascinating stories. I was able to explain two or three of these cases, including one rather famous case in Britain involving strange lights over Stonehenge which I managed to identify as military flares. It featured in a Granada television production.

As scientists I think we should be open minded and be prepared to look at the evidence and in the case of UFOs, I’m one of the few scientists who has actually looked at the evidence. I’ve read the Condon Report which came out of Project Blue Book and talked to witnesses. Obviously people see things in the sky all the time and the vast majority of sightings are just misperceptions or atmospheric phenomena of various sorts.

Then there’s a tougher residue that’s harder to explain and I would say two things about those. One is that these are real experiences - I don’t think anyone is lying. The second thing is that to me, they don’t have the hallmark of extraterrestrial visitation and it is not what I would expect from ET. So whatever lies behind this, and there may be different explanations for different things, I don’t think will be extraterrestrial visitation will be one of them.

The one situation where I do feel I have an understanding of what’s going on is with alien abduction, which I think are closely related to lucid dreams.

Not sleep paralysis?

That’s more or less the same thing. I have had lucid dreams and have enjoyed the experience of them. First of all you’re paralysed and secondly, unless you’re experienced with this, you don’t know you’re dreaming and you think you’re awake and there’s always a sense of malevolent presence in the room.

And you’ve experienced that sensation yourself? How did you rationalise it?

I went and learned a bit about it. I bought a face mask from the New Scientist magazine that could induce lucid dreams and I have them a few times a year, although I don’t use the face mask very much any more. The last time I had one, I did an experiment. Interestingly, because I hadn’t thought of it in advance but my dream self did at the time, I looked at my image in a mirror to see if it was the mirror image or the inverted image, and it was the mirror image. This was like doing a physics type experiment in a lucid dream.

If you don’t know you are dreaming, I think these lucid dreams can be very scary and have all of the hallmarks of an abduction experience. I think that is easily the most plausible explanation for what’s going on there.

The upshot of all this is, in principle we could be being visited but I don’t think we are. I don’t think it is happening now and if it is, I’m very disappointed in ET.

Why would you be disappointed? You said before that it wasn’t what you would expect from him. What would you expect?

I would expect that if there was going to be actual contact, that this would be a civilisation-changing event that would be carefully managed by the other side, and not just a few extraterrestrials flitting around as tourists or whatever they’re supposed to be doing. If they are here right now, then what exactly are they doing and where are they now and where do they go at night? Where’s the warehouse? This was always the problem with UFOs. People see them but they are just some sort of local phenomenon. They appear and they disappear and they’re not around. It just doesn’t make any sort of sense.

So unless we’re dealing with something that is just truly outside our experience, something that is in the realm of the paranormal, then I see no reason to invoke those sorts of explanations. In the cases I investigated personally, I was always open minded, and when I investigated them, I could see that even when presented with the reality, people would often remain in a state of denial. If you’re not a trained observer or scientist and you see something weird that comes and goes, a transitory phenomenon, then you retain a certain memory and your brain rationalises the experience. If then later somebody explains to you what it was you saw it can be that you will still say, “Well, I don’t believe it”

We’ve just had a case in Phoenix last week where people saw lights, and then some guy fessed up shortly after. And yet witnesses still refused to believe it. Its great fun and endlessly entertaining, but just another depressing aspect of the whole UFO scene.

I got interested in the subject in my teens and as you correctly say, I met witnesses and was interested in the material but nothing has really changed since then. We’re still getting the same sort of dismal reports forty years on. Nothing has moved forwards. Richard Fineman was the person who expressed it well. He said, “In good science, the more observations you make, the better the science gets. With bad science, the worse it gets” and it seems to me the UFO thing is exactly like that. No matter how many observations are made, you get no further forward and so that suggests to me this is not a scientific phenomenon. We’re not dealing with extraterrestrial visitation but instead probably a whole range of different things.

The full interview is carried in issue 3 of Alien Worlds. Please see

http://www.alienworldsmag.com

and the following link for purchasing a copy or a subscription

http://alienworldsmag.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=101

Alien Worlds Issue 3

2008-06-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome to issue 3. Below is a description of the articles, features and interviews that appear in this edition. The magazine is available in the UK at WH Smiths, Menzies and Borders as well as a large number of independent retail outlets. It is stocked in Easons in Ireland and in some outlets in Europe. In the States it is mainly sold in Barnes and Noble. If you prefer, you can subscribe at the web site at http://www.alienworldsmag.com/ where you can also purchase a single issue if you so wish.

Interviews

A conversation with Greg Bishop

Greg is an outstanding and experienced observer, author and critique of the UFO field. What marks him out is his ability to think outside the box and to keep an open mind. Without any particular angle or position to hold or promote, he intelligently reads the situation in a thoroughly objective manner. He is, frankly, one of the best minds in the field and is a man I much admire.

Professor Paul Davies

It is quite a coup for Alien Worlds to have been granted an interview with Professor Paul Davies, one of the world’s leading cosmologists and thinkers. Innovative, imaginative, brilliant, and an outstanding mind, this charming man runs the rule over a few of the major debates and arguments to do with the likelihood of cosmological intelligence, possible messages in our DNA, the Great Filter, life on Mars, the Earth as a computer, the Goldilocks enigma, and, amongst a host of other things, his own early interest in UFOs and the abduction phenomenon. You will need your science hat on.

Why Do I Feel Like Someone Is Watching Me?

Diana Tumminia is an American lady who is a member of the Sociologist sub species of Academicus - a tribe of Humans who secretively study the lifestyles and whims of alien worshipers. That’s the likes of you and me pal. She is the editor of a book which is nothing to do with this magazine but is nevertheless called Alien Worlds. It is a large collection of essays written by a respected number of fellow members of the Academicus tribe as well as a couple of human escapees by the name of Jerome Clark and Jacques Vallee, who have all piled in to give us their observations about UFO’s, contactees, alien related religions and similar.

Rich Reynolds; UFOlogy’s Biggest Pain In The Ass

A man who attracts large dollops of odium, Rich Reynolds is the perpetual outsider who knocks on the door of UFOlogy only to spit in the face of the person who opens it for him. He perches on the fringe and throws slingshots and ridicule at those who take the subject seriously. Untroubled by the technicality of hypocrisy, 69 years old Rich blunders on in his quest to cleanse the subject of anyone over the age of 30 while remaining the person that many will not touch with a ten foot barge pole. So naturally we had to talk to him.

Life On Mars On Earth

One day Man will go to Mars. Before that happens he will need to practice a bit so the Mars Society have built these toys, sorry, Mars Desert Research Stations (MDRS) in various locations around the world for people to go and practice in. Heather Allaway, a young Canadian gal from the Science of Reproduction Faculty at Saskatchewan University went on one of these expeditions back in April. As she also has a keen interest in the problems of human reproduction in space, she was an ideal person for Alien Worlds to speak to.

Features

Cosmic Questions and Conundrums - Examining The Evidence For Alien Abduction

Starting off with the alleged Betty and Barney Hill abduction, Nigel Watson engages in an excellent and very thorough review of the phenomenon, covering every conceivable aspect of the experience that so many thousands of people have claimed to have. This is a balanced, no punches pulled article.

Ufologists swamped with Ministry of Defence (UK) data

Joe McGonagle gives us a quick general overview of the recently released MoD files of UFO sightings.

Beyond Bedtime Closets (and continental shelves) - Meet ‘Angelic Aliens’ And ‘Monsters’ [that] Ink!

Instead of looking upwards for his aliens, Nick Parkins turns his gaze downwards beneath the oceans and examines some of the weird life and organisms that we never see. When you remember that two thirds of the surface of this planet is liquid, Nick takes us down, down, down, into a beautiful and slightly scary world of beauty and majesty that is only matched by the poetic style of his prose.

Hypothetical Model for Space Travel with Medieval Level Technology

Daniel Schilling is a one off. I’ll be honest and say that for the first five minutes after I originally came across his writings, I thought he was off his trolley. That thought lasted as long as it took to realise that behind the madness was a genius who made me smile. He started a blog on the Internet called How I discovered that Romans used to live on Mars in which he alleged that they managed to get there in wooden sailing ships, and it soon became obvious that we were heading off into the land of epic narrative. In this specially written piece, Daniel expands upon his thinking.

UFOs, Sonic Booms, F-16s and an Earthquake

On Wednesday 16th April this year, a series of loud explosions and earthquake like tremors accompanied by reports of strange lights and fireballs were seen and felt in Kokomo, Indiana, panicking the local residents and prompting a flood of 911 calls to the emergency services. Inevitably, a massive search was launched but nothing was found. Confused and concerned, local folk began to suspect the air force who thoughtfully issued a statement. And it was at that point that things started to go a little funny. Frank Warren reports.

Readers Articles
Yet again two outstanding articles by, gentlemen take note, two women! In the first, S.J. Porter runs the rule over Sex and (its) Consequences in Space. In a witty and remarkably insightful piece, S.J. casts her eye a few years into the future and finds that some things still remain the same.

In the meanwhile, my old friend Kithra runs riot with the Cumberland Spaceman and the Ilkley Moor alien, and just for good measure, there’s a large rubber Frenchman thrown in as well. Thank you both ladies and a message to you all: I sit here all day waiting for you lot to do my job and write this magazine for me. Please send me articles.

Warminster-The Forgotten Enigma.

