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   Dec

                          UFO UpDates Mailing List
                                  Dec 2004

  Dec 1:

   Notice of Imminent Legal Action Against BLM - Larry W. Bryant [26]
   Light Formation Apex North Carolina - Brian Vike - HBCC UFO Research
   [66]
   Last Call For Audio History Of Ufology Compilations - Wendy Connors
   [10]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [15]
   55,000 Posts To The UFO UpDates Archive - UFO UpDates - Toronto [11]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Don Ledger [12]
   UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 48 - John Hayes [419]
   Re: Aykroyd Expounds On His Belief In UFOs - Heath - Gord Heath [34]
   Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Nicolaides - Louise Nicolaides [6]
   Re: Chapala Jalisco Mexico Saucer-Shaped Craft - - Kyle King [32]
   Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Christol - Michael Christol [7]
   Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Rudiak - David Rudiak [14]
   Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Matteson - Gary Matteson [6]
   Re: A New Lie Detection Technology? - Maccabee - Bruce Maccabee [44]
   Re: John Ford's Southaven Footage? - Maccabee - Bruce Maccabee [5]
   Re: Ufology As A Science - Boone - Greg Boone [31]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [24]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King - Kyle King [57]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - James Smith [27]
   Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Boone - Greg Boone [8]

  Dec 2:

   Filer's Files #50 - 2004 - George A. Filer [607]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Chace - David Chace [36]
   Re: John Ford's Southaven Footage? - Balaskas - Nick Balaskas [23]
   Selective Morals - Frank Warren [14]
   First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Nick Balaskas [34]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King - Kyle King [6]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King - Kyle King [5]
   Sex And Alien Abduction? - James Smith [19]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Gary Matteson [9]
   Are You A Believer? Video Might Make You Wonder - Frank Warren [25]
   Re: Ufology As A Science - Rimmer - John Rimmer [54]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Kyle King [22]

  Dec 3:

   Re: Ufology As A Science - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [12]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [18]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [14]
   Re: Sex And Alien Abduction? - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [16]
   Magonia Supplement 53 - John Harney [5]
   Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Scheldroup - John Scheldroup [31]
   Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast - UFO UpDates - Toronto [30]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Alfred Lehmberg [44]
   Re: Ufology As A Science - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [16]
   Secrecy News -- 12/03/04 - Steven Aftergood [139]
   11 Goats Slain In Puerto Rican Petting Zoo - Scott Corrales [73]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason - Cathy Reason [58]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason - Cathy Reason [26]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - James Smith [25]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Friedman - Stanton Friedman [12]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King - Kyle King [54]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King - Kyle King [21]
   Re: Sex And Alien Abduction? - King - Kyle King [35]
   Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast - Boone - Greg Boone [27]
   Re: Ufology As A Science - Dickenson - Ray Dickenson [13]

  Dec 4:

   Re: The E.T. Equation Recalculated - Friedman - Stanton Friedman [38]
   Joe Firmage & Stan Grof To Honor Dr John Mack - Will Beuche - John E
   Mack Institute [25]
   The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - UFO UpDates - Toronto [72]
   The Threat From Life On Mars - UFO UpDates - Toronto [105]
   Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield - UFO UpDates - Toronto [35]
   Space Travelers Prepare For Alien Encounter - UFO UpDates - Toronto
   [85]
   Britain's X-Files/The New X-Files - UFO UpDates - Toronto [71]
   New *U* Statistics Display Online - Larry Hatch [14]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Hatch - Larry Hatch [47]
   Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast - Ledger - Don Ledger [18]
   UFO Clippings Booklet - Rich Reynolds [40]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Chace - David Chace [8]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Chace - David Chace [33]
   Re: The E.T. Equation Recalculated - Rudiak - David Rudiak [40]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [31]
   Re: Woman Wins Lawsuits Against Movies - Boone - Greg Boone [26]
   Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast - Boone - Greg Boone [20]

  Dec 5:

   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Clark - Jerome Clark [10]
   Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Allan - Christopher Allan [21]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Bruce Maccabee [11]
   Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Frank Warren [35]
   Many Have Taken Interest In UFOs - UFO UpDates - Toronto [56]
   Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO Results? - Greg Boone [6]
   Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB 'Beam' - Larry W. Bryant [35]
   Re: New *U* Statistics Display Online - Maccabee - Bruce Maccabee [6]
   Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Hatch - Larry Hatch [13]

  Dec 6:

   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason - Cathy Reason [29]
   Earth Rings? - Terry W. Colvin [9]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason - Cathy Reason [22]
   Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO - Richard Hall [8]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - James Smith [28]
   Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB - John Rimmer [13]
   Notice Of Imminent Legal Action Against The CIA - Larry W. Bryant [24]
   Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO - Stanton Friedman [13]
   Re: Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield - Ledger - Don Ledger [5]
   Jaime Maussan Visiting Los Angeles With New Videos - Greg Boone [9]
   Good News For Causality - Larry Hatch [37]
   Russian UFO Documents - Nikolay Subbotin - RUFORS [6]
   Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Chace - David Chace [21]
   Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Frank Warren [220]
   Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield - James Smith [12]
   Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB - - Will Bueche [16]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - James Smith [36]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Alfred Lehmberg [84]
   Re: Good News For Causality - Reynolds - Rich Reynolds [15]

  Dec 7:

   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Smith - James Smith [30]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [14]
   Secrecy News -- 12/06/04 - Steven Aftergood [161]
   NWSURC Recently Reported Sightings 12-06-04 - Barb Campbell [316]
   Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO - Brad Sparks [2]
   Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Holman - Brett Holman [18]
   If UFO Lands Call Him - UFO UpDates - Toronto [47]
   Some Things Are Just Not Discussed - UFO UpDates - Toronto [42]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson - Ray Dickenson [45]
   UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 49 - John Hayes [253]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - James Smith [48]
   Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB - - Alfred Lehmberg [31]

  Dec 8:

   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Ledger - Don Ledger [4]
   Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Ledger - Don Ledger [14]
   Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [15]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Sparks - Brad Sparks [142]
   Re: Good News For Causality - King - Kyle King [61]
   Latest On Bryant v. Rumsfeld et al - Larry W. Bryant [21]
   Re: UK National Archives On UFOs - Pope - Nick Pope [15]
   Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB - - John Rimmer [9]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Kyle King [48]
   Betty Hill Autographed Alien - Loren Coleman [7]
   CCCRN News: Canadian Crop Circle Mapping Project - Paul Anderson [38]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Alfred Lehmberg [79]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Maccabee - Bruce Maccabee [22]
   Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO - Bruce Maccabee [5]
   Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB - - Alfred Lehmberg [22]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [7]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - James Smith [138]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Clark - Jerome Clark [43]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - James Smith [30]

  Dec 9:

   The Night Aliens Called On Lennon - UFO UpDates - Toronto [147]
   Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences - UFO UpDates - Toronto
   [57]
   UK Government Files On UFOs - UFO UpDates - Toronto [212]
   Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - UFO UpDates - Toronto [6]
   Last Rocketeers Set Sights On Mars - UFO UpDates - Toronto [174]
   Secrecy News - 12/08/04 - Steven Aftergood [144]
   Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Sparks - Brad Sparks [10]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson - Ray Dickenson [41]
   Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB - - Brad Sparks [20]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren - Frank Warren [98]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Alfred Lehmberg [186]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan - Christopher Allan
   [24]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Kyle King [112]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [37]
   HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings - 12-08-04 - Brian Vike - HBCC UFO
   Research [623]
   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal - Stanton Friedman [10]
   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal - Alfred Lehmberg [9]
   Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB - - Alfred Lehmberg [47]
   Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - White - Eleanor White [3]
   Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Miller - Stuart Miller [4]
   Smith & Rogerson - Rich Reynolds [48]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren - Frank Warren [6]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - James Smith [21]
   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal - James Smith [20]
   Filer's Files #51 - 2004 - George A. Filer [561]
   This Navy Sighting Was Dynamite - Terry W. Colvin [139]
   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal - Greg Boone [30]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Don Ledger [7]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Alfred Lehmberg [7]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Ledger - Don Ledger [25]
   Re: This Navy Sighting Was Dynamite - Ledger - Don Ledger [3]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Clark - Jerome Clark [114]
   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal - David Rudiak [26]
   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal - Greg Boone [7]

  Dec 10:

   Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' - Wendy Connors [14]
   Is It Time To Scrap SETI? - UFO UpDates - Toronto [118]
   Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - King - Kyle King [25]
   Central Research Facility [was: Smith & Rogerson] - James Smith [27]
   Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered - - Kyle King [10]
   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal - Eleanor White [25]
   Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Hatch - Larry Hatch [7]
   Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Tonnies - Mac Tonnies [9]
   Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Holman - Brett Holman [7]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer - John Rimmer [40]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman - Brett Holman [102]
   Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Stevenson - Colin Stevenson [3]
   Re: Central Research Facility - Cammack - Diana Cammack [19]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [23]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson - Ray Dickenson [43]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Clark - Jerome Clark [25]
   Re: Central Research Facility - Richard Hall [15]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Hall - Richard Hall [8]
   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal - David Rudiak [47]
   Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison - Diane Harrison [47]

  Dec 11:

   Re: Central Research Facility - Smith - Jim Smith [5]
   Re: Is It Time To Scrap SETI? - White - Eleanor White [11]
   Geminids - Chris Rutkowski [15]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer - John Rimmer [31]
   Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' - - Richard Hall [4]
   Re: Central Research Facility - Maccabee - Bruce Maccabee [6]
   Fire Chief Prepares For UFOs - Greg Boone [50]
   Man Made UFOs, Kentucky Style - William H Bolt [8]
   Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - King - Kyle King [64]
   1952 Military Engagement With UFOs Myth Or Mystery? - UFO UpDates -
   Toronto [159]
   Debate On Secret Program Bursts Into Open - Diana Cammack [111]
   Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' - - Geoff Richardson [3]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [15]
   Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' - - Richard Hall [5]
   British TV Program - Are We Alone - Rich Reynolds [9]
   Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' - - Bob Shell [29]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [54]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Clark - Jerome Clark [58]
   Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' - - Wendy Connors [29]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman - Brett Holman [87]
   Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' - - Richard Hall [17]

  Dec 12:

   Re: Good News For Causality? - Shough - Martin Shough [17]
   UFO Clipping Booklet [Redux] - Rich Reynolds [13]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Clark - Jerome Clark [150]
   Re: Central Research Facility - White - Eleanor White [28]
   Crooked Bush Saskatchewan - Barb Campbell [43]
   Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' - - William Sawers [12]
   Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' - - Edward Gehrman [37]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Gonzalez - Luis R. Gonzalez [17]
   Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' - - Josh Goldstein [21]
   Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison - Diane Harrison [43]
   Recommended New Spanish Language UFO Books - Vicente-Juan Ballester
   Olmos [15]

  Dec 13:

   Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer - John Rimmer [21]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer - John Rimmer [30]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Harney - John Harney [14]
   Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - King - Kyle King [108]
   Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Holman - Brett Holman [34]
   UFO Spotted In China - Terry Groff [21]
   Alien Twin Link For UFO Capital - Terry Groff [26]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson - Ray Dickenson [43]
   Re: Central Research Facility - Allan - Christopher Allan [10]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan - Christopher Allan
   [16]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Hall - Richard Hall [24]
   Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hall - Richard Hall [5]
   "Crows As Clever As Great Apes, Study Says" - Alfred Lehmberg [125]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Clark - Jerome Clark [11]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [78]
   Re: Central Research Facility - Reynolds - Rich Reynolds [28]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Clark - Jerome Clark [55]
   New News On Roswell Fragment? - Greg Boone [16]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Smith - James Smith [21]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Gonzalez - Luis R. Gonzalez [10]
   Re: UFO Spotted In China - Smith - James Smith [10]

  Dec 14:

   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren - Frank Warren [29]
   More Correspondence With Frank Drake - Frank Warren [232]
   Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Rich Reynolds [8]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [17]
   Re: Central Research Facility - White - Eleanor White [20]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer - John Rimmer [13]
   NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe Resigns - NASANews@hq.nasa.gov [139]
   Professional Amateurs - Terry W. Colvin [46]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Reason - Cathy Reason [16]
   And Speaking Of Anal Probes - Terry W. Colvin [76]
   Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hatch - Larry Hatch [10]
   A Guide Into The UFO Wilderness - UFO UpDates - Toronto [133]
   UFO Over Sunraysia? - UFO UpDates - Toronto [46]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Clark - Jerome Clark [144]
   NORAD & Fastwalkers [was: UFO Spotted In China] - Alfred Lehmberg [109]
   Re: Professional Amateurs - Cammack - Diana Cammack [15]
   Re: A Guide Into The UFO Wilderness - Groff - Terry Groff [9]
   Re: UFO Over Sunraysia? - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [86]
   Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - King - Kyle King [25]
   Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Shough - Martin Shough [12]
   Re: Central Research Facility - King - Kyle King [29]
   Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Smith - James Smith [17]
   Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Reynolds - Rich Reynolds [10]

  Dec 15:

   UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 50 - John Hayes [229]
   Re: UFO Spotted In China - Boone - Greg Boone [53]
   Re: Professional Amateurs - Kaeser - Steven Kaeser [19]
   Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hall - Richard Hall [9]
   Secrecy News - 12/14/04 - Steven Aftergood [148]
   Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Smith - James Smith [3]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Hall - Richard Hall [23]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Harney - John Harney [12]
   Exopolitics & The Methodological Bias Of Ufology - Michael E. Salla
   [217]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Hall - Richard Hall [5]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Hall - Richard Hall [16]
   Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison - Diane Harrison [31]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Hall - Richard Hall [29]
   Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison - Diane Harrison [39]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - King - Kyle King [27]
   Re: Professional Amateurs - King - Kyle King [32]
   Re: Alien Abductions - King - Kyle King [41]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer - John Rimmer [59]
   Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [28]
   Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hatch - Larry Hatch [17]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Reason - Cathy Reason [66]
   Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Reynolds - Rich Reynolds [7]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Reason - Cathy Reason [5]
   Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Hamilton - Bill Hamilton [5]
   Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Hamilton - Bill Hamilton [3]

  Dec 16:

   Re: Exopolitics & The Methodological Bias Of - Rich Reynolds [37]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan - Christopher Allan
   [38]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Reynolds - Rich Reynolds [4]
   Re: UFO Spotted In China - Smith - James Smith [19]
   Re: UFO Spotted In China - Smith - James Smith [19]
   Re: UFO Spotted In China - Friedman - Stanton Friedman [28]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren - Frank Warren [17]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Adams - Brian Adams [15]
   Re: Central Research Facility - White - Eleanor White [9]
   The Chinese Take UFOs Seriously! - Greg Boone < [10]
   Re: Central Research Facility - Adams - Brian Adams [8]
   Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Holman - Brett Holman [12]
   Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Maccabee - Bruce Maccabee [11]
   Re: Professional Amateurs - Holman - Brett Holman [28]
   Re: Professional Amateurs - Holman - Brett Holman [13]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Sawers - William Sawers [12]
   Strange Microwave & Radio Signals In Himalayas - UFO UpDates - Toronto
   [42]
   Only White People See Aliens - UFO UpDates - Toronto [19]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Groff - Terry Groff [8]
   Re: Only White People See Aliens - Cammack - Diana Cammack [8]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Miller - Stuart Miller [23]
   Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Reynolds - Rich Reynolds [5]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson - Ray Dickenson [15]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren - Frank Warren [51]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Hall - Richard Hall [13]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [79]
   Re: Only White People See Aliens - Hall - Richard Hall [11]
   Re: UFO Spotted In China - Boone - Greg Boone [84]
   Re: Only White People See Aliens - Boone - Greg Boone [7]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Sandow - "Greg Sandow" [21]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Allan - Christopher Allan [22]
   Part 2 Of Are We Alone? - Rich Reynolds [7]

  Dec 17:

   Secrecy News -- 12/16/04 - Steven Aftergood [118]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [31]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan - Christopher Allan
   [26]
   Re: Alien Abductions - King - Kyle King [15]
   Re: Professional Amateurs - King - Kyle King [16]
   Re: Part 2 Of Are We Alone? - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [97]
   More On Our UFO Clippings Booklet - Rich Reynolds [6]

  Dec 18:

   Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [9]
   Re: Only White People See Aliens - Rudiak - David Rudiak [4]
   HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings - 12-17-04 - Brian Vike - HBCC UFO
   Research [398]
   The Quantum Film? - Rich Reynolds [6]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - White - Eleanor White [8]
   Intelligent Design Merits Equal Time With Evolution - Eustaquio Andrea
   Patounas [107]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Harney - John Harney [18]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Hall - Richard Hall [10]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren - Frank Warren [35]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman - Brett Holman [52]
   Phil Klass [was: Alien Abductions] - Sandow - Greg Sandow [39]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Salla - Michael Salla [101]
   Re: Phil Klass - Clark - Jerome Clark [26]
   Re: The Naked Scientists - Pope - Nick Pope [23]
   Re: Phil Klass - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [13]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Reason - Cathy Reason [22]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Reason - Cathy Reason [4]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson - Ray Dickenson [20]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Scheldroup - John Scheldroup [23]
   Re: Phil Klass - Friedman - Stanton Friedman [15]

  Dec 19:

   'Nevada US-Alien Facility' Brief? - Barb Campbell [8]
   Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics - Ray Dickenson [27]
   Re: Phil Klass - Maccabee - Bruce Maccabee [2]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - - Josh Goldstein [7]
   Re: Good News For Causality? - Shough - Martin Shough [20]
   Re: 'Nevada US-Alien Facility' Brief? - Hamilton - Bill Hamilton [6]
   Re: Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics - - Alfred Lehmberg [69]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Hall - Richard Hall [46]

  Dec 20:

   Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman - Brett Holman [11]
   Re: Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics - - Brett Holman [67]
   More Evidence Of ET Contac With Indian Government - UFO UpDates -
   Toronto [83]
   Rash Of UFOs In Eastern Hemisphere - UFO UpDates - Toronto [44]
   Mexican AF UFO "A Squadron Of New Stealth Strike - Terry W. Colvin
   [119]
   Large PDFs Of Report On Death Of James Forrestal - Terry W. Colvin [14]
   Re: 'Nevada US-Alien Facility' Brief? - Friedman - Stanton Friedman
   [16]
   Re: Large PDFs Of Report On Death Of James - Greg Boone [22]
   Re: More Evidence Of ET Contac With Indian - Greg Boone
   Evolbaby@aol.com [11]
   Re: Mexican AF UFO "A Squadron Of New Stealth - James Smith [4]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren - Frank Warren [17]
   Causality & Blind Science News - Ray Dickenson [30]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Reason - Cathy Reason [92]
   Indonesian Blasts Likely Meteor Shower - Frank Warren [16]
   HBCCUFO Recently Reported Sightings - 12-20-04 - Brian Vike - HBCC UFO
   Research [389]
   LWB's First Amendment Violation By Marine Corps - Larry W. Bryant [50]
   The Strangest UFO File? - UFO UpDates - Toronto [9]

  Dec 21:

   NWSURC Recently Reported Sightings - 12-20-04 - Barb Campbell [202]
   Re: The Night Aliens Called On Lennon - Guenther - Daniel Guenther [6]
   The 'Flying Saucer' Dilemma - Rich Reynolds [38]
   Merry Christmas - Philip Mantle [84]
   New UFO Search Engine - Larry Hatch [26]
   Re: The Strangest UFO File? - Hall - Richard Hall [14]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Smith - James Smith [9]
   Secrecy News -- 12/21/04 - Steven Aftergood [180]
   Re: More Evidence Of ET Contact With Indian - Christopher Allan [16]

  Dec 22:

   UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 51 - John Hayes [576]
   Re: Merry Christmas - Koch - Joachim Koch [2]
   Alien Autopsy Film Review - Ed Gehrman [24]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - - Josh Goldstein [22]
   UFO Review Issue 7 - Stuart Miller [38]
   Merry Christmas - Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo [7]
   Filer's Files #53 - 2004 - George A. Filer <Majorstar@aol.com [376]
   Re: Causality & Blind Science News - Holman - Brett Holman [95]
   Are We Alone? Part III - Rich Reynolds [7]

  Dec 23:

   Merry Christmas - Matteson - Gary Matteson [5]
   Re: Phil Klass - Allan - Christopher Allan [7]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Sparks - Brad Sparks [84]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren - Frank Warren [48]
   Re: Are We Alone? Part III - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [18]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - White - Eleanor White [8]
   Merry Christmas - King - Kyle King [30]
   Invitation To ETI - UFO UpDates - Toronto [32]
   Is The Press Killing Us? - Greg Boone [36]
   Re: The 'Flying Saucer' Dilemma - Johnson - Don Johnson [60]
   X-Conference Press Release - 12-23-04 - Stephen Bassett [147]
   Standing Water On Mars? - UFO UpDates - Toronto [4]
   Re: Causality & Blind Science News - Dickenson - Ray Dickenson [40]
   Re: Phil Klass - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [20]
   Re: Phil Klass - Hall - Richard Hall [2]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Hall - Richard Hall [6]
   Re: Merry Christmas - Hall - Richard Hall [4]
   Earth Organisms On Mars - Ray Dickenson [23]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Clark - Jerome Clark [32]
   Re: Standing Water On Mars? - Ledger - Don Ledger [5]

  Dec 24:

   Merry Christmas - Jones - Sean Jones [1]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [12]
   Re: Re: Standing Water On Mars? - Hall - Richard Hall [7]
   Re: Standing Water On Mars? - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [3]
   Re: The 'Flying Saucer' Dilemma - Reynolds - Rich Reynolds [39]
   Re: Standing Water On Mars? - Balaskas - Nick Balaskas [45]
   Best Wishes To All - Diane Harrison [22]
   Re: Standing Water On Mars? - Tonnies - Mac Tonnies [7]
   Re: Earth Organisms On Mars - Boone - Greg Boone [40]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Sparks - Brad Sparks [42]
   Highest Yet Potential Impact Asteroid - Terry W. Colvin [26]
   Re: Earth Organisms On Mars - King - Kyle King [15]
   CI: Martian 'Puddle' - Mac Tonnies [32]
   Re: Standing Water On Mars? - Hatch - Larry Hatch [19]
   Re: Merry Christmas - Hatch - Larry Hatch [8]
   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - - Josh Goldstein [19]
   Re: Is The Press Killing Us? - Hatch - Larry Hatch [28]
   Re: Standing Water On Mars? - Hatch - Larry Hatch [9]
   Re: Highest Yet Potential Impact Asteroid - Hatch - Larry Hatch [7]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Clark - Jerome Clark [79]
   List Christmas Hiatus - UFO UpDates - Toronto [10]

  Dec 27:

   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Hatch - Larry Hatch [22]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Shough - Martin Shough [29]
   Re: Standing Water On Mars? - King - Kyle King [25]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Sparks - From: Brad Sparks [14]
   Earthlings Still Captivated By The Star Of - UFO UpDates - Toronto
   [101]
   PRG Update - 12-26-04 - Steven G. Bassett [75]
   UFO Sightings Over Iranian Nuclear Installations - UFO UpDates -
   Toronto [56]
   Origin Of 'The Sourcebook Project' - Terry W. Colvin [740]
   The Exopolitics Of Santa Claus & NORAD - Gord Heath [58]
   Indian Ocean 9.0 Earthquake - Larry Hatch [20]
   Tibetan Monk RVs Alien Intervention By 2012 - Greg Boone [64]
   PRG Update - 12-27-04 - Steven G. Bassett [82]
   Re: Indian Ocean 9.0 Earthquake - Boone - Greg Boone [23]
   False(?) Radar Returns [was: Alien Abductions] - Jim Deardorff [28]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson - Peter Rogerson [24]
   Believe It Or Not They're All The Same Species - Ed Gehrman [95]
   New Edition Of UFO Politics At The White House - Larry W. Bryant [34]
   Re: Believe It Or Not They're All The Same Species - Greg Boone [18]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Ledger - Don Ledger [46]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Shough - Martin Shough [59]

  Dec 28:

   Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren - Frank Warren [41]
   Re: Standing Water On Mars? - White - Eleanor White [12]
   Secrecy News -- 12/27/04 - Steven Aftergood [145]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Ledger - Don Ledger [16]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Hatch - Larry Hatch [18]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer - John Rimmer [25]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Sparks - Brad sparks [83]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Shough - Martin Shough [44]
   HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings - 12-27-04 - Brian Vike - HBCC UFO
   Research [338]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Deardorff - Jim Deardorff [57]
   Maccabee's Mexican Airforce Radar/FLIR UFO Report - Bruce Maccabee [25]
   Chihuaha Mexico Residents Experiment With UFOs - Scott Corrales [82]
   Chilean UFO University Opens its Doors - Scott Corrales [54]

  Dec 29:

   Re: Earth Organisms On Mars - Balaskas - Nick Balaskas [52]
   Martian Cheshire Cat - Colin Stevenson [9]
   Re: Merry Christmas - Smith - James Smith [2]
   UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 52 - John Hayes [390]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Shough - Martin Shough [37]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Shough - Martin Shough [20]
   Re: Chilean UFO University Opens Its Doors - - A. J. Gevaerd - Revista
   UFO [20]
   Re: Earth Organisms On Mars - Dickenson - Ray Dickenson [29]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Shough - Martin Shough [65]
   The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - Rich Reynolds [32]
   Re: UFO Review Issue 7 - Pope - Nick Pope [18]
   Re: The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - Kaeser - Steven Kaeser [20]
   Re: Martian Cheshire Cat - Groff - Terry Groff [4]
   Re: The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - Reynolds - Rich Reynolds [25]

  Dec 30:

   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Ledger - Don Ledger [8]
   Re: Martian Cheshire Cat - Miller - Stuart Miller [16]
   Re: The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - Shough - Martin Shough [32]
   Re: Martian Cheshire Cat - Stevenson - Colin Stevenson [11]
   Re: The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - Ledger - Don Ledger [43]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Ledger - Don Ledger [27]
   Re: HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings - - Kyle King [21]
   A Possible Method For Visual Data Collection? - Kyle King [18]
   Filer's Files #1 - 2005 - George A. Filer [542]
   Re: Chilean UFO University Opens Its Doors - - Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo
   [6]
   Re: Earth Organisms On Mars - White - Eleanor White [3]
   Re: The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - King - Kyle King [68]
   Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg - Alfred Lehmberg [36]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Deardorff - Jim Deardorff [78]
   Arthur C. Clarke Survives Quake & Tsunami - Alfred Webre - ICIS [54]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Maccabee - Bruce Maccabee [43]
   Re: Maccabee's Mexican Airforce Radar/FLIR UFO - Terry Groff [5]
   Russia Joins Iran in Fighting UFOs - UFO UpDates - Toronto [26]
   Leir's 'Alien Debris' - Aaron LeClair [6]
   Re: The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - Shough - Martin Shough [44]
   UK Boasts Another UFO Hot-Spot - Greg Boone [50]
   UFOs In The Media: CNN Crossfire 12-16-04 - Joel Carpenter [23]
   Re: The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - Dickenson - Ray Dickenson [24]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Shough - Martin Shough [4]
   Walter Cronkite And UFOs - Richard W. Heiden [96]

  Dec 31:

   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Shough - Martin Shough [19]
   Re: The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - Reynolds - Rich Reynolds [15]
   Re: The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - Shough - Martin Shough [18]
   Re: The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - Reynolds - Rich Reynolds [31]
   Re: Martian Cheshire Cat - Groff - Terry Groff [11]
   UFO Research Tools - James Smith [126]
   Re: A Possible Method For Visual Data Collection? - Brad Sparks [10]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Sparks - Brad Sparks [9]
   Secrecy News -- 12/30 - Steven Aftergood [90]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Maccabee - Bruce Maccabee [6]
   Re: Chilean UFO University Opens Its Doors - - A. J. Gevaerd - Revista
   UFO [9]
   Re: Leir's 'Alien Debris' - Hall - Richard Hall [10]
   Underground Government Site Declassified - Nick Pope [12]
   UK Freedom of Information Act - Nick Pope [8]
   Re: Chilean UFO University Opens Its Doors - - Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo
   [12]
   Re: UK Boasts Another UFO Hot-Spot - Groff - Terry Groff [5]
   The New And Improved SETI - UFO UpDates - Toronto [109]
   Watching The Heavens From Dalnegorsk - UFO UpDates - Toronto [59]
   Mysterious Object Visits City On Centennial - UFO UpDates - Toronto
   [90]
   No Canals Glassy Tubes Instead - Terry W. Colvin [56]
   Re: UFO Research Tools - McGonagle - Joe McGonagle [25]
   Re: Leir's 'Alien Debris' - LeClair - Aaron LeClair [9]

  Dec 30:

   Walter Cronkite And UFOs - Richard W. Heiden [96]
   Re: The Hand Is Quicker Than The Eye? - Dickenson - Ray Dickenson [24]
   Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Shough - Martin Shough [41]

   The number enclosed in brackets is the number of lines of new text in





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   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 1

                 Notice of Imminent Legal Action Against BLM

From: Larry W. Bryant <overtci.nul>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:29:17 -0500 (EST)
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 07:35:45 -0500
Subject: Notice of Imminent Legal Action Against BLM

To: osfoia.nul
Cc: zaidms.nul, president.nul


To:   Secretary
      U. S. Department of the Interior
      ATTN:  Mr. William W. Wolf (DOI FOIA Appeals Officer)
      Washington, DC  20240

From: Larry W. Bryant
      3518 Martha Custis Drive
      Alexandria, VA  22302

DATE:  November 30, 2004

Your agency has had more than ample time to process and grant my
April 20, 2003, appeal of the U. S. DOI/Bureau of Land
Management's April 16, 2003, denial of my FOIA records-search-
fee-waiver request of March 7, 2003/April 11, 2003 (by which I'd
sought the waiver on the grounds of my requester status as an
independent writer).

Having included in that appeal certain concrete, persuasive
evidence of my requester status (and having accumulated more of
the same evidence since that time), I hereby serve notice upon
you that I'm instructing my attorney, Mark S. Zaid, Esq., to
file the appropriate complaint, on my behalf, circa Dec. 20,
2004, in U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia.


Larry W. Bryant

Copy furnished to:
Mark S. Zaid, Esq.
(Washington, D.C.)







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   A mailing list for the study of UFO-related phenomena
   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 1

                     Light Formation Apex North Carolina

From: Brian Vike - HBCC UFO Research <hbccufo.nul>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:29:58 -0800
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 07:38:01 -0500
Subject: Light Formation Apex North Carolina


Apex, North Carolina Formation Of Lights

Date:  Mid November, 2003
Time:  Approx: 9:00 p.m..

Number of witnesses: 1
Shape of objects: Formation.

Full Description of event/sighting: I have taken a photo of what
I thought was 3 planets lined up, (although they had a red tint
to them). In the middle of November, 2003, I was coming home
after dark and noticed them above my head because I was closing
the sunroof on my car and just happened to look straight up. I
saw 3 lights the same distance apart, so I came in the house and
got my camera, but only took one shot, because I didn't think
that much of it because planets line up all the time. I put in
my computer and left it there until I had time to check it out.
I had forgotten about having it, and was cleaning out my files
this summer and found it. That's when I used the features on my
camera software and found anomalies.  I have the simplest, most
inexpensive Kodak (CX 4200),  but it makes good night shots
without the flash. The features I have are - brighten, enhance,
contrast, color-adjust, red-eye, darken, lighten. Those are the
ones I've used on this photo. And I can 'trim' (crop) a picture.

There are somewhat famous Ufologists in this country but two of
them seemed to brush off my report? One did, however, state if I
could pinpoint a certain date, he could verify if it is an
official star formation, or it isn't. I don't know the exact
date, although I'm sure it was in November of 2003 and it was
around 9:00 p.m..

I have several drafted emails waiting to send, with the pictures
if you'd like to see them; the original, as well as the ones I
used my camera features on.

I tend to think the others I've contacted think I'm trying to
present a hoax of some kind; This photo is all TOO clear. But I
am an average person with a cheap Kodak camera. I am a 54 year-
old female who's "seen things" all my life. I have always
believed UFO's existed and may come from elsewhere other than
this blue planet. The strangest thing is I don't remember at
what point I started believing that. I have always.

If it was a ship of some sort, what was it doing sitting over my
house? I live in the country, about 20 miles from the RDU
airport in Morrisville, and a long way from any military bases.
I think Fort Bragg would be the closest and it's hundreds of
miles, I'm not sure. We do have a nuclear power plant within 10
miles of my home. Shearan Harris (spelling?). I get their
notices each year in the mail; where the evacuation routes are
and all that other info.

Please let me know if you want to see the pictures. I hope so,
because I'd love for someone knowledgeable to tell me what this
was. If it moved, I don't know because I didn't go outside again
that night, but it wasn't moving when I took the shot

Thank you to the witness for the report and pictures.

The photos are going to be looked at and some answers hopefully
found for the witness.

To view photos:

http://www.hbccufo.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2104


Brian Vike
Director HBCC UFO Research
Home - Phone 250 845 2189
email: hbccufo.nul
Website: http://www.hbccufo.com
Redirect: http://www.canadianufo.com
HBCC UFO RESEARCH Newsletter:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HBCC_UFO_Newsletter/

HBCC UFO Research
Box 1091 Houston
British Columbia
Canada - VOJ 1ZO








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   A mailing list for the study of UFO-related phenomena
   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 1

             Last Call For Audio History Of Ufology Compilations

From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:09:44 -0700
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 07:39:42 -0500
Subject: Last Call For Audio History Of Ufology Compilations


Last call for the Audio History of Ufology compilations. In
order to ensure they arrive before Christmas, you will need to
place your order by the morning of December 1, 2004.

I won't be producing any copies or new compilations until after
the first of the New Year and current supplies are very limited.
These compilations are not produced in large quantities and are
highly collectable.


Thank you,

Wendy Connors
www.fadeddiscs.com







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   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 1

               Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:14:25 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 07:41:58 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson


>From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 17:02:50 -0500
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 18:02:08 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

><snip>

>>But the real problem maybe that for many, perhaps most
>>ufologists, the subject is more akin to a religion rather than a
>>science. Just see how people react to crticial commentaries on
>>classic cases, with the usual denounciations of skeptibunker,
>>pelicanist etc of anyone who proposes a solution to a ufo case
>>which does not involve non human intelligences of some kind. A
>>reaction as though someone had challegned their deeply held
>>religious faith. I suppose the next step will be to denounce
>>sceptics as hybrids and burn them at the nearest stake. Peter
>>Rogerson

>Or maybe that for some who believe UFOs are ET craft, it derives
>from plain old common sense, based on decades of contemplating
>the huge, ancient and complex universe and the way nature seems
>to inhabit the most unlikely environments, including the vacuum
>of the Moon.

>The discovery of microbes on a 2-year old lander, for example.

Those would be imported microbes, not native lunar ones. At
present there is no actual evidence for ET life, only inferrence
and speculation. Even if microbial life is common, complex
multi-cellular organisms might be rare.

The assumption that there is some kind of impetus to produce a
universe full of Carl Sagans, though popular with astronomers,
is not one which the majority of evolutionary biologists adhere
to.

Real alien life will be something biologically far more
different from us than yeast or slime mold is. Its unlikely to
be sufficiently physically or psychologically simlar to us to be
engaged on projects such as building radio telescopes or
spaceships, which are very much the product of our own
particular culture, let alone species.


Peter Rogerson







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   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 1

               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 15:47:42 -0400
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 08:54:50 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 15:41:44 -0600
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 11:49:52 -0400
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>From: Nick Balaskas <Nikolaos.nul>
>>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 15:52:56 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
>>>Subject: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>We all know that the closest planet to us in space is Venus,
>>>the Earth's 'twin' planet. This very bright celestial object is
>>>sometimes seen in the sky at dawn or dusk and is often mistaken
>>>for a UFO.

<snip>

>>Any information regarding the size of 2002 VE68. How close to
>>Earth's orbit does it come. I've often thought that someday we
>>would uses asteroids for research, hitching free rides on - or
>>in - them. Maybe others do.

>Hey Don... I wrote this in August, 2001.

>I'm just wondering if this is not something that Humanity will
>very tragically miss the point on. Must these near Earth
>asteroids be only the "Planet Killers" we paint them to be?
>These big rocks that sail down so close to Earth orbit seem to
>me to be something else, entirely.

<snip>

Hi Al,

Once we've tamed a few of them, they are not only possible
sources of free rides, but mineral wealth as well, ready to be
exploited. But as free rides, their sizes offer offer more
protection than the 1/16th inch of the aluminum canister we use
now, Bigalow's new revitalized Kevlar, water-jacketed Habitats
notwithstanding.

But we have to get out of Low Earth Orbit first.


Best,

Don









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   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 1

                       UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 48

From: John Hayes <John.nul>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:21:52 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 08:59:28 -0500
Subject: UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 48

Posted on behalf of Joseph Trainor.

<Masinaigan.nul>
==========================

      UFO ROUNDUP
Volume 9, Number 48
December 1, 2004
Editor: Joseph Trainor

E-mail: Masiniagan.nul
Website: htp://www.ufoinfo.com/roundup/


ANOTHER FIGHTER JET
CRASHES IN INDIA

      "An Indian Air Force (IAF) jet crashed Monday night,"
November 8, 2004, "the third French-built airplane
involved in a crash since September (2004), officials
said."
      "They said the jet went off military radar 'almost
immediately' after taking off around 8:40 p.m. from the
central Indian Air Force base at Gwalior and then crashed
in a dense forest nearby."
      "'The aircraft seems to have caught fire after
gaining altitude,' an IAF source told Agence France Presse
in New Delhi," India's capital.
      "Rescuers rushed to the site to assist its lone
pilot."
      The jet interceptor was a Dassault Mirage 2000, the
aircraft used by the IAF's front-line fighter squadrons.
      "On (Tuesday) October 12 (2004), an Indian Air Force
Mirage 2000 went down during joint maneuvers with the
Singapore Air Force after the pilot lost control due to
technical problems."
      "Another Mirage 2000 crashed near Gwalior after
losing its nosewheel in mid-air on (Thursday) September 23
(2004)."
      "An Indian Defence Ministry official said the latest
crash was 'bewildering.'"
      "'We are really at a loss to figure out why we are
now losing Mirage planes.  They have been a reliable
fighter plane since we began ordering them (in 1985--
J.T.),' the official said, speaking on conditions of
anonymity."
      The following day, India's newspapers reported that
the pilot had not survived the crash.  He was Flight Lt.
Neehar Gururani, a career IAF officer reputed to be
"India's Top Gun."
      "With the death of Flight Lt. Neehar Gururani last
night, the IAF has lost its second pilot in a Mirage 2000
jet crash."
      "Gururani's aircraft hit the ground about 80
kilometers (50 miles) from IAF Gwalior on Tuesday.  With
this crash, the IAF has lost six Mirage 2000 jets so far--
three of them during the past two months alone."
(Editor's Note:  To say nothing of the IAF MiG-21 that
went down in the western desert near Bikaner on Monday,
November 1, 2004.  See UFO Roundup, volume 9, number 46
for November 17, 2004, "A shootdown in India?" page 1.)
      "IAF Vice-Chief Air Marshal S.K. Malik said today
(Wednesday, November 10, 2004) that preliminary evidence
shows the pilot may have been 'disoriented' due to the
darkness, so there was no reason to suspect technical or
engine failure.  Initial reports Monday night had said the
pilot was safe, but then the rescue teams reached the site
and found Gururani's body."
(Editor's Comment: So India's Top Gun became
'disoriented,' eh?  Riiiiight!  And if you believe that,
you probably think it happens to Chuck Yeager, too.)
      "The IAF sent its Director-General of Flight
Inspection and Safety, Air Marshal P.S. Ahluwalia, to
probe the reason behind the recent series of Mirage
crashes."
      "'The crashes have been surprising indeed.  The
Mirage continues to be our finest fighter,' Malik said."
      A spokesman for Dassault, the French firm that built
the aircraft, said, "We are waiting for a final report
from the IAF on the crash.  From the information that we
have received, it seems possible that the pilot was
disoriented; which is why he may not have pushed the panic
button."
      Gururani was part of a two-plane formation that took
off from IAF Gwalior.  His wingman "sounded an alert when
Gururani did not respond to radio inquiries and
disappeared from the radar screen.  When the second pilot
failed to contact Gururani, he retraced his flight path to
find a ball of fire on the ground."
      "The dead pilot is the son of IAF Air Marshal S.
Gururani, who retired in 1997 as the commander of IAF
Maintenance Command."
      "Malik said, 'We have seen his fitness reports.  He
was a good pilot and an enthusiastic boy.  It is rather
unnerving that this has happened.'"
      "The IAF has ordered ten more Mirages to make up for
the crash losses, and an additional squadron is expected
to arrive by year's end.  The Defence Ministry is also
considering Qatar's offer of ten of its own Mirages."
      "In the October 12 (2004) crash, (the engine's)
turbine blades came loose.  The pieces are now at the
National Metalurgical Laboratory in Jamshedpur for tests.
After this, they will be sent to the Dassault factory in
France for examination."
      Indian ufologists are questioning why Gururani's
Mirage descended to 900 meters (3,000 feet) before
disappearing from military radar.
      Ufologist Daniel Wilson is now comparing UFO reports
from India and Pakistan with news accounts of jet crashes
in the subcontinent, to see if there's any correlation.
      "Until Daniel brought it up, we had not considered
the possibility of a clandestine air war.  But India has
lost six Mirages and one MiG-21," said Krishnari Bai
Dharapurnanda, UFO Roundup correspondent in India.  "A
Mirage was lost on September 23 (2004).  This was at the
same time many UFOs were seen over Himachal Pradesh (the
Himalayas--J.T.) and there were reports of aliens building
a base in the mountains overlooking the upper Sutlej River
valley."
      Gwalior is in India's Madhya Pradesh state
approximately 300 kilometers (180 miles) south-southeast
of New Delhi.  (See the newspaper Indian Express for
November 10, 2004, "Another Mirage 2000 military jet
crashes."  Many thanks to Daniel Wilson and Krishnari Bai
Dharapurnanda for this newspaper article.)