It’s true that the Warminster phenomenon was conveniently forgotten about for many years, but thanks to Steve Dewey and Kevin Goodman, we seem to have made up for it in recent times. And quite rightly so. A strange mixture of a charismatic figure, a town gripped with fear, strange lights in the sky and something called “The Thing” rampant along the village lanes, this sleepy Wiltshire town was suddenly catapulted to national fame. In a revised and updated article, Kevin Goodman recounts the details of what happened from a personal perspective.

Opinion

Above and Beyond

Award winning columnist Paul Kimball combines his love or travelling and his interest in UFOs and takes us on a tour of The Seven Wonders of the Ufological World, revealing in his choices symmetrical beauty, oddness, mystery and a brush of wackiness.

Rob Bignell

Our Rob picks up a great big flat and soggy wet fish and whacks Professor Andrew Watson of East Anglia University full in the face with it as he refutes the points that the Proff raised in his recent paper on The Great Filter, in which he alleges that the chances of finding other intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe are not very high.

Why do I bother?

Regular columnist Joe McGonagle explains what drew him in to the subject of UFOs and why, as a self respecting sceptic, he still stays, by highlighting some intriguing cases involving sightings by children.

The Round Files: The Really, Really Secret Mission of Apollo 18

We are very pleased to extend a warm welcome to Las Vegas new columnist Daniel Brenton who, like me, likes to push your buttons a little. Very dry, you’ll need to be on your toes and awake with this one.

Brittany Babakioff

The brightest and most exciting new star in the glittering world of cosmological clutter, Brittany is a breadth of fresh air that is untinged by the bitterness and cynicism that befall wizened old hacks like myself. Here she recounts in detail her recent visit to her first UFO conference at Landers in Southern California where she attended the Retro UFO 3 Convention held at the Integratron.

General

Your Editor Squeaks
Stuart waffles and trills. He does love the sound of his own voice.

Groups
What we hope will become a regular feature, if you belong to any kind of group that is either directly or loosely connected to our subject, please tell us about it.

Professor Stephen Hawking Speaks
…………and we listen

Books of Interest
All that’s new and upcoming in print, including a review by Nick Redfern of Jon Downes new book, Island of Paradise

Readers Letters
Some of you have got very grumpy about some things in issue 2. That weird bloke from last time is back. He sent me the £5 I suggested that he send for printing his last missive. It was crumpled.

Is this or is this not the best UFO related magazine out there on the newsstands?

Alien Worlds Issue 2

2008-04-04T03:45:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the articles, features and interviews that appear in issue 2 of Alien Worlds. The magazine is available at a large number of retail outlets in the UK, a few across Europe, and in Barnes and Noble in the States. If you prefer, you can subscribe at the web site at http://www.alienworldsmag.com/ where you can also purchase a single issue if you so wish.

Beyond UFOs

Dr. Jeffrey Bennett has a B.A. in Biophysics from the University of California and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado. So why would he be interested in UFOs? Because he recognises that for most people, the subject of extraterrestrial life starts with flying saucers, and so he does too. We talk at length about the probability that someone has already discovered us, how far ahead of us they might be, the relationship between the science community and UFOs, what UFO witnesses might be seeing, how life started here and finding it elsewhere, the critical point that Mankind is currently at, why we should send humans into space, the important role that science plays in our lives, and even global warming. We almost put the world to rights, nearly.

Mirage Man

John Lundberg is an artist, crop circle maker and film producer. Fascinated by how myths and belief systems are created and passed into the human conscience, he has been adorning the British countryside with beautiful patterns for over a decade. More recently, he has made a film about Rick Doty, the intelligence maverick of the UFO world and one of my most favourite people. John tells us about his adventures in Laughlin and Albuquerque chasing after Rick, how he got access to him and why he came to think of him as the best thing since sliced bread. We also delve into the machinations of the CIA and why you should never walk on Hampstead Heath.

SETA SETV SETI

Besides pointing telescopes out to the great beyond, some people seek evidence of extraterrestrials by looking for things they may have left behind. In all likelihood, this planet may well have been discovered ages ago by another species who might have left a probe behind to keep an eye us. Where could such a probe be? Eminent British astronomer Dr. David Darling explains the mechanics of the search for extraterrestrial visitation and artefacts.

The Inconvenient Man

Paul Devereux first came up with his theory that some UFO sightings were earthlights as far back as the early 80s. Unfortunately, as it suggested a terrestrial origin, his ideas didn't go down too well with many in UFOlogy and some people were even quite rude about it. He explains a bit more about the phenomenon and also how our view of reality and our planet is cosseted in safety while the truth is probably quite disturbing. An engrossing interview.

Still on the Trail of the Saucer Spies

Nick Redfern updates us on how he let the UFO community down yet again with his book "Saucer Spies" and how the spooks spy on Ufologists but not because of UFO secrets. You can't rely on Nick any more these days; he's more interested in the facts and has become a bit of a spoil sport.

Will Someone Have A Word With God Because This Should Not Have Happened (apparently)

A large, extraterrestrial lump of rock crashed through Earth’s atmosphere on September 15th last year and hit the ground hard at Caranacas in the Peruvian Andes. Shortly after, the locals started making claims of headaches, vomiting and nausea after inhaling gases coming from the crater. B movie stuff and all that was missing for the meteorite to split open and an eight legged flesh eating alien to crawl out.

Through a fractured glass

A brilliant analysis, in words you can understand, of the writings and personality of Whitley Strieber, written by Aeolus Kephas. Of course that's not his real name and no, I don't know what it is either. Good article though. I've never read a Streiber book in my life and now I’m going to have to.

Neanderthals might have been partially wiped out due to cannibalism.

Our naughty anthropological neighbours may have come a cropper through eating each other. Roasted or slightly braised?

Oldest hominid discovered is 7 million years old
Another fossil, another theory.

UFO Hunters
American TV on a suicide mission as two series start on separate channels with the same name. Frank Warren untangles the mess for us and reviews both programmes.

Planetary terrestrial Mining

Professor Jim Jordan of Lamar University in Texas explains what might draw us into taking up our picks and shovels and going off to the moon in search of treasure. Unfortunately, there are perils that await.........

SETI – A British Perspective
Part 2 of our interview with Dr. Ian Morison, head of Jodrell Bank.

Above and Beyond

Paul Kimball reasons how and why the UFO crowd have managed to back themselves into a mental dead end when it comes to the question of unidentified flying objects and what we have to do to free ourselves from our self imposed shackles. He is absolutely right, but is it a futile request?

Joe McGonagle
Have you laughed at court cases when the defendant has claimed "the aliens made me do it?" I know I have. Regretfully, when you examine the detail, it stops being amusing. Joe casts his eye over some of the more high profile and tragic cases of recent years.

Rob Bignall
When you hear an astronomer or astrobiologist saying, "There are millions of other intelligent species out there" have you ever asked yourself, "How do you know?" Just exactly what is that vague figure based on? Rob runs us through the Drake equation and explains its plusses and minuses.

Brittany Babakioff - The Younger generation

Youth has a voice! Just what is the attraction for younger people in a serious interest in ET? How difficult is it to get started in a subject that is swathed in controversy and widely differing opinion? Who do you trust, who do you read? Brittany articulately explains the daunting task facing someone starting out.

Readers Articles
Two readers, Sonya and Mel, share their thoughts and adventures with us. I like this, getting you lot to do all the work. Keep 'em coming!

Your editor squeaks
More words of wisdom from Stuart.

Book reviews
All the latest releases

Arthur C. Clarke Speaks; for the last time.

Reader’s letters
You've had something to say! Most of you seem to like us. One man doesn't, or rather he does. Actually, I can't tell.

Spot the UFO competition
More hilarious fun and games, this time involving a cool customer over California and a chase.

Ask an astrobiologist
More knowledgeable readers' questions for our extraterrestrial expert who doesn't know much about anything really.

An astronomer’s guide to contacting aliens
Uncle Seth explains what you'll need if you want to speak to an alien.

Plus so much more I find it overwhelming even thinking about it.

Stop This Bloody Nonsense

2008-03-12T13:15:00.000-07:00

President George Bush isn’t the most popular President the United States has ever had. Despite actually having done reasonably well at a prestigious university, superficially, he has always given the appearance of a Neolithic sub species primate, anchored in good ‘ol southern sentiments like “Global warming is a left wing conspiracy” and science is anti-God.

Meanwhile, since 1997 in the UK, we have been governed by the Labour Party under the sub text of New Labour. This façade could not have been more different than the old model which was routed in grossly outdated Trades Union practices and attitudes. Tony Blair was young, in touch with people, and ruthless in his determination to shake off his party’s old ways and to embrace the vision of a modern, European inclined Britain. Here was a man with an ideologue that perfectly defined his predecessor’s aspiration of Britain being at the heart of the white heat of the technological revolution.

Comparing the outlooks of Bush and Blair hardly seems a fair fight, you would think.

And yet, if you examine the actual hands-on-approach of the Bush administration to that of Blair and his successor Gordon Brown in relation to the subject of science and in particular space, then George Bush looks like an enlightened, blessed saint.

I bow before you Mr. Bush.

It’s true that NASA may not have got all it wanted in its present budgetary fight and that some programmes may have to be cut back a bit, but, a few years ago you announced that America would be sending men back to the Moon and Mars, and that promise is being acted upon now. You have continued to fund the space shuttle, the space station, and various other NASA probes and activities too numerous to mention.

You are a menche George, I kiss the ground you walk on.

Meanwhile back over here in the UK, unlike the rest of our major European partners, we errrr don’t have a space programme. We’re a piss poor neo third world banana set up that’s absolutely stone broke and certainly has no money to throw away on frivolous things like space exploration. Do us a favour. We’ll pretend instead to plough what little dosh we can muster into astronomy.

But not even that any more.

Proposed miserly budget cuts from the UK Government’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) would axe the annual £2.5m public funding for "e-Merlin" - an upgrade to the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network between the UK's seven radio telescopes. Jodrell Bank Observatory, an international icon, would be decimated and mothballed.

It is utterly pathetic and just about sums up the UK in 2008.

If Jodrell Bank is still standing after its proposed closure date, someone will come along and give it a parking ticket. That's what happens in Britain now.

To sign the 10 Downing Street petition in support of continuing the funding for Jodrell Bank, please follow this link

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/jodrellfunding/

My Enemy’s Enemy Is My Friend

2008-02-25T09:01:00.000-08:00

That phrase the “Old Guard” has reared up again lately. Who does it refer to and what does it mean? It’s probably best personified by Dick Hall and Jerry Clark, and perhaps Gildas Bourdais as well, among a few others, but it varies in its subtleties between them. For example, Dick is a staunch upholder of the ETH, Gildas is absolutely sold on Roswell as an alien event and panics when anyone says otherwise, and while Jerry is less committed to the ETH, like Dick, he can’t abide “silly” ideas that explore other realms of possibilities.

It isn’t usually good form to name names, in part because nobody wants to draw down the wrath of the Gods but also because suggesting even by implication that great contributors of yore might now be past it just isn’t the done thing.

They have taken a bit of negative comment lately because of the arrival of Alien Worlds and the clearly defined philosophical approach that the magazine heralds. Essentially, the values reflected in it are that we’ve had 60 years of doing it one way and, having not really got anywhere, it might be worthwhile to take a fresh approach and be a bit more open minded. There is contained within that an unstated suggestion that the Old Guard might step back slightly and desist from bullying those who speak up with different ideas or perspectives. Some chance.

I am on the private mailing list of Robert Morningstar, the editor of the UFO Digest web site. I think it is fair to say that these days there is a gulf between my view of the UFO subject and that of Robert’s. I think he’s actually drifted off further towards the dark side a bit more, meaning there is a less rigorous evidential basis to his work and more of a disposition towards the Exopolitical sphere. I do not make these observations critically and I say good luck to him. I carry a number of UFO Digest reports on my news pages and am certainly not antipathetic to what he’s doing.

I was however very amused by the contents of Robert’s latest email to me, for it contained an exchange between himself and another individual about the recently reported story of a possible meeting at the UN concerning UFOs. This was the email Robert received:

I am intently monitoring and following any news or insights into this momentous development.

I do not subscribe to Errol Bruce-Knapp's UFO Updates and I don't miss one moment of not reading it, although I had read it every day since the mid-1990s before E B-K began charging for it.

With very few and rare exceptions, the "Old Guard" UFOlogists who post there have always been irrationally rabid and completely close-minded and hostile toward any Disclosure initiative, so if they as a whole are harshly critical, it is because they have been completely irrelevant and totally out-of-the-loop for so many years while those of us involved in Exopolitics have been the true pioneers in getting the word out to planet.

It would be a mistake for any elements in the USG monitoring their antics to view them in terms of a microcosm of a larger macrocosm of those of us who actually CAN handle the truth.

The "Old Guard" at UFO UpDates is intractable in terms of their inability to learn of and from the truth.

It is best to just ignore them for the bad tempered and blind fools so many of them are.

This is unbelievably ironic. While I do not share the sentiments of the writer, I certainly do share his sense of frustration. It just goes to show what a focussed stranglehold the Old Guard have on what people feel free to express themselves about.

It might well be that both Jerry and Dick would scratch their heads and wonder what people are moaning about, for it is not within their remit to block messages to email Lists. This of course is disingenuous because it is the criticism and ridicule in the responses that people fear most. Playing Devil’s Advocate further, Jerry and Dick might then say that if people don’t have the courage to stand behind what they allege to be true, then it speaks volumes about their ideas.

But if only life were that simple. Not everyone either wants to or indeed has the ability or time to get involved consuming and draining slanging matches. Furthermore, there is no question that both men have indulged in what is tantamount to bullying in the past, and although it is unlikely to make any difference, it is nevertheless amusing that they are now getting it from both sides of the UFOlogical fence.

Observations

2008-02-20T09:22:00.000-08:00

One of the most amusing events currently taking place at this moment is the big deal about the rogue American space satellite that is soon to be shot down. What is difficult to comprehend is the sheer level of hypocrisy involved.

On January 11th, the Chinese launched a ground-based, medium-range ballistic missile at one of their old weather satellites sitting 537 miles above Earth. They smashed it to smithereens. Not only did they get subsequent weeks of hassle about space debris but the indignant ranting and ballyhooha that followed from the American side was deafening. Bumptious Senators huffed and puffed their chests, articles appeared about how this could change the balance of space power and how threatened the Americans felt, and there were strong implied threats about the long term implications for future Chinese/American relations.

The American justifications for their impending actions are that the satellite has a full tank of frozen, toxic hydrazine propellant on board and that the tank would likely survive reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. This could result in the dispersal of harmful or even potentially deadly fumes over an area the size of “two football fields”, as Hydrazine is similar to chlorine or ammonia in that it affects the lungs.

This is of course a high risk strategy for the Americans in one particular area; if they miss, they sure are going to look very stupid. The Chinese got it in one.

And in the meantime, the Russians have accused the US of using the event as a premise for testing an anti-satellite weapon. And they are almost certainly right.

So, what price a weapons free environment in space then?

As Nick Redfern so frequently points out on his blog at The Night of the Living Jackboots, we in the UK are the most watched nation in the world. The number of CCTV cameras in Britain far surpasses the population per head of any other country, and it stinks. Fundamentally, it is lazy policing that has been enabled by the 9/11 event and subsequent terrorist atrocities. But of course, in matters such as this, you cannot trust a government, and its use has gone way beyond any justification on security grounds.

Likewise, in astronomy, the lazy approach is also being taken. Instead of entirely focussing funds into a developed manned space programme powered by new design engines that will carry its payloads and passengers at speeds far greater than the fairground ride attraction level they are currently at, new telescope arrays are either springing up or being planned for just about everywhere. As I have already said, the chances are that intelligent extraterrestrial life will likely be discovered by someone munching on a hamburger while sitting in a darkened observatory rather than, say, an astronaut walking across the surface of Mars and suddenly noticing something that looks suspiciously artificial. Which is a shame, because there goes the romance of the whole thing.

Franklin D Fields recently had an article published in a couple of spots called Why don't Americans believe UFOs are real?. The answer trips off the tongue a little too easily I’m afraid; because they’re not as stupid as they seem. Mr. Field’s article is essentially an Exopolitical/Disclosure cant, containing ground breaking statements like “It is obvious that our government knows about the reality of UFOs. Furthermore, it is clear that the government is engaged in a conspiracy to hide the truth.” Give American’s their due; some of them will be asking, “How do you know this Mr. Fields?” And his answers, at least to those who require convincing, are less than durable.

A woman on a message board, replying to an email sent through by Bill Hamilton about the current spate of UFO sightings, says, “Do you have any info on Dec 2012? Where are you going to be?” Bill hasn’t replied yet but I will; under the bed with my thumb up my ass and reading a copy of Portnoy’s Complaint.

The Vanities

2008-01-30T03:52:00.000-08:00

While I have argued here in the past that I think the giggle factor relating to “UFOs” has greatly diminished in recent years, we have not got away from it completely. I remember someone recently complaining that as many questions about UFOs were asked in the presidential debates in the States as there had been about the Green issue. This was said with utter disbelief as if there could be nothing more important than ecology, and UFOs were simply trash talk.

There are others that have opined that all the recent activity in Texas has made Stephenville a laughing stock.

And so on.

The reason I mention this is to get some perspective. To many people, those with an interest in UFOlogy, regardless of how belief driven or reason driven they may be, are all nutters. There is no differential made between those that embrace it as a religion and those that want it taken seriously by science. All are loonies fit for the bin.

With that in mind, quite recently, Rod Brock reactivated his Aliens Ate My Buick blog. It can be found here:

http://strangegrub.blogspot.com/

From the perspective of an ETH’er, Rod is a sceptic and has attracted bucket loads of abuse and criticism over the years. While he has his fans, his views are not the sort that many in UFOlogy want to read or listen to, understandably.

I think he talks a lot of sense and writes in a truly objective manner. But objectivism and UFOlogy do not necessarily make good bedfellows.

Labelling is always a dangerous game and one that within UFOlogy, is never really accurate, but for the sake of argument, I would call myself a fringe sceptic in relation to UFOs these days. Nevertheless, I do notice a trait among some of the more died in the wool lot that I call battle weariness. It is a state of mind that comes about from having been in too many philosophical fights, arguments, and exchanging of insults. This in turn induces a siege mentality and a degree of obstinacy on the part of the sceptic, an anticipation of reaction and an aggressive posture pre-assumed. Debates can only go in one direction.

I notice this attitude in Rod Brock. The root cause of it I believe is frustration. Rod knows he talks common sense and his despair comes about from the failure of others to see his point of view. There’s no getting away from it but an attitude such as this is arrogant. There’s also no getting away from the fact that when you call someone arrogant, it is impossible to do so without causing offence, and I don’t intend to cause that offence. It’s an observation. I don’t know Rod Brock and can only make an assessment based on his writings.

What Rod wants to do is to change the world. He wants people who follow a fanciful, unsustainable path of thinking to snap out of it and see sense and reason.