THREE LARGE UFOs SEEN
OVER PAKISTAN'S CAPITAL

      On Monday, November 8, 2004, at 5:10 p.m.--just a few
hours before Flight Lt. Neehar Gururani's Mirage 2000 went
down in central India--three large luminous UFOs were seen
by a family in Islamabad, the capital of neighboring
Pakistan.
      The witness, a 41-year-old Pakistani woman, reported,
"I noticed three moving objects in the sky as I sat in my
house.  I quickly ran outside onto my terrace and called
my children, a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old.  The three
objects were gliding towards the east and going higher and
higher.  I ran and got a digital camera, but for some
reason I could not see the object through the (camera's)
lens.  Finally, I got a photo."
      "The objects were brownish with protuberances but, as
they got higher, they formed an L-shaped formation and
became round in shape.  When I zeroed in with the camera's
telephoto lens, I saw that two of the objects were
triangular in shape and one was egg-shaped.  I am the 41-
year-old mother of three children."  (Many thanks to
Daniel Wilson for this report.)


MYSTERIOUS JET CRASH
AT AREA 51 IN NEVADA

      A U.S. Navy jet crashed near Area 51 in Nevada in
early November.
      "A Virginia Beach-based F/A-18 Hornet crashed near
Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada shortly after takeoff
Tuesday," November 9, 2004.
      "The pilot ejected and was rescued by a U.S. Air
Force rescue crew.  He is listed in good condition at the
Nellis base hospital."
      "His identification is not being released, the Navy
said."
      "The crash took place about 15 miles (25 kilometers)
north of the sprawling base (just west of the Moapa River
Indian Reservation--J.T.) just outside Las Vegas, Nev.
(population 478,434).  The aircraft impacted in a
sparsely-populated (desert) area.  No one on the ground
was injured."
      "The plane was assigned to the 'Wildcats' of Strike
Fighter Squadron 131, based at Oceana Naval Air Station in
Virginia Beach, Va., said Mike Maus, a spokesman for the
Atlantic Fleet Naval Air Force in Norfolk, Va."
      The crashed F/A-18 Hornet "was participating in an
exercise with the Air Force Weapons School at Nellis, he
said."  (See the Virginia Pilot of Virginia Beach, Va. for
November 10, 2004, "Pilot safe after Beach-based jet
crashes in Nev."  Many thanks to Daniel Wilson for this
newspaper article.)


HEAVY UFO ACTIVITY
REPORTED IN MEXICO

      "A large UFO resembling an organic creature was
recorded on video over Mexico City as it expelled strange
spheres from several tentacles."
      According to Mexican ufologist Jaime Maussan, "On
(Wednesday) October 27 (2004), to be exact, a giant object
was videtaped and photographed over Mexico City.  It was
very impressive and launched spheres."
      "This is an inexplicable phenomenon," Maussan added,
"It's as though it were an organic being with several
tentacles, and some of these tentacles were putting forth
spheres.  We called in an expert to see if it could have
been some sort of balloon, but he said no."
      Maussan "revealed that an air traffic controller at
the city's airport calculated that the object was flying
at over 3,000 meters (10,000 feet), which means that, in
order for it to be picked up by a (ground-based) camera,
its diameter should have been between 300 and 400 meters
(1,000 and 1,330 feet), making this a highly strange and
extraordinary event."
      "He added that the object made a series of impressive
maneuvers, that it braided itself and stretched but was
always surrounded by a series of red and blue spheres that
appeared to be stuck to the (larger) object's sides."
      "'If it's an organic being, where did it come from?
How did it get here?  That's inside the spheres that it is
ejecting?  Is this some sort of invasion?  Or are we being
monitored?'" Maussan asked.
      "Maussan said that the images were supplied by Arturo
Robles Gil, a professional photographer, who also managed
to record it with a camcorder.  For this reason, the
images are very clear."
      Robles Gil "revealed that at first they debated on
whether it could be a balloon, but a considerable monetary
investment would have been required, aside from the fact
that it would have been necessary to assemble it at around
2 in the morning in order for it to be seen at 9 a.m."
      "The video's duration is between 5 to 10 minutes,
although the object was visible for 10 to 20 minutes,"
Maussan added.
      On Saturday, November 20, 2004, at 4:45 p.m., three
Mexican ufologists spotted four mysterious translucent
objects in the skies over Tepoztlan, a town in the state
of Morelos about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of
Cuernavaca.
      Ufologist "Salvador Guerrero videotaped four
translucent spheres in the town of Tepoztlan, state of
Morelos.  He was in the company of Amado Marquez and
Eduardo Ortega and engaged in intensive skywatching.
Guerrero has been an active ufologist since 1981."
      "At approximately 4:45 p.m., the team became aware of
a strange sphere of the size of a ping pong ball almost at
ground level, and they approached it with videocameras to
record evidence.  They made videotapes with three
different cameras."
      "Subsequently, the object came out from behind a tree
bough and remained surprisingly motionless, then moving up
and down with intelligent movement, according to Salvador
Guerrero.  At one point, the object was close to his own
body, scant centimeters (inches) away."
      "It was then that he reached out and touched it.
Upon contact with his skin, the sphere released a
gelatinous fluid that caused harm and discomfort to the
skin, leaving a red rash on his flesh."
      "A total of four spheres were sighted with intervals
of five minutes between each sighting."
      During this time, "teachers and children from the
Escuela Meztitla (school)" in Tepoztlan "joined the trio"
and watched the diminutive UFOs.
      According to Mexican ufologist Ana Luisa Cid
Fernandez, who interviewed Guerrero after the sighting,
"He still reports discomfort to his hand.  He has been
advised to see a physician to obtain a diagnosis as to
what happened to his skin."
      "Guerrero has recorded similar (UFO) phenomena before
but never touched it."
      The team's videotapes were aired Thursday, November
18, 2004, on The Omar Chaparro Show and on Jaime Maussan's
TV show, Los Grandes Misterios de Tercer Milenio.
(Translated: Great Mysteries of the Third Millenium--J.T.)
(Muchas gracias a Scott Corrales y Ana Luisa Cid Fernandes
para estas historias de OVNIs.)


MYSTERY BOOMS HEARD
IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

      "The mysterious booms first heard on Richmond's north
side are now being heard in other part of the area"
surrounding the city, the state capital of Virginia,
"including Henrico and Chesterfield counties."
      "A city spokesman says Richmond's officials also have
heard from officials in Indiana and Canada, where similar
booms have also been felt."
      "The booms started in Richmond on" Tuesday, November
2, 2004, "and have happened several times a week since.
Most of them happened in the northern part of the city
(Greendale, Lakeside and Regency Square--J.T.), and on
Sunday," November 21, 2004, "authorities got 250 calls to
report an afternoon boom."
      "City officials have ruled out construction,
railroads or factories, along with public utilities,
military exercises and private activities."
      "Advanced electronic equipment is being brought to
the city to help pinpoint the source of the booms."  (See
the Richmond, Va. Times-Dispatch for November 23, 2004,
"Mysterious booms now being heard elsewhere in the area."
Many thanks to Robert Fischer for this newspaper article.)


UFOs SIGHTED IN CHESHIRE
AND THE MIDLANDS, UK

      On Sunday, October 31, 2004, at 7 p.m., the
eyewitness, Eddie C., was driving in rural Cheshire about
15 miles (25 kilometers) south of Liverpool.  Stopping in
Wirral, he took some photographs.  After these were
developed, he was astounded to see a UFO in one image.
      "The object didn't appear until the film was
developed," said Eddie, who described himself as having a
theatrical background but who was now studying "with a
well-known spiritual medium in UK.  The lights could not
be seen with the naked eye--only with the development of
the photos.  I was very excited."
      On Saturday, November 13, 2004, at 3:18 p.m.,
eyewitness Lloyd Bailey reported, "Travelling along Every
Street" in Ancotes, a suburb of Manchester, "I was playing
a game on my dad's phone when a dark shape caught my eye.
I turned to look over to the field to it and saw a dark
oval shape with what looked like wings sticking out of its
sides.  I had enough time to convert my dad's phone to
camera (mode) and took a photo of the object."
      "The object was just above the houses, maybe 150 to
200 feet (45 to 60 meters).  It was travelling at an
incredible rate of speed.  After the initial sighting, it
just disappeared."  (Many thanks to Stefan Duncan of AUFON
for the Cheshire report; the Ancotes report was an Email
Form Report.)


GAMMA-RAY SPACECRAFT
LAUNCHED BY NASA

  "The fastest-swiveling space science observatory ever
built rocketed into orbit Saturday," November 20, 2004,
"to scan the universe for violent celestial explosions
that astronomers believe represent the birth screams of
black holes."
      "NASA launched the observatory--named Swift for its
speedy pivoting and pointing--following weeks of delays
caused by hurricanes and a three-day postponement due to
rocket trouble.  The unmanned rocket climbed smoothly
through a cloud-flecked midday sky" in Cape Canaveral,
Florida "and delighted flight controllers wished the
spacecraft a successful mission."
      "Swift, a $250 million collaboration by NASA, Italy
and Britain, should begin its hunt for gamma-ray bursts by
January (2005) and ease some of the mystery surrounding
these explosions and black holes."
      "Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful events in the
universe, exceeded only by the cosmic curtain-raising Big
Bang itself.  Lasting just a few seconds on average, the
bursts appear out of nowhere like flashlight beams and are
thought to signal the formation of black holes."
      "Astronomers theorize the collapse or collision of
massive stars is what produces black holes--so dense not
even light can escape--and that the resulting
gravitational energy sends gamma rays shooting out across
time and space."
      "'We think that, perhaps, bursts are the birth cries
of black holes and we're seeing these across the
universe,' said NASA's Neil Gehrels, principal scientist."
      "A single gamma-ray burst releases more energy than
the sun will emit in its entire lifetime at all
wavelengths, Gehrels said."
      To give our UFO Roundup readers some idea of how
fantastically powerful a gamma-ray burst is, here's a
brief list of energy comparisons.
      (1) One nuclear power plant equals 10,000 campfires.
      (2) Our sun equals one hundred million billion
nuclear plants.
      (3) One supernova (explosion caused by a dying star--
J.T.) equals 100 million suns.
      (4) One gamma-ray burst equals one trillion
supernovae.
      "Put another mind-blowing way, 'If you added together
everything in the rest of the universe during that second,
it would not be as bright as the gamma-ray burst,' said
Pennsylvania State University astrophysicist John Nousek,
director of mission operations."
      "So far, astronomers have managed to identify only a
couple dozen gamma-ray bursts, as close as a few million
light-years and as far as 12 billion light-years" away.
(Editor's Note: One light-year equals 5.9 trillion miles.)
      "Swift should zero in on two gamma-ray bursts a week
as far away as 15 billion light-years, representing the
very first generation of stars, for a grand total of more
than 200" to be surveyed "during the planned two-year
mission."
      "The spacecraft will scan one-sixth of the sky at any
one time and thus see one-sixth of all gamma-ray bursts
out there.  The observations will help scientists learn
more about what the bursts are, how black holes are
formed, and how many are out there."
      "As soon as Swift's gamma-ray burst-alert instrument
spots an explosion, the spacecraft will quickly turn all
by itself so that two other on-board telescopes can
observe the X-rays and ultraviolet and optical light
streaming from the afterglow."
      "This swinging into position will take just one
minute, lightning speed by astronomical standards because
of Swift's six momentum wheels, double the number for a
science satellite.  Speed is crucial because once the
ever-so-brief gamma-ray burst subsides, the afterglow is
difficult to find and fades within hours or sometimes
weeks."
      "News of the gamma-ray burst and its precise location
instantly will be relayed to astronomers everywhere by the
mission control center at Penn State.  Ground
observatories can then be aimed to assist in the afterglow
analysis."
      "Deputy project manager Tim Gehringer calls Swift
'the Roadrunner of spacecraft, speeding from birth to
birth as it advances mankind's knowledge of the most
violent explosions in the universe.'"
      "After chasing gamma-ray bursts for a year or two,
Swift will expand its repertoire to other rapidly-
occurring cosmic events."  (See the Duluth, Minn. News-
Tribune for November 21, 2004, "Spaceship hunts for gamma-
ray bursts," page 14A.)


READER FEEDBACK:

POINTED CHINS IN HOLLYWOOD

  Concerning the feature story in UFO Roundup, volume 9,
number 47, "2004: Prisoner of the Aliens," Terry Duckworth
writes, "If that guy who was held prisoner in the
underground base gets spooked by pointed chins, he'd
better stay away from the tabloids.  Check out all the
pointed chins in the Globe for November 15th (2004), pages
58 and 59.  Of the six celebs shown, Nicky Hilton is the
only one without a pointed chin.  Isn't that weird?"
(Editor's Comment: A bit.)


  That's it for this week.  Join us in seven days for more
UFO, Fortean and paranormal news from around the planet
Earth, brought to you by "the paper that goes home--UFO
Roundup."  See you next time!

  UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 2004 by Masinaigan Productions,
all rights reserved.  Readers may post news items from UFO
Roundup on their Web sites or in news groups provided that
they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list
the date of issue in which the item first appeared.

E-Mail Reports to: Joseph Trainor <Masinaigan.nul>
or use the Sighting Report Form at:

http://www.ufoinfo.com/submit/sightings.shtml

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Website comments: John Hayes <webmaster.nul>

UFOINFO: http://www.ufoinfo.com

Official Archives for UFO Roundup, AUFORN Australian
UFO Reports and Experiences, UFO + PSI Magazine
plus archives of Humanoid Sighting Reports (Albert
Rosales), Filer's Files, Oz Files, UFO News UK.
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             Re: Aykroyd Expounds On His Belief In UFOs - Heath

From: Gord Heath <gheath.nul>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 13:15:24 -0800
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 09:50:12 -0500
Subject: Re: Aykroyd Expounds On His Belief In UFOs - Heath


>From: Diana Cammack <cammack.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 15:49:16 +0200
>Subject: Re: Aykroyd Expounds On His Belief In UFOs

>>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscrbers ->
>>Date: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:49 PM
>>Subject: UFO UpDate: Aykroyd Expounds On His Belief In UFOs

>>You've been hearing of these sightings in Carmite Yukon with
>>these ships 200 feet across. Two to three hundred people have
>>seen them Mounties have seen them. There's huge, massive mother
>>ships going up to the Yukon. They've been filmed and are on
>>video. Fifty-four percent of the world believes that there's
>>something inter-dimensional or extraterrestrial going on here.
>>And the rest.so we need sceptics. I invite you to go on the
>>website and look through the material.

>Can someone point me to a link to the 'Yukon sightings'?


Diana,

UFOBC hosts UFO Yukon Research Society on its website at the
following URL:

http://www.ufobc.ca/yukon/index.htm

There are a number of very interesting "giant UFO" reports and
abductions from the Yukon. Dan Aykroyd was possibly referring to
the Dec 11, 1996 event where a giant UFO was observed by over 30
witnesses at three locations (Fox Lake, Carmacks and Pelly
Crossing). Using triangulation from multiple witnesses, the
estimated size of this UFO was as large as 1.7 kilometer (1.1
mile) diameter/length and 400 meter (1300 feet)
height/thickness.

http://www.ufobc.ca/yukon/22index.htm

UFOBC sells a special report on this incident from its website.

http://www.ufobc.ca/Store/giantufo.htm

A second sighting of a giant cigar shaped UFO was made by twin
sisters living in the gold fields near Dawson City in July 1996.
This UFO appeared to disappear into the ground behind a mountain
and based on the size of the mountain, was estimated to be over
500 meters long (>1500 feet).

http://www.ufobc.ca/yukon/indian-river-ufo/irufo-page1.html

Martin Jasek, a member of UFOBC who used to live in the Yukon,
performed the research on these and other very incredible
sightings including the abduction of a hunter from a road on the
Yukon/Northwest Territories border in September 1987.

http://www.ufobc.ca/yukon/n-canol-abd/index.htm

UFOBC continues to assist the study and reporting of Yukon UFO
and abduction events and maintains contact with the study group
in the Yukon. The UFOBC/Yukon UFO website contains extensive
reports on incredible events from the Yukon, BC and other
locations as well. We also publish a quaterly journal that
documents these and other incidents. We invite all interested
persons to visit the site.

Gord Heath, UFOBC












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                     Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Nicolaides

From: Louise Nicolaides <Louise.Nicolaides.nul>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 16:31:07 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 10:19:07 -0500
Subject: Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Nicolaides


>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:59:22 EST
>Subject: The Bamboo Saucer

>Pardon if I've posted this before but an interesting flick I saw
>years ago about UFOs was called, The Bamboo Saucer.

>I'm sure it's out on VHS somewhere and if it comes out on DVD
>I'll buy it.

<snip>

Hi,

I thought you might like to know I found the movie on Ebay. Here
is the link with a description of the film:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=617&item=6343920755&rd=1&
ssPageName=WDVW


Louise









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   Dec > Dec 1

              Re: Chapala Jalisco Mexico Saucer-Shaped Craft -

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 17:48:26 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:04:01 -0500
Subject: Re: Chapala Jalisco Mexico Saucer-Shaped Craft -


>From: Brian Vike - HBCC UFO Research <hbccufo.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 09:27:55 -0800
>Subject: Chapala Jalisco Mexico Saucer-Shaped Craft

>Chapala Jalisco, Mexico Saucer Shaped Craft

>Date: September 11, 2004
>Time: 3:30 p.m.

>Here is the anecdote:

>On sep/11/2004 Chapala Jalisco, M=E9xico at about 15:30 pm. My
>family and I went to dinner to the real Chapala Hotel (Ajijic
>Jalisco, Mexico). We ate and then went to table next to the
>pool, and I saw an object with a shape like a saucer with an
>American-ball inside. I said look an UFO and it moved up an down
>nearly of surface of the lake, we saw too an exhaust coming from
>the object and suddenly go down to the surface of the lake and
>it would navigate on the water for about 50 mts. then
>disappeared.

>Thank you to the witness for the interesting report and the
>photos.

>To view Photos:

>http://www.hbccufo.com/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=3D2102


Hi Brian,

Unusually excellent photographs. I am very intrigued by the
images, and the uniformity of the objects appearance across the
images coupled with the eyewitness account dispels any bird or
aircraft theory.

The closest approximation I can find of what might be in the
images can be found here... and if you back up the URL you can
see some other odd kite designs:

http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/kites/rotor/photos/ufo_3.jpg

The difference being that your cited photos are backlit by the
setting sun, which places the facing side of the object in
shadow.

Nothing conclusive, but the reported erratic altitude behavior
would fit the kite model, and the occasional *exhaust* reported
could be the result of the kite lines intermittently reflecting
the waning sunlight, Unfortunately, neither of the provided
images includes this feature.

I can draw no firm conclusions from analysis of the images, but
an untimely loss of wind would account for a kites sudden
disappearance, into the body of water below. Contrast
enhancement seems to reveal a multi-colored aspect, and perhaps
a hard structure or framework, but this is mostly supposition
when analyzing photos which are backlit.

Nice photos, at any rate.

For more interesting kite shots, check out this site... there
are more kite designs out there than you could shake a stick at.
Some of the photos look like shots from the Close Encounters
*dark side of the moon* scenes:


http://miztral.free.fr/miznet/miznet.htm

Click the Galerie link on the left)


Best Regards,

Kyle








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                      Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Christol

From: Michael Christol <spachopr.nul>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:41:06 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:05:28 -0500
Subject: Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Christol


>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:59:22 EST
>Subject: The Bamboo Saucer


Hi Greg.


Yes, I have seen this movie. In fact, I have it on VHS video.

It is an interesting film. I first saw it back in the 50's, I
think... (I may be wrong here.)

Perhaps it will come out on DVD in the near future. It is a good
flick, well worth watching.


Mike








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                      Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Matteson

From: Gary Matteson <mystrius.nul>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 21:37:45 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:08:37 -0500
Subject: Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Matteson


>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:59:22 EST
>Subject: The Bamboo Saucer

>Pardon if I've posted this before but an interesting flick I saw
>years ago about UFOs was called, The Bamboo Saucer.

>I'm sure it's out on VHS somewhere and if it comes out on DVD
>I'll buy it.

Greg Boone,

Do a search on Amazon.com, I did, found at least five copies
available as of 9:30 P.M. CST.


Kindest regards,

Gary Matteson

http://www.geocities.com/sparky_from_nebraska/Unofficial_MUFON-NE








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               Re: A New Lie Detection Technology? - Maccabee

From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 01:42:19 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:14:27 -0500
Subject: Re: A New Lie Detection Technology? - Maccabee


>From: Michael Belanger <belanger.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:19:33 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
>Subject: Scholor version of Google now open

>As of today, Google has opened a beta version of their scholar research
>engine that will allow academic science and research articles to be
>accessed (for free) by the public. This opens the research articles to
>the public. It will be useful for h&s and compensations purposes as well
>as some arbitration cases involving medical issues.

>The address is:

> http://www.scholar.google.com/

I tried this. It is really surprisingly comprehensive.

I put in "bruce + maccabee" and got 84 hits.

The first 20 or so actually are my work or references to it. The
rest... I don't know why they were hits because they refer to
other people.

I found reference to one of my papers that was so long ago I had
forgotten about it (back in the 60's) Just putting in "maccabee"
turned up 660 references, most of them not to me, but, oddly
enough, it turned up some of my papers that were not included in
the "bruce + maccabee" results. Therefore, when using the Google
engine you should try several different related search terms if
you want to locate 'everything'.

Using this search anyone interested can see some of what I have
published in the 'legitimate' - non-UFO - literature starting
with electric fish, and including zapping water with lasers,
underwater sound, patents, books and even references to papers
published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

Imagine my surprise in seeing the "Philip J. Klass collection"
turn up in my search. He has deposited his voluminous files at
the American Philosophical Society.

I immediately clicked on it to find out how I ended up in his
collection.

The answer is in the correspondence and case files. His 36
linear feet of files includes a large amount of correspondence
between him and me on McMinnville and especially on New Zealand
(Dec 1978).

In fact, he explicitly states in the paragraph on "Series II.
UFO Case Files," that he had an "extensive correspondence" with
me and that the NZ case was his "most challenging and time
consuming investigation."

I can vouch for that.

I estimate that we exchanged about 1200 single spaced letters on
that case (a series of sightings) between 1979 and 1986.

Klass writes that he "eventually determined the object to be
lights from a Japanese squid boat filmed through an improperly
installed telephoto lens."

To which I respond: only in his own mind!

There is physical/optical evidence to prove that the light, to
which he refers, could not have been a squid boat - unless the
boat was fishing from an altitude of about 3000 ft or more.

This optical evidence is supported by testimonial evidence. Phil
published this explanation in his book UFOs, The Public Deceived
in which he, yes, deceived the public.

There is a discussion of the New Zealand case at my web site.








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                Re: John Ford's Southaven Footage? - Maccabee

From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 01:42:45 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:15:30 -0500
Subject: Re: John Ford's Southaven Footage? - Maccabee


>From: Scott Carr <sardonica.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 23:29:37 -0500
>Subject: John Ford's Southaven Footage?


>Dear List

>I'm currently in development of a paranormal television show
>potentially for The Discovery Channel, an episode of which we
>are considering focusing on The Brookhaven UFO Crash in Long
>Island. As such, I've been searching for some time now for a
>copy (for purchase, if necessary) of the VHS footage that was
>sent to John Ford and which allegedly depicts, in Ford's own
>words:

>"By one of the firemen you could see a small gray body. The
>strange thing about this body is that it had a huge head, twice
>the size of a person, only about five feet tall and could only
>weigh about 80 pounds. There were two more alien bodies at the
>scene. One sitting up against a tree the other lying on the
>ground, missing an arm. "

I do not have a copy of this footage. However, I reviewed it
several times ten or so years ago. If I recall correctly, my
impression is that the video showed a blurred or defocused tree
stump and "firemen"(?) sort of wandering around paying no
attention.








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   Dec > Dec 1

                      Re: Ufology As A Science - Boone

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 03:24:52 EST
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:17:38 -0500
Subject: Re: Ufology As A Science - Boone


>From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 14:25:55 -0700
>Subject: Ufology As A Science

<snip>

>Built upon decades of databasing, trace collecting, on-site
>investigation, recordings, photographs and witness statements,
>from all professions and walks of life, that gives testament to
>the legitimacy to Ufology being a dedicated science. This
>massive knowledge base is always in flux as the science
>develops

Thanks Wendy!

Lots of questions and concerns arise from classifying UFOlogy as
a science or elevating it up to or down to a science.

Could be a good thing or a bad thing.

What I mean is, if it qualifies as a science then procedures and
protocols, ethics and standards come into play which would
probably disqualify the bulk of the common folk who are the
bullwark of this field of study. Not saying they're incompetent,
just saying the regimen of real scientific study and application
is too much for some folk.

Then come in the regulations and laws. Could be a good thing
wherein from that point forward doing bogus UFO reports could
end up with a fine or imprisonment. Sort of like making a claim
that Uncle Blumbley's moonshine soup can cure cancer. That's
agin' the law. I think that would wipe out a good chunk of the
UFO market as the snake oil salesmen would go out of business
overnight.

On the other antenna, it could mean that laws could come into
play or better yet the proper execution of existing laws to
protect witnesses, researchers from unlawful imprisonment in
psychiatric institutions or the confiscation of their property
without due process.

Nowadays ufology is in the open. If it became a science would it
go into closed doors with data in the hands of a chosen few?
Would we then be the ones creating a beurocratic new MJ-12?

As a science I don't see it being classified as such. A field of
research yes.

It's a tough call.


Best,

Greg








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               Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:35:34 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:20:16 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Lehmberg


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:14:25 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 17:02:50 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>Real alien life will be something biologically far more
>different from us than yeast or slime mold is. Its unlikely to
>be sufficiently physically or psychologically simlar to us to be
>engaged on projects such as building radio telescopes or
>spaceships, which are very much the product of our own
>particular culture, let alone species.

How gratifying it is to have the cold hard hand of confident
hubris still our troubled ufological waters with such deftness
and easy confidence. It _must_ be transparent proof of the
effortless mastery one can achieve with regard to unknown
sciences, xenobiology, philosophies forgotten or not yet worked
out, and the ability to confuse individual reach with
institutional grasp. And all of it as if these same observations
and conclusions have not been made before, arduously debated,
and then retired when one side (or the other) reaches it's
advancing threshold of reactionary non- acceptance... These
persons _must_ be enviable on one level or another, one would
think.

Me (?) ...I remember the small area covered by a grain of sand
held at arms length, an area containing not millions of mere
stars... but billions of galaxies containing _trillions_ of
stars. I think about all that 'time' and 'space' and 'surface
area', where anything that can happen has happened... and all of
it behind a grain of sand held before you, anywhere before you.
My hubris dissolves, my confidence disappears, and any 'mastery'
becomes the illusions of a spoiled child.

My knees buckle, too. Maybe I'm not holding my mouth right...

alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







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                 Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:57:41 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:21:42 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:14:25 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 17:02:50 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>Real alien life will be something biologically far more
>different from us than yeast or slime mold is. Its unlikely to
>be sufficiently physically or psychologically simlar to us to be
>engaged on projects such as building radio telescopes or
>spaceships, which are very much the product of our own
>particular culture, let alone species.


Hi Peter,

In light of the extremely small sampling of non-earthly bodies
for which we have data, on what do you base this statement, if
not inference and speculation? What qualifications make your
inference and speculation more weighty than anyone else's?

At best, there is little evidence to suggest that your inference
and speculation are more or less accurate than Eleanor's.

Unless you have information to the contrary, there are no
experts on extra-terrestrial life, and certainly there is
insufficient data on which to base your assertion.

It may bring you comfort to believe it, but it is not
scientific. It is merely a belief.

While I do not share the view that SETI is necessarily the best
method whereby to determine the existence of ET life, I am
utterly unable to decry their efforts as a waste. Here I am at
odds with many Listers who believe the opposite. But SETI may
yet have the last laugh. Like you and Eleanor, all we can do is
infer and speculate. To each his/her own.

If the field of Ufology has amassed any evidence at all of ET
life, it would certainly seem to be roughly similar to human
life, and their craft seem to reflect a recognition and
manipulation of natural forces, physics and material.

If sentient ET life exists, how would you suspect their
communication to evolve if not through manipulation of
electromagnetic radiation, a natural phenomenon we can readily
observe even light years away? Since we are merely
speculating...

We all know how science has historically had the first laugh on
many subjects, only to be found in error when better data became
available.

Radio is not a human invention. Radio is a natural phenomenon
which we are able to... through trial, error and time...
discover, modulate and utilize, like electricity. That another
species might discover this is not terribly farfetched,
especially in light of the vast number of life- sustaining
bodies out there coupled with the tenacity of life we observe
here on earth even in the most inhospitable places. Are we the
only monkeys capable of serendipitously producing the proverbial
Shakespeare play?

I think Keyhoe had a good point in saying that the best *albeit
inadvertent* method we might have for attracting the attention
of ET is our nuclear detonations. While they might be large bomb
blasts to us here, they would constitute a burst of *gasp* radio
to a distant civilization, were it listening. Reason enough for
a closer look at this blue marble. In this light, such
detonations, or SETI, might even be the reason ET could come
calling. Worth the effort even if fruitless. At least it is an
effort.

I could be in error, but then it's just another case of
inference and speculation. I simply believe the critical but
open mind is more likely to divine the truth in the end, if
history informs. Your assertion reflects a mind long on
critical, but short on open, a decidedly
unscientific state in my view.

Regards,

Kyle








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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:08:53 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:23:03 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 06:38:09 -0600
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 15:41:44 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>We were born to capture these things like they were wooly
>>mammoths. We were made to steer these things around the sky like
>>beasts of heavy burden. In that noble pursuit we've nothing to
>>lose and everything to gain for our boldness... besides, our
>>boldness will likely bring mighty forces to our aid!

<snip>

>As Alfred points out, they could harbor a treasure trove of
>resources, and would require the combined efforts of
>astronomers, computational physicists, space engineers, and
>adventurous 'spelunkers'.

Capturing or moving such things around seems unlikely (although
I have read papers proposing how to do it). The slight movement
of these beasts seems feasible. Given enough years, I suppose
they can move in orbit "fairly" significantly. The only reason
to do this is collision avoidance. Tweeking such a beast into
orbit around Earth seems impossible in our lifetimes.

Regarding the treasure trove of resources, I don't think so.
Even if we knew the asteroid was made of platinum, it still
doesn't make cost sense. If you add up all the costs of getting
a vehicle to the asteroid and bringing the resource back to
Earth, it will still be much cheaper to buy the resource from
China through Walmart. Launch costs are hellishly expensive and
even with Burt Rutan's genius, its going to add too much to the
cost of the resource. Then consider the cost of human operation
in near zero gravity (on the asteroid) for long periods of time.
ISS crew hour costs are at least $1000/hr (not their pay check,
just the effective cost of them as a resource) and likely alot
more.

The only real way to make a profit from resource in the near
term (10-30 yrs) is energy related, such as fusion (if it ever
works) fuel from the Moon or space solar power (presently still
too costly to implement but Rutan-like genius could help).

Entertainment and prestige industries seem to be a more likely
near term investment course for space. The Moon is far safer to
do this at though, rather than an asteroid and its inherent
risks/complexities.








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                        Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Boone

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:56:32 EST
Fwd Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:24:30 -0500
Subject: Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Boone


>From: Louise Nicolaides <Louise.Nicolaides.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 16:31:07 -0500
>Subject: Re: The Bamboo Saucer

>>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:59:22 EST
>>Subject: The Bamboo Saucer

>>Pardon if I've posted this before but an interesting flick I saw
>>years ago about UFOs was called, The Bamboo Saucer.

>>I'm sure it's out on VHS somewhere and if it comes out on DVD
>>I'll buy it.

><snip>

>Hi,

>I thought you might like to know I found the movie on Ebay. Here
>is the link with a description of the film:

<snip>

Thanks Louise,

I've however found a great review of the flick at:

http://www.scifilm.org/reviews2/bamboosaucer.html

I'm trying to find out if the rumor is true that the film was
banned or whatever.


Best,

Greg








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   Dec > Dec 2

                          Filer's Files #50 - 2004

From: George A. Filer <majorstar.nul>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 15:02:03 EST
Fwd Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 08:46:50 -0500
Subject: Filer's Files #50 - 2004


Filer's Files #50 - 2004, Skywatch Investigations
George A. Filer, Director MUFON Eastern
Vice President of Skywatch International
December 1, 2004, Webmaster: Chuck Warren

Alexandria Found on Mars

The purpose of these files is to report the UFO eyewitness and
photo/video evidence that occurs on a daily basis around the
world and in space as reported each week. Many people claim it
is impossible for UFOs to visit Earth, I ask you only to keep an
open mind and watch the evidence we accumulate each week. These
Files make the assumption that extraterrestrial intelligent life
exists and my hypothesis is that of the over one hundred UFO
reports each week many represent factual UFO sightings in our
skies.

UFOs were seen over Arizona, California, Michigan, Minnesota,
North Carolina, Ohio, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
 Sightings were also reported in Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico,
India, and the United Kingdom.

So let me turn the tables and humbly ask you, dear reader, to be
truly open-minded. Adhere to the advice of T.H. Huxley, who
wrote, "A wise man apportions his belief to the evidence." Keep
your brains tucked safely inside your skulls. Be open but not
gullible. And remember, it is better to think than to believe."


Alexandria - The New Face on Mars

Norman Bryden writes, "Here is another image from the same image
I called Crystal Lake that adds to the evidence of humanoid
structures. This one has a face that is even easier to see than
the other statue like anomalies, and I think people would be
interested in this structure. Thanks to Norman Bryden

Editor's Note: Norman has agreed to name the face "Alexandria"
after the famous Egyptian city located on the Mediterranean Sea
and my granddaughter. Around the edge of Crystal Lake there are
many interesting structures that in my opinion represent
intelligent life. There is also the face of a lion called
"George," the writing points to the top of his head paw is at
bottom right. The large script letter E, and the number 7.

Many of the structures appear to be square or rectangle. None
of these cultural features occur naturally in nature. One has
to conclude they were placed here deliberately to be seen from
the air. We have also found the letter E carved in rocks on the
ground. EL is the name by which God is called in the Old
Testament and by the early Phoenicians. The number '7' is the
letter V in the Phoenician alphabet that was later adopted by
the Greeks, Romans and most of Europe. Finding recognizable
faces, pyramids, animals, structures, and letters on Mars
indicates a close connection between the two planets. []

Note to the right of the Alexandria's face is a '7'and also an
'X' with a closed loop on top that is an Egyptian Hieroglyphic
Alphabet symbol for S. It is my opinion there is a message or
name plate with the face. We can assume communication has gone
on between Mars and Earth for thousands of years.

New UFO Revelations: Cattle Mutilations.

On Monday, November 29, 2004 8-9 pm ETon the History channel
Linda Howe and Jim Hickman gave and excellent television
presentation on the mysterious murder of livestock known as
Cattle Mutilations.

Congratulations on a great show. Jim is the Director of Skywatch
International

Arizona - Disc-Like Object Caught on Video

PHOENIX -- In the second clip for November 25, 2004, at 1:39 to
1:42 p.m., one can clearly see two objects in the sky coming
together. Both video clips are very interesting indeed and will
be posted on the HBCC UFO Research website.

When we spoke a few days ago I was telling you how the last few
weeks the sightings seem to come to a complete stop. That
changed the other day as something streaked across the sky and
caught my attention. I ran into the house to grab my camera but
by the time I came out that object was gone but not for long. I
saw a white disc-like object hovering to the south of me about
3-5000' high. The object was hovering in a horizontal position
but turns on its side and flew straight up extremely fast. It
moved behind the trees but eventually lost sight of it. Thanks
to Brian Vike, Director www.hbccufo.com

California - Residents report UFOs

RIDGECREST -- Jessica Tamturk reports, "A bright circular-shaped
flying object was seen soaring over the skies of the Indian
Wells Valley late Saturday evening on November 6, 2004,
startling at least five eyewitnesses. At around 10:45 PM, as
each of three friends was returning home, a large object
allegedly moving along the west side of the Valley caught their
attention.

"It was neither a plane or a rocket," said long-time Ridgecrest
resident Bonnie Mathis Tuesday evening. "It was very bright, and
diffused colors within the object could be detected upon closer
examination. Whatever it was, it scared the crap out of me." In
the three days since the incident, Mathis said she has been able
to rule out that a jet or rocket incident had occurred that
night for the lack of flames or the absence of emergency
support, nor did she suspect the object to be a meteor since it
was moving too slowly.

"I've seen lots of meteor showers and this was too big and too
slow to be a meteor," said Mathis, adding that the entire
sighting lasted about a minute. "My husband was driving the car,
so my attention was on this thing, whatever it was, for the
entire time," she said. "Towards the end of its trajectory it
just faded. It didn't lose its intensity it just got smaller,
until it crossed the horizon and was out of sight."