He is obviously far from being a stupid man and his years of experience should tell him that he will never change people if they don’t want to change. He is pissing in the wind.

And he’s a long way from being alone. It is endemic.

It has always been so that those who consider they take an intelligent and considered approach to the subject of UFOs want to change the thinking of others. They despise the low life of UFOlogy and want to purge them so that the subject can be taken seriously. Cleansed of people who think ET is already here and there is a government conspiracy, more prestigious institutions will begin to take notice.

What this really is about is them getting to feel better about themselves, separating themselves from the madness and mayhem, and engaging their aspirations to a greater intellectual authority.

No matter how you circumvent this, you always come back to the same word; arrogance.

My argument is, forget it. Leave people be. Let them think what they want and believe what they want. Why shouldn’t they?

Either quit the game or accept the status quo and recognise that you are in a field where some of your fellow travellers disturb you.

But trying to change the world, either surreptitiously by showing good practice or by haranguing folk constantly is simply pointless.

Remember; whoever you are, someone, somewhere thinks you’re an idiot.

The Garden Path Beckons

2008-01-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

There are discomforting similarities between the events in Stephenville Texas last week and the Phoenix Lights incident. The one major difference is that Phoenix happened over a large metropolis and Stephenville is out in the sticks.

So why am I disturbed by these similarities? It is because of the way, 11 years later, that I now perceive the Phoenix Lights events. I don’t believe that what floated around over the capital of Arizona on that evening of March 13th in 1997 was an extraterrestrial craft. I think the event was deliberately staged to reinvigorate the UFO story for intelligence purposes. I think it was a brilliantly acted out performance that involved a deliberate confusion of sightings and a conflict involving flares. The actual object seen was some sort of dirigible, possibly some sort of lifter, or maybe even something especially rigged up for the occasion.

Dirigibles, flares, and a very large object as big as the proverbial football field, as in Phoenix, have all been mentioned in relation to Stephenville.

I think we have to ask ourselves what exactly it is that we expect from sightings like Phoenix and Stephenville. It’s a rhetorical question because the answer is clear. What we hope is that these are genuinely anomalous objects that carry within them intelligent life from another planet. Although some people might earnestly argue differently, they might mitigate or qualify, if truth be told, we want aliens.

Just how likely is that? Just how likely is it that life from another planet would choose to get so close to our planetary surface and then just parade itself around in this fashion and fly off again?

Now it is true, and I’ve said this before, that I don’t know what might go on inside an alien’s mind, so of course I cannot categorically insist that Phoenix and Stephenville did not involve extraterrestrials. Furthermore, I could be totally wrong on another front; the heat generated from Stephenville has attracted genuine astronomical interest and there are suspicions that some of the sightings have a natural origin to them. This is still up in the air, as are a lot of facts, but for the purposes of this thread, let us assume that this particular direction proves fruitless.

So what are we left with? Another town becomes a tourist hot spot and its local industry becomes invigorated. The subject of UFOs is thrown once more into the public limelight, having barely recovered from its previous brush with the Presidential race. There is some ridicule but in the main, it gets serious coverage. Well, if anyone within the Disclosure movement had half an ounce of brain matter, then they should be getting hysterical just at this moment and screaming that all these UFO events coming along so closely, one after the other, is surely an indication that we’re being “prepared” and that full disclosure has to be imminent. Be funny if they were right.

In my estimation, we’re just being dragged over the coals again, played and poked with by the theatrical department of AFOSI in their “genuine” pursuit of the psychological examination of the propagation of myth and rumour, and their ability to manipulate it and us via modern media outlets i.e. the Internet and the Press.

One question that comes to my mind about this is; does it matter to them that as time has progressed, the subject of UFOs gradually gets taken more seriously as the historical ridicule progressively evaporates? Is it relevant and does it even matter?

I am very curious about what might happen next. If there is another major’ish UFO related event within the next few months, depending on what it is, then I think it could be argued with a degree more respectability that we might be moving towards something. Could it be Disclosure? I’d like to give a highly qualified “possibly” but the difficulty I have is that the movement is so bedecked with utter nutters that I am too ashamed to even countenance the likelihood, for fear of being associated with them by implication.

The best answer I can give for now is this: if something else happens relatively soon, then the chances are that someone somewhere is up to something. What that might be, for the moment, is beyond me.

UFOs and Irrelevant Arguments

2007-12-26T10:24:00.000-08:00

Rich Reynolds' latest blog, UFOs: The Cosmology Flaw at http://tinyurl.com/2ufynm
is, I believe, fundamentally flawed. In it, he lists at least one of the standard sceptical arguments about why intelligently controlled UFOs wouldn’t visit Earth; the planet is irrelevant and not worth the trouble. He even goes as far as to say that Saturn or Venus would be more interesting.

This kind of statement, which Rich is a long way from being alone in making, is of a course a personal abstract. What the individual is really saying is, I’m not worth the trouble of travelling 20 million light years through space to come and observe.

I have no idea what UFOs are, or at least no definite theories other than the probability that their solution lies in more than one direction. But what they are or are not isn’t the issue here. For me, it is the claim that we would be of no interest to a sentient species more advanced than ourselves.

To put it bluntly, this is absolute rubbish. Why? Well, it’s true that in order to answer the question, I have to fall into one of my own traps which is to anthropomorphise and make a judgement based on what Humans would do, which admittedly is not necessarily what an alien would do. But to put it simply, we are intrigued by primates, fascinated by insects, and generally enthralled by other intelligence, regardless of how developed or basic it may be. And we are prepared to travel what for us would be vast distances to look for it. When we do discover microbial life on Mars, we will lavish scientific attention on it to a depth probably not experienced before.

Why wouldn’t another sentient species take the same attitude toward us? If they’ve got themselves into space and developed the ability to travel cosmic distances, they have done that in part to investigate. They may have done it for other reasons as well, such as the need to get off their own planet, but unquestionably, curiosity will be part of their motive. It may be base, it may be malignant, but regardless, they would be driven by a desire to explore.

Even if intelligent life is “everywhere” in the cosmos and civilisations like ours are ten a penny, it doesn’t detract from the potential desire to observe and learn. If we are part of a universal evolutionary chain, then we know from our own experience that evolution adapts according to environment and circumstances. Perhaps there are conditions on Earth that have caused us to go in a particular direction, one which may be a little different, a little more unique. And perhaps not. Either way, I have no doubt we are significant enough to be worthy of further examination.

Another irrelevant argument offered against UFOs being intelligently controlled is that interstellar travel would take too long and that the distances are too great. Nothing can contravene the laws of physics which is that faster than light travel is impossible. This argument is flawed in so many different directions it’s difficult to know where to begin. Firstly, there is an assumption that there is no intelligent life nearby, and before you say, “Okay Stuart, where is it?”, my response would be; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is not an idea I particularly adhere to – that we have intelligent, relatively near neighbours, but by the same token, it cannot be ruled out as an absolute. It may be unlikely and there is no proof, but it is not impossible.

And the claim that FTL travel is impossible is pathetic. It may be impossible in terms of our understanding of physics now, but let’s look a little further ahead and imagine that in 50 or 100 years, our science may just have moved on from where it is now. To rule something out as impossible because currently its fantasy is pointless.

When it comes to ET, we have absolutely no idea; just the cultural imprint that we all carry. We need to free ourselves of these shackles and be prepared for anything, and avoid ridiculous blanket statements such as “Why bother with us?”

Alien Worlds Magazine

2007-12-20T12:13:00.000-08:00

The Internet based magazine UFO Review, which has been in hiatus for the last few months, has metamorphosised into a glossy newsstand print magazine called Alien Worlds.

The first issue will appear on UK retail sale on February 8th 2008 and will be available via a wide array of outlets. Among a number of other European countries also taking the magazine are Ireland, Greece, Poland, Sweden, Israel, Norway and Austria. The selling in process is ongoing at this moment and it is probable that others will be added to the roster before publication. Negotiations are also underway for North American distribution but no details are on hand as yet. As the picture becomes clearer, further information will be posted on our website.

Initially, the magazine will be published bimonthly. It will also be available worldwide via subscription.

Alien Worlds will take a much broader approach to the subject of extraterrestrial life and will encompass astrobiology and SETI as well as the phenomenon of UFOs/UAPs and the origins and development of life here on planet Earth.

In preparation for the launch, a new web site has been created to support the magazine which is located at http://alienworldsmag.com. It is still being developed but there you will find the identical news service that was previously located at UFO Review as well as a blog, a forum, background information on the magazine, and general articles of interest.

Starting us off, we have a guest article kindly written especially for us by Stan Friedman entitled Flying Saucers and Science - An Overview. In it, Stan explains and describes the background and circumstances that has led to him writing his new book, "my magnum opus", which will be published in June of 2008. The article can be found on the front page of the web site at http://www.alienworldsmag.com

Barring unforeseen events, it is evident that any imminent progress in the search for extraterrestrial life is going to come first from spaceflight and astronomy. Alien Worlds will be taking a keen interest in those areas.

But UFOlogy cannot be ignored. Unlike the other specialities, it is much more people orientated and while there is a diversity of ideas and opinions in the other disciplines, they generally converge towards a central point. Not so with UFOlogy which is rich in disparity and utterly lacking in convergence. This provides an array of fascinating avenues to explore.

My goal has been to get the level and feel of the magazine to a point where I would buy it if I saw it sitting on a rack, and I don't buy magazines. I am very proud of the result. It represents a more progressive and current approach to the question of extraterrestrial life and brings together under one title a combination of subjects with, broadly speaking, a common goal. There is nothing else like it out there.

For those who share this wider perspective, you will find those principles reflected in Alien Worlds.

You are very welcome to join us.

Stuart Miller
http://www.alienworldsmag.com

Is The Messiah Coming?

2007-12-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

At the risk of seeming like I’m riding on the back of the Exopolitical movement, I was disturbed by the latest email release from Dr. Salla about Comet Holmes. You can read it here at http://tinyurl.com/2m39ho

In my last posting about them (http://tinyurl.com/3dtn2v), I noted that there was a substantial spiritual element within the movement. But the way that the sudden appearance of Holmes has been received is reminiscent of a previous, distressing event.

I am referring to the Heavens Gate cult and their response to, and expectations of, the Hale-Bopp comet. As you may know, when this comet appeared in 1997, the cult’s leaders, Applewhite and Nettles, convinced their following that there was a space ship riding along in its tail. They also thought that planet Earth was about to be wiped clean and that the way to survive this was to leave their human bodies and transcend through and up to the ship and so be carried off to rapture. To do this, 39 people took their lives.

I’m not suggesting for one moment that the Exopolitical movement is going to instigate a mass suicide event because of Comet Holmes. But I find it unsettling that the comet’s appearance has invoked such a response from them. It is reminisent of some medieval or even neanderthal reaction, the sort you’d expect from superstitious and uneducated peoples. It seems desperate. It has been an excuse for a massive meditation experience with suggestions that its appearance was fortold in a crop circle back in 2005. The comet is not visible to the naked eye at the moment but irnony of ironies, Salla has the following to say:

According to the physicist James McCanney, Comet Holmes is likely to experience another plasma discharge when it comes into alignment with the electromagnetic tails of the Earth and Mars on December 22.

So at Christmas, there will be a large bright light in the sky. Christ almighty.

The Exopolitical movement is in danger of attracting anthropologists and academics who study UFO religions, if, that is, it hasn’t happened already. But if I was Dr. Salla and some clown from some university rang me up and asked if he could come along to observe what I and my followers were up to, then that would be the moment I knew that what I believed in had turned into a joke.

Astrophysics and the Morality of Academic Prejudice

2007-11-30T01:44:00.000-08:00

Returning tentatively to the Intelligent Design debate, there is another aspect to this which, like my last piece on the subject, http://tinyurl.com/27n8ch, also leaves me feeling uncomfortable, but this time from a different perspective.

By and large, through out my life, I have tended to find myself in minorities. As a white man in Western Europe that might seem a silly thing to say but there are other areas of my background where I have not always been part of the greater number and because of that, occasions where I have felt uneasy or not in control.

There is a situation that been ongoing for a while within the astrobiological field that also touches on the ID subject and while I have no personal involvement, observing it has made me feel ill at ease. This time however I find myself in the camp of the majority with concern that a minority is being persecuted.

I am referring to the case of astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez who is an Iowa State University assistant professor of physics and astronomy and who also, in his spare time, is an advocate of Intelligent Design. His application for tenure at the University was declined and his supporters allege that this was because of his beliefs. The University counters that "he failed to meet the expectations for scholarly achievement for a faculty member in the department of physics and astronomy during the six years of his probationary, pre-tenure period of appointment" and that his advocacy of the "intelligent design" concept was not a factor in the decision to turn down his request for tenure.

There can be little doubt about Cuban born Gonzalez’s commitment to ID as he is a senior fellow at the infamous Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture as well as a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, all dedicated, hard core ID propogators.

To be fair to the University, they do put up a good case. In essence, to get tenure, you need to prove that you can draw both money and prestige to the establishment and this you do by publishing peer reviewed articles and attracting sponsorship for research. This, they allege, Gonzalez has failed to do and further add that his telescope time and student tuteledge hasn’t been up to much either. Their final nail in the coffin to demonstrate that they are not academically prejudiced against him is that astronomy is one of their strongest academic programs and that over the past decade, four of the 12 candidates who came up for review in that department also failed to get tenure.

That seems a fair rebuttal and unless it can be factually disproved, seems to be conclusive. But Gonzalez’s supporters are not giving up and unless there are intervening developments, there is a strong possibility that this could end up in court.

Despite everything you still cannot get away from the suspicion that his beliefs are somehow at the back of it all. I have no wish to see them promoted in an academic setting but conversely, I don’t feel comfortable seeing his career progression hindered because of them either. The problem here is that the dispute crosses into personal belief as opposed to professional position and therein lays the dichotomy.

But, if pushed, I regret I hope the university prevail.

The Good Doctor and the Aliens

2007-11-26T11:53:00.000-08:00

Dr. Michael Salla is nothing if not an honest man. His recent article Exopolitics: Discipline of Choice for Public Policy Issues Concerning Extraterrestrial Life http://tinyurl.com/3d6rkx pretty well tells it as it is. For part of the story you have to read between the lines a little, but most of it is there in your face. The facts are simple; fed up with the likes of UFOlogists Dick Hall, Jerry Clark, and anyone remotely like them, the Exopolitical Movement has taken the next step. That step is to assume there is an extraterrestrial presence as a given and to formulate political policy based on this fact. Unfortunately, because they can’t actually see this presence themselves, there isn’t really any policy, just a lot of hot air.

As the article says, Exopolitical policy is based upon the testimony of whistleblowers, eyewitnesses, scientists and experiencers. Dr. Salla has done an excellent job in the past of defending this evidence but the fact is, all of it is based on intelligence services disinformation and none of it has any real basis in reality. I’m quite sure that Dr. Salla would vigorously oppose that statement and the principle does matter to him because he is an academic, but it doesn’t really matter to the Exopolitical Movement per se because, as I’ve said, they’ve moved to the next step. To them it is obvious that ET is here and nitpicking over the detail is just a distraction.

I may have made that sound a little trite but I don’t particularly have anything against them as long as we recognise them for what they are. They are a religion. Not a formal one as such, but that is what they are. Religions, as we know, are based on faith and faith, to a died-in-the wool UFOlogist like Dick Hall, is anathema because UFOlogy must be based on hard fact and the scientific method in order to achieve respectability. The fact that Dick believes in the ETH when there isn’t a shred of evidence that has any enduring stamina or resolution within a science laboratory that will confirm that fact is an irony that passes him by. But I’ve been there before with this and now is not the time for another rant.

The Exopoliticians are undoubtedly the modern day equivalent of the Contactee Movement and as de rigueur these days is to look back to that period with affection, then there really is no reason why we shouldn’t view Exopolitics in the same way. It is after all a way of thinking and a way of being and they do no harm to anyone that I can tell. Some argue that they are a distraction and they get in the way of establishing a serious interest in UFOs, but I can’t really see that either. They are, to a degree, side lined and anyone drawn to them is never going to be interested in nuts and bolts UFOlogy in the first place. They commune with dolphins and have a strong spiritual element to them and are clearly a New Age conscript. They seem, actually, to be quite nice people.

If one was being really cruel, one could argue that from a neutral viewpoint, the difference between them and established UFOlogy is paper thin anyway. It is simply a matter of position but essentially, both sides believe. One assumes greater intellectual authority while the other has said, “Bugger that” and just gets on with it. It’s all pretty pointless as there is no control, and everyone is a victim.

Perhaps after all, a “Bugger that” attitude is the way forward for we’re never going to get any help from anyone here on Planet Earth. And perhaps, also, it is too early to judge them for they are still a fledgling movement. Their time may yet come.

But in terms of establishing the fact based reality of extraterrestrial life, I'm afraid they're pretty hopeless.

Cosmic Dust; Oh, Ok Then – Star Seed

2007-11-25T08:49:00.000-08:00

If there is one subject that makes me feel deeply uncomfortable, it is the debate about Intelligent Design that has raged in the States for a couple of years.

I do in fact believe in Intelligent Design but the moment I utter that statement, I feel the immense urge to run away very quickly while simultaneously shouting, “But I’m not with that lot”.

“That lot” are the vast bulk of ID’ers who are to the religious right and who believe that because Nature is such an amazing complexity of beauty and staggering synchronisation, that it is far too intricate to have simply been the result of natural development (evolution) and that everywhere you look, there is evidence of a greater power having been at work.

I recognise and accept evolution and I don’t for one moment believe that God created the world 5,000 years ago. Neither do I believe in sexual abstinence, chastity, or that taking drugs is bad. And for that matter, I’m an atheist in so much as I don’t believe in God in the spiritual sense. However, I do think there was a creator, and a creator with a small “c”.

I think that life started on this planet as a result of Panspermia, out of the hundreds of thousands of tons of space dust that lands on this planet each and every year. The building blocks of life that contain the blueprints for existence cosmically roam the universe looking for Goldilocks planets like Earth and when they find one, they take hold. How far they go is a matter of chance for it is at this point that evolution steps in and the random element comes in to play. Very likely, as common as intelligent life might be, microbial life will be far more common.

I think there is a cosmic gardener that spreads this seed and I think he scatters it and then sits back and watches what happens. He puts the very basics in but doesn’t interfere any further. If it catches and grows then fine, but if not, well there’ll be another planet along in a short while.

And so, in case it isn’t obvious, I believe in directed Panspermia. I think the effort to spread life is deliberate. I don’t choose to call the force that does that God.

But Panspermia isn’t the complete answer and like with any theory about the origins of life, as you follow it back, you always come up against the same brick wall; who or what started it? Who is this force that I think spreads cosmic dust everywhere and, if it is an alien being, who or what created him, and so on.