UFO investigator Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO
Reporting Center based in Seattle, Wash. said in a telephone
conversation Tuesday that over 100 UFO sightings from the North
American continent and beyond had been reported to his
organization. Among them was a report filed by a Newport Beach
resident, which corroborated Ridgecrest eyewitness accounts.

The individual described that he had seen a large bright object
moving low across the skies Saturday at 10:45 p.m., and rapidly
made its way over the Pacific Ocean "at speeds no man made
object could move," said Davenport. No reports from Ridgecrest,
nor the greater Mojave area, were reported to NUFORC for
Saturday evening. "It doesn't mean it didn't happen, it's just
that as of yet we do not have a report filed," said Davenport.
"Our belief is that out of 1,000 sightings, only one or two
individual reports are filed. But if you have more than that,
then perhaps several thousands have seen the object." Upon
description, Davenport would not commit to any specific
confirmatory statement, but that sightings in the Mojave area
were quite frequent. Jerry Johnson, Mathis' friend, said Tuesday
that she also had witnessed "a huge, bright light moving
westward." Johnson added that she had perceived a greenish glow
around the object, a report that was corroborated by the third
friend, who rendered a statement on condition of anonymity.
"I've seen lots of meteors in my life, and at the time I didn't
think it was one, but in hindsight I don't know what else it
could be," said Johnson. Snip Thanks to Jessica Tamturk."
jtamturk.nul and Skywatch-International Web Site
http://www.skywatch-international.org/

SONORA -- Another low-flying, glowing object was videotaped over
Sonora last night, November 16th. Two clips of this object have
been posted here: http://www.sonorasightings.com/63310.html .
This is the second glowing object that was observed last night.
The first was very fast and disappeared quickly and, while
videotaped, the second object was more spectacular, as it moved
slowly and directly over Lyons Bald Mountain before disappearing
behind the treeline to the Northeast. Thank you, and we hope you
will continue to support our efforts to bring to you this
strange and ongoing phenomenon by donating to the Sonora
Sightings website. Your donations will help maintain our website
as we attempt to document these sightings. Thanks to Mark A.
Olson, D.M. www.sonorasightings.com

GARDENA -- It was the night of November 13, 2004, at 8:38 PM, My
sister was having a birthday party for her daughter. My brother
and I were outside talking and looking up at the stars. It was a
clear evening, no clouds in sight. I saw something fly overhead,
I wasn't sure I was seeing it, so I asked my brother to look.
The object was in a V shape, and flew overhead as if it were
gliding, it made no sound, very quite. This craft blended into
the night sky, almost like camouflage. It had very faint glowing
lights, three or four on each bottom side of the craft, with one
at the tip of the V. With binoculars it was shaped like a "V", I
had my brother take a look and he confirmed it.

DEPUTY SHERIFF says, "I have never been a believer in UFOs, I'm
still not sure if I am." Let me tell you my story. I am a Deputy
Sheriff in California. On October 30, 2004, at about midnight, I
was on patrol driving down the main street of the city. I saw a
faint golden glow in the western sky moving slowly. I pulled my
vehicle into a dark parking lot to get a better look. I saw 4 to
6 lights almost diamond shaped traveling E/N in the sky. It
didn't look any higher than the average aircraft would fly in
the area (we live close to a large Navy Air Base). I noticed
there was no sound from the aircraft, which seemed impossible
for the altitude it was traveling. I watched it for about 15
minutes until it disappeared into the eastern sky. I wrote it
off as something the Navy base was involved with, but it has
bothered me since that time. I looked up a UFO website and
located a UFO sighting report dated 10/30/04, at 11:00 a.m. from
Phoenix AR. I chuckled when I read the report because it sounded
like what I saw. I looked at the pictures. My heart almost
stopped. The photographs were exactly what I saw. Thanks to
Brian Vike www.hbccufo.com

North Carolina - Two Disc Shaped Objects

HIGH POINT - - Field Investigator Alan Caviness informed me that
he and other investigators have been taking a series of images
and video of UFOs in his general area. He has obtained an
astounding amount of data indicating heavy concentration of UFOs
in his area. He has provided me with numerous examples of these
objects. Many are cylinder or disk shape and fly above Davidson
County, and High Rock Lake, North Carolina. Thanks to Alan
Caviness

GRANITE FALLS -- The witness was on his way to the local video
store about 6:45 PM, on November 7, 2004, when he looked up and
saw a disc shaped object with white lights similar to chasing
lights on a Christmas tree going all the way around this object.
There was a red light on either side of the object. The witness
states, "The disc was moving faster than anything I've ever seen
in a straight line across the sky."

On his way back home, he decided to investigate further and in a
rural area with lots of hills and trees he found a UFO and
another not too far from it that was identical to the first.
They seemed to be communicating with one another by way of a
white light that would come out of the side of one and the other
would respond. This went on for about five seconds. One of the
objects flew away quickly while the other hovered motionless for
just a couple of seconds. They came back into close proximity
once but didn't seem to be communicating and appeared to be
level with each other until one of them moved in a straight line
vertically a short distance then just as quickly returned to a
level position with the other one. Thanks to Brian Vike
www.hbccufo.com

Michigan - Colorful And Brilliant Light

WESTLAND - The witness saw what looked like a helicopter with
lights all over it on November 26, 2004, at 8:30 PM. He states,
"This is not the first UFO I have seen and I have seen this same
'copter' before, but did not get a photo." This time I used my
Cannon Digital Elph S400 to shoot the object a half to a mile
away at about 500 feet. I have not done anything to the photo
except enlarge it to 200% given it's small size. When you do so
it becomes more strange. The sky was overcast, but it was not
raining. The moon was full but well behind the overcast skies.
The object traveled from the S.W. to the N.N.E. at the speed of
a small plane, it even made a sound similar to a helicopter but
different. It traveled almost overhead at a very steady pace.

A week ago I saw a white light non strobe, like a reverse spot
light, in the clouds that came out of the west. There was no
sound until it turned almost overhead to the south and I could
hear a sound similar to a jet but no sonic boom. Given the
apparent speed I thought I would have heard at least one sonic
boom as the sound was far behind the object. Had I not been
looking at the very spot I would have missed seeing it as it was
visible for a few seconds. Followed by the sound, I also saw an
object that appeared to be round at 10:30 PM with five white non
strobe lights and one red light in the middle. Thanks to Brian
Vike, Director www.hbccufo.com

Wisconsin - UFOs Seen Almost Daily

FREDERICK - Shawn and his wife called to tell me they are seeing
UFOs near their home almost daily. As we talked they described
seeing a UFO like a fallen rainbow at 12:48 PM, on November 29,
2004. He sent me some photos that I will bring to my readers.
All the sightings started in July and continue. Often he and his
family members can feel pressure in their ears as the craft pass
over their home. Many of the UFOs blend into the background and
appear to be camouflaged. Some look like a dragon and seem to be
operating in the valley near their home. He uses digital type
cameras and a Sony digital video camera with night vision to
capture the objects. He observes objects that look like Lucite
willow branches and little marble things of light. The family
also sees objects over the treeline that look like Tinkerbelle
fairies.

He recently saw an octopus like object similar to one seen in
Mexico City. The UFOs have silent propulsion systems that have
magnetized everything in the house. He recently saw a UFO shaped
like a large T antennae adjusting itself. When in motion it was
invisible, but when it stopped moving they could see the object.
Thanks to Shawn

Editor's Note: It is interesting to note that Shawn is just
southwest of Lake Superior in an area that was once covered by
glaciers and has quartzite. George Ritter who lives in Fostoria,
Ohio lives in a similar location near Lake Erie once covered by
glaciers and having quartzite. These areas likely contain vast
underground caverns that would be ideal for developing
underground bases

Minnesota - Array of Lights

GLENWOOD -- At 5:30 AM, the witness saw unidentified lights in
the southeastern sky on November. 9, 2004 in West Central
Minnesota. She ran out to their driveway and snapped three
pictures with her digital camera, an HP Photosmart 320. Each
picture included the moon which was halfway between its last
quarter and the new moon stage. Enhancement of two of the images
and superposition revealed that there was an array of lights
which were moving slowly to the right and rotating counter-
clockwise. About 45 seconds elapsed between the second and third
pictures which are superimposed here. Blue is frame 2, Red is
frame 3. Purple is overlap. Movement is from Blue to Red.
Investigation will continue. Thanks to Bill McNeff Minnesota
MUFON

Ohio - UFO Videotaped

FOSTORIA -- George Ritter videotaped an apparent disc like UFO
in his backyard with his RCA VHS camera. This object was
captured last week flying above a nearby farm thirty miles from
Lake Erie. Thanks to George Ritter

Washington - Nuclear Physicist Stanton Friedman Says UFOs Are
Real

MT SHASTA NEWS reports, "During his lecture at the Kenneth Ford
Theatre in Weed, sponsored by the College of the Siskiyous
Associated Student Body, Friedman took a scientific approach by
presenting facts and information from government files along
with countless interviews he's conducted with civilians and
military personnel since the early 1950s. Friedman presented his
"anatomy of a cover-up" and provided a step-by-step trail of
government issued paperwork which he says shows the absurdity of
copious lies and deceit divulged to the public to cover-up the
existence of UFOs. Friedman reviewed five major scientific
studies with mountains of evidence to support his conclusion of
alien visits to Earth, including the Roswell Incident, where the
wreckage of two flying saucers and the recovery of several alien
bodies from New Mexico were documented in a classified memo
released by the US government in 1950.

Having worked under security while doing nuclear research for 14
years, Friedman said he knows how easy it is for governments to
keep secrets. As the only civilian investigator on the Roswell
incident, Friedman said he became aware of huge "black budgets"
of UFO technology related research by top military officials and
scientist, including the CIA and Operation Majestic 12, which
was created for the purpose of researching UFO's. After 25 years
of UFO research and many interviews, Friedman said he visited 20
archives and read the original Operation Majestic Five documents
as well as Project Blue Book Special Report 14, which gives
detailed accounts of physical evidence found since 1947. "The
challenge for us all is to recognize that, while our future is
in space, we are not alone," Friedman said. "Though we are
clearly a primitive society whose major activity is tribal
warfare, I hope we can qualify for admission to the 'Cosmic
Kindergarten." Friedman noted the ignorance of data and the lack
of research for the "noisy negatives" who he said aren't
interested in facts and whose minds are made up. "They are
simply unaware of the real, non-tabloid evidence," said
Friedman. Snip Source: Mt Shasta News
http://www.mtshastanews.com/articles/2004/11/24/news/11notalone.
txt

Washington - Loud Sounds

OLYMPIA -- Extremely loud sound like classic '50s movie flying
saucer, flying low over house with bright flashing lights on
November 3, 2004, at 10 PM. Just after going to bed, we heard an
extremely loud sound rapidly coming from south to north directly
over our house. It seemed to be just barely above the house. The
sound was that of the typical movie flying saucer sound from a
'50s outer space flick. It was an extremely loud, very high-
pitched whoop, whoop, whoop sound...very rapid and very squeal
or beep-like. We thing about 80 or 90 decibels.

The sound was accompanied by chaotic bright white flashing
lights. The object flew over extremely fast...I jumped out of
bed and ran outside - hoping to get a glimpse, but it was
already gone...just a residual sound in the distance. A light
fog was beginning to form outside, but I should have been able
to see at least the flashing. I have never heard anything like
this, except in the old flying saucer movies. We've lived here
for the past 8 or 9 years, right near Fort Lewis, and within 30
miles of the McCord Air Force base, and see and hear many
aircraft, but nothing like this...so loud, so close...and so
strange. We are both college grads, and wide awake at the time.
Thanks to Peter Davenport Director www.UFOCenter.com

West Virginia - Red Fireball with Protrusions

My grandmother lived in rural Southern West Virginia near a
small town nestled in the Appalachian foothills. There were very
few cars in those days so most people walked to and from town or
church often for miles along hilly paths or long stretches of
isolated dirt roadways night or day. It was in the spring of
1932 or 1933 that grandma , who was in her 40's, was returning
home from town near dusk when she found herself on an isolated
stretch of road called "Water Tank Hill" where 'ghost lights'
were seen. Evidently, these ghostly lights were seen by various
people as "red, glowing fireballs" which would zig zag or bob
along this hill and adjacent ridges. As mysteriously as they
would appear, they would disappear. Grandma had just started
down the gentle slope in the road when suddenly something shot
out just in front and above her in the sky from a ridge near the
"infamous" Water Tank Hill. She said it had so startled her that
she actually "froze " in midstep and saw one of the red, glowing
or fireball .'ghost lights' s." The next second she realized it
had to be something other than a "ghost light" and that
frightened her even more because she had no explanation at all
for what she was seeing.

The red object hovered and she saw "protrusions" from the
object. When she was asked just what she meant by that, her
reply was 'well, like antennas or legs sticking out from it". It
therefore in her mind was 'machine', not a 'ghost' and this
defied any concept of any machine she knew about. I asked her if
it somehow could've been an airplane, but she shook her head
emphatically 'no'. She went on to say that once she saw these
strange protrusions , she ran like "a scared rabbit" the rest of
the way home. She didn't know if the object followed her for she
was too afraid to look up. Once she got inside the house and
bolted the door she wouldn't look out. My grandma was not the
person who was easily frightened . But what she saw that spring
night unnerved her for sometime. Thanks to Brian Vike
www.hbccufo.com

Canada - UFO Sightings Increase

TORONTO, ONTARIO -- I've got another daylight sighting with
another witness over Toronto, observed in Scarborough, Ontario.
On Friday, November 12, 2004 at 12:20 PM,. Facing southwest on a
perfect clear sky, I observed a small round bright object with
binoculars. This object could only be seen with binoculars and
not the naked eye, it was that much higher. It appeared like the
other high sightings in the day that could have been a planet.
This one moved after 5 minuets, very slowly to the north and as
luck would have it while this was happening I grabbed another
witness which I've never met before. As I sat watching the
object and used a hydro pole as a marker. I asked the DHL
courier driver if he had good eyes and his reply was "yes". Then
asked him, "do you want to see a UFO?" He looked at me strangely
and said "sure". I got up from sitting and instructed him to sit
were I was. I gave him the binoculars, pointed at the hydro pole
as the marker and "yes" he too could see it. He could see it
moving very slowly in a northerly direction with it stopping and
going. Then a minute later, he said it disappeared. He passed
over the binoculars and he was right, nothing there. I had him
call our local UFO hotline after the sighting. Then he gave me
the envelop he was delivering and left shaking his head. When he
left, of course, I was out there again viewing and found it
again. The object was a full arm's length over to central
western sky, viewed it for another 2-3 minutes. Thanks to Brian
Vike.

CALEDON, ONTARIO -- On November 22, 2004, Ithought I would send
this picture because this is the same UFO that I see quite
often. I haven't had a camera for a couple of weeks, but you can
be sure that this is what I saw again last night, it was in the
south sky around 6:45 p.m. and it was slowly making its way
toward the west, its movements were small, quick, circular
patterns as it moved across the sky. There were many stars in
the sky last night and as most would notice, these have rapidly
flashing lights, not like a star. It appears there's still some
action going on in Ontario and I know from my experiences that
they visit throughout the winter as well. I'll keep watching.
Thanks to Brian Vike www.hbccufo.com

VANCOUVER, B.C.-- I was looking at the Kat Kam on November 15,
2004, at last 5:20 PM, and noticed that cluster of lights was
hanging in the sky again just to the south of the Planetarium
and just over UBC. The lights were there from approx. Nov. 15,
04 - 17:20 until Nov. 16,04 - 07:10. To me it just appears to be
a reflection from some group of lights but although I scanned
the whole photo I could not find anything which would account
for them. I've noticed that I will sometimes get similar types
of reflection since my windows have double panes and the inner
glass reflects onto the outer. But if this was the case that
group of lights should be there every night. I tried checking
back for the past two weeks and there was nothing, it appears to
be a one night appearance. I also tried copying the shot and
zooming in on the lights but it was inconclusive as to just what
they are. There doesn't appear to be any structure around them.

Thanks to Brian Vike


TRANSCONA, WINNIPEG MANITOBA - From my backyard, I witnessed a
large fireball descending rapidly in the North-West Sky on
Wednesday November 3, 2004, at 6:30 AM. It was very bright and
somewhat green in color, similar to a street signal light, but
very bright. It lit up the sky even when it went behind low
level clouds. I lost sight of it as it descended below houses on
the street. Do you know what this was? A meteorite or space
debris? Thanks to Brian Vike www.hbccufo.com

PUERTO RICO -- Sighting of UFOs near Aerostat

TORONTO -- Professor Reinaldo Rios and investigators took up
watch near the environs of the base of the Aerostato Radar on
November 14, 2004. The radar is a gigantic globe that attempts
to detect drug traffic and conduct military experimentation.
They made a nocturnal watch just off Highway 303 of the Sector
Fajardo de Lajas, Puerto Rico. They were able to capture the
image below on 35 mm film..

Approximated distance of 1000 feet of north to the south which
circulated slowly changing the intensity of light. Many people
in the area have seen similar lights. Police patrols were seen
and communication was made but they did not pay attention to our
allegations. An object moved downwards had the form of an
eclipse with the plane. Thanks to Reinaldo Rios
http://groups.msn.com/CampamentosOvnisReinaldoRiosInternacional

UK/Wales - Motorists See Gigantic UFO

CARDIFF, SOUTH WALES -- On Thursday, October 14, 2004, at 10
p.m., Mark A. was driving about four miles west of Cardiff, when
he had a most unusual encounter. "I was driving along a fairly
busy road heading west just outside of Cardiff city," Mark
reported, "Something caught my eye, so I pulled over. I also
noticed that other people, about 15 other drivers, had done the
same and were now outside their vehicles looking up at what I
just couldn't believe. At about 3,000 feet was the largest
flying object that I have ever seen. Something like, say, the
new Airbus A380, not yet in service, or a Boeing 747, that would
have been dwarfed by it. The crazy thing was--absolute silence!"
"We stood dumbstruck as this thing moved slowly through the air
almost directly above us. There was also complete silence from
everyone observing this amazing event from the roadside. Other
drivers were now stopping, and people were getting out of their
cars to take a look."

"I am a pilot and have a fairly good idea of how motions of
normal aircraft can 'trick' people into seeing a UFO. This was
in no way normal. My next move was to telephone the Control
tower at the local airport and ask if anything unusual had just
taken off. Air traffic control- said that a (Boeing) 737 had
just departed a few minutes ago. This object was too big and too
silent to be a 737. I then asked if they had anything on radar.
'Nothing, 'they said."  Mark then called the Cardiff RAF base.
"Again, 'nothing.' This thing was almost the size of a very
large container ship. It didn't have any visible wings or any
other way of showing how it could stay in the air. If I saw it
on the ground, I would bet money that it was not able to fly."
 "The weather was good with ten miles of visibility. There were
light clouds at 500 feet (150 meters) and very light winds. I
watched this object keep the same speed and height (altitude)
and then it passed behind some mountains to the northeast of
Cardiff."

Two days later, on Saturday, October 16, 2004, Mark added, "I
saw a friend and told him about the sighting. He was almost
speechless when I started to describe the same thing that he had
seen moments after me. His account is identical to mine in the
size and height of the object, speed (about 50 knots--M.A.)."
Thanks to UFO ROUNDUP, Vol. 9, #47 11/24/04, Editor: Joseph
Trainor Masinaigan.nul


UK/England

MARLBOROUGH - The witness was approaching the village on foot
and noticed a bright orange ball, it appeared stationary at 7:30
PM on November 4, 2004. I went for a long walk yesterday,it was
very dark but a beautiful evening, the stars were very clear. I
had been walking for approximately 1 hour and was approaching
the village of Vernhan Dean. This is a small village with a few
street lights. I noticed a bright orange light that appeared
stationary, it was partly shielded by a tree I assumed it was a
light on top of a pole or mobile telephone mast. As I walked and
got nearer the object, the tree no longer impaired my vision. It
then began to catch my eye, the colour was bright orange and it
glowed like a ball of flame. It had appeared stationary;
however, it then began to move quickly vertical and horizontal
passing overhead. It was difficult to tell how high or close it
was, there was no noise associated with the object, and it
appeared to travel very smoothly and without effort. I had a
very powerful spotlight with me and decided to direct it at the
object, to my amazement it instantly vanished.

Mexico - Tentacle UFO

MEXICO CITY -- A UFO most resembling an organic creature may
have been recorded over Mexico as it expelled strange spheres
from several tentacles, says Jaime Maussan: "On October 27,
2004, a giant object was photographed and videotaped over Mexico
City. It was very impressive and it launched spheres" with
regard to the latest evidence to feed his alien hypothesis.
"This is an inexplicable phenomenon. It's as though it were an
organic being with several tentacles, and some of these
tentacles are putting forth spheres. We called in an expert to
see if it could be some sort of balloon, but he said no."

Anair traffic controller calculated the object was flying at
over 10,000 feet, which means that in order to have been picked
up by a camera, its diameter should have been between 300 and
400 meters, making it a highly strange and extraordinary event.
He added that the object made a series of impressive maneuvers,
like a knot. Then it braided itself and stretched, but always
surrounded by a series of blue and red spheres that appeared to
be stuck to the object's sides. "If it's an organic being, where
did it come from? How did it get here? What is inside the
spheres it is ejecting? Is there some sort of invasion or are we
being monitored?" the journalist asked himself. He pointed out
that this fact confirms the existence of a very intense presence
of beings from another planet. "These beings are literally here,
and unfortunately we aren't through realizing what all of this
means. "Maussan said that the images were supplied by Arturo
Robles Gil, a professional photographer, who also managed to
record it with a camcorder. For this reason, the images are very
clear. "If balloons are involved, we figure that some 57,000 of
them would be required to form something similar, aside from the
fact that it is forbidden to launch balloons in the Mexico City
airspace which could jeopardize air travel. This would
constitute an illegal act," said the Ufologist. He stated that
this evidence is still being analyzed. "It was fortunate that
this event took place at 9 a.m. and no infrared lights were
needed to see it perfectly. "The video's total duration is
between 5 -10 minutes. Translation (c) 2004. Scott Corrales,
Institute of Hispanic Ufology.

India - Flying Triangles near Himalyas

DRANG DRUNG GLACIER -- Lara Mohani of the India Daily reports,
"A little girl in Zanskar on the India China border - Indian
side of the Himalayas reported a silent triangular high speed
very large air ship in the sky.

Sources say, there is a concentration of Asia's largest number
of nuke missiles from China and India hidden deep in the earth.
Neither Chinese nor Indians allow any one to go close to these
installations. These craft are similar to those seen in the US.
Definitely these are frictionless anti-gravity propelled flying
machines that are UFOs. The aircrafts are said to be either
extra-terrestrial or secret advanced US Air Force planes. But
when during Chemrey Angchok festival in Ladakh last week,
several local villagers gathered to discuss these strange
objects, Indian news reporters got curious. According to the
villagers these strange triangular objects have been visiting
over the last five years and their numbers are increasing. They
are silent and can move through the air extremely slowly, so
slowly that any conventional aircraft would stall and crash.
They can suddenly vanish at tremendous speed, far faster than
any known machine built by man could ever possibly move. They
are translucent; their flying beacons don't project light as
would a normal earth-made stream of light, and so on. Are these
'extra terrestrial UFOs' or spy machines of some unknown
country. The area is sensitive and it is possible that some
countries are watching this area. Also, it is possible that the
extra-terrestrials are watching the nuke installations of India
and China. Thanks to India Daily =
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/11-25g-04.asp


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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 2

                Re: John Ford's Southaven Footage? - Balaskas

From: Nick Balaskas <Nikolaos.nul>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:28:15 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
Fwd Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 09:33:14 -0500
Subject: Re: John Ford's Southaven Footage? - Balaskas


>From: Scott Carr <sardonica.nul>
>To:  ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 23:29:37 -0500
>Subject: John Ford's Southaven Footage?

<snip>

>I'm currently in development of a paranormal television show
>potentially for The Discovery Channel, an episode of which we
>are considering focusing on The Brookhaven UFO Crash in Long
>Island. As such, I've been searching for some time now for a
>copy (for purchase, if necessary) of the VHS footage that was
>sent to John Ford and which allegedly depicts, in Ford's own
>words:

>"By one of the firemen you could see a small gray body. The
>strange thing about this body is that it had a huge head, twice
>the size of a person, only about five feet tall and could only
>weigh about 80 pounds. There were two more alien bodies at the
>scene. One sitting up against a tree the other lying on the
>ground, missing an arm. "

>If anyone has a copy of this footage which they'd be willing to
>share, or if anyone could point me in the direction of obtaining
>it, I'd be eternally gratefull!

<snip>

Hi Scott!

I have a later generation video copy of the November 24, 1992
Long Island, New York UFO crash (19 1/2 minutes long). If I am
not mistaken, my copy came from Tom Theofanous, the Chair/
Director of Investigations for MUFON Ontario who once met and
spoke with John Ford regarding this incident.

Although this video is supposed to show firemen, alien bodies
and crashed UFO wreckage (looks more like crumpled aluminum foil
with dry ice "smoke" coming from the inside it to me), I
certainly could not see any evidence of these!

If you could provide me with your snail-mail address, I would be
happy to make and send a free copy of this video to you.
Included on the same video cassette is the alleged August 18,
1991 Carp, Ontario UFO crash (10 1/2 minutes) outside of Ottawa
which was investigated by Tom and other members of MUFON Ontario
who have reasons to suspect that this UFO is really Pavel
Farfara's pick-up truck. DND photoanalysists I spoke with
determined this UFO to be a five blade Commanche helicopter
(years before its official first flight) secretly being test
flown from the nearby Boeing plant, but that's another story...


Nick Balaskas








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   Dec > Dec 2

                              Selective Morals

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 08:16:58 -0800
Fwd Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 09:35:31 -0500
Subject: Selective Morals


Source: The News Hounds

http://www.newshounds.us/2004/12/02/selective_morals.php

12-02-04

Selective Morals

... The next segment which lasted for the rest of the show, was
all about extra terrestrials. UFO activist and Washington
lobbyist, Stephen Bassett discussed an ET "pattern of engaging"
with earthlings going back to 1947. Many callers shared stories
about seeing UFOs, ETs and being abducted. I'm not a believer
but it was unsettling to hear about creatures appearing in
bedrooms in the middle of the night, especially for an ex-New
Yorker on a freezing cold, pitch-black night on a back-country
road.

I have a feeling I'm going to have nightmares.








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   Dec > Dec 2

                 First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Nick Balaskas <Nikolaos.nul>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 09:22:37 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
Fwd Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 09:38:07 -0500
Subject: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 11:49:52 -0400
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Nick Balaskas <Nikolaos.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 15:52:56 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
>>Subject: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

<snip>

>>We all know that the closest planet to us in space is Venus,
>>the Earth's 'twin' planet. This very bright celestial object is
>>sometimes seen in the sky at dawn or dusk and is often mistaken
>>for a UFO.

>>Although the Earth has a large natural satellite, the Moon, and
>>at least two known asteroid companions, Cruithne and 2002 AA29
>>(both objects co-discovered by astronomers/near Earth asteroid
>>dynamicists at York University), Venus and the Mercury were
>>believed to be the only two planets in our solar system without
>>moons or asteroid companions, until now.

<snip>

>Any information regarding the size of 2002 VE68. How close to
>Earth's orbit does it come. I've often thought that someday we
>would uses asteroids for research, hitching free rides on - or
>in - them. Maybe others do.

Hi Don!

From NASA's asteroid radar research site I was able to find that
this "Potentially Hazardous Asteroid" was about 13 times the
distance of the Moon and fast receding from us when it was
discovered in 2002. It's next closest approach to the Earth (and
our chance to hitch a ride on it?) will be in 2010.

From preliminary optical observations only, this quasi-satellite
of Venus, has been estimated to be anywhere between 150 and 600
meters across - several times larger than the $100 billion plus
and still incomplete International Space Station! Next week I
fly to Las Vegas where I hope to visit Bigelow Aerospace (the
same Robert Bigelow that funded research into UFOs) to learn
more about his plans to built an inflatable but very tough space
hotel (and possibly even a manned outpost for 2002 VE68?) as big
or bigger than the space station but at a very, very much
smaller cost.

Since you are fascinated with heavier-than-air manned flight,
and are also a licensed pilot yourself, you will be interested
to know of a historic flight that is planned in Toronto sometime
very soon. If successful, it will be the realization of a dream
to fly like a bird that mankind held since the time God created
us without wings.

http://www.physorg.com/news2150.html

Of course, one of the original members of this ornithopter team
is York University's Prof. Daphne Schiff who has previously
taught the "Science of Flight" course at York and the "Physics
of Flight" at our Glendon College campus. Daphne also has a
company called "AIR-O-SOLS" which has done pollution-monitoring
flights for the government so I suspect she would be someone who
knows something about "contrails/chemtrails" controversy, but
that's another interesting story...


Nick Balaskas








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   Dec > Dec 2

                 Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 08:53:46 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 11:05:46 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:35:34 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>Me (?) ...I remember the small area covered by a grain of sand
>held at arms length, an area containing not millions of mere
>stars... but billions of galaxies containing _trillions_ of
>stars. I think about all that 'time' and 'space' and 'surface
>area', where anything that can happen has happened... and all of
>it behind a grain of sand held before you, anywhere before you.
>My hubris dissolves, my confidence disappears, and any 'mastery'
>becomes the illusions of a spoiled child.

>My knees buckle, too. Maybe I'm not holding my mouth right...


Hi Alfred,

While our respective missives reflect a difference in style, the
substance could not be more in tune.

Kudos,

Kyle







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                 Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 08:56:33 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 11:07:20 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King


>From: David Chace <davidwchace.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 23:45:32 -0800
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>In any case, there are no a priori grounds for believing that
>extraterrestrial beings or their probes do not visit the Earth
>from time to time, or do not operate here on a fairly regular
>basis.


Hi David,

I couldn't have said it better myself. <g>

Best Regards,

Kyle








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                          Sex And Alien Abduction?

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 11:25:38 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 13:02:49 -0500
Subject: Sex And Alien Abduction?


Sort of related to my post requesting some "good" adbuction
outcomes - results - and I don't mean good books sales or
appearance fees.

Has anyone done a study of the frequency of alien abduction
reports in which there is voluntary sex with the aliens? Sure we
all don't find greys very appealing, but I remember as a lad
reading APRO reports (70's era) of stuff that sounded like it
was out of Penthouse magazine and the aliens were not greys, but
rather slightly non-human. The other intersting thing was that
it seemed like most reports were from South America.

I know the Raelians seem to be promoting the sex for space
concept but lets dismiss that cult in this discussion.

The interesting thing is that there seems to be an evolution in
these cases. The 70's seemed to be the peak of the voluntary
alien sex reports and they have declined up to this day - for
some unknown reason - filtering by UFO researchers? Aliens
afraid of HIV AIDS? Reduction in the promiscuous culture?

Indeed, it seems that more involuntary and clinical
related/based sex type reports have occurred recently.







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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Gary Matteson <mystrius.nul>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 12:40:49 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 17:50:25 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:08:53 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 06:38:09 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

<snip>

>>As Alfred points out, they could harbor a treasure trove of
>>resources, and would require the combined efforts of
>>astronomers, computational physicists, space engineers, and
>>adventurous 'spelunkers'.

<snip>

>Even if we knew the asteroid was made of platinum, it still
>doesn't make cost sense. If you add up all the costs of getting
>a vehicle to the asteroid and bringing the resource back to
>Earth, it will still be much cheaper to buy the resource from
>China through Walmart. Launch costs are hellishly expensive and
>even with Burt Rutan's genius, its going to add too much to the
>cost of the resource. Then consider the cost of human operation
>in near zero gravity (on the asteroid) for long periods of time.
>ISS crew hour costs are at least $1000/hr (not their pay check,
>just the effective cost of them as a resource) and likely alot
>more.

>The only real way to make a profit from resource in the near
>term (10-30 yrs) is energy related, such as fusion (if it ever
>works) fuel from the Moon or space solar power (presently still
>too costly to implement but Rutan-like genius could help).


Living in a capitalist society, I appreciate this point of view
however, is it not presumptuous of us to assume, given the
possibility there are space-faring peoples 'out there', that
money is necessarily an issue for them, just because we do? I
cannot accept that argument as valid.


Gary Matteson

http://www.geocities.com/sparky_from_nebraska/Unofficial_MUFON-NE








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               Are You A Believer? Video Might Make You Wonder

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 12:49:08 -0800
Fwd Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 18:01:37 -0500
Subject: Are You A Believer? Video Might Make You Wonder


Source: KATU TV 2 - Portland, Oregon

http://www.katu.com/team2/story.asp?ID=73105

12-02-04

Are You A Believer? Video Might Make You Wonder
By Dan Tilkin and KATU Web Staff

Trout Lake, Wash. - Mount Adams has become a hotbed for UFO
believers who claim to have witnessed extraterrestrial travel
there night after night.

The people are led by a man named James Gilliland who owns a
retreat at the base of the mountain and has spent years
capturing his encounters on video.

Gilliland says his window into another world opened 27 years ago
when he nearly drowned, a near-death experience that he says
allows him to receive extraterrestrial telepathic messages.

Throughout the years, he has drawn countless people to his
retreat who are hoping to make alien contact, but around the
town of Trout Lake, Gilliland is known as 'Cosmic Jim.'

"I've lived here 34 years and I've never seen anything out of
the ordinary," says Andy Van Laar with Andy's Valley Service.
"Just a beautiful mountain and beautiful country. That's about
it."

"A long time ago, I transcended any need for acceptance or
approval outside of myself," says Gilliland. "For them to say
that I'm nuts and not look at the evidence, it's really
inconsistent to make a statement like that."








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                      Re: Ufology As A Science - Rimmer

From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 19:38:24 +0000
Fwd Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 18:06:29 -0500
Subject: Re: Ufology As A Science - Rimmer


>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 03:24:52 EST
>Subject: Re: Ufology As A Science

>Lots of questions and concerns arise from classifying UFOlogy as
>a science or elevating it up to or down to a science.

>Could be a good thing or a bad thing.

>What I mean is, if it qualifies as a science then procedures and
>protocols, ethics and standards come into play which would
>probably disqualify the bulk of the common folk who are the
>bullwark of this field of study.

Hmmm, I can just see it: 'The Protocols of the Learned Elders of
CUFOS'! But seriously, these protocols, ethics and standards
should already be in place, and, to be fair, many UFO
organisations have attempted to define some ethical standards
for investigations. Certainly, the question of ethics and
standards in mainstream science is a contentios one, and ufology
would be no different. For example, BUFORA's on-going moratorium
on the use of hypnotic regression is certainly not accepted by
ufologists in the USA, or indeed, some in britain.

>Not saying they're incompetent,
>just saying the regimen of real scientific study and application
>is too much for some folk.

This is certainly true.

>Then come in the regulations and laws. Could be a good thing
>wherein from that point forward doing bogus UFO reports could
>end up with a fine or imprisonment. Sort of like making a claim
>that Uncle Blumbley's moonshine soup can cure cancer. That's
>agin' the law. I think that would wipe out a good chunk of the
>UFO market as the snake oil salesmen would go out of business
>overnight.

Surely ufology in itself is not a science; rather it is the
application of science to find solutions to puzzling events. The
idea that the rightness or wrongness of a UFO-related claim
should be tested in a court of law is intriguing, we would
perhaps get a ruling once and for all as to whether
uncorroborated personal testimony has any legal weight! But
bogus claims are made in science, and they only come into court
if anyone is harmed, physically or financially, as a result.
There are plenty of barmy science books being written, and
unproven claims being bandied around, but I don't see m'learned
friends taking an interest in them!

One could draw a comparison between ufology and psychic
research. Practitioners of the latter certainly consider their
work to be a science, and have created a consistent form of
scientific protocol involving carefully planned experiments,
meticulous recording and record keeping, suitably boring-looking
journals and all the rest of the paraphernalia of mainstream
sciences. However, one must ask how much good it's done them in
the past 130 years or so.

>On the other antenna, it could mean that laws could come into
>play or better yet the proper execution of existing laws to
>protect witnesses, researchers from unlawful imprisonment in
>psychiatric institutions or the confiscation of their property
>without due process.

I know of two instances of so-called "unlawful imprisonment" in
relation to ufological claims, one in the USA and one in Britain
and don't want to get involved in discussing them further, thank
you very much. I do not think that there is any real instance of
such imprisonment happening purely because of a person's views
on UFOs or their claims to have seen one, but there have
certainly been instances where a person imprisoned for unrelated
crimes has found it useful to blame their ufological interests.

Proclaiming ufology to be a "science" is unlikely to make any
difference to the legal position of ufologists or witnesses - a
physicist or astronomer who breaks the law is no more or less
likely to be punished than a ufologist or psychic researcher.

>Nowadays ufology is in the open. If it became a science would it
>go into closed doors with data in the hands of a chosen few?
>Would we then be the ones creating a beurocratic new MJ-12?

Well, according to most people on this List, a great deal of
ufology is taking place behind closed doors, so no change there,
then! I think a good analogy would be astronomy, where a
vigorous and scientifically respectable amateur movement exists
alongside and collaborating with the academic side of the study.
Of course, the key words her are "scientifically respectable".

>As a science I don't see it being classified as such. A field of
>research yes.

If by "classified" you mean that, for instance, MUFON becomes
affiliated to the main American scientific organisations, or
BUFORA joins the British Association for the Advancement of
Science... well, who's for a snowball fight in Hades?

--
John Rimmer
Magonia Magazine
www.magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/00/newmag.htm







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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 13:47:28 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 19:13:37 -0500
Subject: Re:  First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:08:53 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 06:38:09 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 15:41:44 -0600
>>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>We were born to capture these things like they were wooly
>>>mammoths. We were made to steer these things around the sky like
>>>beasts of heavy burden. In that noble pursuit we've nothing to
>>>lose and everything to gain for our boldness... besides, our
>>>boldness will likely bring mighty forces to our aid!

><snip>

>>As Alfred points out, they could harbor a treasure trove of
>>resources, and would require the combined efforts of
>>astronomers, computational physicists, space engineers, and
>>adventurous 'spelunkers'.

>Capturing or moving such things around seems unlikely (although
>I have read papers proposing how to do it). The slight movement
>of these beasts seems feasible. Given enough years, I suppose
>they can move in orbit "fairly" significantly. The only reason
>to do this is collision avoidance. Tweeking such a beast into
>orbit around Earth seems impossible in our lifetimes.

>Regarding the treasure trove of resources, I don't think so.
>Even if we knew the asteroid was made of platinum, it still
>doesn't make cost sense. If you add up all the costs of getting
>a vehicle to the asteroid and bringing the resource back to
>Earth, it will still be much cheaper to buy the resource from
>China through Walmart. Launch costs are hellishly expensive and
>even with Burt Rutan's genius, its going to add too much to the
>cost of the resource. Then consider the cost of human operation
>in near zero gravity (on the asteroid) for long periods of time.
>ISS crew hour costs are at least $1000/hr (not their pay check,
>just the effective cost of them as a resource) and likely alot
>more.

>The only real way to make a profit from resource in the near
>term (10-30 yrs) is energy related, such as fusion (if it ever
>works) fuel from the Moon or space solar power (presently still
>too costly to implement but Rutan-like genius could help).

>Entertainment and prestige industries seem to be a more likely
>near term investment course for space. The Moon is far safer to
>do this at though, rather than an asteroid and its inherent
>risks/complexities.