Even if you assume, as is the case, that In The Beginning there was absolutely nothing; no time, no space, no continuum, not even a void, some chemical reaction started the process leading to the Big Bang. What kick started that?

It is only at this point that I have some sympathy for religion. From our present understanding, I can appreciate the frustration in trying to climb over this final hurdle and faced with the impossibility of an answer, I can sympathise with the desire to submit to a paranormal super being of omnipotent and supreme power.

But for most in science, that is a kop out and the search for the defining solution is the reason why many of the white coats still get out of bed in the mornings. I am with them on this one. What is confusing is that some scientists also claim to believe in God, which is scientific blasphemy. There is no spiritual element to this conundrum, just, somewhere in the depths of the cosmic blur, a single CSICOP’ian fact.

Amen.

Yes, Aliens Are Among Us

2007-11-21T08:32:00.000-08:00

It is always reassuring when one of the most eminent specialists in your favoured field offers ideas that correspond to yours. Generously, Paul Davies has done just such a thing in his excellent SciAm article Are Aliens Among Us?

http://tinyurl.com/3b8voo

He starts by reflecting on the unresolved question of whether Earth is unique or whether life is prevalent everywhere. It seems bizarre to me that given the historical examination of meteorites, the astronomically observed clouds of cosmic dust, the clear evidence that basic life forms can survive in extreme conditions, the likelihood that water probably isn’t a prerequisite and the commonly held scientific view that life will be found on Mars, that there are still people who believe that Earth stands alone. It is simply mathematically impossible. Davies says;

How can scientists determine which view is correct? The most direct way is to seek evidence for life on another planet, such as Mars. If life originated from scratch on two planets in a single solar system, it would decisively confirm the hypothesis of biological determinism. Unfortunately, it may be a long time before missions to the Red Planet are sophisticated enough to hunt for Martian life-forms and, if they indeed exist, to study such extraterrestrial biota in detail.

My only point of disagreement with him here is his definition of “a long time”.

The remainder of his article reviews the possibilities of, using a term that he has borrowed from Carol Cleland and Shelley Copley of the University of Colorado, shadow life. This concept, which I believe to be a strong possibility, is that either alien life forms are already here or alternatively are the result of a previous genesis. When we talk of “alien life forms” we aren’t referring to ET in the shape of a gray, but to microbial life, so exciting it isn’t. It is more than conceivable that such forms exist and that science is simply not aware of them yet. There could even be one sitting on your sleeve at this minute.

Likewise with a previous genesis. There may be paleontological evidence of an earlier “start up” but discovering it is another matter.

This article is an outstanding overview of the areas where alien life might exist on Earth and how it might thrive. You may reason that if all we’re talking about are effectively specks of dust, does any of it really matter? But the central issue of how life originated has, as yet, eluded us and any clue that can help us on our way to that answer has to be worth the effort.

UFOs And The National Publicity State

2007-11-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

The recent run of publicity relating to UFOs, a combination of events, has certainly been unusual and a real fillip to the moral. The Larry King Show and the respectful treatment the subject received (along with the drubbing of James McGaha), the National Press Club conference in Washington with what looks like a credible list of witnesses, the Dennis Kucinich incident and the debate that generated, and the publicity surrounding the impending release of Clinton correspondence with Laurence Rockefeller have all raised the profile. One man stands head and shoulders above the melee for carrying the responsibility for the bulk of this and that is film director James Fox. He has come over as an articulate and level headed individual who has brought his many talents to this subject and I for one am grateful.

One unfortunate side affect of all of this has been the resurgence of the original Disclosure Project, anxious to ride along and even to possibly hi-jack the success of the Washington news conference. On this occasion they are assisted by the Exopolitical movement in the shape of Alfred Webre. While I suppose inevitable, I feel it best if they could be ignored, for they will do nothing other than to detract from the credibility that has been painfully and gradually reinstated. While never being an Exopolitical fan, I was always tolerant and recognised that they had a place. Now I wish they would just shut up.

At the risk of being considered negative, I do not however feel that James Fox’s efforts will achieve anything other than a very welcome hike in public awareness. Firstly, I don’t actually think there are any UFO secrets to reveal, although it would always be interesting to hear current government/Pentagon opinion on the phenomena. But most importantly, UFOs have been a highly advantageous asset to the intelligence services over the years and it’s fairly obvious that they aren’t finished with them yet. To give this tool up by revealing The Truth i.e. “We haven’t got a clue”, and in so doing, demystify the subject, would not be in their best interests.

Which is a pity. I guess it’s conceivable that if public opinion was to move in a particular direction over the next couple of years and the “right” candidate wins the presidential race, there is an outside chance of something developing, but I wouldn’t hold your breadth.

On the other hand, high viz publicity tends to attract and while it may not attract the American government, it might draw in some institution or wealthy individual who wishes to investigate further. I can’t see anyone complaining about that.

For the moment though, I am enjoying the revival, as I hope you are. If it proves one thing, it is that UFOs just won’t go away.

Kucinich Afterthoughts – America Grows Up.

2007-11-06T07:13:00.000-08:00

Now that the dust has settled somewhat after the “Kucinich Affair”, it is time to take stock. What, if anything can we conclude from the event?

Plenty. I think it has had a very positive effect for UFOlogy.

Sure it started out following a well worn path; public figure admits to seeing a UFO and he’s mocked, sniggered at, and doubts are cast about his mental state. What’s new? Kucinich wasn’t helped either by the fact that the original source of the story is the biggest flake in The Land of the Giddy.

But the fallout didn’t quite go with the plan. There were sounds of balance, of a refusal to condemn and “he’s not alone” from some quarters of the press. He was also helped by precedent. In the end, the ridicule came from the Republican right who ended up shooting themselves in the foot as their over the top responses failed to find an audience. Most folks just shrugged their shoulders and said, “So what?” Certainly, if he’d had any chance prior to the event of winning the nomination (which he didn’t), his chances subsequently wouldn’t appear to have been affected.

I don’t think its overstating something to say that Kucinich’s UFO sighting may have marked a turning point in public perception, understanding and maturity in relation to this matter. There might now even be some perceived value in other candidates stepping forward and admitting to ghostly encounters or NDEs or something similar. Times have changed. People have become inured to “wackiness” and are generally less judgemental, and making an announcement like this isn't seen as an impairment to a public career. Much of the reaction was more to do with relating Kucinich’s experience to ordinary people and there was definitely an empathic undercurrent at work. And that's where the votes come from.

Other than the fact that Kucinich is a left leaning, social welfare tax raising commie bastard, I say “Well done” and wish him well.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

2007-11-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

We always were in the land of make believe with the Serpo story but after the latest Victor Martinez postings relating to the Reagan debrief, we’ve moved into the nether underworld of the fairies.

Has Rick Doty lost his touch or is debasing the premise of the story even further part of some dastardly complicated disinfo ploy, the motive for which defies even his perverse mind? Is he, at last, past it? Is he living in some time warp where he thinks the rest of us still have our minds in the 90s?

What has been revealing is that the Believers Paradise into which this was launched has reacted much the same way as I have. No one is having it and there doesn’t even seem to be a desire to want to anymore. And can Doty ever be forgiven for making Reagan seem like such an irritating twerp?

As his brief appears to be to determine the government’s ability to play with people’s minds and to see what does and doesn’t float, then this feeble attempt could well be part of that programme. How far can folk be pushed into believing the ridiculous? What is their limit? Never underestimate the stupidity of the general public says Scott Adams, and he might have a point. Prior to the NFL’s invasion of Wembley Stadium in London last week, a radio interview with some unnamed player broadcast in the UK prior to arrival revealed the guy didn’t know that in England we speak English.

There is no doubt that Doty carries an aura about him and even seasoned and knowledgeable UFOlogists appear to be aware they are in a presence when they meet him. I haven’t had that pleasure, yet, and find it difficult to weigh him up on occasions. I simply can’t decide if he’s brilliantly clever and we’re all very stupid or if he’s not very bright to start with but we’re even dumber still. How smart do you have to be to present yourself as a lightweight?

I’ve contradicted myself on this before but just at this moment in time, I am of the opinion that Rick Doty is not the cleverest man walking the face of this planet.

Perhaps he has been unlucky with his timing on this occasion as he has had to compete with other simultaneously published serious rubbish. Richard Hoagland hosted a news conference announcing that alien artefacts had been discovered on the moon, yet again.

And attention was further diverted by Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich stealing the national limelight as he was put through the wringer on national TV, having been stabbed in the back by his dear friend Shirley MacLaine who revealed in a book that Dennis had seen a UFO. This debate had the unfortunate consequence for Rick of raising the discussion on the subject of UFOs from Rick’s sub prime moron level to that of “a subject worthy of acceptable discourse”. As a consequence, Rick’s material has been left dragging itself along in the sewer, where it belongs.

We are all malleable, much as some of us might prefer to think otherwise and personally, I enjoy being taken for an idiot. But when it gets to the point that the perpetrator looks like he’s lost the plot, then the game becomes boring.

And Serpo and Doty and Reagan and his ET debriefing is very, very boring.

ET and Humans

2007-10-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

I am at a continual loss to comprehend the complete lack of imagination applied to the enigma of human reaction to contact. Astronomy seems to be emotionally detached and approaches the subject in an academic monotone. UFOlogists just don’t get it and the liberal sciences rarely think of it.

Either people can’t envisage the response or they don’t want to.