Hi James,

Boy, you sure know how to quench the fire in a dream.

To borrow and mangle a well-turned phrase... 'You look at things
that are and say why?, and I (and others) look at things that
never were and say 'Why not?'.

Were it not for impractical dreams, our world would be devoid of
many of its most practical realities.

Besides, I believe neither of us placed a timetable on the idea
Nor are we the first to suggest it.

I'm beginning to understand what Stan means when he talks about
Noisy Negativists. <LOL>

Your points are all very well presented, and likely accurate in
the main, but this is something that both Alfred and I believe
not to be happening in our lifetimes, but on a timeline one
might call ideal, where the thirst... no... the need for
knowledge trumps any monetary imperative, where the quest for
truth is judged by its potential rather than its cost alone, and
where those who presume the preposterous are called innovators
rather than spendthrifts.

But you're probably right. <g>


Regards,

Kyle








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                     Re: Ufology As A Science - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:04:28 +0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 07:23:16 -0500
Subject: Re: Ufology As A Science - Rogerson


>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 03:24:52 EST
>Subject: Re: Ufology As A Science

<snip>

>On the other antenna, it could mean that laws could come into
>play or better yet the proper execution of existing laws to
>protect witnesses, researchers from unlawful imprisonment in
>psychiatric institutions or the confiscation of their property
>without due process.

Can you give a single example where this fate has befallen
someone for no other reason than reporting a UFO sighting, or
investigating UFO cases, excluding cases where someone claims
that the guys from Proycon V have told them to eat next door's
gerbil.

The risks to ufologists must be far less than to those who taken
up skunk farming as a hobby. or declare themselves to be founder
leader of either the Satanic Grotto of Baphomet, the Blood Red
Revolutionary Communist Party Marxist Leninist or the Islamic
Jihad Front.


Peter Rogerson








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               Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:30:39 +0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 07:27:43 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:57:41 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>Radio is not a human invention. Radio is a natural phenomenon
>which we are able to... through trial, error and time...
>discover, modulate and utilize, like electricity. That another
>species might discover this is not terribly farfetched,
>especially in light of the vast number of life-sustaining
>bodies out there coupled with the tenacity of life we observe
>here on earth even in the most inhospitable places. Are we the
>only monkeys capable of serendipitously producing the proverbial
>Shakespeare play?

>I think Keyhoe had a good point in saying that the best albeit
>inadvertent method we might have for attracting the attention
>of ET is our nuclear detonations. While they might be large bomb
>blasts to us here, they would constitute a burst of *gasp* radio
>to a distant civilization, were it listening. Reason enough for
>a closer look at this blue marble. In this light, such
>detonations, or SETI, might even be the reason ET could come
>calling. Worth the effort even if fruitless. At least it is an
>effort.

>I could be in error, but then it's just another case of
>inference and speculation. I simply believe the critical but
>open mind is more likely to divine the truth in the end, if
>history informs. Your assertion reflects a mind long on
>critical, but short on open, a decidedly unscientific state in
>my view.

Sorry but the majority opinion of evolutionary biologists, which
is indeed just opinion, but at least its informed opinion, is
that if you ran the history of life on earth again and again it
would come out different each time. There is a minority most
notably Simon Conway Morris who disagree with this view. Time
will tell. However there seems no more reason to think the
universe will be full of humans that it would be full of
armadillos.

The development of radio wireless telephony was not a historical
inevitabilty, but a product of the economic and military needs
of the British Empire, especially the need to communicate with
the ships in the Navy. At a time when radio was only capable of
transmitting morse code, cable broadcasting in central Europe
was bringing concert performances into peoples homes, and
experiments with in-ground induction wireless in the USA were
transmitting reasonable quality speech. The willingness of
Britain to back Marconi eventually won out. Peter Rogerson







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               Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:47:52 +0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 07:29:43 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson


>From: David Chace <davidwchace.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 23:45:32 -0800
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>In any case, there are no a priori grounds for believing that
>extraterrestrial beings or their probes do not visit the Earth
>from time to time, or do not operate here on a fairly regular
>basis.

Just about the last thing that one would expect an alien probe
to resemble would be a medium sized ultra high performance
aircraft buzzing round the esrth's atmosphere. Ufos really
represent 1950s images of what an advanced technology would look
like. Much more likely would be nanotechnological probes which
would just fit in with the general dust. These would be many
orders of magnitude cheaper than anything large.

Objects carrying biological crews of roughly human size would be
of necessity, colossal, as all interstellar journeys will be
ones of permanent exile. To maintain a reliable breeding
population over many generations of travel and building colonies
would probably require a population of around 10,000 minimum,
plus complete self sustaining biosphere Peter Rogerson







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                   Re: Sex And Alien Abduction? - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 22:09:37 +0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 07:31:56 -0500
Subject: Re: Sex And Alien Abduction? - Rogerson


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 11:25:38 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Sex And Alien Abduction?

>Sort of related to my post requesting some "good" adbuction
>outcomes - results - and I don't mean good books sales or
>appearance fees.

>Has anyone done a study of the frequency of alien abduction
>reports in which there is voluntary sex with the aliens? Sure we
>all don't find greys very appealing, but I remember as a lad
>reading APRO reports (70's era) of stuff that sounded like it
>was out of Penthouse magazine and the aliens were not greys, but
>rather slightly non-human. The other intersting thing was that
>it seemed like most reports were from South America.

<snip>

I suspect if you claimed voluntary sex with aliens you might
suffer some of the side effects Greg Boone mentioned, and it
might even be considered beastiality and they would put you in
clink along with the sheep worriers.

Many of these stories seem to come from the 50s and 60s with AVB
and Elizabeth Klarer, and I suspect that the very first
abduction story, the apparently lost story of the salesman, the
nurse and the aliens in the desert featured sex somewhere, which
is why it never got into the ufo literature.

Today such stories must pass the abduction finders criteria, ie
be as nasty as possible, involve things walking through walls,
and have some group of outsiders that they can label as hybrids
and begin to persecute. Extraterrestrial romance a la Howard
Menger is definately off the menu.


Peter Rogerson








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                            Magonia Supplement 53

From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 23:31:32 -0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 07:33:11 -0500
Subject: Magonia Supplement 53


All you Martin Kottmeyer fans will be glad to hear that his
latest article appears in Magonia Supplement No.53. The html
edition is now available at:

http://magonia.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/ms53.htm


John Harney








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                     Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Scheldroup

From: John Scheldroup <jschel.nul>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 23:00:11 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 07:43:08 -0500
Subject: Re: The Bamboo Saucer - Scheldroup


>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:59:22 EST
>Subject: The Bamboo Saucer

><snip>

>Anyone recall this flick and it's history?

><snip>

Hi Greg and Listers,

When I came home from school around the third or fourth grade,
in the early seventies, it was 3:00 pm or so on Friday that we
had what was called the Friday Afternoon Matinee featured on
ABC.

If I recall this movie correctly with not viewing it since, the
flying saucer was stored in an Orthodox church which also served
as barnyard for farm animals with hay and so forth.

The Russians and Chinese mentioned approached, but to gain
access to the saucer either an American or Briton upon entering
the craft caused the craft to make a humming sound with some
effect of anti-gravity, which then hovered for a few moments
inside the church before coming back down to rest.

When a door opened up they approached cautiously... closer and
closer they came to the door then... a head of whatever dangled
from the small doorslit with blood-snot draining from the nose.

That gave a younger guy quite the jitters, but I figured it must
have been something like bends when a body comes to the surface
from deep waters too quickly.

Late, the Russians and Chinese came closer, a fight ensued
outside the church when one American man and possibly one
British woman crawled into the saucer, locked the door. While
inside the dome of the saucer, which seemed transparent to them,
they could see out but nobody could see in.

Apparently someone punched buttons and some anti-gravity caused
them to break free from the church, automatic control took over
and they both went sight seeing through the transparent dome.

That's about what I recall of this story. I had completely
forgotten the name of the movie until you mentioned it.

Or may it have been a childhood dream I had?


John









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                        Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 07:48:05 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 07:48:05 -0500
Subject: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast




Source: BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/4061893.stm

12-02-04


'Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast'

Shock from seeing an alien ship was one of a whole host of far-
fetched excuses offered by speeding motorists trying to avoid
penalty points and fines.

Bemused staff at the Northumbria Safety Camera Partnership say
many drivers believe if they come up with an elaborate excuse
they will be let off.

They have compiled a top 10 of the most ridiculous claims from
speeding drivers including rushing to see dying pets.

But they also warned their message is serious and that speeding
claims lives.

Staff at the Partnership, responsible for fixed speed cameras in
the north-east of England, regularly receive letters from
drivers hoping to avoid the =A360 fines and three points on their
licence.

Manager Ray King said: "Some drivers seem to think that if they
tell a good enough story, then they will get off, which
unfortunately rarely works.

"But if there are genuine mitigating reasons, there is always
the option of putting their case to a magistrate."

Everything from the wind behind the car to jets overhead and
dying hamsters have been blamed by motorists, Mr King said.

But he added: "This is a light-hearted look at excuses for
speeding, but it is a serious issue - we'd rather not be getting
any letters at all because no one is breaking the speed limit
and no one is receiving a ticket."


[UFO UpDates thanks Joe McGonagle for the lead]







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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 07:34:09 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:29:55 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 13:47:28 -0600
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 10:08:53 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 06:38:09 -0600
>>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 15:41:44 -0600
>>>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

<snip>

>Hi James,

>Boy, you sure know how to quench the fire in a dream.

...and to what purpose, actually... and how effective, in the
aggregate, that "wet blanket"? Who was instructed, educated, or
otherwise elevated? Who was inspired? Who felt better? And
finally, who acts just like that learned but forgettable spawn
of dismissive scientism who proclaimed we'd never get on the
moon because we'd never be able to generate enough power to
leave the gravity well? He was an effective wet blanket, too.
Thankfully, not effective enough. Moreover, my fire still roars.
I suspect yours does, too, Sir.

>To borrow and mangle a well-turned phrase... 'You look at things
>that are and say why?, and I (and others) look at things that
>never were and say 'Why not?'.

I think it entirely likely the gentleman is not asking anything
he feels he might not have a 'safe' answer for. Another of those
unfortunate souls who hasn't discovered it's answers,
ultimately, that are the _least_ important. It's always been the
quality _question_ has the superiority.

>Were it not for impractical dreams, our world would be devoid of
>many of its most practical realities.

>>ding!<<>>ding!<<>>ding!<<

>Besides, I believe neither of us placed a timetable on the idea
>Nor are we the first to suggest it.

In a way? We are.

What do we want? Reach and Grasp! When do we want it? ...Now.
Anytime is always the first time because it might be the _last_
time... more Zen... sorry.

>I'm beginning to understand what Stan means when he talks about
>Noisy Negativists. <LOL>

I'm not laughing. Friedman's noisome negativists transcended
laughter decades ago when they colluded to destroy (murder?)
James McDonald, confabulate history, and hijack the mainstream
to facilitate the psycopathic unelected. Moreover, a reality
that does not carry James McDonald around on a little three
cornered velvet cushion is not a realty I want to have any part
of, and a reality that I will work tirelessly to discredit,
deride, and eventually disgrace.

>Your points are all very well presented, and likely accurate in
>the main, but this is something that both Alfred and I believe
>not to be happening in our lifetimes,

Speak for yourself, Sir! I _may_ be doomed to a disappointment
that is likely, but I _expect_ the whole planet to start feeling
the affects [sic] of our accelerating 'propensity' _well_ within
my lifetime; a lifetime, by the way, that might not have to end
as a result of a biological necessity... and that's Mr.
Lehmberg, Mr. King, remember. [g].

>but on a timeline one
>might call ideal, where the thirst... no... the need for
>knowledge trumps any monetary imperative, where the quest for
>truth is judged by its potential rather than its cost alone, and
>where those who presume the preposterous are called innovators
>rather than spendthrifts.

Gandhi said you had to _be_ the changes you expected around you.
Mr. Smith might take your lesson. Hell, _should_ take your
lesson.

>But you're probably right. <g>

No, Sir. He couldn't be more wrong - arrogantly in letter, in an
altogether meager paucity of facts and yet-to-be-discredited
conventional wisdoms, and _certainly_ in spirit. Wet blankets
are a retrograde mechanism with little utility, usually an axe
to grind, and ultimately forgettable. I was unmoved, just
annoyed, and definitely not laughing.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







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                     Re: Ufology As A Science - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 07:51:21 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:31:53 -0500
Subject: Re: Ufology As A Science - Lehmberg


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:04:28 +0000
>Subject: Re: Ufology As A Science - Boone

>>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 03:24:52 EST
>>Subject: Re: Ufology As A Science

<snip>

>Can you give a single example where this fate has befallen
>someone for no other reason than reporting a UFO sighting, or
>investigating UFO cases, excluding cases where someone claims
>that the guys from Proycon V have told them to eat next door's
>gerbil.

Pride goes before a fall, Mr. Rogerson.

John Ford. I don't _believe_ he was accused of eating
gerbils... but given the oblique duplicity of of his
_persecutors_ (?) I wouldn't rule it out.

>The risks to ufologists must be far less than to those who taken
>up skunk farming as a hobby. or declare themselves to be founder
>leader of either the Satanic Grotto of Baphomet, the Blood Red
>Revolutionary Communist Party Marxist Leninist or the Islamic
>Jihad Front.

Apples and oranges. Written like you had your mind made up, Sir.
And like someone new or someone who hasn't been paying
attention, too.

Smirks and sneers are a needless irritation, Mr. Rogerson, and
usually say more about the 'smirker' than the 'smirkee'.
Additionally, I suspect that many on this list are a little less
amused than you would think they are.

Be that as it may, you're here to leap hurdles, Sir, not make
them.

alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







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                          Secrecy News -- 12/03/04

From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 08:46:03 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:33:47 -0500
Subject: Secrecy News -- 12/03/04


SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2004, Issue No. 107
December 3, 2004


**      HOMELAND SECRECY
**      FLYING BLIND: THE DECLINE OF SCIENCE POLICY ADVICE
**      WHITE HOUSE PANEL CRITICIZES CYBERSECURITY OVERCLASSIFICATION
**      SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE 108TH CONGRESS (CRS)
**      THE CLASSIFIED SILEX URANIUM ENRICHMENT PROJECT
**      CIA YIELDS TO SOUTH KOREA IN SPELLING DISPUTE


HOMELAND SECRECY

The Department of Homeland Security "needs to remember that the
homeland whose security it is protecting is one in which
democratic debate is supposed to be open and freewheeling," the
Washington Post editorialized today.

The Post editorial today casts a much-needed spotlight on two
extraordinary aspects of Homeland Security secrecy policy: a
requirement that DHS employees sign non-disclosure agreements as
a condition of access to certain unclassified information, and
the secrecy imposed by the Transportation Security
Administration on an entire body of security directives that
govern interactions with the public.

See "Homeland Secrecy," Washington Post, December 3 (free reg.
req'd): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30124-
2004Dec2.html

The problem of secret but legally binding security directives
was explored in an article I wrote in Slate on November 18. See
"The Secrets of Flight":

http://slate.msn.com/id/2109922/


FLYING BLIND: THE DECLINE OF SCIENCE POLICY ADVICE

The U.S. government is poorly configured to produce, receive and
act upon scientifically literate and technically informed policy
advice, according to a new report from the Federation of
American Scientists.

"The need for effective science and technology advice continues
to increase while the infrastructure for providing such help is
in a state of crisis," the report begins.

Among other structural problems, "the gap created by the loss of
the congressional Office of Technology Assessment in 1996 has
not been filled." Meanwhile, science advice to the executive
branch has declined with the effective demotion of the
president's science advisor in the Bush Administration.

Furthermore, arbitrary and ill-considered controls on public
access to certain scientific and technical information have
impeded policy formulation and public accountability.

The FAS study proposes a series of policy options for addressing
these problems and reversing the decline in science advice to
government, should there be a will to do so.

See "Flying Blind: The Rise, Fall, and Possible Resurrection of
Science Policy Advice in the United States," by Henry Kelly,
Ivan Oelrich, Steven Aftergood, and Benn H. Tannenbaum, December
2004 (117 pages, 355 KB PDF file):

http://www.fas.org/pub/flyingblind.pdf


WHITE HOUSE PANEL CRITICIZES CYBERSECURITY OVERCLASSIFICATION

Sometimes the act of classifying scientific or technical
information can diminish national security instead of enhancing
it.

Last month, a White House panel concluded that the growing
classification of government research on computer security is
not serving the nation well because it renders such research
inaccessible outside of narrow military and intelligence
channels.

"Classified cybersecurity R&D is, of course, needed for numerous
purposes," observed F. Thomson Leighton, chair of the
cybersecurity subcommittee of the President's Information
Technology Advisory Committee.

"However, classified work tends not to benefit generic
cybersecurity products--which are used throughout society
(including the military and intelligence communities)," he said
at a meeting last month.

In the future, he said, the government should "favor
unclassified basic research" in cybersecurity.

Leighton's speech was first reported in the newsletter Inside
the Pentagon on November 25.

See "White House Panel Blasts Pentagon's Cybersecurity R&D
Policies" by John T. Bennett, Inside the Pentagon, reposted with
permission and with a link to the underlying presentation here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/11/itp112504.html


SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE 108TH CONGRESS (CRS)

A wide spectrum of science and technology policy issues treated
in the last Congress are surveyed and summarized in a recent
Congressional Research Service report.

See "Science and Technology Policy: Issues for the 108th
Congress, 2nd session," updated September 8, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/spp/civil/crs/RL31846.pdf


THE CLASSIFIED SILEX URANIUM ENRICHMENT PROJECT

An innovative technology for enriching uranium known as the
Separation of Isotopes by Laser Excitation or SILEX process has
the distinction of being the first and only privately generated
information to be classified by the U.S. Government as
Restricted Data under the Atomic Energy Act (Secrecy News,
06/26/01).

A critical assessment of the SILEX technology, which is under
development in Australia, was presented in a new report by
Greenpeace, which opposes the project.

See "Secrets, Lies, and Uranium Enrichment: The Classified SILEX
Project at Lucas Heights," November 2004 (1.7 MB PDF file):

http://www.greenpeace.org.au/frontpage/pdf/silex_report.pdf


CIA YIELDS TO SOUTH KOREA IN SPELLING DISPUTE

Following months of quiet diplomacy as well as public
controversy, the Central Intelligence Agency has yielded to
persistent demands from the Republic of Korea that the Agency
change the way it spells the name of the South Korean president.

Let no one say that the CIA is incapable of reform.

"The Web site of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) corrected
the name of the South Korean president to Roh Moo-hyun from
previously spelled No Mu-hyun," the Yonhap News Agency in Seoul
reported this week, referring to the latest revision of the CIA
World Factbook.

(See "South Korea to CIA: It's Roh Not No," Secrecy News,
07/14/04; and "A Lesson in Korean Linguistics," Secrecy News,
07/19/04).

But no matter how many concessions the CIA makes, there are some
critics who will never be satisfied.

"Many references [in the CIA World Factbook] still remain
wrong," the Yonhap article stated. "The CIA site spells the name
of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as 'Kim Chong-il' and
still applies the McCune-Reischauer system of romanization to
spell South Korean provinces, such as 'Cheju' and 'Cholla,'
rather than the government's official spelling, 'Jeju' and
'Jeolla'."

See "CIA Factbook Corrects Spelling of S. Korean President,"
Yonhap News Agency, November 30, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2004/11/yonhap112904.html



_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email tosecrecy_news-request.nul
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.

OR email your request to saftergood.nul

Secrecy News is archived at:http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html

Secrecy News has an RSS feed at:http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.rss

_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web:  www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood.nul
voice: (202) 454-4691








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   Dec > Dec 3

                 11 Goats Slain In Puerto Rican Petting Zoo

From: Scott Corrales <lornis1.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 09:56:06 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:44:34 -0500
Subject: 11 Goats Slain In Puerto Rican Petting Zoo


INEXPLICATA
The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
December 3, 2004

Source: Primera Hora - Newspaper
Date: December 3, 2004

Puerto Rico: 11 Goats Slain In Petting Zoo

Horrible find in children's park

Eleven goats were found dead inside their wooden pen, which
forms part of the petting zoo of the "Illusion" children's park
on the premises of the Montehiedra Town Center in Rio Piedras
(San Juan, PR).

The discover was made by Fausto Radaelli, the person in charge
of the petting zoo and its owner.

According to the explanation given by Radaelli to Primera Hora,
he took 11 goats to the kiddie park last Monday because he was
attempting to recreate a manger scene for the Christmas holiday.

He placed them in a wooden pen in the open air so they could
spend the night there. But they were found lifeless on Wednesday
morning.

Three of the goats presented large bite marks, dismemberment and
one of them had half of its body devoured; all of its internal
organs, excepting its stomach, were gone.

The rest of the goats had bite marks and fang marks on the rear
of their bodies. The marks resembled the ones found  on animals
allegedly attacked by the infamous "Chupacabras".

The goats had their necks twisted backward and rigor mortis had
not set in 48 hours after their deaths.

According to biologist Ernesto Marquez, a specialist in exotic
animals, the goats were attacked by "a wolf, a coyote, a hybrid
(wolf-dog hybrid) or very large feral dogs."

Marquez says that these animals exist on the island and knows
that they are trafficked and even advertised in newspaper
classifieds.

The expert's theory is sustained by the carnivore's modus
operandi. "These are regular fang marks. Canids kill animals by
the rear, seizing them to hold them down and eat them."

Marquez dismissed the possibility that the goats may have been
slain by a feline, since "these kill from the throat, strangling
[their prey], dragging it off. This was a canid."

He added that "the animal leaped; it is an agile animal,
attacking from the rear. It's astute and knows human beings. It
came around when there was no one around and returned on the
next day, when there was no one either. He explained that this
animal has wild instincts and that not even animals in Africa,
at large in their own habitat, kill so much prey to eat only
one.

"This is vicious. The animal isn't psychologically well,"
maintained the biologist, who also belongs to the SPCA.

Yesterday, the site was being examined by Marquez, Julio Diaz of
the Animal Control Solutions company and veterinary technician
Herman Sulsona of the San Juan Animal Control Center.

There were no signs of forcible entry. No prints nor hairs of
any other animal were found.

Radaelli also has a pony, Dutch hens and sheep at the petting
zoo; at his farm in Carolina, where he raises these animals, he
has dwarf cows, a burro and other goats, which the occasionally
brings to the park.

The park, which has been operating since May 8th and will remain
until January 31st, has no security of any kind. Yesterday,
after removing the dead goats, the park was reopened to the
public after 6 pm.  Specialists cautioned the park's custodians
that the animal may return, and advised that the animals be kept
inside a trailer, or else removed from the site.

Last night, Martinez and Radaelli were expected to authorize
Diaz and Marquez to stay overnight at the location with the
specialized equipment needed to hunt the predator. Diaz informed
PRIMERA HORA that they have been given confidential information
that in the vicinity of Caimito and Montehiedra there are
"wealthy persons who traffic in exotic animals,and lions, tigers
and pumas can also be found."


Translation (c) 2004 Scott Corrales
Institute of Hispanic Ufology
Special thanks to Lucy Guzman








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                Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason

From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:18:17 -0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:47:33 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:30:39 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>Sorry but the majority opinion of evolutionary biologists, which
>is indeed just opinion, but at least its informed opinion, is
>that if you ran the history of life on earth again and again it
>would come out different each time. There is a minority most
>notably Simon Conway Morris who disagree with this view. Time
>will tell. However there seems no more reason to think the
>universe will be full of humans that it would be full of
>armadillos.

I think it's fair to say that this is, actually, the consensus
among biologists. This conclusion is pretty much based on two
lines of reasoning; the first is what might be called the
"undersampling" principle, which is that generalizations from
small samples tend to overestimate the homogeneity of the wider
population. This is the line taken by Sewart and Cohen in their
recent book "Evolving the Alien", and it is a good point, in my
view.  It does seem to be the case that when we construct
theoretical models based on what we know, these models tend to
overpredict the extent to which what we don't know looks like
what we do.

The other line of reasoning might be called the "chain of
probability" argument, which you have pretty much outlined here:

>The development of radio wireless telephony was not a historical
>inevitabilty, but a product of the economic and military needs
>of the British Empire, especially the need to communicate with
>the ships in the Navy. At a time when radio was only capable of
>transmitting morse code, cable broadcasting in central Europe
>was bringing concert performances into peoples homes, and
>experiments with in-ground induction wireless in the USA were
>transmitting reasonable quality speech. The willingness of
>Britain to back Marconi eventually won out.

If something is an outcome of a series of n events each of
probability p(n), then as n increases the product PI p(n) will
become increasingly small even if the individual p(n) are
themselves large. However, this is problematic for a number of
reasons. Firstly, although the number of events n involved in
the evolution of intelligent life - call this p(int) - is almost
certainly very large, we don't know exactly how large it is, and
there are definite constraints on the size of the product PI
p(int). In particular, there must be a clear relationship
between the probability of life [p(life)], and the probability
of intelligence given life [p(int|life)]. If p(life) is such as
to make life very rare in the universe, then p(int|life) cannot
also be very small. And yet we have no good theoretical reason
to believe that life is common in the universe any more than we
do to believe that intelligence is common. Like intelligence,
life is the outcome of a long series of extremely idiosyncratic
events.

Secondly, applying what we know about the evolution of life on
earth to the evolution of life in the universe in general
overlooks one rather important fact - the evolutionary histories
of life on the earth are not independent of each other. And we
don't know what the effect this has on our analysis - for
example, if we rephrase the question as "What is the probability
that any individual ecosystem will generate a niche which can be
exploited by intelligent life?" - then it's clear that not only
does the problem look entirely different, but that our
understanding of life on earth is of little use in answering the
question.

And finally, a practical illustration of the problems with this
line of thinking. In his 1978 book "Spacehips of the Mind",
Nigel Calder presented a version of the "chain of probability"
argument against extraterrestrial intelligence. He listed a
number of points at which our evolution kight have taken a very
different turn, such as the following:

"Apes would not have evolved into upright-walking human beings
if the tropical forests where they lived had not been thinned
out and reduced to grassland."

The problem with this is that, as I'm sure you realize, it's now
known to be almost certainly untrue. The evolution of upright-
walking human ancestors appears to have preceded, not followed,
the move from the forests to the grasslands. And if that isn't
an illustration of the pitfalls associated with trying to
establish the probability of an event from the history of a
single instance, then I don't know what is.


Cathy








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                Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason

From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:33:07 -0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:49:10 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:47:52 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>Ufos really
>represent 1950s images of what an advanced technology would look
>like.

The problem with this sort of statement is that it's completely
untestable. How would you establish if a UFO did not look like a
1950s image of what an advanced technology would look like? I
have a book of illustrations dating from the 1930s to the 1950s
which includes various renditions of imaginary spaceships. Most
of them don't look to me much like UFOs.

>Much more likely would be nanotechnological probes which
>would just fit in with the general dust. These would be many
>orders of magnitude cheaper than anything large.

So why is this 2004 image of what advanced technology would look
like any more to be relied upon than the images of the 1950s?
This sort of argument depends on the assumption that we can
predict the technology of the far future, which as you've
already indicated is probably impossible.

>Objects carrying biological crews of roughly human size would be
>of necessity, colossal, as all interstellar journeys will be
>ones of permanent exile. To maintain a reliable breeding
>population over many generations of travel and building colonies
>would probably require a population of around 10,000 minimum,
>plus complete self sustaining biosphere

And how do we know that all interstellar journeys will be ones
of permanent exile?

I do think you have a good point, that advanced alien technology
might be something we would be utterly incapable of recognizing
even if we saw it. Then again of course, some people think that
is exactly what is happening.

A more interesting point, to me, is whether the whole notion of
extraterrestrial life is itself an artifact of our current
cosmological model which will one day be superseded. When Dante
wrote his Commedia during the Middle Ages, he used the most
accurate and up-to-date cosmological model of his time, and
peopled the planets with angels and the spirits of the departed.
Perhaps in years to come our present-day notions of alien beings
will seem as quaint as Dante's planetary angels.


Cathy








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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 10:37:48 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:50:47 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 13:47:28 -0600
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>Boy, you sure know how to quench the fire in a dream.

Sorry,. My work puts me on the "Red Team" alot. My work has me
deeply involved in space tech. I have enough years to be very
cynical. How many great tech ideas have I seen get cancelled
just prior to completion!

>To borrow and mangle a well-turned phrase... 'You look at things
>that are and say why?, and I (and others) look at things that
>never were and say 'Why not?'.

You gotta have motivation to do something. For instance, I
always liked the idea of space solar power platforms. This would
truly do the world good. Its just not feasible with our current
budget/launch costs.

Sure it would be nice to have Holiday Inns on all your major
asteroids. But it would be nice to be God too.

>Were it not for impractical dreams, our world would be devoid of
>many of its most practical realities.

Don't know if you have enough data for that. All major
inventions were based on motivation (money, fame, make life
easier, etc).

>Besides, I believe neither of us placed a timetable on the idea
>Nor are we the first to suggest it.

>I'm beginning to understand what Stan means when he talks about
>Noisy Negativists. <LOL>

I like to think of myself as a Reticent Realist. The only reason
I respond to your posting is that you are talking about an area
I work in and familiar with.

>Your points are all very well presented, and likely accurate in
>the main, but this is something that both Alfred and I believe
>not to be happening in our lifetimes, but on a timeline one
>might call ideal, where the thirst... no... the need for
>knowledge trumps any monetary imperative, where the quest for
>truth is judged by its potential rather than its cost alone, and
>where those who presume the preposterous are called innovators
>rather than spendthrifts.

Dreams are fine. I hope someday we can fulfil them as you
desire. But we have alot of work to do to fix up Earth before we
go wasting money on these kind of things. It amazes me that we
do as much space exporation that we do given our screwed up
planet/infrastructure. Focusing on exploration/utilization of
space to better the lives of the average Joe should be our
focus, not capturing pretty pictures with a space telescope or
landing probes to poke at rocks with no hope whatever of using
these results to help Mankind.






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               Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Friedman

From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 12:18:18 -0400
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 20:57:22 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Friedman


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:47:52 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: David Chace <davidwchace.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 23:45:32 -0800
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

><snip>

>>In any case, there are no a priori grounds for believing that
>>extraterrestrial beings or their probes do not visit the Earth
>>from time to time, or do not operate here on a fairly regular
>>basis.

>Just about the last thing that one would expect an alien probe
>to resemble would be a medium sized ultra high performance
>aircraft buzzing round the esrth's atmosphere. Ufos really
>represent 1950s images of what an advanced technology would look
>like. Much more likely would be nanotechnological probes which
>would just fit in with the general dust. These would be many
>orders of magnitude cheaper than anything large.

>Objects carrying biological crews of roughly human size would be
>of necessity, colossal, as all interstellar journeys will be
>ones of permanent exile. To maintain a reliable breeding
>population over many generations of travel and building colonies
>would probably require a population of around 10,000 minimum,
>plus complete self sustaining biosphere Peter Rogerson

Mr. Rogerson,

I trust you can provide some evidence to support your many
rather arrogant and pretentious claims about what UFOs are,
should be, how they work etc etc ad nauseum? Do you have a
pipeline directly to alien HQ? Or is it comedy central? Are you
trying out plot lines for a science fiction series?

Surely you are aware that there are many sightings of huge
"mother ships" as well as of the much smaller earth excursion
modules typically observed in the thousands of physical trace
cases that Ted Phillips has collected. Ever hear of the word
"Evidence"?


Stan Friedman








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                 Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 11:29:37 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 20:59:54 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:30:39 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:57:41 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

><snip>

>Sorry but the majority opinion of evolutionary biologists, which
>is indeed just opinion, but at least its informed opinion, is
>that if you ran the history of life on earth again and again it
>would come out different each time. There is a minority most
>notably Simon Conway Morris who disagree with this view. Time
>will tell. However there seems no more reason to think the
>universe will be full of humans that it would be full of
>armadillos.

<snip>

Hi Peter,

Informed opinion? Please explain. Informed opinion once held
that Earth was the center of the universe, and was flat.
Informed opinion once held that Jews, women, blacks, and Native
Americans were inferior and something less than human, or at
least unworthy of equality. Informed opinion might provide a
comfort zone for some, but it does not represent truth. Merely
opinion. Often informed opinion is used as a rationalization for
the narrow-minded, uninformed and agenda-led. One must be
reminded that evolution itself is just a guess. One can support
it with terrestrial evidence, but to extrapolate that beyond
earth is just smug self-congratulatory speculation. It remains
unproven.

I'd enjoy hearing what evidence supports your informed opinion.

History and even current events show again and again that the
majority opinion neither reflects truth, nor does it reflect an
informed view. This is true regardless of the number of letters
behind ones name, or how informed one might be.

Your position seems to be summed up in your penultimate
paragraph. *...there seems no more reason to think the universe
is full of humans than it would be full of armadillos."

On what evolutionary biological evidence do you base this odd
assertion? If you are one of the informed majority, surely you
can provide support for your position?

The only statement in your post that reflects an objective truth
is *time will tell*.

On this we agree. But even on this, it is merely speculation. We
may never find the answers, no matter how long we look. The
search in and of itself does not assure success. Examples of
this abound.

If current events inform, the majority opinion is suspect at
best, and reflective of our least noble traits at worst.

Of course, another point to be made is that if you take all the
evolutionary biologists on earth, including those that do not
agree with the majority opinion, they still represent a very
small minority.

Why should I lend more weight to your opinion? What
qualifications distinguish your opinions of extraterrestrial
life and its nature?

I prefer to keep an open mind, and presume that life here is no
more unique than anywhere else.

I think it is highly likely that life as we know it exists
elsewhere, and life as we do not know it exists elsewhere. If we
search for the former, we may very likely find the latter along
the way. We may even learn that nature, on finding a trait that
works, might apply that trait across the cosmos as it does
across continents.

Perhaps this is accomplished through mechanisms we don't fully
understand, like quantum entanglement.

Speculation indeed, but as valid and informed as any other in my
view.


Regards,

Kyle







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                 Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 11:49:17 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 21:01:04 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - King


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:47:52 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: David Chace <davidwchace.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 23:45:32 -0800
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

><snip>

>Just about the last thing that one would expect an alien probe
>to resemble would be a medium sized ultra high performance
>aircraft buzzing round the esrth's atmosphere. Ufos really
>represent 1950s images of what an advanced technology would look
>like. Much more likely would be nanotechnological probes which
>would just fit in with the general dust. These would be many
>orders of magnitude cheaper than anything large.

>Objects carrying biological crews of roughly human size would be
>of necessity, colossal, as all interstellar journeys will be
>ones of permanent exile. To maintain a reliable breeding
>population over many generations of travel and building colonies
>would probably require a population of around 10,000 minimum,
>plus complete self sustaining biosphere Peter Rogerson

Hi Peter,

As unidentified aerial phenomena have been observed since
antiquity, and have followed roughly similar descriptions, your
assertion about the 1950s is a biased view based on a uniquely
American popular culture, and not a review of history.

Your supposition that interstellar journeys will be ones of
permanent exile is based on what? Our human limitations? I think
that you are opining out of both hemispheres of your grey
matter.

Is it not possible that an advanced intelligence might have a
more effective means of interstellar travel than we mere humans
have discovered to date? Is it not possible that time might be
found to be mutable? Is it not possible that age is relative,
and that for some species, an interstellar trip might be a
weekend excursion rather than permanent exile?

What I find most interesting is that you think that
extraterrestrial life would be vastly different than our own,
but then you apply human conditions and limitations to them.

What exactly is your position again?


Regards,

Kyle







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                     Re: Sex And Alien Abduction? - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 12:24:20 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 21:03:10 -0500
Subject: Re: Sex And Alien Abduction? - King


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 22:09:37 +0000
>Subject: Re: Sex And Alien Abduction?

>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 11:25:38 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>Subject: Sex And Alien Abduction?

<snip>

>I suspect if you claimed voluntary sex with aliens you might
>suffer some of the side effects Greg Boone mentioned, and it
>might even be considered beastiality and they would put you in
>clink along with the sheep worriers.

>Many of these stories seem to come from the 50s and 60s with AVB
>and Elizabeth Klarer, and I suspect that the very first
>abduction story, the apparently lost story of the salesman, the
>nurse and the aliens in the desert featured sex somewhere, which
>is why it never got into the ufo literature.

<snip>


Hi Peter and James,

Again I must comment on Peter's fixation with the 50s and 60s.
Tales of alien abduction are as old as man. The incubus/succubus
stories are little different than alien sex stories, except that
the technology we achieved added more possibilities as to the
source of the abductors.

Demonic possession is also a form of alien abduction, and while
it can be named and treated as a psychological disorder, that is
more an admission that we just don't understand it than a
declaration of fact.

When an abductee is called "loony", it is based more on the
abductees reaction to the event than on the event itself.

We condemn the Inquisition for rooting out witches, known to
consort with demons and devils, through rigged tests.

Today we commit or at least ridicule people who say they've had
sex with ETs or ghosts using equally ridiculous presumptions as
to what is possible and what is impossible.

Progress? Well, they might just be crazy, and then again they
might not. A matter of perspective and how the
victim/participant reacts, more than an objective judgment of
its validity.

Oh, and bestiality (not beastiality) as a crime is also in the
eye of the beholder. It is a construct of religion and moral
indignation. In the realities of life however, it is sometimes
simply an expediency...a need fulfilled by what means are
available at the moment. No different than sex with birth
control, or assisted masturbation, except in the minds of those
that have the *normal* means, or a moral objection.

God might not like it, but it has been happening for as long as
we've been here. And even the Bible doesn't say it's crazy, just
not acceptable in a religious *read moral* context.


Regards,

Kyle








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                  Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast - Boone

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 13:24:36 EST
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 21:11:17 -0500
Subject: Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast - Boone


>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 07:48:05 -0500
>Subject: UFO UpDate: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast

>Source: BBC News

>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/4061893.stm

>12-02-04


>'Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast'

>Shock from seeing an alien ship was one of a whole host of far-
>fetched excuses offered by speeding motorists trying to avoid
>penalty points and fines.

As funny as this is, there's more importance than meets the eye.

Using an UFO for an excuse for something brought about chuckles
but what if it were true?

See the dilemma arising? If for some strange reason the world upped
out of fear of the subject think how many court cases would swamp
us with 'The UFOs made me do it' excuses.

In the U.S. where the majority are religious no one goes to court and
says 'The Devil made me do it' ( pardons to the late great comedian
Flip Wilson as this was one of his gags ) because they would be tossed
into a psychiatric facility. Yet the President himself will quote scripture
as reality. Even though the majority believe that spirits, demons
whatever influence their daily lives, the courts won't recognize it? Yet
those same courts won't shirk at accepting the billions of dollars of
charitable contributions to the population from these same people
they disregard. So now people have UFOs to engage in regarding
their daily goings on.

Couldn't make it to work because you were abducted? Can't get
pregnant because some alien screwed up the operation? Crops
won't grow because something the government says doesn't
exist just irradiated your field? Doesn't matter, it's all about your
money they're concerned with.

Whether you believe the ET hypothesis or not, whether it's real or
not, the legal issues are very important nonetheless.

It will be fascinating to see what comes from the legal community
in years to come.


Best,

Greg








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                    Re: Ufology As A Science - Dickenson

From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 18:42:23 +0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 21:13:47 -0500
Subject: Re: Ufology As A Science - Dickenson


Hi,

Ufology is a field of study where, if the scientific method is
used then it's a real discipline, just like archeology or any
other discipline.

'Science' is the concept of a method - not a field of study.

Misusing concept words can be dangerous - here's example:

1) "love" is used to describe an infinite number of 'things'.

2) "country" is used to describe a non-existent 'thing'.

And what's the product of Infinity x Zero?

Downright silliness.


Cheers

Ray D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Perceptions" http://www.perceptions.couk.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~






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                Re: The E.T. Equation Recalculated - Friedman

From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:26:53 -0400
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:22:46 -0500
Subject: Re: The E.T. Equation Recalculated - Friedman


>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>Date: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 8:36 AM
>Subject: UFO UpDate: The E.T. Equation Recalculated

>Source: Wired Magazine

>http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/life.html

>Issue 12.12 - December 2004


>The E.T. Equation Recalculated
>By Frank Drake

>Fifty years ago, those of us who dreamed about finding
>extraterrestrials thought we knew where to look: planets with
>temperatures somewhere between the freezing and boiling points
>of water. Given warm little ponds, simple chemical reactions
>would produce life, and evolution might eventually produce
>intelligent creatures. While working at the National Radio
>Astronomy Observatory in the 1950s, I tried to estimate the
>number of planets in our galaxy with intelligent, technological
>civilizations.

<snip>

>Frank Drake (fdrake.nul) originated the idea of listening
>for life on other worlds with radio telescopes. He is senior
>director of the Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at
>the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.


Once again we are treated to the dartboard physics of the cult
of SETI.

There is absolutely no basis for the original 10,000 figure.
(That would be only one in 20 million of the stars in the
galaxy).

We have data on one civilization of one solar system. There are
about 200 billion stars in the galaxy. Rather a large
extrapolation.

The Drake equation not only neglects the  greenhouse effect. It
neglects colonization and migration and the devlopment of more
sophisticated technology then ours.

Let's face it: all our "sophisticated" knowledge about
aeronautics, astronautics,electronics, nucleonics, genetics,
biology,etc began about 100 years ago.

The solar system is about 5 billion years old and the galaxy at
least 10 billion years old.

Technological progress comes from doing things differently in an
unpredictable way.

How could any reasonable scientist - as opposed to a SETI
cultist - assume none of the civilizations in the neighborhood
are much more advanced than are we and are using our antiquated
techniques for travel and communication. I doubt if Frank uses a
slide rule much these days and he is only a few years older than
I am.

Let's face it, just 39 light years away are 2 sunlike stars only
1/8th of a light year apart from each other and 1 billion years
older than the Sun.

Surely beings on any planet around either star would have far
greater incentives for interstellar travel and communication
than do we since they could directly observe planets aound the
other and are 80 times closer than is the sun to the next
sunlike star.

As I have noted before, SETI stands for Silly Effort To
Investigate.

There is a "Challenge to SETI Specialists" on my website:

http://www.stanfriedman.com


Stan Friedman








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                Joe Firmage & Stan Grof To Honor Dr John Mack

From: Will Beuche - John E Mack Institute <info.nul>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 15:32:43 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:25:41 -0500
Subject: Joe Firmage & Stan Grof To Honor Dr John Mack


San Francisco: January 16 Event in Remembrance of Dr. John Mack
with speakers Joe Firmage, Stan Grof, James O'Dea, and many more.

An alliance of Bay Area organizations including the
International Contact Support Network, the Insititute of Noetic
Sciences (IONS), the Bay Area Consciousness Network (BACN), the
Organization for Paranormal Understanding and Support (OPUS),
California MUFON, Bay Area UFO Expo, and Friendly Favors,
together with the Cambridge-based John E Mack Institute, are
presenting a large-scale event in memory of Dr John Mack.

Speakers planned for this two-hour event include:

* Joe Firmage
* Stan Grof
* James O'Dea
* Kathy Vaquilar
* June Steiner, and
* Daniel Sheehan

Where: Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 9th Street, Oakland, CA

When: Sunday January 16th at 2:00 PM

Admission: Free. Donations to cover event expenses are welcomed;
any excess will be donated to the John E. Mack Institute.

Merchandise: The hard-to-find hardcover edition of Dr. Mack's
Passport to the Cosmos will be available for purchase, as will
the DVD of "Touched". Please visit our website for RSVP details,
and for other event info:

www.johnemackinstitute.org








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                         The UFO Guy Comes To Boise

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:31:19 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:31:19 -0500
Subject: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise



Source: Boise Weekly

http://www.boiseweekly.com/more.php?id=3D4832_0_1_0_M

11-10-04

Saucer Bureaucracy

The UFO Guy Comes To Boise
by Nicholas Collias

Robert Hastings has an important news flash for Idahoans. "Our
military", the speaker and researcher begins, "has not yet
developed any aircraft that can go 2,000 miles an hour in one
direction, stop on a dime and reverse direction." Not a
surprise? This might be: thousands of craft with precisely those
capabilities have been spotted, tracked and sometimes forcefully
engaged while hovering surreptitiously around America=92s nuclear
weapons bases. You may not believe in it, but your government
does, and has for almost 50 years. Hastings can prove that part
beyond any reasonable doubt.

For almost 25 years, Hastings has made a living that sounds
almost too easy to be a real job. He relays, through lectures at
colleges and universities, piles of government data that is free
and easily available to any citizen with a home address and a
sense of curiosity. He also calls the people in the documents,
be they retired military personnel or FAA air traffic
controllers, to verify their stories. That=92s it. Consider him
the Matthew Lesko (that guy with the question marks on his suit)
of UFOs. The passkey to his world is the Freedom of Information
Act of 1966. This act allows Hastings, or anyone else, access to
millions of pages of previously classified information from the
CIA, FBI and all branches of the military=97and at least 10,000 of
the pages relate, in no uncertain terms, to governmental
encounters with aircraft straight out of War of the Worlds.

"I don=92t pretend to know the rhyme or reason of the sightings,
or why a given area is more prone to them at a particular time
than others," he promises. "But the fact remains that flying
discs, or saucers or UFOs have demonstrated a decades-long
interest in the U.S. nuclear weapons program." Hastings first
experienced this phenomena in 1967, at the nuke stronghold of
Malmstrom Air Force Base in western Montana, when only a 17-
year-old self-described "Air Force brat." While hanging out in
the air control tower one evening, he was shocked to learn that
five nearby UFOs were being tracked on radar. Fighter jets were
launched to intercept them, but the craft performed a vertical
ascent at speeds beyond any human capability and escaped. From
that moment, Hastings=92 path was clear.

At age 23, he began interviewing retired military personnel
about UFOs, albeit merely "for my own curiosity." By age 30, he
had compiled enough documents and witness accounts that his
attitude had changed. "I began to conclude that this is a
legitimate issue for public awareness, despite the ongoing
position of the military intelligence and national security
communities that the public should be kept in the dark about
it," he explains. Hastings has spent the ensuing years
formulating and continually updating his lecture, "UFOs: The
Hidden History," a 90-minute slide show about the most striking
and undisputable UFO encounters from the 1950s to today=97and rest
assured, there are many, many encounters still being reported
today.

Attendees of Hastings=92 November 15 presentation at Boise State
will come away with an excess of the most scintillating type of
water cooler stories, including fighter/UFO dogfights, nuclear
launch sequences that mysteriously start themselves and UFO
crashes on government property. But even if you can=92t muster the
$1 entry fee, plan on hearing a lot more from Hastings and his
contacts in the near future. Peter Jennings Productions is
currently in production of a two-hour primetime documentary, set
to broadcast on ABC in early 2005, exclusively about military
UFO encounters and utilizing many of Hastings=92 interviewees.


[UFO UpDates thanks Greg Boone for the lead]

He wrote:

"Nice article about how Robert Hastings does the UFO thing.

Cool first hand account in the article that is amazing regarding
what Mr. Hastings saw himself while at an Air Force control
tower when he was young."










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                        The Threat From Life On Mars

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:36:37 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:36:37 -0500
Subject: The Threat From Life On Mars



Source: The Times - UK

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1385572_2,00.html

December 03, 2004


The Threat From Life On Mars
By Nigel Hawkes

Earth=92s defences may need to be boosted against risk of
potentially deadly microbes returning on space probes

EARTH must take precautions to avoid contamination from
lifeforms that must now be presumed to exist on Mars, leading
scientists gave warning yesterday.

Potentially deadly microorganisms could be returned to Earth on
a probe which is being planned to collect samples from the
Martian surface.

The warning comes after a detailed scientific analysis of data
sent back by the roving vehicle Opportunity which landed on Mars
on January 25.

Jeffrey Kargel of the US Geological Survey said that protection
of our own planet from alien forms of life requires the
assumption that Martian life exists. =93Before proceeding with
sample returns or human missions to Mars, we must review
measures for planetary biological protection.=94

His warning appears in Science magazine in an article
accompanying the first formal publication of the mass of data
from Opportunity, which continues to operate on the Martian
surface.

The search for life on Mars, now more than a century old, is
still not finally resolved. But the odds that life existed there
and may still exist are shortening, according to planetary
experts, Dr Kargel said.

Nobody any longer expects Martian life forms to be anything like
those on Earth. But there remains a possibility that bacteria or
other microscopic organisms may survive in regions where there
is still water. On Earth, almost every imaginable habitat,
including deep underground, has specialised bacteria =97 called
extremophiles =97 living and thriving.

The risks are twofold: probes sent from Earth may contaminate
Mars with terrestrial bacteria, wrecking future studies of
Martian life; or, more important, bacteria brought back from
Mars may contaminate the Earth with unpredictable effects.

Similar precautions were taken at the time of the Apollo Moon
landings. Astronauts returned to Earth were kept in quarantine
after they landed for fear they might be infected with a lunar
bug. None was.

Although the presence of water on the red planet can be
considered proved, of life there are only hints. One is the
presence of the gas methane, which might be produced by forms of
life. On Earth, life can exist in areas as acidic and salty as
Meridiani Planum, where Opportunity landed =97 examples are the
ancient mines of Rio Tinto in Andalucia, Spain, or the salty
Permian Basin in Texas. But few earthly species survive in
environments that are at the same time very cold, very acidic,
and very salty =97 and none that do survive in such conditions
produce methane.

=93But maybe on Mars they do,=94 says Dr Kargel, the author of a
recent book on the latest ideas about Mars. Or maybe, he
suggests, the organisms that produced the Martian methane live
in areas more hospitable than Meridiani Planum.

Analysing the data collected by Opportunity, a team led by the
rovers=92 principal investigator, Dr Steve Squyres, of Cornell
University, concludes that the sedimentary rocks found by
Opportunity preserve a record of environmental conditions
different from any on Mars today.

=93Liquid water was once present intermittently at the Martian
surface at Meridiani, and at times it saturated the subsurface,=94
the team concludes. =93Because liquid water is a prerequisite for
life, we infer that conditions at Meridiani may have been
habitable for some period of time in Martian history.=94

Opportunity has explored two craters, Eagle and Endurance, near
its landing site. In both areas, layers in the bedrock showed
that it had been laid down as sediments, implying past oceans
and voids in the rock were probably caused by the dissolution of
salt.

Opportunity also found quantities of small spheres, named
=93blueberries=94 =97 even though they are grey, not blue. These
marbles consist of the iron-rich mineral haematite. Similar
spheres have been found in the deserts of southern Utah, formed
as iron-rich water seeped through sandstone.

The first idea that Mars might contain life came from the
astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who thought that he saw canals
when he looked at Mars through a telescope at the end of the
19th century. H.G.Wells popularised the idea in The War of the
Worlds, published in 1898.

NATIVES OF THE RED PLANET

o Named after the Roman god of war for its angry red appearance,
Mars is about half the size of the Earth and is one and a half
times further from the Sun

o Mars has clouds, weather and winds. Its atmosphere is thin,
consisting mainly of carbon dioxide

o The surface of Mars is a frozen, rock-strewn desert, with
sweeping dunes and huge craters. Its craters and volcanoes are
far larger than any found on Earth. The largest volcano, Olympus
Mons, is 78,000 feet high

o In 1976, two Viking landers arrived on the surface of Mars
looking for life. They found none

o A meteorite from Mars found in the Antarctic seemed to contain
structures suggestive of life and reignited the possibility that
Mars had once been home to life in a microscopic form

o A belief that Mars once contained water =97 and may still =97 was
confirmed this year by the Opportunity and Spirit rovers. But
Beagle 2, the British probe designed to search for life,
disappeared without trace and is presumed to have crashed into
the Martian surface

o Some time in the next decade Nasa plans to bring back samples
from Mars that may answer questions about Martian life


[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]








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   Dec > Dec 4

                      Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:44:42 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:44:42 -0500
Subject: Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield




Source: MSNBC

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6648208/

12-03-04


Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield

Interceptor to be installed in California silo

The Associated Press


WASHINGTON - The military will install a long-range missile
interceptor in a silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., next
Tuesday, the Pentagon said.

The interceptor is part of the Bush administration�s missile
defense program, designed to shoot down incoming ballistic
missiles fired from North Korea or elsewhere in eastern Asia.

It is the first interceptor to be placed at Vandenberg. Six
other interceptors are already in place at the primary site in
Fort Greely, Alaska; the Vandenberg site will receive a second
missile this month.

The multibillion-dollar system is still being tested. The
military has no date set to activate the missile defenses, but
says it intends to put them on alert by the end of the year.

The system includes a tracking radar on the Aleutian island of
Shemya in Alaska, an early warning radar at Beale Air Force
Base, Calif., and command centers at Colorado Springs, Colo.,
and Fort Greely. It also will rely on early warning satellites
to detect missile launches.

A Navy destroyer has begun patrolling the Sea of Japan with an
upgraded Aegis radar capable of tracking North Korean missile
launches and feeding information to the missile defense network.

Critics say the system has not been tested properly and has yet
to prove it would work in a crisis. Military officials describe
the system as still experimental but insist it will be ready to
function in a crisis.


[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]

[Listen to:

 http://www.virtuallystrange.com/ufo/sdi/sdiarchive/sdi318victor.ra

 for Victor Viggiani's observations--ebk]








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   Dec > Dec 4

                 Space Travelers Prepare For Alien Encounter

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:50:00 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:50:00 -0500
Subject: Space Travelers Prepare For Alien Encounter




Source: The Sun-Herald - Gulfport, Mississippi

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/news/world/10326557.htm


12-03-04

Scientists Advise Space Travelers To Prepare For Alien Encounter

By Robert S. Boyd
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - After studying thousands of images from Mars,
scientists now are convinced that liquid water once flowed on
the surface of the red planet, increasing the odds that life may
have existed there in the distant past.

As a result, space travelers should act as if there once were,
and perhaps still are, living creatures on Mars that must be
protected from destruction or contamination, according to
Jeffery Kargel, a senior planetary scientist at the U.S.
Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz.

In an article in this week's edition of the journal Science,
which will be out today, Kargel also pointed out the risk that
earthlings could be infected by alien microbes brought home from
Mars.

"Planetary protection considerations require the assumption that
Martian life exists until we learn otherwise," Kargel wrote.
"Before proceeding with sample returns or human missions to
Mars, all possible care must be taken to avoid cross-
contamination between the Earth and Mars."

A specialist in planetary geology, Kargel is the author of a new
book on the red planet, "Mars: A Warmer, Wetter Planet."

Proof that there used to be liquid water on our neighboring
planet comes from pictures and chemical readings by a NASA
robotic rover inside a crater near the Martian equator.
Scientists said the new evidence removed any doubts and
qualifications that marked previous claims of finding water.

"No hedging needed. There was liquid water on Mars. Case
closed," Kargel wrote in an e-mail message.

"We're certain," agreed Steve Squyres, an astronomer at Cornell
University in Ithaca, N.Y., and lead investigator for the twin
rovers that have been exploring Mars since January.

The recent discovery in the Martian atmosphere of traces of
methane, a gas produced by plants and animals on Earth, also has
raised hopes for finding signs of life. But nonliving chemical
processes also generate methane, so its presence is
inconclusive.

"Ponderings on the life issues remain highly speculative,"
according to Kargel.

The water finding, however, is solid, according to a batch of 11
reports in Science by several dozen astronomers, biologists,
chemists and geologists.

The researchers based their conclusions on detailed analyses of
images of exposed bedrock several yards down in a small crater,
known as Eagle, on a broad plain called Meridiani Planum. As in
the Grand Canyon, rocks below the surface provide a view of
ancient conditions no longer visible from the top.

Squyres called images taken by the Mars rover Opportunity "the
first close-up look at Martian bedrock." He said they supplied
the "first clear geological and geochemical documentation of
water on Mars."

The evidence included ripples in the rocks like those caused by
flowing water on Earth, and salty chemicals like those found in
dried-out lake beds or acid mine drainage.

"It may have been rather 'icky' water - highly acidic, very
salty, maybe super-cold, but definitely just plain nasty water
from any human perspective," Kargel said. "Maybe it was good
enough for microbial life to enjoy."

In addition, the methane and salts "may provide humans with raw
material for building a new civilization on Mars," he said.

In a report in the Sept. 9 issue of the journal Nature, based on
satellite information, Brian Hynek, a planetary scientist at the
University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space
Physics, estimated that water may once have covered 127,000
square miles of the Meridiani Planum, an area comparable to all
the Great Lakes combined.

"Liquid water, which our results show was once abundant at
Meridiani Planum, is widely viewed as a key prerequisite for
life," Squyres wrote in Science. "Therefore, we infer that
surface conditions at Meridiani may have been habitable for some
period of time in martian history."

The images in Science came from the first 90 days of observation
by Opportunity, which landed on the Meridiani plain Jan. 25. Its
sister rover, Spirit, which landed on the opposite side of Mars
on Jan. 4, so far has detected no evidence of water.

Both rovers are continuing to function through the bitter
Martian winter, although they've long surpassed their projected
three-month life spans. Further scientific results are expected
as they send data back to Earth. Opportunity left the Eagle
crater last spring and is exploring a larger, deeper crater
called Endurance.







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                      Britain's X-Files/The New X-Files

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:57:12 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:57:12 -0500
Subject: Britain's X-Files/The New X-Files




Source: BBC Radio 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/xfiles.shtml

11-03-04


Britain's X-Files/The New X-Files

In the post War years, RAF pilots and navigators began to report
sightings of unidentified flying objects over the UK. The air
crew were trained and rational observers, and their testimony
was sounding alarm bells among military chiefs.


Programme 1:

The concern was not that Britain was about to be invaded by
aliens, but that the Russians were gaining the upper hand in the
Cold War and had developed a new fighter aircraft that could
outpace anything the West had developed.

The evidence wasn't only coming from pilots. On a number of
occasions, RAF radar stations tracked fast-moving objects over
Southern and Eastern England.

A top-secret working party was established at the heart of
Whitehall to investigate the threat these UFOs posed to our
national security. For fifty years, the Ministry of Defence has
denied the existence of a specialist team of UFO investigators.
But social historians Dr. David Clarke and Andy Roberts have
discovered hitherto classified documents that piece together
Britain's military response to this strange aerial phenomena.

And while the concern of senior military commanders may have
been the threat from the Eastern bloc, there were others in the
British establishment who believed the UFOs were in fact other
life forms trying to communicate with us on Earth.

Listen again to programme 1 Britain's X-Files:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/rams/xfiles.ram


Programme 2:

Social historians David Clarke and Andy Roberts, whose research
formed the basis of our previous programme, have unearthed lots
more - both from the United States and from the Public Records
Office here - on the secret Government inquiries into reports of
suspicious sightings in the skies above England right up until
the 1990s.

One story offers a flavour of the material. It concerns events
at a US air base in East Anglia, where in 1981 there were
reports that a UFO had in fact landed in woodland that bordered
the airfield. The event was kept a closely guarded secret for
two years before details eventually leaked out, and there was
press hysteria. The investigation by Clarke and Roberts shows a
divergence of opinion between the Ministry of Defence and US
base commanders who were unswerving in their belief that
something strange had happened.

The deputy commander of the base wrote a report insisting they'd
seen a metallic object with flashing lights. His report was
passed to the MoD, where it remains a classified document. But a
copy of it was released in the US two years later under the
freedom of information act where it provided UFO enthusiasts
with what they were waiting for - a confirmed sighting of a UFO.
An RAF radar operator also came forward and said on the night of
the UFO landing, strange radar blips had been picked up off the
East Coast, and that US military police had seized the
recordings of the radar trace.

Questions were asked in the House of Commons. But the MoD
maintained that the events at Bentwaters-Woodbridge had not
posed a threat to the security of the UK and therefore were of
no interest. However it now emerges that the MoD did
investigate. So what really happened that night? The MoD had
seized on the evidence of two civilian police officers who had
gone to the base on the night that the UFO had reportedly
landed. They concluded that the only light they could see was
that from the Orford Light House as it swept through the woods.
A simple, and according to the MoD, plausible explanation - one
that perhaps seemed too straightforward for the US base
commanders... but typical of the rumours and conspiracy theories
that fill the X-files.

Listen to programme 2:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/rams/xfiles2.ram



[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]








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                      New *U* Statistics Display Online

From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 14:31:39 -0800
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 10:05:09 -0500
Subject: New *U* Statistics Display Online


I just put up a new page of monthly histograms for UFO
sightings, but this time all on the same page so people can
compare continents.

What surprised me, is that the monthly distributions for North
and South America are pretty much the same!

I was expecting a reversal, since most SA reports come from
places well below the Equator where the seasons are reversed.

Instead, it is Europe with a different distribution, the busiest
months later in the year.  That mostly results from the great
wave of 1954.

http://www.larryhatch.net/MTHISTOS.html

Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Best wishes

- Larry Hatch








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                Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Hatch

From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 06:35:58 -0800
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 10:06:56 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Hatch


>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:33:07 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:47:52 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>>Objects carrying biological crews of roughly human size would be
>>of necessity, colossal, as all interstellar journeys will be
>>ones of permanent exile. To maintain a reliable breeding
>>population over many generations of travel and building colonies
>>would probably require a population of around 10,000 minimum,
>>plus complete self sustaining biosphere

>And how do we know that all interstellar journeys will be ones
>of permanent exile?

>I do think you have a good point, that advanced alien
>technology might be something we would be utterly incapable of
>recognizing even if we saw it. Then again of course, some people
>think that is exactly what is happening.


Hello Cathy and Peter:

I see a bias in the public perception of alien visitation, one
that I blame mostly on science fiction and the movie industry.

This bias is, simply, that aliens must come here in person.

Why? To scare the bejeezers out of the movie audience I suppose.
It makes no sense to me otherwise.

Wouldn't something less unrealistic have a deeper impact?

Just once, I'd like to see a sci-fi film based on robotic
entities, with intelligence equal or greater to ours, here on a
long-term mission of scientific exploration.

How about completely robotic and (nearly) autonomous probes sent
thousands of years ago to study life bearing planets? Is that
too ridiculous? I don't think so. It need not be dull. Some
'cyborg' or whatever could blow a fuse, get captured and reveal
a few of its secrets.

The downside is that the audience either wants aliens with the
wisdom of Solomon, or green slime attacking us from the drain
hole in the kitchen sink. Notice the disconnect?

I think its wrong to blame all of ufology for the sins of
Hollywood. Some of us sure, but count me out. Not all of us
require living alien beings with all the horrible mess and
luggage they would need. Dirty diapers? Ooof!

My personal opinion is that ET (assuming ET exists and found
Earth) would be to send highly intelligent cybernetic probes to
do their scientific legwork.

I can hardly guess what forms shapes and sizes they might take,
but I'm tempted to bet on a variety, with the smallest ones
coming in the most closely.

Just for fun, lets suppose that this idea has some merit.

Lets suppose ET's home is 150 light years away. The probes
(probots?) are in our time-frame, but news from Earth gets back
there 150 years late.

Its still 1854 here for all they can see. The Crimean war was
making news (Turks vs Russians vs the British) .. cholera
epidemics here and there, but still .. something new!

Telegraph lines are stretching rapidly in some places,
unmistakable for their electrical clicks. Railroads connect more
and more places, again unmistakable for their cuts, fills, iron
and heat trails. Clearly the bipeds on Earth are entering a
technological age.

If I were ET, I wouldn't miss a minute of the "Earth Show'. I'd
send more devices, better ones.

Good probes should be cheap and easy for any civilized
and forward looking alien couch potato.


Best wishes

- Larry Hatch










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                 Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast - Ledger

From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 11:16:43 -0400
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 16:46:50 -0500
Subject: Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast - Ledger


>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 13:24:36 EST
>Subject: Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast

>>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>>Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 07:48:05 -0500
>>Subject: UFO UpDate: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast


>>Source: BBC News

>>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/4061893.stm

>>12-02-04

>>'Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast'

>Shock from seeing an alien ship was one of a whole host of
>far- fetched excuses offered by speeding motorists trying to
>avoid penalty points and fines.

>As funny as this is, there's more importance than meets the eye.


Hi Greg,

And in fact seems to happen. I have a case in my book Maritime
UFO Files - actually a few more related cases but not as direct
as the case in question - that occurred in Richibucto, New
Brunswick on October 3, 1976 around 3 o'clock in the morning. In
this case the witness told an RCMP officer he was doing about
115 mph on the Highway 11 in that province while trying to get
away from an object that was harrassing him.

The difference here is that the witness Rejean Emery Robichaud
spotted a farmhouse and tore up the driveway and pounded on the
door to the place. Once admitted he called the RCMP and a
mountie came out to investigate where upon Robichaud _then_ told
the Mountie he had to go that fast while trying to get away from
the thing. This was no mean feat considering that old winding,
narrow highway.

I've other cases where UFOs harrass motorists as I'm sure others
do.

Don Ledger









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   Dec > Dec 4

                            UFO Clippings Booklet

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 10:30:19 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 16:48:54 -0500
Subject: UFO Clippings Booklet


In 1968 we gathered together some newspaper clippings for the
years 1948 through 1968 and put them together in a booklet of 40
pages.

We resurrected the booklet pages a few months back and put the
booklet for sale on eBay. (I'm not sure why exactly.) The price
on eBay is a few dollars plus postage ($1.50).

It has representative samples of press coverage, pro and con,
plus articles with photos of many famous (Hynek) and infamous
(Betherum) flying saucer folks.

And since many of the clippings are from the Michigan press,
there are a few items about the Ann Arbor swamp gas fiasco,
which I covered for some Michigan newspapers. The sightings were
actually in Dexter, which is about 10 miles northwest of Ann
Arbor, and Hillsdale, Michigan, 65 miles(!) from Dexter/Ann
Arbor.

I met Dr. Hynek at a press conference he held, and saw him
trying to pass the swamp gas scenario to skeptical reporters,
most of whom, however, eventually printed his explanation as
fact.

NICAP excoriated us for not including dates for the clippings,
which is a justifiable criticism, but we only put the booklet
together to give an idea, an overview, of what was going on with
UFOs, not as a publication for UFO study.

While we shan't try to sell the book to UFO UpDates readers, we
can offer the thing to those who might be interested in seeing
it if they send us 4 U.S. stamps (or proper postage for a 6
ounce Media Mail envelope if it's slated for mailing outside the
U..S.).

Yes, we'll bite the bullet for the booklet and envelope, but
can't (or won't) expense the postage. Sorry. (We're somewhat
frugal here.)

So, send your four 37 cent stamps (or a $1.50) to:

InterAmerica, Inc.
PMB 150
619 E. Dupont Road
Fort Wayne
Indiana 46825

and we'll send the booklet your way, so long as supplies last.


Rich Reynolds
Fort Wayne MediaWatch






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                Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Chace

From: David Chace <davidwchace.nul>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:18:19 -0800
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 16:50:04 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Chace


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:47:52 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: David Chace <davidwchace.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 23:45:32 -0800
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>>In any case, there are no a priori grounds for believing that
>>extraterrestrial beings or their probes do not visit the Earth
>>from time to time, or do not operate here on a fairly regular
>>basis.

>Just about the last thing that one would expect an alien probe
>to resemble would be a medium sized ultra high performance
>aircraft buzzing round the earth's atmosphere. Ufos really
>represent 1950s images of what an advanced technology
>would look like. Much more likely would be
>nanotechnological probes which would just fit in with the
>general dust. These would be many orders of magnitude
>cheaper than anything large.

>Objects carrying biological crews of roughly human size
>would be of necessity, colossal, as all interstellar journeys
>will be ones of permanent exile. To maintain a reliable
>breeding population over many generations of travel and
>building colonies would probably require a population of
>around 10,000 minimum, plus complete self sustaining
>biosphere Peter Rogerson

This is all assumption and speculation, and carries no more
weight than that of subjective plausibility. In the absence of
definitive knowledge regarding alien technological capabilities
or their biological and psychological natures, we can not
objectively evaluate the likelihood of any one of these
scenarios as compared to any other.


David W. Chace








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                Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Chace

From: David Chace <davidwchace.nul>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:29:59 -0800
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 16:51:35 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Chace


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:30:39 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>Sorry but the majority opinion of evolutionary biologists,
>which is indeed just opinion, but at least its informed opinion,
>is that if you ran the history of life on earth again and again it
>would come out different each time. There is a minority most
>notably Simon Conway Morris who disagree with this view.
>Time will tell. However there seems no more reason to think
>the universe will be full of humans that it would be full of
>armadillos.

I suppose you are right to say that the majority opinion of
evolutionary biologists is that if you ran the history of life
on Earth again and again, it would come out differently each
time. The real issue of debate is how differently? The majority
of evolutionary biologists have never publicly expressed their
views on this speculative question.

If you went back to the beginning of the Cambrian and then ran
the clock forward again to the present, would the dominant
(large) land animals be vertebrates? Would they be tetrapods?
Would they physically resemble vertebrates or tetrapods?

Would you instead have six limbed creatures roaming the
savannahs (assuming those ecosystems could still be called
savannahs)? Would you have three limbed creatures? Would
bilateral symmetry still predominate? While nature obviously
allows for many variations, the basic truth of form follows
function still holds. This is the underlying cause of convergent
evolution, and the history of life teaches us that it should not
be underestimated.

I think it�s quite reasonable to speculate if that you ran the
clock forward from the mid-Jurassic period again, you would find
that reptilian looking humanoids were now exploring the Solar
system and they would regard mammals as pets, pests or food. On
the other hand, it is also quite possible that no technology-
using species would have evolved and the Earth would still be a
wilderness. There is no way to be certain of the likelihood of
one of these scenarios versus the other. One simply has to keep
an open mind. And so it is with the question of whether humanoid
spaceship builders with radio telescopes are actually widespread
in the universe, or are exceedingly rare. Look at the UFO data
from a stance of humility, taking into account our ignorance on
these issues.


David W. Chace








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                 Re: The E.T. Equation Recalculated - Rudiak

From: David Rudiak <drudiak.nul>
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 10:09:07 -0800
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 16:53:27 -0500
Subject: Re: The E.T. Equation Recalculated - Rudiak


>From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:26:53 -0400
>Subject: Re: The E.T. Equation Recalculated

>>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>>Date: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 8:36 AM
>>Subject: UFO UpDate: The E.T. Equation Recalculated

>There is absolutely no basis for the original 10,000 figure.
>(That would be only one in 20 million of the stars in the
>galaxy).

Of course it is an estimate based mostly on gut-level estimates
of various probabilities in the Drake equation. Unfortunately
different scientists have different gut-level estimates of the
probabilities, some extremely conservative ones ending up with
no other civilizations while more liberal ones ending up with
millions of civilizations. 10,000 is something of a geometric
mean. When I run the numbers with my own varying levels of
fairly conservative probability estimates I end up with between
100 and 10,000 civilizations myself.

>The Drake equation not only neglects the greenhouse effect. It
>neglects colonization and migration and the devlopment of more
>sophisticated technology then ours.

Yes, it's oversimplified. Basically it's a crude estimate of the
number of _independently_ evolved civilizations. One
relentlessly colonizing Borg-type civilization could occupy
billions of solar systems in only a few million years, rendering
the Drake equation all but academic. On the other hand, other
very conservative scientists (such as the "Rare Earth" folks)
would argue that the habitable zone in the galaxy is much
smaller than the SETI estimates and other civilizations are few
in number or nonexistent.

>Let's face it: all our "sophisticated" knowledge about
>aeronautics, astronautics,electronics, nucleonics, genetics,
>biology,etc began about 100 years ago.

>The solar system is about 5 billion years old and the galaxy at
>least 10 billion years old.

>Technological progress comes from doing things differently in an
>unpredictable way.

>How could any reasonable scientist - as opposed to a SETI
>cultist - assume none of the civilizations in the neighborhood
>are much more advanced than are we and are using our antiquated
>techniques for travel and communication. I doubt if Frank uses a
>slide rule much these days and he is only a few years older than
>I am.

I got a pitch for money from Drake a few years back. His
argument was that if we ever hoped to contact aliens we had to
use radio waves because our best chemical rockets would take
80,000 years to reach the nearest star.

Basically he was arguing that our best propulsion (or the best
propulsion of an alien civilization thousands or millions of
years older than ours) would never advance beyond the chemical
rocket stage. To claim that humanities current technical prowess
is the best that can ever be attained is surely one of the
dumbest arguments ever advanced.

NASA propulsion experts certainly do not agree. One of the goals
of NASA director Dan Goldin was to launch an interstellar probe
to Alpha Centauri in the next 40 years using a probe accelerated
to 10% light speed. That journey would take less than 50 years,
not 80,000. It's a daunting technical challenge, but not an
impossible one, even at our own current level of technology.

Despite what the debunkers say, there is no current scientific
theory that shows that interstellar travel is literally
impossible - difficult, yes, from an technological, economic,
and political standpoint, but not _theoretically_ impossible.
That is big distinction that needs to be drawn.


David Rudiak








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               Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 18:28:01 +0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 16:56:28 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson


>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:33:07 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:47:52 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>Ufos really
>>represent 1950s images of what an advanced technology would look
>>like.

>The problem with this sort of statement is that it's completely
>untestable. How would you establish if a UFO did not look like a
>1950s image of what an advanced technology would look like? I
>have a book of illustrations dating from the 1930s to the 1950s
>which includes various renditions of imaginary spaceships. Most
>of them don't look to me much like UFOs.

>>Much more likely would be nanotechnological probes which
>>would just fit in with the general dust. These would be many
>>orders of magnitude cheaper than anything large.

>So why is this 2004 image of what advanced technology would look
>like any more to be relied upon than the images of the 1950s?
>This sort of argument depends on the assumption that we can
>predict the technology of the far future, which as you've
>already indicated is probably impossible.

Images of 1940s and 1950s ideas of a superior technology only in
the sense that in order to insepct the earth you would have to
send macroscopic, populated probes into the atmosphere, and not
referring to any particular shape. Though the Childes-Whitted
rocket ship clearly was derived from science fiction
illustrations of the period

>>Objects carrying biological crews of roughly human size would be
>>of necessity, colossal, as all interstellar journeys will be
>>ones of permanent exile. To maintain a reliable breeding
>>population over many generations of travel and building colonies
>>would probably require a population of around 10,000 minimum,
>>plus complete self sustaining biosphere
>
>And how do we know that all interstellar journeys will be ones
>of permanent exile?

Becausce even if you could slow down crew time by hyper-
relatvistic velocieties (and there are more problems with that
than are usually considered such as the growing density of
cosmic dust and the blue shifting of incoming light due to
forshortening of the space ahead of the spaceship) huge amounts
of time would have passed back home. Of course we can imagine
vast conservative civilizations where language and mores don't
change over centuries and millennia, but these tend not to go in
for exploration

>I do think you have a good point, that advanced alien technology
>might be something we would be utterly incapable of recognizing
>even if we saw it. Then again of course, some people think that
>is exactly what is happening.

>A more interesting point, to me, is whether the whole notion of
>extraterrestrial life is itself an artifact of our current
>cosmological model which will one day be superseded. When Dante
>wrote his Commedia during the Middle Ages, he used the most
>accurate and up-to-date cosmological model of his time, and
>peopled the planets with angels and the spirits of the departed.
>Perhaps in years to come our present-day notions of alien beings
>will seem as quaint as Dante's planetary angels.


Yes. That puts a finger on one problem with the sort of
explanations that ufologists come up with. However exotic, they
are products of our own or past cultures.

An analogy I came up with some time ago was that someone in say
the 14th century might have argued that exotic objects in the
sky were visitors from the antipodes come to here the gospel
preached. They had to come to us with their superior technology
becauce our ships were unable to take missionaries past the
fiery regions which were _known_ to exist in the equatorial
region. This explanation made perfect sense in terms of the
geographical and theological world view of the period.

All of this makes my point about the uselessness of the ETH as
an explantion for UFO reports. Explaning anomalous experiences
by referring to something we don't even know exists, let alone
what its properties and capacities are is pointless.


Peter Rogerson







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               Re: Woman Wins Lawsuits Against Movies - Boone

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 15:39:58 EST
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 16:58:55 -0500
Subject: Re: Woman Wins Lawsuits Against Movies - Boone


Woman Wins Lawsuits Against 'The Matrix' & 'The Terminator' Movies!!!

http://www.slccglobelink.com/main.cfm/include/detail/storyid/785067.html

I am so blown away at this story!

I got a call from my best friend that he'd met a woman who was
in a fight in court because the movies 'The Matrix' and 'The
Terminator' were based on her works. He told me what had
happened and it was so unbelieveable I had to see for myself.

Sure enough, she won the lawsuits with the help of the FBI.

Biggest settlement in Hollywood history and the story hasn't hit
the big press and radio!

Then it all made sense. She's a young black woman who had been
suppressed by the media because AOL/Time Warner own everything
for a million miles except the wet on rain.

It pains me to see creative folks beaten down like that but in
this case the good gal won.

I've read many a ufologist's research and they don't get the
just due they deserved but sooner or later their stuff will end
up in a big budget movie or tv show or comic book.

Makes ya' wonder what really goes on in the so-called 'Liberal
Media'.

Shows you why the media suppresses stories. It's not in their
best interest monetarily, socially to bring the truth to the
people but they'll sure as heck hide behind the 1st Amendment.

I thought the 1st Amendment protected a free press, not a free mess.


Best,

Greg








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                  Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast - Boone

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 16:54:38 EST
Fwd Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 17:00:45 -0500
Subject: Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast - Boone


>From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 11:16:43 -0400
>Subject: Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast

>>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 13:24:36 EST
>>Subject: Re: Aliens Made Me Drive Too Fast

<snip>.

>I've other cases where UFOs harrass motorists as I'm sure others
>do.


Don thanks! I should have remembered!

I can't believe I've been so absent minded! There were hundreds
of such traffic related UFO situations back in the Hudson Valley
when I was on staff at the newspaper there!

Gad! It was like every other day in it's hey-day!

We had police and fire and airport scanners in the newsroom that
blared all day and night and quite often you'ld get the cops or
firemen discussing one of those ' Um, let's go to Code 2 on this
one boys'. Then later I'ld run into one of the boys and they'd
whisper about UFOs.

Matter of fact, during the 'Unsolved Mysteries' episode about
the Hudson Valley UFOs there's a scene where motorists turned
off the road to avoid and observe one of the large boomerang
craft!

There must be an enormous amount of reports and I'll bet the
gang back home have a ton of them on file or at least some good
stories to tell.