Of course, it’s an unknown quantity but I simply can’t go along with the thinking that not a lot would happen, that people would be under-whelmed or that little would change. The manner of contact would be key and the consequences would understandably vary depending on whether we were being attacked or whether, for example, an artificial extraterrestrial construct was discovered in space. For the sake of this thread, let us assume the most benign possibility of them all; SETI detects a signal. And it comes from light years away and somehow SETI are able to establish that those transmitting are unable to reach us. There is no danger, no immediate threat of eradication, just a presence.

Hysteria anyone? Well inevitably there would be but to what degree is anyone’s guess. For guidance, Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds is what we point to, amidst revisionist claims that the reaction has since been exaggerated and was nothing like it has historically claimed to have been. Perhaps the myth is greater than the reality but the relevance today is oblique. Gone are the pre Second World War tensions of 1938 and the memories of a devastating depression, to be replaced with a hyped up, fear driven, head in the sands religious zeal of biblical intensity and dogma. Is there more fire and brimstone now than in 1938? Yes but, no but. It’s different, it’s the same.

But Roswell happened and if anything, that was more real. At least we all went looking to kick Orson Welles’ butt after the joke was revealed but in 1947, one of them actually landed here in America, did it not? The cheek of it! No, no hysteria, just intense curiosity.

Sixty years later we’re still in the same mess. For different reasons, what prevails now is what has prevailed for ever; fear. The Iron Curtain has gone and is replaced with Iran or terrorism or both but whatever, we’re still under the cosh, we can never relax, and at one level at least, human existence is a pretty miserable experience.

Conflicting with this zeal are increased levels of education, awareness, maturity and suspicion of government - the counter weight. Today is what matters and it’s a difficult call. My opinion is that there would be substantial elements of world wide hysteria which couldn’t be ignored, for it would inevitably impinge on the calmer elements. The most un-endearing quality within the psyche of the human spirit is arrogance. Our world is full of strutting little despots, be it militarily, politically, administratively, the religious realm, or even in our personal lives. People full of their own self importance and power, without humility or empathy, who would seize the opportunity to terrify and manipulate. Martial law in some quarters would be a real possibility. After all, this would be an event of a life time.

Would calm ever be restored? Would the threat of the devil a’coming be assuaged sufficiently for people to shrug their shoulders, go back to work, and get on with their lives? I guess pretty much, particularly when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse miss the starting line up for the 3:20 at Kempton. But sociologically, it could never be the same. A fissure of irreparable width would sear through the human throng and the mountains of Montana and other world wide remoteness would begin to resemble overcrowded metropolises. This, mind, relates to the “bad” part of hysteria, those with the complete screaming had-dabs, rolling tongues, staring eyes, and dribble down their chins. The “good” part are those who merely expect rapture. Large numbers of these will die in road traffic accidents as drivers attempt to swerve out of the way of figures kneeling in prayer in the middle of the road. It’s not beginning to look like a good thing.

Back in Normalsville, how would Mr Average react? Why don’t I ask him? Well, if I was absolutely assured of their non threatening behaviour, I’d be very curious, I would want to know whether they were ahead of us technologically, whether they would want to meet, what they looked like and what their world was like, what we could learn from them and them us; the usual things. I don’t think my inner self would be changed because of the realisation that we are not unique but rather to the contrary, there would be a real pleasure that we weren’t alone. I would probably undergo some element of spiritual sensation but only to the extent of putting candles around the bath. I wouldn’t start high tailing it off to church or temple any more frequently than I don’t do now and I wouldn’t get the colly wobbles either. I would feel different, certainly. I would be uplifted and feel like there was a point to it all after all. I would expect a reaction from my political leaders by way of an example and if it failed to come, I would be prepared to launch a physical attack against them because of their stupidity in not taking an opportunity for change. I would expect to see a world wide improvement in international relations a la the Regan principle. I would expect a realignment of views and approach. Frankly, I would expect a changed world and peace to break out all over the place. And if it didn’t, I would be very, very cross. It would be time to cut the crap.

So, he’s got an opinion or two then. What he left out is how small the Earth would begin to look and yet at the same time, how wonderful a place it will seem. Mental health issues would surge to the fore - “ordinary” issues like depression and schizophrenia would be rampant. The suicide rate would undoubtedly shoot up. There would be social unrest, disquiet, and extremes of communal highs and lows. There would be great joy, dramatic displays of human kinship and love and an animosity towards authority.

Science will pause and hold its breadth, not knowing which way to turn. Astrobiology will be cock a hoop. Anthropology will be thrown into confusion. Physics will want to give up. There will be many more questions than answers. The economy will suffer dramatically. Substantial numbers just won’t care anymore and will stop working. Markets will crash and turmoil will prevail. The quality of life will assume an even greater importance than it presently does.

What happens if I’m just not interested? That’s not an option – you won’t be allowed to be not interested. You won’t be left alone. Your senses will be assaulted by every conceivable media outlet. Your friends, your work colleagues will have little else of conversation. Literally, the only way to avoid it would be to lock yourself away in your house and shut the rest of the world out.

All this just from a confirmed SETI signal. I wonder what it would be like if we were under attack?

Anthropomorphism and Extraterrestrial Life

2007-10-23T08:09:00.000-07:00

I am reminded of the ongoing circle of imaginative discourse involved in attempting to see planet Earth and its cosmic relevance through the eyes of an extraterrestrial over at Paul Gilster’s Centauri Dreams. In his piece Self-Consciousness Among the Stars he says;

Sometimes it seems that we humans give ourselves too much importance in the cosmic scheme of things. After all, what would our little planet have to offer in a galaxy that, as The Age (Melbourne) notes, is made up of 100 billion stars (and there’s that number again, 100 billion, which reminds me that estimates of our Galaxy’s stellar population range from this low-ball figure all the way up to Timothy Ferris’ whopping one trillion). Aren’t humans, we ask, just one more backward species trying to evolve?

Maybe, but the problem is that we have no way of knowing the answer. If we are the only civilization in the Orion Arm, then we’re hugely significant. If we’re one of ten thousand, then we’re not.

Giancarlo Genta, who has written wisely and sanely about SETI in his new book Lonely Minds in the Universe (New York: Copernicus, 2007), would add that we don’t really know whether intelligence and self-consciousness always co-exist.

Paul encapsulates both points of view by either referencing in the third person or by quoting someone else. It would have been nice to know his opinion.

The opinion I hear most often, but do not share, is the former; namely that if a civilisation is capable of interstellar travel, we could not possibly be of any interest to them.

But I beg to differ. Regardless of the frequency of other life, as he himself illustrates, we have no real idea of how intelligence and consciousness from another environment might present itself. If we were to happen upon life that was obviously sentient but very different to us, we’d be intrigued and we’d stop or at least observe.

The futility of such a comment though is obvious. How can we possibly presume to know how another intelligence would think? If one extends that argument further, then a massive question mark must even appear over SETI as well.

So it seems we have no choice but to anthropomorphise because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t even get started, and there’s not much point to that.

SETI; I blame Stan Friedman.

2007-10-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

I was delighted for SETI the week before last that they got such a tremendous PR boost from the coming-on-line of the Allen Array at Hat Creek. Furthermore, one is reminded of how fortunate they are to have such a generous benefactor in Paul Allen. This is a classic example of putting your money where your mouth is except that in Mr. Allen’s case, I never actually heard him talking about the search for extraterrestrial life before he became involved with SETI. To be honest, I’ve not heard him talk much about it since then either, so he’s obviously a very discrete individual.

The fact that there is antagonism between the SETI and the UFO camps is down to Stan. He has set the tone and the pace over the years and the rest of us, incapable of independent thought and sheep like, have followed suit. The Silly Effort To Investigate is quite a catchy jingle and one wonders why Stanley has never forsaken UFOs and nuclear physics and turned instead to the wonderful world of advertising, where his intellect might have earned him a crumb or two.

And it is all so self serving. Inevitably over the years, Stan and Seth have crossed swords and Stan has continued to lick his wounds. Seth of course, cannot for a moment give any ground because if he does, the game is up. If he even hints at the possibility that ET has already been here then the big switch gets thrown at Mountain View and someone will be looking for other gainful employment.

To be fair to Stan, the work and the approach that SETI takes attracts almost as much universal criticism pro rata as does the study of UFOs. Many regard SETI as simply pissing in the wind; that their whole premise is based on an erroneousness assumption and they should be using other methods other than the radio spectrum or, they should instead be transmitting instead of just listening, and so on. And most interestingly, they too have been accused of being faith based and not much better than a religion, something that will be familiar to UFO advocates. The more you consider it, the more alarming the scenario becomes as you realise that the niggles between the two groups are like two siblings squabbling.

That said, SETI have my unquestioning full support. We should be grateful for any properly organised attempt at discovering ET and if there is any honesty and generosity of spirit within UFO circles, then it behoves them to support Seth and his tribe. But there isn’t, so they won’t. Nonetheless, I can’t help feeling that both sides are going to miss out and that it will be the astrobiological mob that will plant the flag and be the first to discover and confirm the existence of extraterrestrial life.

As in many conflicts, there is great irony. Stan and Seth both seek intelligent life. The astro crowd want that too but are arguably the party with their feet most firmly planted in the world of reality and probability. The bugs will win.

I do have my own criticisms of SETI but they are more to do with their PR side. Their web site is poor, despite a recent overhaul and their general publicity machine could do an awful lot more than it does. But their heart is in the right place and their goals are spot on.

I wish them well and I thank Paul Allen.

UFOs and Science

2007-10-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

People who have had long, distinguished careers in a subject, who have contributed through books and even been a part of the history, should command the respect of others. That Dick Hall doesn’t do that for me is either a testimony to my mean mindedness or a tribute to his ability in pissing people off. Dick requires patience and “understanding” to deal with, and I can’t be bothered.