Best,

Greg








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                Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Clark

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 16:04:37 -0600
Fwd Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 09:59:50 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Clark


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 18:28:01 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:33:07 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:47:52 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>Images of 1940s and 1950s ideas of a superior technology only
>in the sense that in order to insepct the earth you would have
>to send macroscopic, populated probes into the atmosphere, and
>not referring to any particular shape. Though the Childes-
>Whitted rocket ship clearly was derived from science fiction
>illustrations of the period.

Really dumb, Peter. First of all, it's Chiles, not Childes, and the
statement means absolutely nothing.

>All of this makes my point about the uselessness of the ETH as
>an explan[a]tion for UFO reports. Expla[i]ning anomalous
>experiences by referring to something we don't even know exists,
>let alone what its properties and capacities are is pointless.

This from the guy who once championed "birth trauma" -
"something [that] we don't even know exists" - as an
"explanation" for the abduction phenomenon.

Now it's time for Peter to take the gospel to all those SETI
types who are forever "referring to something [that] we don't
even know exists," speculating about its nature, and working on
strategies to contact it.


Jerry Clark







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                   Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Allan

From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 10:26:41 -0000
Fwd Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 10:39:36 -0500
Subject: Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Allan


From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
Date: Saturday, December 04, 2004 2:31 PM
Subject: UFO UpDate: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise

>Source: Boise Weekly

http://www.boiseweekly.com/more.php?id=4832_0_1_0_M

>11-10-04

>Saucer Bureaucracy

>The UFO Guy Comes To Boise
>by Nicholas Collias

>Robert Hastings has an important news flash for Idahoans. "Our
>military", the speaker and researcher begins, "has not yet
>developed any aircraft that can go 2,000 miles an hour in one
>direction, stop on a dime and reverse direction." Not a
>surprise? This might be: thousands of craft with precisely those
>capabilities have been spotted, tracked and sometimes forcefully
>engaged while hovering surreptitiously around America's nuclear
>weapons bases. You may not believe in it, but your government
>does, and has for almost 50 years. Hastings can prove that part
>beyond any reasonable doubt.

<snip>

Some comments:

1. Are there really 10,000 pages relating to government
encounters with ETs?
(Why not produce just one such page for us to see)

2. Are there really "thousands" of cases where craft possessing
such amazing characteristics have been "spotted, tracked and
sometimes forcefully engaged" over US nuclear weapons bases?
(Aerial combat with ETs should be great fun!)

3. Is there even one authenticated case of UFOs "crashing  on
government property"? Which government property was lucky enough
to experience this ET visit?

Mr Hastings clearly goes way beyond Stanton Friedman. Still,
maybe I am taking both him (or the reporter) just a bit too
seriously.


CDA








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                    Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 08:15:34 -0500
Fwd Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 10:43:02 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:30:39 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:57:41 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>The development of radio wireless telephony was not a historical
>inevitabilty, but a product of the economic and military needs
>of the British Empire, especially the need to communicate with
>the ships in the Navy. At a time when radio was only capable of
>transmitting morse code, cable broadcasting in central Europe
>was bringing concert performances into peoples homes, and
>experiments with in-ground induction wireless in the USA were
>transmitting reasonable quality speech. The willingness of
>Britain to back Marconi eventually won out.

This is an oversimplification.

True, the needs of Britain were a '500 lb gorilla' driving the
development of the technology, but the development would have
happened anyway.

Tesla, in the USA, preceded Marconi in transmitting long range
Ground Wave, and J.P. Morgan was pushing Tesla to devise a
system so that Morgan could keep track of the stock market while
he was away from the USA - e.g. in Britain, on business.

After his death Tesla was granted the US patent on basic AM
radio circuitry.







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                      Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 07:14:54 -0800
Fwd Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 10:46:51 -0500
Subject: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin


Source: The Australian - Sydney, NSW

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11599504%255E421,0
0.html

12-06-04


Even the sceptics are questioning the origins of a strange light
that hovered over Darwin on Saturday night.

Several readers phoned the Northern Territory News late on
Saturday night to describe the unidentified flying object that
captured their attention.

But neither the RAAF or the airport were able to shed any light
on the flashing green, blue and red lights witnesses saw.

Laboratory technician Julie Lynn was relaxing on the balcony
with husband Nigel at their Leanyer home when they noticed the
UFO about 8.30pm.

A self-described sceptic, Mrs Lynn believes there is a perfectly
reasonable explanation for why the UFO hovered above Darwin -
she just has no idea what it could be

"It was fascinating to watch," she said.

"I was quite looking forward to curling up on the couch and
watching a movie but it had our attention until we went to bed
after midnight.

"It hovered in the one place for at least two hours but had
moved significantly when we checked on it again before we went
to bed.

"I can't believe there are UFOs or little green men out there -
there must be an obvious explanation.

"And we weren't drinking so it wasn't something we imagined."

The UFO was described as being shaped like three connected ball-
shaped spheres that flashed blue, green and red from as many as
six different light sources.

It first appeared in a south-easterly direction and was moving
northeast.

Department of Defence spokeswoman Kelly Cooper said the UFO was
definitely not a secret military aircraft or RAAF-related.

The airport also denied the UFO could have been a plane waiting
to land in Darwin.









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                      Many Have Taken Interest In UFOs

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 10:56:07 -0500
Fwd Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 10:56:07 -0500
Subject: Many Have Taken Interest In UFOs




Source: The Lincoln Tribune - Lincoln, North Carolina

http://www.lincolntribune.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=371

12-05-04


Letters to the Forum

Many Have Taken Interest In UFOs

A number of notable UFO advocates have passed on in 2004, among
them have been former President Ronald Reagan, astronaut Gordon
Cooper, social worker Betty Hill, Harvard University
psychiatrist Dr. John Mack, millionaire Laurance Rockefeller,
England's UFO Magazine publisher Graham W. Birdsall and diplomat
and Flying Saucer Review Magazine publisher Gordon Creighton,
also from England.

Ron and Nancy Reagan reported two UFO encounters, one while
flying above California and one while driving down a California
highway. President Reagan spoke on "the alien threat" in five of
his last seven talks to various national and international
organizations.

Astronaut Cooper chased UFOs while flying over Europe and later
revealed movie films and still photographs taken of "a domed
saucer with tripod landing gears" that landed in a restricted
zone at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Cooper also
testified on the reality of UFOs on a global scale during
hearings on the subject before the United Nations (UN) in 1978.

Another key figure in ufology was Betty Hill, who was abducted
and then given a physical examination, along with her husband
Barney in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 1961. A best
selling book in twelve languages titled, "The Interrupted
Journey" was followed by a NBC movie titled "The UFO Incident."

Dr. John Mack of Harvard University won the Pulitzer Prize in
biography with his biography of T.E. Laurence (Laurence of
Arabia) in 1977. Psychiatrist Mack began to research and
investigate purported extraterrestrial abductions in many global
countries, as well as in the USA. As a result, he published two
books on the UFO topic. They were titled, "Abduction" in 1994
and "Cosmos: Human Transformation and the Alien Encounters" in
1999.

Millionaire Laurance Rockefeller invested much of his funding on
scientific studies of the physical evidence for UFOs, peer group
reviews of UFO reports worldwide and published "The Best
Evidence Available" which was mailed to world leaders on a
global scale.

Graham Birdsall of England, a young man, who published the bi-
monthly UFO Magazine, circulated worldwide at Barnes & Noble
bookstores, also sponsored worldwide scientific UFO symposiums
for a large number of years.

Another publisher and diplomat in England, [Gordon Creighton]
who knew how to translate thirteen languages fluently and
published the worldwide Flying Saucer Review quarterly for 55
years recently died. This journal is still being published and
circulated monthly.


George D. Fawcett
Founder
MUFON-NC Inc.
602 Battleground Road
Lincolnton NC
28092








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              Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO Results?

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 10:42:24 EST
Fwd Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 11:01:24 -0500
Subject: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO Results?


I'm sure you've all heard of this website:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ufo.html

They obtained some documents in a brief reply when they inquired
about UFOs from the government.


Best,

Greg








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               Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB 'Beam'

From: Larry W. Bryant <overtci.nul>
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 20:59:04 -0500 (EST)
Fwd Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 11:47:00 -0500
Subject: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB 'Beam'


To:   beam.nul

To:   Commander
      11th Wing - Bolling AFB
      Attn: Public Affairs Officer
      Bolling Air Force Base, DC 20032-0103

From: Larry W. Bryant
      3518 Martha Custis Drive
      Alexandria, VA 22302

Date: December 4, 2004

   Blow the Whistle on Agencies' FOIA Subversion!

A Washington, D.C.-based independent writer focusing on
national-security issues and official-information access has
encountered renewed official stonewalling of certain requests
under the U. S. Freedom of Information Act.

This time, three agencies - the Department of the Interior, the
Central Intelligence Agency, and the Office of Naval
Intelligence - have chosen to deny him a records-search-fee
waiver by ignoring his "requester status" as an independent
writer.

As he proceeds with judicial review of that denial, his case
would benefit from documented knowledge that other such
writer-requesters have experienced similar stonewalling.

Your whistleblowing in this matter would help us all to

(1) counter and prevent any such subversion of congressional
intent;

(2) restore the Act's time-honored values of wide public
accessibility/right-to-know, agency accountability, and
citizens' stakeholdership in governmental decisionmaking; and

(3) strengthen all positive milestones inherent in some 30 years
of related federal case law.


Contact: Larry W. Bryant at:

3518 Martha Custis Drive
Alexandria VA 22302

Phone: 703-931-3341
E-mail: overtci.nul








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              Re: New *U* Statistics Display Online - Maccabee

From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 08:15:30 -0500
Fwd Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 11:49:53 -0500
Subject: Re: New *U* Statistics Display Online - Maccabee


>From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
>To: Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>>
>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 14:31:39 -0800
>Subject: New *U* Statistics Display Online


>I just put up a new page of monthly histograms for UFO
>sightings, but this time all on the same page so people can
>compare continents.

>What surprised me, is that the monthly distributions for North
>and South America are pretty much the same!

>I was expecting a reversal, since most SA reports come from
>places well below the Equator where the seasons are reversed.

I believe that this similar peak in the North and South, at the
same time, was pointed out many years ago and used as an
argument against the claim that saucer sightings were only a
result of the summertime 'Silly Season' in the Northern
hemisphere (when more people are out at night and available for
seeing a UFO).








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                Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Hatch

From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 08:10:29 -0800
Fwd Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 11:53:06 -0500
Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Hatch


>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 07:14:54 -0800
>Subject: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin

>Source: The Australian - Sydney, NSW

>http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11599504%255E421,
00.html

>12-06-04

>Even the sceptics are questioning the origins of a strange
>light that hovered over Darwin on Saturday night.

<snip>

Hello Frank:

Night lights cases may have many mundane explanations, but
there's a new and interesting one for Darwin.

They have now completed the railway up from Adelaide SA, thru
Alice Springs and now all the way to Darwin, NT. This makes the
Port of Darwin an important one for import/export with the
southeast Asian countries to the North.

Previously, Darwin was only accessible by road or air, as I
understand it, costly and difficult for heavy freight and
livestock.


Best wishes

- Larry








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                Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason

From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 16:40:33 -0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 07:21:04 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 18:28:01 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

I had previously asked Peter why he assumed that interstellar
journeys would necessarily involve permanent exile. He replied:

>Because even if you could slow down crew time by hyper-
>relatvistic velocieties (and there are more problems with that
>than are usually considered such as the growing density of
>cosmic dust and the blue shifting of incoming light due to
>forshortening of the space ahead of the spaceship) huge amounts
>of time would have passed back home. Of course we can imagine
>vast conservative civilizations where language and mores don't
>change over centuries and millennia, but these tend not to go in
>for exploration

I'm afraid I don't find this argument very convincing. For one
thing, it assumes that all space-traveling aliens will have more
or less human lifetimes and human social organization, which,
given your previous comments about cultural chauvinism, is
rather odd. (Indeed, writings about ETs generally seem to assume
the latter, even to the extent of assuming they will share our
primate sense of social hierarchy - why else do we have the
expression "Take me to your leader?")

More than that, though, you assume that the capabilities of any
future technology can be delineated in terms of present-day
knowledge, which seems to me a contradiction in terms.  For
example, the atom bomb could not have been determined to exist
within the terms of nineteenth-century physics, because it
violates what was then thought to be a physical law (the
Conservation of Matter). Of course, as we unfortunately know all
too well, nineteenth-century physics would have been wrong.

>Yes. That puts a finger on one problem with the sort of
>explanations that ufologists come up with. However exotic, they
>are products of our own or past cultures.

<snip>

>All of this makes my point about the uselessness of the ETH as
>an explantion for UFO reports. Explaning anomalous experiences
>by referring to something we don't even know exists, let alone
>what its properties and capacities are is pointless.

Always in science we proceed by postulating the existence of
things we don't know - that's the nature of hypotheses. The
question is whether the hypotheses can be meaningfully tested or
not. I agree with you that the ETH fails this test at the
moment. The problem is, so does every other hypothesis. They are
all, by definition, products of our own and previous cultures.
So you appear to be saying that UFOs are a metaphysical
phenomenon beyong the capacities of current science. That may be
so, but I hope we aren't going to give up trying.


Cathy







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   Dec > Dec 6

                                Earth Rings?

From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 09:59:50 -0700
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 07:23:46 -0500
Subject: Earth Rings?


Would it be desirable to contain particles from space flight
projects, in a ring, around the Earth? Would such a ring remain
stable?

http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2002/earth-sci-fossil-fuel/ringw
orld.html

http://uk.geocities.com/aa_spaceagent/restricted/earth-ring-dynamics.html

http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf012/sf012p07.htm

http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/library/SatelliteFragHistory/13thEditionof
BreakupBook.pdf





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                Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason

From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 17:01:45 -0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 07:25:20 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Reason


>From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 08:15:34 -0500
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>True, the needs of Britain were a '500 lb gorilla' driving the
>development of the technology, but the development would have
>happened anyway.

>Tesla, in the USA, preceded Marconi in transmitting long range
>Ground Wave, and J.P. Morgan was pushing Tesla to devise a
>system so that Morgan could keep track of the stock market while
>he was away from the USA - e.g. in Britain, on business.

>After his death Tesla was granted the US patent on basic AM
>radio circuitry.

I think this illustrates very well how difficult it is to derive
probability from history. If one regards the set of possible
histories as a tree which branches randomly though an
unconstrained, arbitrarily large parameter space, one will
always conclude that the probability of any given individual
history is remote. But often it is the case that historical
branching is not unconstrained, but governed by various
principles which determine the extinction of certain branches
and the survival of others, and this is certainly the case in
biology. This "forcing" of histories into certain regions of the
parameter space gives rise to what is sometimes referred to as
"convergent evolution", although personally I loathe that term
for all sorts of reasons.

Of course, evolutionary biologists do not presume an
unconstrained parameter space. But there is certainly no general
theoretical framework for predicting what sorts of constraints
will apply in what particular circumstances, nor how this will
affect the evolution of histories, and in practice one is
reduced to "reverse-engineering" from known histories. The whole
notion of "counterfactual evolution" in biology is,
unfortunately, something of a black art.


Cathy







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                Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 17:03:57 +0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 07:26:55 -0500
Subject: Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO


>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 10:42:24 EST
>Subject: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO Results?

>I'm sure you've all heard of this website:

>http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ufo.html

>They obtained some documents in a brief reply when they inquired
>about UFOs from the government.


Greg,

Not being a lawsuit or court case buff, I was not aware of this
site.

A quick browse suggests that, like its parent company Court TV,
it is into anything spectacular or sensational that titillates
the public and sells. Since serious UFO research doiesn't 'sell'
and sensationalism does, the outcome is predictable.


 - Dick







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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 12:32:12 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 07:31:02 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 07:34:09 -0600
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 13:47:28 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>Boy, you sure know how to quench the fire in a dream.

>>...and to what purpose, actually... and how effective, in the
>>aggregate, that "wet blanket"? Who was instructed, educated, or
>>otherwise elevated? Who was inspired? Who felt better? And
>>finally, who acts just like that learned but forgettable spawn
>>of dismissive scientism who proclaimed we'd never get on the
>>moon because we'd never be able to generate enough power to
>>leave the gravity well? He was an effective wet blanket, too.
>>Thankfully, not effective enough. Moreover, my fire still roars.
>>I suspect yours does, too, Sir.

Realism, Sir... realism. Don't promise more than you can
deliver. If you wish to live in a dream world, fine. Opium dens
were popular in decades past, Sir.

>>To borrow and mangle a well-turned phrase... 'You look at things
>>that are and say why?, and I (and others) look at things that
>>never were and say 'Why not?'.

>I think it entirely likely the gentleman is not asking anything
>he feels he might not have a 'safe' answer for. Another of those
>unfortunate souls who hasn't discovered it's answers,
>ultimately, that are the _least_ important. It's always been the
>quality _question_ has the superiority.

Dreams that cannot be translated into practical reality are
meaningless entertainment. Perhaps profitable if put into
books or TV shows though.

>>Besides, I believe neither of us placed a timetable on the idea
>>Nor are we the first to suggest it.

>What do we want? Reach and Grasp! When do we want it? ...Now.
>Anytime is always the first time because it might be the _last_
>time... more Zen... sorry.

Practicality rules. Feed the masses first, then move on to dream
entertainment spots off world.

>>I'm beginning to understand what Stan means when he talks about
>>Noisy Negativists. <LOL>

>I'm not laughing. Friedman's noisome negativists transcended
>laughter decades ago when they colluded to destroy (murder?)
>James McDonald, confabulate history, and hijack the mainstream
>to facilitate the psycopathic unelected. Moreover, a reality
>that does not carry James McDonald around on a little three
>cornered velvet cushion is not a realty I want to have any part
>of, and a reality that I will work tirelessly to discredit,
>deride, and eventually disgrace.

I'll pass since I cannot decode your meaning.

>>Your points are all very well presented, and likely accurate in
>>the main, but this is something that both Alfred and I believe
>>not to be happening in our lifetimes,

>Speak for yourself, Sir! I _may_ be doomed to a disappointment
>that is likely, but I _expect_ the whole planet to start feeling
>the affects [sic] of our accelerating 'propensity' _well_ within
>my lifetime; a lifetime, by the way, that might not have to end
>as a result of a biological necessity... and that's Mr.
>Lehmberg, Mr. King, remember. [g].

Whooo! Downloading your brain into a computer eh? You may still
experience the "blue screen of death" though! It is somewhat
amusing to me to think we may be able to install Alfred Lehmberg
Verison 9.1 on our computers in the future and be regaled by a
fount of wisdom and obscurities.

>>but on a timeline one
>>might call ideal, where the thirst... no... the need for
>>knowledge trumps any monetary imperative, where the quest for
>>truth is judged by its potential rather than its cost alone, and
>>where those who presume the preposterous are called innovators
>>rather than spendthrifts.

>Gandhi said you had to _be_ the changes you expected around you.
>Mr. Smith might take your lesson. Hell, _should_ take your
>lesson.

Right. Well, I can really see _that_ is working well. If you think
this a real Universe operating premise, then it seems the best
we can ever accomplish is a stalemate or stagnation because half
want one thing and half the other (unless you look at the
scenario of every one for themselves).

>>But you're probably right. <g>

>No, Sir. He couldn't be more wrong - arrogantly in letter, in an
>altogether meager paucity of facts and yet-to-be-discredited
>conventional wisdoms, and _certainly_ in spirit. Wet blankets
>are a retrograde mechanism with little utility, usually an axe
>to grind, and ultimately forgettable. I was unmoved, just
>annoyed, and definitely not laughing.

Sorry to poke at your bubble, Sir. I am not writing
inspirational poetry/prose, such as yours. I operate in a hard-
edged real world of practicality. When I dream, I extrapolate a
path to implement the dream. If I am simply dreaming for
entertainment's sake, then the sky is the limit. But it is of
little use (except as I said you want to entertain the masses).

If you are annoyed at my lack of facts, I am sorry. I could
spend time doing all the calculations and digging out old
reports, but to what avail, Sir? Dream on... dream on!








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                Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB

From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 17:40:37 +0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 08:13:20 -0500
Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB


>From: Larry W. Bryant <overtci.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 20:59:04 -0500 (EST)
>Subject: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB "Beam"

>To:   beam.nul

>To:   Commander
>      11th Wing - Bolling AFB
>      Attn: Public Affairs Officer
>      Bolling Air Force Base, DC 20032-0103

>From: Larry W. Bryant
>      3518 Martha Custis Drive
>      Alexandria, VA 22302

>Date: December 4, 2004

>   Blow the Whistle on Agencies' FOIA Subversion!

>A Washington, D.C.-based independent writer focusing on
>national-security issues and official-information access has
>encountered renewed official stonewalling of certain requests
>under the U. S. Freedom of Information Act.

>This time, three agencies - the Department of the Interior, the
>Central Intelligence Agency, and the Office of Naval
>Intelligence - have chosen to deny him a records-search-fee
>waiver by ignoring his "requester status" as an independent
>writer.

>As he proceeds with judicial review of that denial, his case
>would benefit from documented knowledge that other such
>writer-requesters have experienced similar stonewalling.

>Your whistleblowing in this matter would help us all to

>(1) counter and prevent any such subversion of congressional
>intent;

>(2) restore the Act's time-honored values of wide public
>accessibility/right-to-know, agency accountability, and
>citizens' stakeholdership in governmental decisionmaking; and

>(3) strengthen all positive milestones inherent in some 30 years
>of related federal case law.

Why do you phrase your advertisments in such a deliberatly
confrontational way? Is it because you actually *want* them to
be refused in order to provide confirmation for your theories on
government censorship? If fact, from the wording above, it's not
even clear what kind of information you are seeking that might
attract "whistleblowers".

I suspect that really you're just trying to wind-up the
authorities for your own satisfaction, and I think a more
neutrally phrased advertisment might produce more productive
results.


John Rimmer

Magonia Magazine
www.magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/00/newmag.htm







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               Notice Of Imminent Legal Action Against The CIA

From: Larry W. Bryant <overtci.nul>
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 14:43:24 -0500 (EST)
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 08:21:29 -0500
Subject: Notice Of Imminent Legal Action Against The CIA


TO:   Director
         U. S. Central Intelligence Agency
         ATTN:  General Counsel
         Washington, DC  20505

FROM:  Larry W. Bryant
              3518 Martha Custis Drive
              Alexandria, VA  22302

DATE:  December 5, 2004

Your agency has had more than ample time to process and grant my
Sept. 18, 2004, appeal of the CIA FOIA coordinator's  Sept. 9,
2004, denial of my FOIA records-search-fee-waiver request of
Aug. 9, 2004 (No. F-2004-01956 -- by which I'd sought the waiver
on the grounds of my requester status as an independent writer
researching background on the "McCarthy Saga").

Having included in that appeal certain concrete, persuasive
evidence of my requester status (and having accumulated more of
the same evidence since that time), I hereby serve notice upon
you that I'm instructing my attorney, Mark S. Zaid, Esq., to
file the appropriate complaint, on my behalf, circa Dec. 27,
2004, in U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

By snail-mail, I'm sending to you a signed printout of this e-
formatted letter.



LARRY W. BRYANT

Copy furnished to:  Mark S. Zaid, Esq. (Washington, D.C.)






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                Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO

From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 17:22:00 -0400
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 08:25:02 -0500
Subject: Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO


>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 10:42:24 EST
>Subject: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO Results?

>I'm sure you've all heard of this website:

>http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ufo.html

>They obtained some documents in a brief reply when they inquired
>about UFOs from the government.

There are literally thousands of government UFO documents one
can get from the government. Many are on the Web such as at John
Greenewalt's Black Vault.

The cover statement from smoking gun is in error. The Nixon
administration did not claim we are not being visited. Blue Book
wasn't begun until after 1951 not in 1947. The USAF put out an
anuual summary sheet for many years.

Generally speaking it was quite deceptive, leaving out those
cases still under investigation, and automatically putting the
one-witness cases in the "Insufficient Information" category.
The statement put out when Blue Book was closed in December,
1969, was equally misleading


Stan Friedman







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               Re: Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield - Ledger

From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 20:54:19 -0400
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 08:42:09 -0500
Subject: Re: Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield - Ledger


>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:44:42 -0500
>Subject: UFO UpDate: Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield


>Source: MSNBC

>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6648208/

>12-03-04

>Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield

>Interceptor to be installed in California silo

>The Associated Press

>WASHINGTON - The military will install a long-range missile
>interceptor in a silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., next
>Tuesday, the Pentagon said.

>The interceptor is part of the Bush administration�s missile
>defense program, designed to shoot down incoming ballistic
>missiles fired from North Korea or elsewhere in eastern Asia.

<snip>

Just generally-and off topic. They should have one of these
systems installed to prevent another missile attack on the
Pentagon.


Don Ledger







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             Jaime Maussan Visiting Los Angeles With New Videos

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 18:40:52 EST
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 10:29:22 -0500
Subject: Jaime Maussan Visiting Los Angeles With New Videos


Hi folks,

Just got an email from Jaime Maussan. He'll be here in Los
Angeles doing a three day seminar at the Orpheus Theatre from
Fri-Sun 10-12th.

I'm waiting to hear about times and admission etc. but he says
he has lots of new videos no one has seen yet. So anybody round
these parts I may see you at the seminars.


Best,

Greg








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                           Good News For Causality

From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 18:13:39 -0800
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 10:36:54 -0500
Subject: Good News For Causality


Hello all:


Recently there was some discussion about sending signals or
information faster than light.

Here is a recent article that seems to dash that hope.

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/11/10/1


Good News For Causality

18 November 2004

Physicists in Switzerland have confirmed that information cannot
be transmitted faster than the speed of light.

Nicolas Gisin and colleagues at the University of Geneva have
shown that the "group velocity" of a laser pulse in an optical
fiber can travel faster than the speed of light but that the
"signal velocity" - the speed at which information travels -
 cannot (N. Brunner et al. 2004 Phys. Rev. Lett. 93 203902).

Two types of velocity are used to describe the propagation of a
wave in a dispersive medium: the phase velocity and the group
velocity. The phase velocity is the speed at which light of a
single wavelength moves. However, pulses of light contain a
range of wavelengths, which all move at different speeds in a
dispersive medium. The group velocity is the speed at which the
pulse moves. In particular, the energy travels at the group
velocity rather than the phase velocity.

In recent years, physicists have shown that both these
velocities can exceed the speed of light in certain situations
without breaking the laws of special relativity. This means,
therefore, that neither the group nor the phase velocity can be
used to describe the speed at which the information in the pulse
travels, and we need to define it by another velocity - the
"signal velocity". This is defined as the speed at which the
"front" of the pulse travels.

According to relativity, this speed can never exceed the speed
of light in a vacuum because, if it did, it would be equivalent
to sending the signal backwards in time, which would violate
causality.


More information at the URL above.


Best wishes

- Larry









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                            Russian UFO Documents

From: Nikolay Subbotin - RUFORS <info.nul>
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 10:26:22 +0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 19:01:21 -0500
Subject: Russian UFO Documents


New Russian research site open with military documents about
UFOs in Russia.

http://setka-mo.narod.ru


Regards,

Nikolay Subbotin,
Director RUFORS








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                   Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Chace

From: David Chace <davidwchace.nul>
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 00:03:35 -0800
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 19:04:37 -0500
Subject: Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Chace


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 10:26:41 -0000
>Subject: Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise

>>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>>Date: Saturday, December 04, 2004 2:31 PM
>>Subject: UFO UpDate: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise

>>Source: Boise Weekly

>>11-10-04

>>Saucer Bureaucracy

>>The UFO Guy Comes To Boise
>>by Nicholas Collias

>>Robert Hastings has an important news flash for Idahoans.
>>"Our military", the speaker and researcher begins, "has not
>>yet developed any aircraft that can go 2,000 miles an hour in
>>one direction, stop on a dime and reverse direction." Not a
>>surprise? This might be: thousands of craft with precisely
>>those capabilities have been spotted, tracked and sometimes
>>forcefully engaged while hovering surreptitiously around
>>America's nuclear weapons bases. You may not believe in
>>it, but your government does, and has for almost 50 years.
>>Hastings can prove that part beyond any reasonable doubt.

><snip>

>Some comments:

>1. Are there really 10,000 pages relating to government
>encounters with ETs? (Why not produce just one such page
>for us to see)

In response to point one, the government certainly has a lot of
documents relating to observations of UFOs, but whether those
documents relate to �government encounters with ETs� is a
different question.

>2. Are there really "thousands" of cases where craft
>possessing such amazing characteristics have been "spotted,
>tracked and sometimes forcefully engaged" over US nuclear
>weapons bases? (Aerial combat with ETs should be great fun!)

It depends on how you interpret the meaning of the sentence in
the context of its grammar and sentence structure. The original
statement was that thousands of such craft had been spotted,
thousands had been tracked (or perhaps both spotted and tracked)
and sometimes these craft had been forcefully engaged while
hovering around nuclear weapons bases. The sentence does not
necessarily imply that thousands of these exotic craft have been
spotted over nuclear weapons bases or tracked over nuclear
weapons bases. There are several different ways the sentence can
be interpreted and I might humbly suggest that one does not have
to automatically assume the most outlandish interpretation. Of
course, it may be that the statement was misleadingly or
ambiguously worded, which justifies some confusion, and may
constitute a reason for not taking it too seriously.

>3. Is there even one authenticated case of UFOs "crashing on
>government property"? Which government property was
>lucky enough to experience this ET visit?

I suppose it depends on who you believe, and what, exactly you
mean by "authenticated".


David W. Chace








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                    Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 09:16:25 -0800
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 19:12:46 -0500
Subject: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies


Fellow Listerions,

Having always been annoyed by the apparent hypocrisy that
Astronomers exibit (specically SETI folk)in regards to
evidence/data towards Ufology, I posed the following question to
Frank Drake:


Dear Mr. Drake,

Back in July a colleague of yours, Seth Shostak debated Stanton
Friedman on the idea that some UFOs are indeed ET spacecraft;
Friedman took the "pro position" and Shostak of course opposed
the notion.

One thing the two men agreed upon was that they both adhered to
the concept of =93intelligent life existing in the universe.=94 As
the debate progressed Shostak took issue with the evidence that
Ufologists in general present for their theorem=97this brings me
to my question:

It would seem that most of the ideologies presented today from
=93mainstream Astronomers=94 e.g., extra-solar planets, rogue
planets, black holes etc., are based on =93circumstantial
evidence=94; for example, the idea of =93extra-solar planets=94 is
deduced by a =93star=92s wobble=94; my observation, as well as the
question, is why the guidelines for Astronomers in regards to
evidence is acceptable in =93their field=94 but they won=92t apply the
same rules to Ufology.

I would certainly appreciate your thoughts on the =93evidence or
data methodologies=94 used in Astronomy, and why said
methodologies
don=92t seem to be adequate for Ufology.

Thank You,
Respectfully,
Frank Warren

---

He replied:

Hi:

Well, it is hard to give a short answer to your query.

However, the rules of evidence for mainstream astronomy and
UFOlogy are actually the same. In both cases we look for well-
observed, calibrated data, which can be verified by repeat
observations or experiments, best done by more than one
observer.

All the astronomical claims of actual existence you mention are
supported by such solid, repeatable evidence. The wobbles in
stars are seen to repeat, and to follow a complicated pattern
which fits precisely the wobble expected when a star is being
pulled on by a planet moving with a changing speed in an
elliptical orbit. This is a very definitive requirement, which
is met precisely by the observations. Furthermore, in some cases
there is more than the wobble to go on -- the light of the star
is decreased by just the right amount and with the complex time
history expected if the planet passes in front of the star.

And it repeats as it should. So there is no doubt here.

Some things are still speculations, of course. Rogue planets are
one. There are no observations of such a planet. But it is fair
to speculate they exist from our growing modeling of what takes
place as a planetary system is formed, and the prediction from
this modeling that some planets will be ejected from the system.
Indeed, it would be amazing if this did not occur.

When it comes to UFO reports, none of the evidence criterion are
satisfied. No observations can be repeated. None has ever been
definitively recorded. So the rigid standards of science are far
from met. As Carl Sagan said, "Grand claims require grand
evidence", and that evidence is not there.

Frank Drake

---

I replied:

FW: Dear Mr. Drake,

Thank you for you for your expeditious reply to my inquiry.

FD: Hi:

Well, it is hard to give a short answer to your query. Actually
I was looking forward to a "detailed explanation." However, the
rules of evidence for mainstream astronomy and UFOlogy are
actually the same. In both cases we look for well-observed,
calibrated data, which can be verified by repeat observations or
experiments, best done by more than one observer.

FW: Allow me to play devil's advocate based on your affirmation
of equality in regards to evidentiary protocol of Astronomy and
Ufology.

FD: All the astronomical claims of actual existence you mention
are supported by such solid, repeatable evidence. The wobbles in
stars are seen to repeat, and to follow a complicated pattern
which fits precisely the wobble expected when a star is being
pulled on by a planet moving with a changing speed in an
elliptical orbit. This is a very definitive requirement, which
is met precisely by the observations. Furthermore, in some cases
there is more than the wobble to go on - the light of the star
is decreased by just the right amount and with the complex time
history expected if the planet passes in front of the star. And
it repeats as it should. So there is no doubt here.

FW: To be clear, (from a layman's [me] point of view) since we
have "empirical evidence" of our own sun's orbit presumably
being affected by the gravity (pull) of Jupiter (and other large
planets in our own solar system), and the orbit (wobble) seems
to be directly proportional to the mass of said planet; we
therefore can presume the "same effect" takes place in other
solar systems, with their stars, and although we cannot see the
planets, we can observe the wobble, via "Doppler Shift" etc.
Since the "wobble" is directly proportional to the "mass of a
planet" (at least it appears to be here, in our solar system) we
can determine the mass of said planet by mathematical equation.

In addition to the wobble of a distant star, going on the
assumption that it is indeed a planet's gravity causing the
wobble, one could assume that if said planet were to cross
between the earth and the star being observed, the light from
the star would be measurably diminished.

You finally, state, that "there is no doubt here." I take that
to mean that this is going "beyond theory" and is accepted as
fact... interesting.

First I'd like to state that the "circumstantial (indirect)
evidence" put on the table for "extra-solar planets" is more
then enough "for me," for validation of their existence;
however, playing "Devil's Advocate":

1). Can we state emphatically that there aren't "other forces"
in the universe that aren't currently known that would "mimic
the pull" caused by gravity of a "Jupiter sized planet?" Could
another "space borne" object of the same mass cause the wobble?

2). Are there other actions that could affect "Doppler Shift,"
or any other form of detection in the same manner that "star
wobble" does, e.g., pulsations etc.?

3). Given the fact that the most detection methods of "extra-
solar planets" is relatively new, (with technology expanding by
leaps and bounds) and not without controversy, i.e.,( "Barnard's
Star and possible planetary bodies, David Gray's disputation of
51 Peg,") isn't possible that either "new information" could
surface, or the interpretation of the data may change, and
affect the current conclusions?

IMHO if the answers to any of the afore mentioned questions is
"unknown" or "it's possible," then that would leave "some"
doubt, albeit little to the "absolute existence" of extra-solar
planets based on the current methodologies used for their
reality; that said, what we're left with is strong
"circumstantial evidence" in support of the "theory" of extra-
solar planets."

FD: Some things are still speculations, of course. Rogue planets
are one. There are no observations of such a planet. But it is
fair to speculate they exist from our growing modeling of what
takes place as a planetary system is formed, and the prediction
from this modeling that some planets will be ejected from the
system. Indeed, it would be amazing if this did not occur.
Agreed. When it comes to UFO reports, none of the evidence
criterion are satisfied. No observations can be repeated. None
has ever been definitively recorded. So the rigid standards of
science are far from met. As Carl Sagan said, "Grand claims
require grand evidence", and that evidence is not there.

Frank Drake

FW: Here I have to respectfully disagree; you stated that the
criterion for the rules of evidence for mainstream astronomy and
UFOlogy are actually the same. In both cases we look for:

1). Well-observed, calibrated data.

2). Verification by repeat observations or experiments.

3). Multiple observers.

First let me clarify some points: The bulk of UFO reports over
the last 60 years after thorough investigation, can be
attributed to more conventional explanations, e.g., known
aircraft, celestial bodies etc.; however, the ones addressed
here are the smaller percentage that cannot be explained in a
conventional manner.

The ones I speak of are of an "unknown airborne craft" that
exhibit characteristics beyond man-made technologies. It is
true, that this phenomena can't for the most part be repeated
"on demand" it is a "transient uncontrollable unpredictable
event"; however, it certainly does repeat, and observations are
to numerous to count. It of course isn't the same as observing a
"fixed celestial body" and doesn't have the same obvious
advantages for scientific research. It does/has re-occurred,
often, and can/has been recorded in a number of ways to allow
for scientific investigation; for example:

1). In most cases involving a "craft" there is "direct
evidence," i.e., "eye witnesses.

2). The craft "occupies space."

3). It moves as time passes.

4). It emits "thermal effects."

5). It exhibits light emission and absorption.

6). It effects the atmosphere.

7). It can be photographed.

8). It has left residual "after-effects," i.e., forensic
evidence etc.

9). It has caused electric, magnetic and gravitational
disorders.

10). It has been tracked by radar

The list goes on . . .

You've stated that none (UFOs) have been "definitively
recorded." This is inaccurate. UFOs, in this instance "unknown
craft" have been photographed, video taped, tracked by radar,
and those readings recorded. In addition, they have been pursued
by "our aircraft," and those of other countries.

Finally, "all" the criterion you cite for evidence have been met
for Ufology with one more addition, "eye witnesses." One only
need to look at the data. This is not to say that all the
questions have been answered; in fact, it evokes this one--"why
doesn't Ufology receive that attention it deserves from
mainstream science?"

You quoted one of Carl Sagan's often used statements; I might
add that he also said, " In physics, as in much of all science,
there are no permanent truths; there is a set of approximations,
getting closer and closer, and people must always be ready to
revise what has been in the past thought to be the absolute
gospel truth."

But back to the quote you mention, "grand claims require grand
evidence." Is what Ufologists suggest so grand, so far out? By
your own device, ("Drake's Equation") you suggest the number of
planets in our galaxy with intelligent, technological
civilizations. Is it so far out that one of these civilizations
is far more advanced then we, and have mastered space travel; or
travel in ways beyond our comprehension. Using our own
technological advancement as a baseline we have progressed in a
few generations to what only our ancestors could describe as
"magic" given some examples; think what might and most assuredly
would happen in thousands of years, or more! I've always found
it odd that intelligent people admit to advance ETI, yet believe
that when it comes to traveling to earth--they (ET) "played
hooky" from that class!

Omitting the evidence, the data, for a moment (regarding
Ufology) and agreeing on the common point(s) that there is
"abundant intelligent life in the universe," the question is not
"are they here," but "why wouldn't they be?

I would like to hear your thoughts on what I've presented, as
well as my last question if you would be so kind.

Thank you for your attention to this matter, and I look forward
to your response.

Sincerely,

Frank Warren

---

I am still awaiting a response from Mr. Drake to my last
e-mail.









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   Dec > Dec 6

                      Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 10:22:09 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 19:14:22 -0500
Subject: Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield


>From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
>To:  ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 20:54:19 -0400
>Subject: Re: Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield

>>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>>Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 09:44:42 -0500
>>Subject: UFO UpDate: Pentagon Expanding Missile Shield

>>The interceptor is part of the Bush administration's missile
>>defense program, designed to shoot down incoming ballistic
>>missiles fired from North Korea or elsewhere in eastern Asia.