A major area of antagonism is his complete lack of good grace or manners towards others. Fresh from snarling at all and everyone, he has recently posted this message to the UFO UpDates message board. It’s about science and UFOlogy. In between regularly insulting the entire List about its complete lack of any scientific bearing or approach, it would seem that it is only him, a non scientist, who truly applies the scientific method in analysing UFOs.

Following up on recent posts about how science could and should study UFOs, here is what I outlined in The UFO Evidence, Vol. II (2000).

I thought I had it on a floppy disc, but if so I couldn't find it. In the original I argued the case more fully, so this is a bare-bones outline.

From The UFO Evidence, Vol. II (Scarecrow Press, 200), pp. 645-647,I reported the "Elements of a Scientific Study." Condensed here they are:

I. Adequate funding for scientific personnel and administrative staff infrastructure.

II. Systematic gathering of both historical and current information at one or more collection points.

III. Quick reaction teams equipped with instruments to conduct timely field investigations.

IV. Re-establishment or establishment of new reporting networks similar to successful ones of the past.

V. Cataloging, documenting, and data analysis of evidential types of UFO reports:

a. E-M effects
b. Radar
c. Physiological/medical effects
d Landing traces
e. Animal reactions
f. Photographic evidence
g. Computerized pattern and correlation analysis

VI. Publication and peer review of data, analysis, and findings.

VII. Testing of the hypothesis that some UFOs represent an as yet unexplained, potentially significant phenomenon of worldwide scope, giving both the appearance and some instrumented evidence of being solid, structured objects (i.e., craft).

No, there’s nothing wrong with what he’s written, just in case you were wondering, and they are all very admirable sentiments. The only difficulty is that none of it is based in the land of reality. In fact, it is so far removed from the real world it almost makes me cry.

What scientifically based institution is going to undertake this sort of programme? None, for the simple reason, and I’m not being cynical here, that there’s no money in it. If he can coral Dan Akroyd or some other starry eyed celebrity with more cash than sense to divvy up then he might be in luck, but I doubt it.

Of course Dick gives the whole game away with his last paragraph. What he is saying is this: I believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial craft and I want science to focus all its resources into proving my pet theory. Sure Dick; here’s a few million dollars to indulge yourself with, you moron.

One of the small problems he faces is that there is precious little evidence on which to base a serious scientific study in the first place. Of course Dick would probably burst a blood vessel in his rush to disagree. He would wave his bundles of witness statements and photographs and all manner of other material but it’s all irrelevant because it begs one question; if there was any substance to any of it, someone would have jumped in before. Lots and lots of companies would want to know how a UFO flies and how it’s built.

Why do I always have to bring everything back to money? Because that’s the way America works.

Try as he might, he refuses to grasp what is obvious to most. There is a phenomenon but it’s probably in the plural and no one has a clue as to source. There’s simply no starting point. But Dick wants to throw money at it.

Oh, you can measure light refraction or cloud levels or where the nearest airport is or take an EM reading or even note when the dog last farted. But when you’ve done all that, then what? It’s anomalous! That helps a lot.

Worse, it could just be that his most favourite person in the whole wide world, Jacques Vallee, might even be right or at least going in the right direction. That would mean no Little Green Men for Dicky.

He just can’t let go of the ETH but wants it all nice and cuddly and respectable. He wants to be able to walk tall and feel that he has the weight of respected society and its institutions behind him instead of constantly ducking as yet another journalist labels those who study UFOs as nutters. He is trapped in a tunnel vision hell-hole without the intellectual capability or courage to cast his eye further a field which, by my reckoning, doesn’t make him very bright. It’s the ETH or nothing for him and he wants Society to bale him out. It is never going to happen.

We all want the ETH Dick. It's just some of us have grown up.

The great irony is, science not only takes an interest in, but is actually leading the march towards the discovery of extraterrestrial life. And it will unquestionably find it. But Dick isn’t interested in whether there’s extraterrestrial life; he’s interested in UFOs.

As I said, it’s enough to make me cry.

Disclosure

2007-10-15T07:02:00.000-07:00

I find the entire concept of “Disclosure” a most bizarre line of reasoning. It is so unimaginative, restrictive, and incomprehensible that I wonder about the mindset of those that look to it and hope for its coming.

What I find perplexing are the assumptions. The primary one is that the government knows something or at the very least, knows more than us. This belief, for that is what it is, is based on the notion that government is powerful and all knowing and simply must have the answers, because of its resources, to what has been happening in the skies above us. They have these answers because they have somehow developed unspecified machinery or equipment that is capable of giving them this information or because ET has previously secretly made contact with the American regime and said “hello.”

People who follow this credo are no better than sheep in a flock; “Someone will tell me because I need to be told. I also need to be told when to wipe my ass.” I think the best that one can objectively claim about the American government is that they might have suspicions about this or about that but very little else. There is much argument and debate about just how easy it is for Government to really keep something secret. The most oft quoted example is the Manhattan Project during the Second World War, a programme in which many thousands of people were involved and about which not a word leaked out. And there are also undoubtedly many secrets concerning major events which have still to see the light of day.

I am one of those people who think, by and large, that Governments can’t keep secrets and that inevitably, stuff does come out. What confuses the issue is that other stuff also floats about so that one can never know for sure which premise is the right answer. But that the truth is out there is beyond question.

One can lose sight of the fact that “Government” is made up of beings called “People”. Regardless of their discretion, their intellect, and their skills, the bottom line is they are just like us, with all the foibles, weaknesses, and mental issues that the rest of the population possess. They aren’t anything particularly special.

If the study of UFOs should have taught us anything, it is exactly the same lesson to be learned from the study of the paranormal and from Bigfoot; intangibility and elusiveness. Everything is always just beyond our reach and just over the horizon. And yet in the eyes of those asking for disclosure, somehow, this doesn’t appear to apply to the government.

Or maybe it is that ET has chosen to make contact directly to a nation’s leadership. Why would He do this? Because it’s the obvious thing to do? Obvious to whom? Obvious to our way of thinking and of doing things perhaps, but how can we possibly assume to know how an extraterrestrial might think?

People want answers and that is understandable. But demand for disclosure is a shifting of responsibility and immature reasoning. It is a lazy way of blaming someone else for the frustration that the study of UFOs brings about.

And the ironic thing is, if the Americans announced that ET was here, half of those clamouring for The Truth wouldn’t believe them and would insist they were still covering something else up.

Have Aliens Ever Visited Planet Earth?

2007-10-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

As my journey within UFOlogy has moved on, my philosophical position has mirrored that of a fuel gauge in a car, moving gradually from full to near empty. From being an almost wide eyed believer, I have become sceptical. Not cynically so, not bitter or fed up, but in to a position that I think of as a realistic perch on which to sit. This has happened as a result of recognising the degree and depth to which UFOlogy has been the victim of the American Intelligence services.

In early October of 2007, I posted up on the UFO Review website an article by Canadian writer Bernard Pelletier which amounted to a good old fashioned side swipe at sceptics. I prefaced it with the observation that the views contained did not necessarily represent the opinions of the web site etc but the article had some element of worth and although I disagreed with it fundamentally, within certain limits I’m quite prepared to offer a platform to pretty much anyone.

The writer displayed the despair of the scared believer, one who feels his position undermined but who is desperate not to let go. It was, frankly, a rant. My reason for mentioning this is to illustrate the point that sceptics come in a variety of colours and shades and to blindly thrash around waving a bat at all of them is silly.

You see, I believe that aliens have visited planet Earth.

When most people offer the opinion that they think it’s very unlikely that ET has visited here, inevitably they do so from the trapped cultural perspective of the Gray. They may not have that word in mind but undoubtedly behind the statement, somewhere in their consciousness, will be a mental image of something with a head and limbs jumping out of a saucer-shaped craft. That scenario is just so unlikely that it’s a doddle to reject. And it’s true; it is easy to reject because for one thing, there’s no acceptable proof.

This is a trap that we all constantly fall into, as do those who insist that faster then light travel is impossible. On the one hand, at some level we recognise that this is a mysterious subject that has defied explanation for centuries. It presents itself in myriad forms that perplex, puzzle, frighten and confuse. It fills us with awe and fear as well as intense expectation and reaches into the Human spirit in a way that shuts out the mundane and excludes the banal.

Yet we look at it through the camera lens of Stephen Spielberg. What we don’t do is to bring to this subject the one thing that it needs: imagination.

We want what we want, and what we want is the cliché. However people twist it, however they deny it, and no matter what intellectual or research level they hold within UFOlogy, fundamentally, they want their Space Brothers. They want to be rescued, guided, and mentored. Which is why for many people within the subject, the science of astrobiology induces a yawn.

Microbes aren’t exciting and they don’t interact. Red rain remains a phenomenon that can be conveniently ignored. The bizarre life forms that might have evolved on Europa are just glorified fish. And the Mars Rovers are a pain in the ass because nothing so far has stood up in front of them holding a card reading “Come and get me Earthlings”.

ET is here alright. He’s the bumble bee in the room or the dust swirl in the garden. He is frankly, anything your imagination can let him be. But if there is intelligent life out there, no matter how far away it might be, that is a hundred years or more ahead of our science, and there will be, then it will have come. It will have got here and had a look at our planet and lamented the pitiful lack of imagination among its inhabitants.

Welcome

2007-08-16T04:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the blog of Alien Worlds magazine.

We will start posting regular blogs here soon.