>Just generally-and off topic. They should have one of these
>systems installed to prevent another missile attack on the
>Pentagon.

Generally, you don't want to use a ballistic missile to shoot
down a commercial aircraft (I assume this was the "another
missile attack on the Pentagon" you are referring to). I assume
if commercial aircraft are used again, then hopefully we shall
have our act together and shoot down the aircraft with
jets/antiaircraft missiles mounted on the Pentagon. Given the
proximity of D.C. airports, the latter will likely be required.

However, although the ballistic missile defense will help
protect the porn-belt (Calipornia), if such enemy ballistic
missiles are launched from ship near the East Coast then they
cannot be stopped.


[End of thread, please --ebk]







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               Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -

From: Will Bueche <willbueche.nul>
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 07:23:09 -0800 (PST)
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 19:18:09 -0500
Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 17:40:37 +0000
>Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 08:13:20 -0500
>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB

<snip>

>Why do you phrase your advertisments in such a deliberatly
>confrontational way? Is it because you actually *want* them to
>be refused in order to provide confirmation for your theories
>government censorship? If fact, from the wording above, it's not
>even clear what kind of information you are seeking that might
>attract "whistleblowers".

>I suspect that really you're just trying to wind-up the
>authorities for your own satisfaction, and I think a more
>neutrally phrased advertisment might produce more productive
>results.

Exactly. I feel his effort, such as it is, creates the
impression that only lone cranks believe in such causes.

Beyond that, I've tried to criticise his evident lack of
familiarity with how to buy ad space, which needs to be
mentioned simply because it reveals exactly what you said - that
he has no intent of actually buying ad space, he just likes to
provoke editors and give editors the impression that the whole
subject of UFOs and alien entities is purely the province of
cranks, something to be dismissed.

So many other approaches would be more productive. He noted, in
one of his commentless-posts to this list (the lack of comments
being yet more evidence that he doesn't actually care to engage
the subject in a meaningful way), that he's only ever managed to
place one ad in all these years. So it seems to be an affordable
hobby for him.








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   Dec > Dec 6

               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 10:45:12 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 19:28:36 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 07:34:09 -0600
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>I'm not laughing. Friedman's noisome negativists transcended
>laughter decades ago when they colluded to destroy (murder?)

Regarding my being considered a noisome negativist, I wish to
clear up this matter. If I was a negativist then I would
recommend that we not try any _any_ space faring tricks until we
(as humans) have gotten our house in order. How well do we
create new technologies! But we have hardly made any advance
regarding morality, ethics, spirit and soul! Why not? Because
there is more money in tech than those other aspects of life.

Since we are likely to misuse any new tech (and moving asteroids
around is definitely open to the possibility of them being used
as weapons and for world-wide blackmail), then I say (if I was a
"negativist") that we should not give the evil ones of our world
another way to harm the innocents.

Data supporting such a negativist view would be the lack of
concern in the Mars human mission community about harming Mars
life forms and Earth life forms by having us go, _in_person_, to
Mars and back again. How can Martian life be protected from
human life once we have humans there? We can't burn off or
irradiate an astronaut; and containment of human cells/Earth
cohabitating life forms cannot be guaranteed, I don't care what
the technology is! If the astronauts don't land then there is
some hope, but then the dreamers won't stand for that.

Visa versa, we _have_ to bring the astronauts back, right? But
then the problem exists of the astronauts having been exposed to
dust/Martian life(?). The Apollo astronauts were covered with
moon dust. Hopefully, since they did not die, then we can assume
they did not bring back deadly life (although, did we know
anything about the dormancy of such life or what its behavior
pattern was?). The same can hold for Mars except that Mars
actually might have life (the radiation on the Moon _should_ have
killed it off).

So if I was a negativist, I would say to stop work on Mars human
missions. But rather, what I say is the realist's viewpoint, if
there is some useful purpose to going to Mars or space (not
science for science's sake) and it makes economic sense (food
versus science) and we will not kill life (Mars or Earth), then
lets do it!








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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 09:58:35 -0600
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 19:31:45 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 12:32:12 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 07:34:09 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 13:47:28 -0600
>>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>Boy, you sure know how to quench the fire in a dream.

>>>...and to what purpose, actually... and how effective, in the
>>>aggregate, that "wet blanket"? Who was instructed, educated, or
>>>otherwise elevated? Who was inspired? Who felt better? And
>>>finally, who acts just like that learned but forgettable spawn
>>>of dismissive scientism who proclaimed we'd never get on the
>>>moon because we'd never be able to generate enough power to
>>>leave the gravity well? He was an effective wet blanket, too.
>>>Thankfully, not effective enough. Moreover, my fire still roars.
>>>I suspect yours does, too, Sir.

>Realism, Sir... realism. Don't promise more than you can
>deliver. If you wish to live in a dream world, fine. Opium dens
>were popular in decades past, Sir.

One man's cheese is another man's rotted milk, Mr. Smith. I
suspect that that 'realism' you too confidently define has a
fuzzier definition than you would insist for it, and your, then
fatuous, appeal for it is as constructive as you mocking my
small insistence for a little formality in contention. The
point, Sir, is that I'm not going to be confined by the little
two-color dreamworld you don't cop to and to which you'd
fallaciously refer to as a 'standard'. That 'standard' is in
default.

Moreover - I'm forever bemused by a class of rigid ideologue who
pirouettes around expressed points (however poetic, Sir) while
they fill the opposition's mouth with words not their own,
attack the opposition's character, mock respectful style, and
reflexively label their opposition as misled, misleading, or
mentally ill. Finally, _I_ am the delivery on all my 'promises,'
Mr. Smith. You might discover this to your consternation.

>>>To borrow and mangle a well-turned phrase... 'You look at things
>>>that are and say why?, and I (and others) look at things that
>>>never were and say 'Why not?'.

>>I think it entirely likely the gentleman is not asking anything
>>he feels he might not have a 'safe' answer for. Another of those
>>unfortunate souls who hasn't discovered it's answers,
>>ultimately, that are the _least_ important. It's always been the
>>quality _question_ has the superiority.

>Dreams that cannot be translated into practical reality are
>meaningless entertainment. Perhaps profitable if put into
>books or TV shows though.

I won't be leaving what constitutes a 'dream' up to you Mr.
Smith. Nor what can be translated into 'practical reality and
what 'meaningless' means. I think I'd rather poll a channeled
Harry Anslinger on the morality of medical marijuana.

Forgetting for a moment that your response had nothing to do
with what provoked it, and was a blurted empty rejoinder with
the conversational power of an, "oh yeah," your too confident
bravado demonstrates only that you are easy to rile and
therefore not really all that confident about the correctness of
your own less that supportable position... such as it is.

>>>Besides, I believe neither of us placed a timetable on the idea
>>>Nor are we the first to suggest it.

>>What do we want? Reach and Grasp! When do we want it? ...Now.
>>Anytime is always the first time because it might be the _last_
>>time... more Zen... sorry.

>Practicality rules. Feed the masses first, then move on to dream
>entertainment spots off world.

And now an appeal to 'practicality' thinly suggesting that your
specious wet-blanket world-view must be the superior method to
end even world hunger... when it might be observed that that is
only additional evidence how far in default said worldview
really is. Astonishing arrogance. Moreover, I suspect your
'practicality' has the same kind of self-involved definition
that your 'realism' does above.

>>>I'm beginning to understand what Stan means when he talks about
>>>Noisy Negativists. <LOL>

>>I'm not laughing. Friedman's noisome negativists transcended
>>laughter decades ago when they colluded to destroy (murder?)
>>James McDonald, confabulate history, and hijack the mainstream
>>to facilitate the psycopathic unelected. Moreover, a reality
>>that does not carry James McDonald around on a little three
>>cornered velvet cushion is not a realty I want to have any part
>>of, and a reality that I will work tirelessly to discredit,
>>deride, and eventually disgrace.

>I'll pass since I cannot decode your meaning.

Uh-huh... That's the ususally cop-out... we could go word for
word if you wanted to.

>>>Your points are all very well presented, and likely accurate in
>>>the main, but this is something that both Alfred and I believe
>>>not to be happening in our lifetimes,

>>Speak for yourself, Sir! I _may_ be doomed to a disappointment
>>that is likely, but I _expect_ the whole planet to start feeling
>>the affects [sic] of our accelerating 'propensity' _well_ within
>>my lifetime; a lifetime, by the way, that might not have to end
>>as a result of a biological necessity... and that's Mr.
>>Lehmberg, Mr. King, remember. [g].

>Whooo! Downloading your brain into a computer eh? You may still
>experience the "blue screen of death" though! It is somewhat
>amusing to me to think we may be able to install Alfred Lehmberg
>Verison 9.1 on our computers in the future and be regaled by a
>fount of wisdom and obscurities.

I was talking about genetics and stem cell research, Mr. Smith.
Maybe you hadn't heard...

And forgetting for a moment I'm beyond surprise at what
'practical persons' such as yourself can suck up out of their
avian thumbs (to place in the mouths of their opposition), one
should remember that mocking insult falls decidedly short in any
debate, Sir, says more about the insulting than the insulted,
and is a great example of not working and playing well with
others. In short, it lacks maturity, Mr. Smith.

>>>but on a timeline one
>>>might call ideal, where the thirst... no... the need for
>>>knowledge trumps any monetary imperative, where the quest for
>>>truth is judged by its potential rather than its cost alone, and
>>>where those who presume the preposterous are called innovators
>>>rather than spendthrifts.

>>Gandhi said you had to _be_ the changes you expected around you.
>>Mr. Smith might take your lesson. Hell, _should_ take your
>>lesson.

>Right. Well, I can really see _that_ is working well.

Yes - it's obvious to the _remotely_ sentient that the
aforementioned works exceptionally well. In fact, it has only
_ever_ been the actions of individuals with efficacious
conviction or we'd still be living in caves and eating bushes.
It's the only thing keeping your 'science', 'realism', and
'practicality' alive, Mr. Smith.

>If you think
>this a real Universe operating premise, then it seems the best
>we can ever accomplish is a stalemate or stagnation because half
>want one thing and half the other (unless you look at the
>scenario of every one for themselves).

I'm only astonished you don't see that yourself, Mr. Smith.
Moreover, everyone _is_ alone and on their own, at the whim of
idiots, and a guarantee that the only justice they will ever see
around themselves is that which they insist upon. To prove that
for yourself just have an original idea of your own, sometime.

>>>But you're probably right. <g>

>>No, Sir. He couldn't be more wrong - arrogantly in letter, in an
>>altogether meager paucity of facts and yet-to-be-discredited
>>conventional wisdoms, and _certainly_ in spirit. Wet blankets
>>are a retrograde mechanism with little utility, usually an axe
>>to grind, and ultimately forgettable. I was unmoved, just
>>annoyed, and definitely not laughing.

>Sorry to poke at your bubble, Sir.

...Sorry you've pulled back a nub, too?

>I am not writing
>inspirational poetry/prose, such as yours.

It inspires _me_, Mr. Smith. It's the only inspiration that's
required, after all. Those who hop on board for the ride are
welcome, of course. They'll get more respect from me than you, I
suspect, Sir.

>I operate in a hard-
>edged real world of practicality.

I think you operate in a world of self-defined edges, are
unmindful of the huge gaps in unsatisfactory and limited senses,
and are childishly threatened by intellectual diversity and
different ideas. I think you call all this 'practicality'
because you're scared, and whistling past your graveyard.

>When I dream, I extrapolate a path to implement the dream.

No - you just whistle louder, Sir.

>If I am simply dreaming for
>entertainment's sake, then the sky is the limit.

Everything you have, utilize, and think about was a discounted
dream once... where even the sky provided _no_ limit, Mr. Smith.
You, yourself, stand on shoulders you don't recognize, you're
drunk on your own limited hubris, and you are unaware that
everything you think you know is likely wrong, Sir.

>But it is of
>little use (except as I said you want to entertain the masses).

And you ought to have a little more respect for the 'masses,'
too, Mr. Smith. We heat your water in ways I don't think you
recognize, accept, or even perceive.

>If you are annoyed at my lack of facts, I am sorry. I could
>spend time doing all the calculations and digging out old
>reports, but to what avail, Sir?

I was pretty clear regarding what makes your attitude an
annoyance, Mr. Smith. You chose instead to insult my character,
impugn my sensibility, and mock my style. 'Calculations' and
'Reports' notwithstanding, as these are likely canted mechanisms
of the same type that 'proved' we'd never have the power to
leave the gravity well... they won't _a_-vail because you don't
_pre_-vail.

>Dream on... dream on!

Have a dream...Sir. Have a dream!


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







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   Dec > Dec 6

                   Re: Good News For Causality - Reynolds

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 11:27:36 -0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 19:35:25 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality - Reynolds


>From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
>To: Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 18:13:39 -0800
>Subject: Good News For Causality

>Recently there was some discussion about sending signals or
>information faster than light.

>Here is a recent article that seems to dash that hope.

>http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/11/10/1

>Good News For Causality

>18 November 2004

<snip>

But Larry:

Lots of variables here....

Laser light, fiber optics, "information," et cetera.

This limits possibilties for other "things" to move faster than
the speed of light.

There could be artifacts which are not comprised of "signal
velocities" or "phase velocities."

And isn't it possible for a single wavelength - which can
travel faster than light - to contain "information"?

In the spirit of some here at UFO Updates, lets leave open
possibilities and not be constrained by a few phycisists who
have a mind-set keeping them shackled to archaic views and a
misplaced homage to the great Einsten's theories.


Rich Reynolds








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                Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Smith

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 13:08:28 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 07:42:32 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Smith


>From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 06:35:58 -0800
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:33:07 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:47:52 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>>Objects carrying biological crews of roughly human size would be
>>>of necessity, colossal, as all interstellar journeys will be
>>>ones of permanent exile. To maintain a reliable breeding
>>>population over many generations of travel and building colonies
>>>would probably require a population of around 10,000 minimum,
>>>plus complete self sustaining biosphere

You cannot judge how such a design would look like or what the
requirements are, based on advanced alien tech. Can you
extrapolate human tech 1000 years advanced from ours? No.
However, based on our primitive understanding of nanotechnology,
we can hypothesize infinite lifespans, no need for breeding,
near 100% energy efficiency (esp ecially in food). Who needs a
biosphere? Nanotech can be used to convert energy to food.

As to the exile bit, there may not even be a sense of home other
than the space ship. So they may not feel exiled. Also, again,
although WE can't circumvent the speed of light limitation yet,
you never know what 1000yr+ tech can do.

>How about completely robotic and (nearly) autonomous probes sent
>thousands of years ago to study life bearing planets? Is that
>too ridiculous? I don't think so. It need not be dull. Some
>'cyborg' or whatever could blow a fuse, get captured and reveal
>a few of its secrets.

You need some personality in your robots to make a good movie.
Robots are generally dull. Note the Lost in Space series. When
it started the robot was without personality and was boring.
When it developed some personality it was more interesting.
There have been a few movies with robot explorers with
personality.

In reality, it may not be ridiculous, who can tell with
infinitely long lived "species"?

>I think its wrong to blame all of ufology for the sins of
>Hollywood. Some of us sure, but count me out. Not all of us
>require living alien beings with all the horrible mess and
>luggage they would need. Dirty diapers? Ooof!

For one thing, aliens, if they exist, may ooze or squirt in
their own natural way, so why prejudge what is natural for them?
Anyway, I suspect they would have used advanced tech to handle
all the messiness, especially of dealing with local
viruses/bacteria (and visa versa), such that you can probably
eat off them (not that you would of course).

>My personal opinion is that ET (assuming ET exists and found
>Earth) would be to send highly intelligent cybernetic probes to
>do their scientific legwork.

Possible. Or more simply, just transmit a signal containing a
"life form" that uses our computers to live and take action.

>If I were ET, I wouldn't miss a minute of the "Earth Show'. I'd
>send more devices, better ones.
>Good probes should be cheap and easy for any civilized
>and forward looking alien couch potato.

Possible. Saw this on South Park. Would be kind of disappointing
that their concept of entertainment would be no more advanced
than ours however.








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               Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 18:57:27 +0000
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 07:44:21 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson


>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 16:40:33 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 18:28:01 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>I had previously asked Peter why he assumed that interstellar
>journeys would necessarily involve permanent exile. He replied:

>>Because even if you could slow down crew time by hyper-
>>relatvistic velocieties (and there are more problems with that
>>than are usually considered such as the growing density of
>>cosmic dust and the blue shifting of incoming light due to
>>forshortening of the space ahead of the spaceship) huge amounts
>>of time would have passed back home. Of course we can imagine
>>vast conservative civilizations where language and mores don't
>>change over centuries and millennia, but these tend not to go in
>>for exploration

>I'm afraid I don't find this argument very convincing. For one
>thing, it assumes that all space-traveling aliens will have more
>or less human lifetimes and human social organization, which,
>given your previous comments about cultural chauvinism, is
>rather odd. (Indeed, writings about ETs generally seem to assume
>the latter, even to the extent of assuming they will share our
>primate sense of social hierarchy - why else do we have the
>expression "Take me to your leader?"

No Only those very very rare aliens sufficiently physically and
psychologically similar to us to be engaged on more or less the
same projects as us.

>More than that, though, you assume that the capabilities of any
>future technology can be delineated in terms of present-day
>knowledge, which seems to me a contradiction in terms.  For
>example, the atom bomb could not have been determined to exist
>within the terms of nineteenth-century physics, because it
>violates what was then thought to be a physical law (the
>Conservation of Matter). Of course, as we unfortunately know all
>too well, nineteenth-century physics would have been wrong.

Only for the sake of making the ETH somehow definable. Explaning
things inn terms of unknown wills possessing unknown powers and
having unknown motives just isn't science. We gave that up 300
years or so ago

>>Yes. That puts a finger on one problem with the sort of
>>explanations that ufologists come up with. However exotic, they
>>are products of our own or past cultures.

><snip>

>>All of this makes my point about the uselessness of the ETH as
>>an explantion for UFO reports. Explaning anomalous experiences
>>by referring to something we don't even know exists, let alone
>>what its properties and capacities are is pointless.

>Always in science we proceed by postulating the existence of
>things we don't know - that's the nature of hypotheses. The
>question is whether the hypotheses can be meaningfully tested or
>not. I agree with you that the ETH fails this test at the
>moment. The problem is, so does every other hypothesis. They are
>all, by definition, products of our own and previous cultures.
>So you appear to be saying that UFOs are a metaphysical
>phenomenon beyong the capacities of current science. That may be
>so, but I hope we aren't going to give up trying.

But that's the logic of your own argument, simply calling that
unknown metaphysical phenomenon an ET with a technology like
magic doesn't alter things at all.

My feeling is that we should simply ditch trying to explain
apparent anomalies by invoking non human intelligences of any
description whatever.


Peter Rogerson








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   Dec > Dec 7

                          Secrecy News -- 12/06/04

From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood.nul>
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 14:23:44 -0500
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 07:46:47 -0500
Subject: Secrecy News -- 12/06/04


SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2004, Issue No. 108
December 6, 2004


**   ISOO: DECEMBER 2006 DECLASSIFICATION DEADLINE "AT RISK"
**   LAW ENFORCEMENT INTELLIGENCE GUIDE
**   LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SIGNS AGREEMENT WITH LIBRARY OF IRAN
**   DHS NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS STIR CONCERN
**   SAFEGUARDING SENSITIVE SECURITY INFORMATION
**   DATA MINING (CRS)


ISOO: DECEMBER 2006 DECLASSIFICATION DEADLINE "AT RISK"

A December 2006 deadline set by President Bush for the automatic
declassification of most 25 year old classified documents may be
missed by "a significant number of [executive branch] agencies,"
the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) said last week
in a special report to the President.

"Based on this year's initial data, ... we estimate that there
are 260 million pages of classified national security
information that must be declassified, exempted, or referred to
other agencies by December 31, 2006," the new ISOO report
stated.

"We believe, for the most part, that the Executive branch is
progressing toward fulfilling its responsibilities for these
records by the initial deadline, although a significant number
of agencies remain at risk of not meeting it."

"There is some concern that 2 agencies [Army and Navy], which
together account for 33 percent of the total, will not be
prepared. Both agencies have strong declassification programs,
but require additional resources to guarantee that they will
meet the deadline," ISOO said.

"There is significant risk that 4 agencies [Commerce, Energy,
NASA and Treasury], which collectively account for 16 percent of
the total, will not be prepared."

"Settings deadlines for declassification increases the potential
release of formerly classified information to the general public
and researchers, enhancing our knowledge of our democratic
institutions and our history, while at the same time ensuring
that information which can cause damage to national security
continues to be protected. An agency's failure to fully
implement the automatic declassification provisions of your
Order undermines its ability to achieve these dual objectives,"
ISOO wrote in its report to the President.

The November 30 report was released on the ISOO web site
(www.archives.gov/isoo) and a copy is posted here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/isoo/2004declass.pdf

"With the onset of automatic declassification just about 2 years
away, I thought it important to conduct an assessment with
respect to where individual agencies are at in meeting their
responsibilities in this area," said ISOO director William
Leonard.  "This special report attempts to do just that and
provides a baseline from which we can measure future progress."


LAW ENFORCEMENT INTELLIGENCE GUIDE

The Justice Department Office of Community Policing Services has
prepared a new Law Enforcement Intelligence Guide "to help law
enforcement agencies develop or enhance their intelligence
capacity."

The new Guide "should prove instrumental in fighting terrorism
and other crimes while preserving hard-won community policing
relationships," the Justice Department said.

The Guide covers the gamut of legal, operational, historical and
other policy considerations governing the conduct of
intelligence in support of law enforcement.

Authored by David L. Carter of Michigan State University, it
displays somewhat greater awareness of the limitations of
intelligence and the potential for abuse than is evident in some
other government products.

The Guide also appears to go beyond current policy to advocate
the broadest possible distribution of "intelligence" information
consistent with protection of intelligence sources and methods:

"Intelligence reports, bulletins, and advisories must be broadly
disseminated to all persons who can use the information
effectively....Without effective dissemination, much of the
value of intelligence is lost. All too often, patrol officers,
private security, and citizens are excluded from dissemination."
(p. 90)

Secrecy News is cited as one of a dozen or so "online
newsletters of reliable organizations" that intelligence
managers can use to monitor "emerging issues, technologies and
trends." (pp. 103-4).  The author prudently adds that "As is the
case with any information, a newsletter will reflect the agenda
of its sponsor."

A copy of the Law Enforcement Intelligence Guide, November 2004,
is posted here (thanks to www.resourceshelf.com):

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/lei/index.html


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SIGNS AGREEMENT WITH LIBRARY OF IRAN

At a time when the governments of the U.S. and Iran are
otherwise estranged, the Library of Congress has reached an
unusual cooperative agreement with the National Library of Iran
to engage in a mutual exchange of resource materials.

The agreement was signed during a recent visit to Tehran by
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, a trip that was
instigated by the private group Catalytic Diplomacy (Secrecy
News, 11/03/04).

The text of the agreement was published in a November 30 news
release from the Library of Congress, copied here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2004/11/loc-iran.html


DHS NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS STIR CONCERN

A drumbeat of concern continues to build over a Department of
Homeland Security policy requiring employees to sign non-
disclosure agreements for access to certain unclassified
information.

The DHS policy "creates an environment exactly opposite, I
think, [from] what we're trying to do in the name of information
sharing," Information Security Oversight Office director William
Leonard told Federal Times.

"It creates an environment of uncertainty. And in an environment
of uncertainty, most people resort to a default position of 'Do
not share, because otherwise I might inadvertently violate a
rule or regulation or a regime that I'm not even familiar
with'," he said.

See "Searches and gag orders: Homeland Security's unprecedented
campaign cloaks unclassified info," by Eileen Sullivan, the lead
story in this week's Federal Times, dated December 6:

http://federaltimes.com/


SAFEGUARDING SENSITIVE SECURITY INFORMATION

The requirements for protection of "sensitive security
information," which refers to transportation security-related
information that may not be publicly disclosed, are set forth in
a 2003 policy memorandum newly released by the Transportation
Security Administration under the Freedom of Information Act.

See "Interim Sensitive Security Information (SSI) Policies and
Procedures for Safeguarding and Control," TSA, October 8, 2003:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/ssi-safeguard.pdf


DATA MINING (CRS)

"Data mining is emerging as one of the key features of many
homeland security initiatives," a recent report from the
Congressional Research Service observes.

"Often used as a means for detecting fraud, assessing risk, and
product retailing, data mining involves the use of data analysis
tools to discover previously unknown, valid patterns and
relationships in large data sets. In the context of homeland
security, data mining is often viewed as a potential means to
identify terrorist activities, such as money transfers and
communications, and to identify and track individual terrorists
themselves, such as through travel and immigration records."

"While data mining represents a significant advance in the type
of analytical tools currently available, there are limitations
to its capability. One limitation is that although data mining
can help reveal patterns and relationships, it does not tell the
user the value or significance of these patterns. These types of
determinations must be made by the user."

See "Data Mining: An Overview," updated May 3, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL31798.pdf




_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to
secrecy_news-request.nul
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.

OR email your request to saftergood.nul

Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html

Secrecy News has an RSS feed at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.rss

_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web:    www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email:  saftergood.nul
voice:  (202) 454-4691







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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 7

                 NWSURC Recently Reported Sightings 12-06-04

From: Barb Campbell <nwsurc.nul>
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 14:23:56 -0500 (EST)
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 07:54:30 -0500
Subject: NWSURC Recently Reported Sightings 12-06-04


Northwest Saskatchewan UFO Research Center (NWSURC)

Recently Reported Sightings 12-06-046


Twin Tailed Sphere Seen In Ellendale, Minnesota

Date: mid October 2004
Time: 2:00 pm
Location: Ellendale, MN
Objects: 1
Witnesses: 1
Duration: 3 minutes

Report received via online form:

I was heading south towards Ellendale, MN. I was driving a Chevy
Impala with tinted windshield. I looked up into the sky and
noticed what I at first thought was a jet very high in the
easterly sky. I looked again and thought that something about it
wasn't right.

The part that should be the plane was huge for the height the
object was. And the contrails were short and further apart than
a regular jet.

I live in fly-over land, so I know a jet when I see one. The
object that should have been the plane, looked like an oval or
round shape and it was white. Until I saw the photo that was
taken in Canada of a simiular object I thought what I had seen
was an meteror.


Further information

Hi Barb,

Thank you for your quick response to my sighting. I would like
to help you. I will try to answer your questions the best that I
can remember.

I am referring to the same photo in Canada you sent me. The
objects are very similar. The contrails were not quite as wide
apart as the trails in your file photo, but the part that should
have been a plane was definitely not. It was more like a round
object. That's why I thought I had just seen a daytime meteor
until I found your web site.

I re-thought my direction of travel. I was actually heading east
towards Ellendale, MN. I looked up and saw the object heading in
almost true north. It seemed to be moving faster than a jet
would be traveling at that altitude. Also from where I was
observing it was moving across the sky from the south. The time
of day would be around 2:30pm in early October.

I pulled my car off to the side of the road and watched it for 2
to 3 minutes wishing I had my video cam with me. I finally lost
site of it after clouds blocked my view.

I have one other similar object to report that I saw just 2
weeks ago. I did not take notice of it as much because I assumed
it was another daytime meteor.

I was in Owatonna, MN in an Wal-Mart parking lot in my car
waiting for my wife to pickup a couple of things. I was facing
the west, time of day was roughly 4pm. I saw the same type of
object with similar contrails, it caught my attention again
because it was not shaped like a jet. It was round or oval
bright white and very high in the sky heading straight east. I
followed it for about 45 - 60 seconds, I remember looking away
from it for just a second and it was gone. I got out of my car
to find it, but it had vanished, no contrail signs, nothing.
Then I looked around to see if anyone else had seen it, but I
saw nobody looking up into the sky.

When I was a kid about 10, I remember playing with some
motorized cars at the elementary school basketball court. The
clouds were low and broken. I remember I looked up at the sky
for just a few seconds and saw an oval shaped shiny object with
two fins on the back and a box sitting between the two fins. No
one else saw it. I was living in northern California at the time
in a town called Grass Valley. It sits in the foothills of the
Sierra Nevada's. It was one of those things you just never
forget.

I hope I have been able to help you.

Please let me know if you are able to find anything out about
these sightings. And I will be carrying a camera of some kind
with me from now on.

Thank you

Thank you to the witness.

Barb's note: the Canadian photo the witness was referring to is
NWSURC File# SSR-04-14

Link http://www.nwsurc.com/ssr-04-14.htm
email: hbccufo.nul Website: http://www.hbccufo.com Redirect:
http://www.canadianufo.com HBCC UFO RESEARCH Newsletter At:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HBCC_UFO_Newsletter/

HBCC UFO Research, Box 1091 Houston, British Columbia, Canada - VOJ
1ZO

Thanks to Brian Vike for this report.



NWSURC UFO Hoax Photo Cleared Up

November 10, 2004 I received an email with a photo in question
attached. The witness stated that an object appeared on the photo at
the time of development, which was not seen at the time the photo
was taken.

From all appearances the scanned photo looked suspicious. See
original scanned photo:

http://www.nwsurc.com/scan0003.jpg

Upon closer examination I arrowed the edges that looked
suspicious and circled areas in question. I forwarded the image
to BJ Booth of UFO CaseBook and to Linda Moore of Rogue Sighting
for further examination. Both results came back the same. The
photo looked as though it had been tampered with.

NWSURC result:

 http://www.nwsurc.com/scan0003-1.jpg

UFO CaseBook results #1:

http://www.nwsurc.com/ShowLetter1.jpg

#2:

http://www.nwsurc.com/ShowLetter.jpg

Rogue Sighting result:

http://www.nwsurc.com/Image1.jpg

The witness was contacted with the findings that the photo had
been tampered with.

A few days ago, I received the original photo along with two
other ones in the mail from the witness with a letter dated
Thursday Nov 25, 2004:


To Barb Campbell,

I am writing to inform you I have enclosed the following three
pictures that were taken of the shrine on August 2000 they have
not been tampered with in any way by us they were developed at
confed superstore one hour photo in Saskatoon and in the email
we sent you I don't know why the scan photo did not turn out
properly

We do not know what it was that we saw it was there only for a
split second all three photo's were taken seconds of each other
the first being with the image.

If you have any questions please phone me at (withheld) or email
at (withheld)

p.s

We do appreciate you looking at the photo's that we enclosed you
can keep the photo's as long as you need them but we need them
back.

Thank you

(Witness)



I thank the witness for sending me the original photo along with
another two, for further examination. This allows for a more
thorough examination and now totally rules out the possibility
of this photo being a hoax.

Here are my reasons why:

1) The original photo

- No manipulation present of any kind

- Suspicious edges were a result of the photo having had
something stuck along the underside edge at one time. Whatever
had attached itself to the photo on the underside, had been
pulled apart from this photo and as a result, removed a small
fraction of the photo paper. The suspicious thing I saw
protruding from underneath the photo along the right hand side
was in fact the partial remains of another photo or paper of
some sort which had not been removed when the rest had been
pulled away. This fact clears up the protrusion and folded right
corner tip area.

- The object in the photo still does not appear to be a real
object, but an artificial object. When I say real object, I mean
it is not something floating in the air above the shrine. By
artificial I mean it appears to be one of two things:

a) Debris caught on lens of the camera. This can be a small fly
or some kind of small particle matter

b) Debris captured on film from the place of photo development

Debris is a high probability when looking at the original photo.
There are traces of even smaller spots located through the
sky... three of them.

The fact that none of this debris was captured on any of the
other two photos taken seconds apart, could mean that the debris
was present across the lens during the initial first shot and
somehow removed itself from the lens when the other two were
captured.

However, I have noticed something interesting when comparing all
three photos.

Image 020 (original photo in question): Two small specks of
light in the clouds about a third of the way down along the left
hand side.

Image 021: Specks of light positioned themselves one above the
other a little further down and near the pointed edge of that
cloud. There is also another speck above the trees behind the
shrine just below the bottom line of the star. Almost in line
with the right side bottom end of the roof. Another two and
possible three specks are noticeable in the upper right side
within the dark blue sky.

Image 022: Seven specks are noticeable in the third image taken.
In fact, one located just above the tip of the trees, off to the
right of the bottom edge of the shrine's roof appears to have
been captured in motion. The highest speck located in thin cloud
mass near the upper mid to left side appears to be the
brightest.

When I first noticed these I almost dismissed them to be debris
as well. These specks could actually be orbs. And it's really
interesting to see the one in motion. And this is in daylight
too. They look like lights of some kind. Orbs captured on photos
cannot be seen with the naked eye. The result is usually
discovered after the photos are developed.

There also appears to be something foreign in the trees below
the speck in motion. A miniature, short straight line, slightly
tilted and is almost a light green in color. It really looks out
of place and cannot be seen in any of the other two photos.

Again, there is no evidence of any tampering or manipulation of
any kind with either of these three images. These specks cannot
be found in the lower parts of the images where the ground is.

Next I wanted to see what happened if I scanned original photo
in question to my computer to see if the image would look as
though it had been tampered with. Click on image for full view.
[In case you are wondering, what appears to be white specks on
the grassy area is plant matter.]

Photo can be seen at http://www.nwsurc.com/photo-quiry.htm

Edges around the larger object don't appear to be as suspicious
as in the original email sent on the 10th of November. See
original below. Click on image for full view.

Photo can be seen at:

http://www.nwsurc.com/photo-quiry.htm

The differences between the two can depend upon the photo
software one uses.

Again, I thank the witness for mailing me the original along
with another two images captured only seconds apart from one
another.

The dark objects in question are very likely the result of
debris, particles or in the case of the larger object, possibly
even a small fly which happened to travel across the lens, or
attached itself to the lens - the instant the image was
captured.

I did find the specks of light and foreign matter in the tree
below speck in motion to be interesting. The colors were not the
same throughout each photo, as brightness and intensity varied.



UFOs Chased Through Farm By Military Aircraft

Date: January 1974
Time: 5:00 - 6:00am
Location: Lucky Lake
Objects: 3
Witnesses: 3
Duration: 30 minutes

Report received via online form:

It was early in the morning, winter time and still very dark. I
woke to find my sister and brother looking out the upstairs
window of our two story farm house to the south. I saw a disk
type object hovering approx 50 feet above the ground and 100
yards south of the house, above our cattle corals and haystacks
and small pasture attached to our yard.

It seems to me that it was looking around and shining lights
onto the ground (similar to search lights) or scanning in some
way. The object did have some lights on it or on its perimeters,
lights of some sort. After a few minutes I noticed another very
similar ship or object, then another, three in total I believe,
(I was abouit 10 years old and it was a long time ago, so my
memory and description is a bit vague).

They did make some low humming sound, but not loud enough to
wake us. We watched these objects for a few more minutes then
they darted off to the west still staying very close to the
ground.

We ran downstairs to tell our parents, as they got up and began
to tell us we were imagining it all. We heard very loud jets
approaching. My dad looked startled and went to the window to
look out, and we saw about 3 military type jets blast through
our yard ( not over or around , but through, almost between our
grainaries and haystacks). The sound booming almost loud enough
to shatter windows. My parents told us that we probably saw
helicopters, but I knew it wasnt.

For the next six months to a year we noticed many military
aircraft flying through this area and began to believe that we
were on a traffic area perhaps flying between Moose Jaw A.F.B to
Wainewright A.B., but now I believe that what we saw was extra
terrestrial and military jet chased them coming from Moose Jaw
in the southeast and following them west.

I believe one of the objects was likely brought down and the air
traffic in the following year was related to this sighting,
please let me know if any others reported anything in this area
at this time. Thank you

Thank you to the witness.

Barb's note: Please contact NWSURC if you have witnessed a
similar incident around the area described by the witness above.
You do not need to reveal your identity.


Mutilated Cow Report

A witness called to report that in Rockglen, a cow had been
found dead with its udder surgically removed. No coyotes or any
other predator would even touch the carcass. The absence of
flies and maggots were also noted.

The witness believes the incident was not reported to RCMP. Date
of this incident is unknown.

NWSURC asks if anybody knows any further information about this
incident to please contact Barb at 1-306-893-4009. Your identity
will not be revealed.



New site open:

http://setka-mo.narod.ru

Russian military document about UFO researching in Russia.

Thanks to Nikolay Subbotin, Director RUFORS


NWSURC is operating a fanastic linkable rotating banner exchange.
Banners rotate without having to reload the page. Visitors can visit
the sites directly, just by clicking on them.

All UFO related sites are welcomed to join the exchange. All that is
required is that you place our banner on your site in exchange for
placing yours on NWSURC. You don't need to store NWSURC's banner in
your site's directory as it comes directly from NWSURC's own
directory.

Details can be found at:

http://www.nwsurc.com/banner.htm


I am pleased to announce Bill Burt of Tall Dwarf Graphics Arts
Studio will be illustrating for NWSURC's web site. Samples of Bill's
artwork can be found on his very own page at:

http://www.nwsurc.com/bill-burt.htm

Bill is extremely talented with UFO and Sci-Fi Fantasy graphics.
Check out his work, you won't be disappointed.


NWSURC is currently undergoing a color change, which should be
completed within the next couple of days. And I am very pleased
to announce that we've received well over 41,300 hits to the
site since it opened October 21, 2004.


NWSURC's 2005 UFO Conference will take place August 2005 in
Saskatoon. A venue has been contacted. I hope to have the
details finalized within the next couple of weeks and have the
final announcement ready by next reporting time.



Barb Campbell, NWSURC
Box 263
Maidstone SK S0M 1M0
Ph:(306)893-4009
Northwest Saskatchewan UFO Research Center (NWSURC)
E-mail: contactus.nul
E-mail: sighting.nul
Web: http://www.nwsurc.com
NWSURC Forum: http://nwsurc.conforums3.com

Member of UFORA Research Alliance


Barb Campbell, NWSURC
Box 263
Maidstone SK S0M 1M0
Ph:(306)893-4009
Northwest Saskatchewan UFO Research Center (NWSURC)
E-mail: nwsurc.nul
Web: http://www.nwsurc.com
NWSURC Forum: http://nwsurc.conforums3.com/

Member of UFORA Research Alliance









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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 7

                Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO

From: Brad Sparks <RB47x.nul>
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 14:45:50 EST
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 07:57:57 -0500
Subject: Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO


>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 10:42:24 EST
>Subject: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO Results?

>I'm sure you've all heard of this website:

>http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ufo.html

>They obtained some documents in a brief reply when they inquired
>about UFOs from the government.

It's just the garbage Blue Book AF press release! Why is anyone
wasting time with this monotonous trash?







   UFO UpDates
   A mailing list for the study of UFO-related phenomena
   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 7

               Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Holman

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 15:35:26 +1100
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 08:01:24 -0500
Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Holman


>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 07:14:54 -0800
>Subject: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin

>But neither the RAAF or the airport were able to shed any light
>on the flashing green, blue and red lights witnesses saw.

>Laboratory technician Julie Lynn was relaxing on the balcony
>with husband Nigel at their Leanyer home when they noticed the
>UFO about 8.30pm.

<snip>

>"I was quite looking forward to curling up on the couch and
>watching a movie but it had our attention until we went to bed
>after midnight.

>"It hovered in the one place for at least two hours but had
>moved significantly when we checked on it again before we went
>to bed.

<snip>

>The UFO was described as being shaped like three connected ball-
>shaped spheres that flashed blue, green and red from as many as
>six different light sources.

>It first appeared in a south-easterly direction and was moving
>northeast.

Bright stars seen through an unusually unsteady atmosphere are
good candidates for UFO reports involving a light flashing
different colours, especially when it is stationary or moving
slowly. This is called atmospheric dispersion or differential
refraction, and is basically an extreme form of twinkling.

This one sounds like Sirius. On Saturday night, as seen from
Darwin, Sirius rose at 8.20pm to the east-southeast. By midnight
it had reached an altitude of 51 degrees and had moved slightly
north. The "three connected ball-shaped spheres" could easily be
a star distorted by the turbulent atmosphere, perhaps seen
through binoculars. Estimates of the object's altitude would
help to verify this identification, but unfortunately are not
evident from this report. It would also be easy to rule out
Sirius as the cause, if the witnesses happened to have seen it
_as_well_as_ the UFO.


Brett Holman







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   Dec > Dec 7

                            If UFO Lands Call Him

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 08:05:27 -0500
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 08:05:27 -0500
Subject: If UFO Lands Call Him




Source: The Cincinnati Enquirer - Ohio

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041207/NEWS01/412070354/10
56

12-07-04


If UFO Lands - Call Him
Fire trainer to be featured on TV

By David Eck
Enquirer contributor

DEERFIELD TWP. - As a Japanese TV audience will soon learn,
Deerfield Township is ready for Unidentified Flying Objects.

Deerfield Township Fire Chief William Kramer will be featured on
a Japanese game show in a segment about how firefighters should
handle a UFO landing in their community.

Kramer, who also teaches firefighting courses at the University
of Cincinnati and hosts fire education videos, covered the topic
in a 1992 textbook, Fire Officers' Guide to Disaster Control.

Researchers for the Japanese television show "Fountains of
Trivia" came across the information and suggested it for use on
the show.

"We have an army of researchers in Japan," said Sam Onoda, a
producer for "Fountains of Trivia." "They pitched the idea to
me."

Onoda, who is based in Los Angeles, interviewed Kramer on Monday
at the township's Snider Road fire headquarters in this southern
Warren County community.

The show featuring Kramer is expected to run nationwide in Japan
on New Year's Day.

During the interview, Kramer said that firefighters and
emergency providers should be prepared to handle mass panic if a
UFO landing is perceived.

An actual UFO landing should be treated with caution, he added,
to safeguard against toxic substances and to not alarm possible
extraterrestrial visitors.

"The key reason it is a part of the text is because whether UFOs
... or their alien occupants exist or not, the perceived
existence of those things could cause a (significant) threat to
some in our community," Kramer said.

"If an actual UFO were to make contact somehow, it's going to be
up to the fire department to bring some kind of order out of the
situation. There may very well come a need for fire officials to
deal with mass panic."

While he stopped short of saying he believes in UFOs, Kramer
said there might be other forms of life in the galaxy.

"I do believe there's intelligent life beyond this small
planet," he said.

"Most people don't really want to discuss that publicly for fear
of being ridiculed."


E-mail deck.nul









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                     Some Things Are Just Not Discussed

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 08:13:49 -0500
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 08:13:49 -0500
Subject: Some Things Are Just Not Discussed




Source: The Tri-Valley Herald - Pleasanton, California

http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10671~2581322,00.html

12-07-04


Some Things Are Just Not Discussed

I ran into Don Hewitt recently in downtown Pleasanton and asked
if he had a story for my column.

"Sure," he said, "but I don't expect you to believe it."

Don explained that only a handful of people had heard the story
he was hesitant to tell.

In fact, what he finds interesting is not so much the story -
 which happened to him and two friends in 1991 - but how people
like him and his friends will choose not to talk about an
incident others won't believe.

"What the heck are you talking about?" I asked him.

Don told me that he and his buddies were up in Washington state
driving at night along the Columbia River when something caught
their attention.

"We pulled over, got out of the car, and watched what was
clearly a UFO hovering brightly just across the river," Don
said.

"After a few moments, it zipped away like a scene from a sci-fi
movie. We just stood there and stared for a while."

Eventually, he and his friends got back in the car and drove on
without saying anything.

"What could we do?" said Don, shrugging his shoulders. "When you
discover we're not alone in the universe, you don't just start
telling everyone."

People who know Don Hewitt, who works in the software industry,
and whose wife, Frances, works for the Pleasanton Downtown
Association, will tell you he's not the type to make up a story
like this. And he's not the type to float conspiracy theories.

In the several years I've known him, he has never mentioned
terms such as "UFO" or "Area 51" or even "Art Bell." And he's
had plenty of opportunities, since our social calendars line up
quite often.

"It's just human nature not to talk about that evening," Don
said.

"It's easier than dealing with people who assume we're mistaken
or who just can't believe us."


Jim Ott is the CEO of a community credit union and an English
professor at Las Positas College. He welcomes your comments and
interesting stories. Contact him at jott.nul







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   Dec > Dec 7

                  Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson

From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 12:02:01 +0000
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 08:50:26 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson


>From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
>To: Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 18:13:39 -0800
>Subject: Good News For Causality

>Physicists in Switzerland have confirmed that information
>cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light.

Hello again Larry,

Having a second shot 'cos it seems _someone_ may be trying to
orchestrate a dumb-down (of joe public) over experimental
results that have already been kept fairly quiet for some
decades now.

It's all about "entanglement info" - which is shown to travel
over arbitrary distances 'instantaneously' - no matter how far,
with whatever intervening!

http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/aspect1/

Clearly that "info" cannot be traveling via any form of radiation
or energy known to modern science - unless someone is keeping a
tight lid on it.

But there are simple experiments _anyone_ can do to demonstrate
that mysterious force, which the scientists cannot or will not
explain.

What experiments?

Spin a coin on a table, or a spinning-top, or ride a bicycle or
motor-bike.

Yup - all those have `unexplained stability' - staying upright
mainly - which science can't understand or explain (although
you'll find many long "descriptions").

That stability obviously (IMHO) comes from the same force that
gives `inertia' - another unexplainable phenomenon - to mass
(because that weird stability is merely `added inertia').

And, almost as obviously, from the same "instantaneous force"
which holds matter together and links all `particle info' -
universally.

Now that was fairly easy to grasp even for dumb clucks like us -
so why is mainstream science acting so scared?

Ask about any of the above effects and you'll get a forced laugh
- "Ha-ha You're not asking me about spinning-tops are you?" (or
gyroscopes etc)

Repeat the question and you'll get a long thoughtful silence. (If
your "scientist" isn't an instant BS merchant - If he is, ask him
to write it down & sign it).

Why is this whole area off-limits to career scientists? (Check
"badsci.txt")

Well, up-front implications (f.t.l comms/disruption/propulsion)
and hidden implications (instantaneous energy-pattern transfer -
 i.e. induced `sights' `sounds' `thoughts') might be a _little_
sensitive right now.

Spin that coin!


Cheers

Ray D



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Perceptions" http://www.perceptions.couk.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~





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   Dec > Dec 7

                       UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 49

From: John Hayes <John.nul>
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 15:32:19 +0000
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 16:28:13 -0500
Subject: UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 49

Posted on behalf of Joseph Trainor.

<Masinaigan.nul>
==========================

      UFO ROUNDUP
Volume 9, Number 49
December 8, 2004
Editor: Joseph Trainor

E-mail: Masinaigan.nul
Website: http://www.ufoinfo.com/roundup/


MORE UFOs SPOTTED
IN THE HIMALAYAS

      More UFOs have been spotted in the Himalayas, this
time around Ladakh, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) east-
southeast of Chini and the upper Sutlej River valley.
      According to Indian journalist Lara Mohani, "A little
girl of Zanskar, near the majestic Drang Drung glacier,
reported a huge triangular object, very high speed, very
large, sailing in the sky.  This was in the area of the
India-China border, on the Indian side of the Himalayas, a
very strategic area for both India and China."
      "Here is the concentration of a large number of
nuclear missiles by both India and China, which are hidden
in the earth."
      Since late September 2004, Indian villagers around
Chini and on the north slope of the Ladakh range have seen
large triangular UFOs during daytime and night, plus
mysterious lights on the mountaintop glaciers.  In
addition, seven jets of the Indian Air Force (IAF) have
been lost in "unexplained" crashes.
      Mohani added, "During the Chemrey Angchok festival in
Ladakh last week, several local villagers gathered to
discuss these strange objects," which they claim have been
"operating for the past five years."
      People in this region of northern Himachal Pradesh
state believe that aliens are building a large underground
complex in the high Himalayas.
      "These wonders are increasing," Mohani reported,
"They (the UFOs) are silent.  They can move through the
air extremely slowly though conventional aircraft would
stall and crash.  They can suddenly vanish at tremendous
speed, far faster than any known vehicle built by man
could possibly ever reach.  They are translucent.  Their
flying beams do not produce light."
      "Are they extraterrestrial UFOs or spy vehicles of
some unknown country  The area is sensitive, and it's
possible that some countries are monitoring the region.
It is also possible that extraterrestrials are watching
the nuclear installations of India and China, as well."
      In other news, Pervez Musharraf, president of
Pakistan, met with USA President George W. Bush on
Saturday, December 4, 2004.  Musharraf, "who has supported
President Bush in the war on terrorism and against Al-
Qaeda" was "expected to use the occasion to push Bush to
allow U.S. companies to sell F-16 fighter jets to
Pakistan."
      "'This meeting is about F-16s,'" said Michael Krepon,
a South Asia specialist at the non-partisan think tank
Stimson Center, "'F-16s prove that we love you.'"
      Although Pakistan has sought to purchase American F-
16 fighter jets since 1989, the need for those jets might
have become more acute since Monday, November 8, 2004,
when three large UFOs flew over Musharraf's capital,
Islamabad.
  (See the newspapers Indian Daily for November 25, 2004,
"Close encounters and mysterious triangles on the Indian
side of the Himalayas," and USA Today for December 3,
2004, "Musharraf coming to U.S. to visit Bush."  Many
thanks to Daniel Wilson, Lara Mohani and Krishnari Bai
Dharapurnanda for these newspaper articles.)


UFO PHOTOGRAPHED OVER
SAN GERMAN, PUERTO RICO

      "A photo taken by Edgar Morales in the streets of San
German," a town in southwestern Puerto Rico, located 14
miles (23 kilometers) southeast of Mayaguez, "shows an
enormous UFO with blinking lights."
      While taking photographs last week from the steps of
San German's old Adventist church, Morales "looked upward
and saw what he described as 'an enormous machine of blue
and green color.  I noticed a cupola on the top of it.  It
was silent, and I remained watching it for two to three
minutes.'"
      "Analysts who tested the Morales photo declared that
'it was a real photo,' not faked, and estimated that the
strange object was at an altitude of 5,000 feet (1,500
meters) above the ground.  They also estimated that the
object was at least 1,000 feet (300 meters) wide."
      Puerto Rican ufologist Reinaldo Rios reported, "The
Morales photo was shown on Channel 2 in San Juan (Puerto
Rico's capital--J.T.) and also on Channel 12 on a program
called Our World."  (Many thanks to Reinaldo Rios for this
news story.)


CHUPACABRAS BLAMED
FOR 11 GOAT DEATHS

      "Eleven goats were found dead inside their wooden
pen, which forms part of the petting zoo at Illuminated
Children's Park at the Monte Hiedra municipal center in
Rio Piedras," Puerto Rico, a suburb of San Juan.
      "The discovery was made by Fausto Radaelli, the owner
and the man in charge of the petting zoo."
      "According to Radaelli's explanation, he took 11
goats to the kiddie park last Monday," November 29, 2004,
"because he was attempting to create a manger scene for
the Christmas holiday."
      "He placed them in a wooden pen in the open air so
they could spend the night there.  But they were found
lifeless on Wednesday morning," December 1, 2004.
      "Three of the goats presented large bite marks,
dismemberment, and one of them had half its body devoured.
All of its internal organs, except the stomach, were
gone."
      "The rest of the goats had bite marks and claw marks
on the rear of their bodies.  The marks resembled the ones
found on animals allegedly attacked by the mythical
Chupacabras.  The goats had their necks twisted backward,
and rigor mortis had not set in 48 hours after their
deaths."
      "According to Ernesto Marquez, a specialist in exotic
animals, the goats were attacked by 'a wolf or a coyote or
a hybrid (wolf-dog hybrid--S.C.) or very large feral
dogs.'"
      "Marquez said these animals exist on the island and
knows that they are trafficked (sold--J.T.) or even
advertised in newspapers."
      "The expert's theory is sustained by the canine's
modus operandi.  'These are regular fang marks.  Canids
kill animals from the rear, siezing them to hold them down
and eat them.'"
      "Marquez dismissed the possibility that the goats had
been killed by a feline, adding that 'these kill from the
throat, strangling their prey, dragging it off.  This was
a canid.'"
      "He added that 'the animal lunged; it was an agile
animal attacking from the rear.  It's astute and knows
human beings.  It came around when there was no one around
and returned on the next day, when there was no one,
either.'"
      "Yesterday (Thursday, December 2, 2004) the site was
being examined by Marquez, Julio Diaz of Animal Control
Solutions Co. and veterinary technician Herman Sulsona of
the San Juan Animal Control Center."
      "There was no sign of forcible entry.  No prints or
hairs of any animal were found."
      "The park, which has been operating since May 8
(2004) and will remain open until January 31 (2005), has
no security of any kind.  Yesterday, after removing the
dead goats, the park was reopened to the public after 6
p.m.  Specialists cautioned the park custodians that the
(predatory) animals might return and advised that the
goats be kept within a trailer, or else removed from the
site."  (See the Puerto Rican newspaper Primera Hora for
December 3, 2004, "Eleven goats slain in petting zoo."
Muchas gracias a Scott Corrales y Lucy Guzman para esto
articulo de diario.)


SATELLITE SUFFERS WEIRD
POWER FAILURE

      "A major communications satellite serving the
Americas suddenly and mysteriously shut down, knocking
some customers off-line."
      "The Intelsat Americas-7 satellite, operated by
Intelsat Limited of Pembroke, Bermuda, suddenly lost power
at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday," November 28, 2004.  "No cause has
been identified as yet."
      "'Our engineers and senior researchers are still
working with the manufacturer to determine a cause,' said
Jodi Katz, a spokesperson for Intelsat in Washington, D.C.
The failure has been classified as 'a sudden electrical
distribution anomaly,' and Katz said it is unlikely that
computer hackers caused the problem--a threat previously
identified by the U.S. government."
      "The satellite, which was launched in 1999, provided
television broadcasting and high-speed Internet access to
20 businesses in North America, Central America, Hawaii
and parts of South America."
      "The company has transferred many of their customers
to some of its 27 other satellites, but some are still
without service."
      "The Americas-7 satellite, formerly known as Telstar-
7, operated in a geostationary orbit about 36,000
kilometers (21,600 miles) above the Equator.  It was
purchased with four other satellites for $900 million
earlier in 2004 from manufacturer Space Systems/Loral of
Palo Alto, California.  The satellite was uninsured."
(See New Scientist for December 4, 2004, "Major satellite
in mystery shutdown."  Many thanks to Steve Wilson Sr. for
this news article.)


UKRAINIANS SAY UFOs
VISITED CHERNOBYL

      The current political turmoil in the Ukraine has led
to the publication of reports of UFO activity around the
destroyed nuclear power station at Chernobyl, which
suffered a catastrophic accident in 1986.
      "The collapse of the Chernobyl nuclear plant on April
26, 1986 sent dangerous levels of radiation into eastern
Europe.  But it could have been much worse.  There could
have been a nuclear explosion wiping out most of Europe."
      "There are persistent stories in the Ukraine that the
world was saved by UFOs" at the time of the Chernobyl
disaster in 1986.  "When the Chernobyl meltdown began to
occur, witnesses saw a UFO hovering above the Fourth
Generating Unit of the Chernobyl plant.  The eyewitnesses
say it was there for six hours and that hundreds of people
saw it."
      Eyewitness "Mikhail Veritsky says, 'I and other
people from my (production) team went to the site of the
blast that night.  We saw a ball of fire, and it was
slowly flying in the sky.  I would say that the fireball
was 6 to 8 meters (20 to 24 feet) in diameter.'"
      "'There were two rays of crimson light stretching'"
from the UFO "'towards the Fourth Generating Unit.  The
object was at least 300 meters (1,000 feet) from the
reactor.  The event lasted for three minutes.  The lights
on the object then went out, and it flew away in a
northwesterly direction.'"
      "Veritsky believes the UFO brought the radiation
levels down and prevented a nuclear explosion."
      "Three years later, on September 16, 1989, the Fourth
Generating Unit emitted radiation into the atmosphere.
Several hours later, a doctor saw an object in the sky
above the Chernobyl plant.  Dr. Gospina described it as
'amber-like' and said she could see the top and bottom of
it clearly."
      "In October 1990, V. Nauran, a reporter for the
newspaper Echo of Chernobyl, was photographing the machine
shop at the Chernobyl plant.  He said, 'I photographed the
top of it (ceiling--J.T.), including part of the sky
above.  I remember everything very well.  I did not see
any UFO at the time.  However, when I developed the film,
I clearly saw the object that was hovering above that hole
in the (machine shop) roof.  The object looked like the
UFO Dr. Gospina saw.'"  (Many thanks to Michel Heseman and
Steve Wilson Sr. for this news story.)


      Well, that's it for this week.  Join us next time for
more UFO, Fortean and paranormal news from around the
planet Earth, brought to you by "the paper that goes home-
-UFO Roundup."  See you next time.

  UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 2004 by Masinaigan Productions,
all rights reserved.  Readers may post news items from UFO
Roundup on their Web sites or in news groups provided that
they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list
the date of issue in which the item first appeared.

E-Mail Reports to: Joseph Trainor <Masinaigan.nul>
or use the Sighting Report Form at:

http://www.ufoinfo.com/submit/sightings.shtml

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Website comments: John Hayes <webmaster.nul>

UFOINFO: http://www.ufoinfo.com

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plus archives of Humanoid Sighting Reports (Albert
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   Dec > Dec 7

               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 10:51:31 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 16:30:10 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 09:58:35 -0600
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 12:32:12 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>You chose instead to insult my character,
>impugn my sensibility, and mock my style.

You get so offended when someone disagrees with you. Can't a
person just have a different opinion than you and not get
lambasted by your sometimes rude, insulting verbosity?

I don't think I insulted your _character_. I imagine you are
sincere and intelligent and don't hurt small animals and likely
give to the Salvation Army. What of it? But, if I have insulted
your character then I apologize.

Regarding "impugning your sensibility", I cannot think how I did
this. Impugn means (note: to confirm the meaning of the word for
discussion, not that you don't know the meaning) "to challenge
or to call into question", usually the integrity of truth of a
person, but in this case you say sensibility (I assume mental
responsiveness and awareness). If you are offended that I am
challenging your awareness of the reality/practicality of the
various proposed projects, then I suppose I am guilty. Doesn't
seem like a big deal in a discussion. Sadly, you seem to take
offense to a free discussion of ideas. What do you want? A choir
of yes-men? Is the fabric of your dreams so delicate that it
cannot withstand my non-aggressive remarks? It seems that
viewpoint's like mine should provide less of a wet blanket to
you than an incentive to figure out how to achieve your dream.
Sure, on Star Trek someone dreamed up communicators weirdly like
cell phones. Did this mean anyone did anything to make cell
phones due to the Star Trek dream? No. It was based on market
forces and independent realists who took an idea into the real
world.

Regarding mocking your style, I think mocking is too aggressive
a term. But I do think it is very hard to understand your
opinion sometimes as derived from your prose. I, for some odd
reason, cannot process mentally some of your paragraphs. An
impressive feat I may say, but there is a law of diminishing
returns and I reach that limit too often with your paragraphs.
But then this may simply be my own limited mental ability, so I
am sorry for being unable to understand what you are writing in
those cases. Also, your liberal sprinkling of "Sirs" reminds me
of an English manservant addressing his employer. You, in fact,
dilute the meaning and power of "Sir" by its repetitive use
which seems to be of no more importance, in context, than a
colon or question mark. "Sir" should really be used when it is
meant and I FEEL that you do not in most cases. But this is a
personal decision in your style and I have no right to ask you
to stop. I chime in with a Sir or two to try to make you feel
comfortable. Sorry it did not work and you think I am mocking
you.

Finally, regarding our difference in viewpoints, I think
dreamers are fine and realists are fine. It takes all kinds in
this world. Both optimists and pessimists are needed. But there
is no need for rancor, only for courteous debate and discussion!








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   Dec > Dec 7

               Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 11:22:16 -0600
Fwd Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 16:34:23 -0500
Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -


>From: Will Bueche <willbueche.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 07:23:09 -0800 (PST)
>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB

>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 17:40:37 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB 'Beam'

><snip>

>>Why do you phrase your advertisments in such a deliberatly
>>confrontational way? Is it because you actually *want* them to
>>be refused in order to provide confirmation for your theories
>>government censorship? If fact, from the wording above, it's not
>>even clear what kind of information you are seeking that might
>>attract "whistleblowers".

>>I suspect that really you're just trying to wind-up the
>>authorities for your own satisfaction, and I think a more
>>neutrally phrased advertisment might produce more productive
>>results.

>Exactly. I feel his effort, such as it is, creates the
>impression that only lone cranks believe in such causes.

>Beyond that, I've tried to criticise his evident lack of
>familiarity with how to buy ad space, which needs to be
>mentioned simply because it reveals exactly what you said - that
>he has no intent of actually buying ad space, he just likes to
>provoke editors and give editors the impression that the whole
>subject of UFOs and alien entities is purely the province of
>cranks, something to be dismissed.

>So many other approaches would be more productive. He noted, in
>one of his commentless-posts to this list (the lack of comments
>being yet more evidence that he doesn't actually care to engage
>the subject in a meaningful way), that he's only ever managed to
>place one ad in all these years. So it seems to be an affordable
>hobby for him.

Wow, Mr. Bueche. Harsh.

Let's forget for the moment that a very collegiate approach has
made very little headway over the years because of the
mainstreams programmed reluctance to credit ufology in any
substantive way and continue to exist in its present
incarnation. Mr. Bryant's decidedly consistent approach reflects
an admirable passion for a cause we all share and should not be
dismissed derisively as a crank while you credit a cowardly
editorship and corporate media with a by because they've been
distracted by said cranks. I suspect cranks are a symptom not a
cause.

I think many of these 'editors' are very aware of what they
could be taking about and don't, not because the evidence
doesn't warrant it, we know it does, but because the guys who
hold their traces give unsubtle jerks on them. Whatever Mr.
Bryant lacks in tact he more than makes up for in consistency,
focus, and perseverance. Bang on a big rock with a little hammer
enough times and the rock cracks, Mr. Bueche, in a manner that
the pointedly ignored collegiate just won't accomplish. Squeaky
wheels get grease.

You allow above that other approaches are more productive.
Could you refresh me regarding what they are?

Be that as it may, this was a disheartening drubbing on a guy
who asked for feedback in the first place, when all that really
needed to be said was an inclusive admonition that a little more
tact might harden the point of his pick a little bit. I can
understand Mr. Bryant's outrage, at any rate, and can admire his
constructive and lawful approach in dealing with it. I admire
his pluck and courage... why can't you?


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net








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                Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Ledger

From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 13:00:10 -0400
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 07:47:51 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Ledger


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 18:57:27 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>But that's the logic of your own argument, simply calling that
>unknown metaphysical phenomenon an ET with a technology like
>magic doesn't alter things at all.

>My feeling is that we should simply ditch trying to explain
>apparent anomalies by invoking non human intelligences of any
>description whatever.

Well, the church has been getting away with it for years. And so
much for Santa Claus.

Don Ledger
















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                   Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Ledger

From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 14:05:32 -0400
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 07:51:45 -0500
Subject: Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Ledger


>From: David Chace <davidwchace.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 00:03:35 -0800
>Subject: Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise

>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 10:26:41 -0000
>>Subject: Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise

<snip>

>>3. Is there even one authenticated case of UFOs "crashing on
>>government property"? Which government property was
>>lucky enough to experience this ET visit?

>I suppose it depends on who you believe, and what, exactly you
>mean by "authenticated".

One question. Can we say it is safe to say, that the government
would/will/could and did cover these events up if they occurred?

That has to be addressed. Because if the government [take your
pick] does regularly cover up events to :

1) Maintain its power base and control.

2) Protect sensitive and power enhancing technology [see # one].

3) Avoid embarrassment

Then any of these events were possible

I don't expect an answer to this question because we've been
batting around these same questions for as long as I've been on
this list, which is at least 8 years. Different names, same
questions. This is not new ground.


Don Ledger












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               Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 18:53:04 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 07:54:23 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Rogerson


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 16:04:37 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Clark


>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 18:28:01 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

<snip>

>>Images of 1940s and 1950s ideas of a superior technology only
>>in the sense that in order to insepct the earth you would have
>>to send macroscopic, populated probes into the atmosphere, and
>>not referring to any particular shape. Though the Childes-
>>Whitted rocket ship clearly was derived from science fiction
>>illustrations of the period.

>>All of this makes my point about the uselessness of the ETH as
>>an explan[a]tion for UFO reports. Expla[i]ning anomalous
>>experiences by referring to something we don't even know exists,
>>let alone what its properties and capacities are is pointless.

>This from the guy who once championed "birth trauma" -
>"something [that] we don't even know exists" - as an
>"explanation" for the abduction phenomenon.

>Now it's time for Peter to take the gospel to all those SETI
>types who are forever "referring to something [that] we don't
>even know exists," speculating about its nature, and working on
>strategies to contact it.

Sorry Jerry but I have never been a champion of the birth trauma
hypothesis, and am very sceptical of it. To be fair however it
did have some of the properties of s scientific theory. It
failed because it was falsified by what we know (or think we
know) about the organisation of the neonates brain and sensory
abilities.

As I keep saying, the problem with the ETH and its more exotic
bretheren is that they are unfalisifiable infinitely elastic
hypotheses.

Jerry has made this point on a number occasions about paranormal
explanations but seems to have a slight difficulty realising
that invoking a technology so advanced as to be like magic is
only verbally different from a paranormal explanation.


Peter Rogerson








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             Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Sparks

From: Brad Sparks <RB47x.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:06:21 EST
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 07:56:06 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Sparks


>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 09:16:25 -0800
>Subject: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>Having always been annoyed by the apparent hypocrisy that
>Astronomers exibit (specically SETI folk)in regards to
>evidence/data towards Ufology, I posed the following question to
>Frank Drake:

<snip>

>However, the rules of evidence for mainstream astronomy and
>UFOlogy are actually the same. In both cases we look for well-
>observed, calibrated data, which can be verified by repeat
>observations or experiments, best done by more than one
>observer.

Drake says best done by more than one observer, but not a rigid
rule, so it does not always have to be the case.

Drake should have been reminded of the various phenomena in
astronomy and astrophysics which are validly accepted one-shot
brief observations, not repeatable, and not repeated except in the
sense that something similar happens again at unpredictable
random times -- such as meteor fireballs, gamma-ray bursts,
and supernovas. These are like UFO incidents in that respect.


>FW: Allow me to play devil's advocate based on your affirmation
>of equality in regards to evidentiary protocol of Astronomy and
>Ufology.

<snip>

>1). Can we state emphatically that there aren't "other forces"
>in the universe that aren't currently known that would "mimic
>the pull" caused by gravity of a "Jupiter sized planet?" Could
>another "space borne" object of the same mass cause the wobble?

>2). Are there other actions that could affect "Doppler Shift,"
>or any other form of detection in the same manner that "star
>wobble" does, e.g., pulsations etc.?

>3). Given the fact that the most detection methods of "extra-
>solar planets" is relatively new, (with technology expanding by
>leaps and bounds) and not without controversy, i.e.,( "Barnard's
>Star and possible planetary bodies, David Gray's disputation of
>51 Peg,") isn't possible that either "new information" could
>surface, or the interpretation of the data may change, and
>affect the current conclusions?

>IMHO if the answers to any of the afore mentioned questions is
>"unknown" or "it's possible," then that would leave "some"
>doubt, albeit little to the "absolute existence" of extra-solar
>planets based on the current methodologies used for their
>reality; that said, what we're left with is strong
>"circumstantial evidence" in support of the "theory" of extra-
>solar planets."

<snip>

After Drake read this he no doubt came away confirmed in his
mind once again that UFO activists are typical extremist
fanatics who can't meet a scientific argument headon with solid
scientific facts so they nitpick around the edges arguing for
the most extreme positions, with special pleading "it's remotely
possible ... it could be ... maybe" etc. Either you have solid
scientific evidence of UFO's or you don't. He must conclude once
again after 40 years of similar encounters with UFO enthusiasts
that they don't have any solid scientific evidence, and
furthermore they are too naive even to realize that they don't.

What they want to hear about is cases where top scientists have
made the observations, multiple observers, triangulations,
measurements, calibrations, instruments, quantitative data,
error bars, etc.

Instead of the tired old repetitions of Arnold, Roswell,
Rendlesham, and other controversial cases, let's hear more about
cases like the world's leading meteoritics astronomer who with 3
other witnesses sighted a 200-foot white ellipsoidal object
maneuvering at high speed in and out of clouds at known distance
in broad daylight, with all the numerical data, date, time,
azimuths, elevations, angular size, speeds, distance, error
bars, etc. Or the Defense Dept.'s top R&D official who sighted a
600-foot metallic sphere hovering in braod daylight which shot
up out of sight, and was witnessed in part by an airline pilot
whose plane the official saw in the sky, and who provided a
triangulation that confirmed the DOD official's distance
estimate. Or the supersecret ELINT (Electronic Intelligence)
aircraft on a training mission that tracked a radar-emitting UFO
pacing and overtaking the jet at the same time that a known
ground radar was also detected on the ELINT equipment, thus
providing the world's first real-time "calibration" of a UFO
instrumented measurement which proved the accuracy and working
condition of the equipment, and which detection was further
confirmed by the crew's visual sighting and ground and airborne
radar tracking of the UFO. Or the Army and AF UFO tracking
networks that obtained multiple triangulations of UFO's, etc.

It is typical of the UFO community to not have its act together,
unable to cite the best scientific evidence for UFO's because it
does not have the foggiest notion of what "best scientific
evidence" looks like or what it means. Typically a UFO
enthusiast thinks the "best" cases are simply his favorite pet
cases, selected out of emotional sentimental attachment, without
any rational scientific basis. A rational scientific set of
criteria will _prefer_ scientists and engineers as witnesses
(_prefer_ not exclude all others), sightings lasting 1 minute or
more, multiple witnesses, angular size Full Moon or greater, and
of course have all the damned date-time-location-azimuth-
 elevation data, too. If any of the criteria are to be relaxed
in a given case then the rest of the case had better make up for
it in some other way. Scientists who are genuine are not
unreasonable and just want to have a reasonable case presented,
and not something sloppy, ill-conceived, or scatter-brained.

Typically the UFO proponent in desperation will cite some big
500-page or 1,000-page tome and say "All the UFO proof is in
there! Go read it!" Whereas in fact the huge tomes are hopeless
hodge-podges of bad cases, good cases, mediocre cases, erroneous
cases, all intermixed according to some order (maybe
alphabetical or chronological) that has nothing whatsoever to do
with selecting best cases according to any scientific or quasi-
scientific criteria ("criteria" is plural by the way, and
"criterion" is singular). Indeed those few books were not really
written for the purpose of presenting the best scientific case
for the UFO to scientists. They were written for other worthy
purposes, but let's not kid ourselves, though, they were not
specially designed to state the case to scientists.

Busy scientists want to read something in a familiar format with
data presented in a familiar knowledgeable fashion, that does
not run to hundreds and hundreds or thousands of pages. They're
not going to read through huge books, multiple books, looking
for something they don't even think is there, with not a clue as
to what to look for. However if they saw a scientifically
smartly presented case they would know it. If they were
presented a list of scientific criteria for best UFO cases they
could assent to them and grasp the strength of the case made
based on those criteria.

Another typical intellectually lazy tactic of the UFO community
is to point to the 100,000 pages of AF UFO files and say "It's
all in there! Go see for yourself. There's plenty of evidence of
UFO's!" Drake is not going to set aside the better part of a
year of his life going through 100,000 pages on a clunky
microfilm reader! Let me tell you I've spent weeks doing that
and after a while you literally get dizzy from the moving images
across the screen. It's not good for your health.

But the UFO community has had these microfilms for almost 30
years now since their public release by the National Archives on
July 12, 1976, and yet there has been almost nothing done to
process and sift through these cases for what McDonald estimated
could be about 3,000 to 4,000 Unknowns. With supposedly
hundreds, maybe thousands, of UFO investigators and researchers
there should have been plenty of manpower and money to
systematically go through the 94 microfilm reels and pick out
the best UFO cases for further study. But this was never done.

For my part I have been going through what AF files I can afford
to go through with limited time and resources. I have started a
Comprehensive Catalog of 1,500 Blue Book Unknowns which is
available on various websites such as CUFOS, NICAP, NIDS, and at
least one ripoff website, but note that the latest revision is
Version 1.7 and anything earlier is out of date. I am working
with the Blue Book Archive Project started by Will Wise, to try
to get the entire BB files, both sanitized and unsanitized
versions, online on the Web for easy access by researchers
worldwide.

Ultimately this effort will enable a powerful scientific case
for the UFO to be presented to the scientific community in a
well- packaged readable format, where they don't have to be
overloaded with too much data mixed in with so much noise, and
won't be told to go read through 100,000 pages themselves.

>FW: Here I have to respectfully disagree; you stated that the
>criterion for the rules of evidence for mainstream astronomy and
>UFOlogy are actually the same. In both cases we look for:

>1). Well-observed, calibrated data.

>2). Verification by repeat observations or experiments.

>3). Multiple observers.

See above where I've more than answered the above points.

>First let me clarify some points: The bulk of UFO reports over
>the last 60 years after thorough investigation, can be
>attributed to more conventional explanations, e.g., known
>aircraft, celestial bodies etc.; however, the ones addressed
>here are the smaller percentage that cannot be explained in a
>conventional manner.
<snip>

Well first off that's just not true. The "bulk of UFO reports
over the last 60 years after thorough investigation" have _not_
been attributed to conventional explanations, IFO's, etc. The
bulk of reports have _not_ been thoroughly investigated or
cursorily investigated. Most "UFO" cases are neither properly
screened UFO cases under Hynek's screening protocol, nor
definitely established IFO's, nor thoroughly investigated. They
are in a limbo state.

In the early days of Blue Book, the IFO's and hoaxes were
running at about only 11%. Let me repeat, there were only 11%
IFO's and hoaxes. There were 27% Unknowns. Then they introduced
a highly misleading statistical trick whereby all the Possible
and Probable categories of IFO's were lumped all together as if
they were definitely Known IFO's, and this inflated the IFO's by
about another 40% quite dishonestly. And then they started
shoving the 23% Insufficient Data cases into those Possible
IFO's, and many of the Unknowns as well. Eventually they would
say there were only a few percent Unknown or Unidentified, all
based on dishonest statistical tricks. And we in the UFO
community still fall prey to the same AF trick year after year
repeating the same falsehood. We never learn.


Brad Sparks








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                     Re: Good News For Causality - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 16:08:12 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 07:57:41 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality - King


>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 11:27:36 -0500
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality

>>From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
>>To: Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 18:13:39 -0800
>>Subject: Good News For Causality

>>Recently there was some discussion about sending signals or
>>information faster than light.

<snip>

>In the spirit of some here at UFO Updates, lets leave open
>possibilities and not be constrained by a few phycisists who
>have a mind-set keeping them shackled to archaic views and a
>misplaced homage to the great Einsten's theories.


Hi Rich, Larry and List,

What is interesting to me in all this discussion of what is or
is not possible is the fact that to date we have learned that
more than 90% of the matter in the observable universe is of a
nature that we cannot accurately describe or understand.

Our more familiar form of matter is but a small subset of what
is.

Is it not possible that all our assumptions and observations
about our surroundings are likewise but a subset of the truth?
If so, the idea of faster than light travel might be a
constraint of our own creation, and not a constant at all.
Plato, Euclid, Einstein, Heisenberg, et. al. all have
contributed to our understanding and definitions of objective
reality. Yet none of them describe a whole. They only describe a
fleeting glimpse of a small subset of matter and energy that
exist in our narrow, visible spectrum.

Try to describe a tesseract to a person of Plato's time, or try
to describe General Relativity to a Maori warrior. Remember well
the blank stare you receive. In the distant future, you will be
that same Platonic innocent, and that Maori warrior, and you
would be the one with the blank stare. One fact is inescapable,
there is more that we do not know than we do.

In response to those that hold that impractical dreams and
flights of fancy are but a waste of time, I would ask, and what
exactly is time, and what exactly have we done so far that has
not been proven to be a waste? Our modern technology kills us,
destroys the planet, deforms our babies, and will eventually
lead to our extinction, unless some dreamer comes up with an
alternative.

When someone says, Yes, but no civilization can travel such vast
distances in a lifetime, I say, what does the ant think of us...
we live forever in their view, travel vast distances in seconds
that would take an ant infinite lifetimes to traverse. Is it not
possible that we are the ants, and are basing our assumptions on
a myopic, egocentric, and fatally flawed database of *facts*
that describe nothing so much as our small, two-dimensional ant-
farm?

We cannot communicate with ants, yet we observe them, analyze
their social hierarchy, invade, mutilate and dissect them, yet
we have no idea what they make of all this, nor do we really
care. We assume a superiority that lends us the ability to do
all of this and not lose any sleep over it.

Is it not possible that we are not so far removed from the ants,
and are similarly observed, analyzed, invaded, mutilated and
dissected by a form of life that considers us no different?

If so, would we not be stupefied by their technology, their
ability to traverse vast distances in an eye-blink, and wince at
their apparent lack of compassion, or inability to communicate?

Most of what is out there is unknown to us. To install blinders,
and stick to what we know is ultimately a conceit in my view. It
is no different than thinking that we are the only sentient life
anywhere.

My guess is that whenever we reach that moment when we
understand the universe around us... if we don't annihilate
ourselves first... it will be the result of some ridiculous
theory cooked up by a dreamer who did lousy in school, and who
was roundly ostracized for his impractical, pie in the sky
fantasies, and who probably died before his ideas were accepted.


Happy...  and Hopeful...  Holidays to all!


Kyle








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                     Latest On Bryant v. Rumsfeld et al

From: Larry W. Bryant <overtci.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:31:30 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 08:00:37 -0500
Subject: Latest On Bryant v. Rumsfeld et al

== Update on Bryant v. Rumsfeld et al ==

By Larry W. Bryant

On Dec. 6, 2004, counsel for the plaintiff and for the
defendants met in Courtroom No. 11 of the U. S. District Court
for the District of Columbia. Called there by the assigned judge
in this case, they spent about 30 minutes responding to the
judge's proposed schedule for the parties' submission of further
pleadings - to include plans for discovery and prospective
motions to bring the case to trial within the next few months.

A brief side discussion dealt with the prospect of my imminent
filing of a follow-on lawsuit against Secretary Rumsfeld, the
secretaries of Army/Air Force/Navy, and the commandant of the U.
S. Marine Corps - contesting those officials' subordinates' out-
of-hand rejection of several of my whistleblower-solicitation
ads recently submitted to various military newspapers under
their jurisdiction. The rejections cited the anti-political-ads
provision of DoD Instruction 5120.4, a restriction that, in my
view, will fail to pass constitutional muster.

At the hearing's conclusion, the judge mentioned the likelihood
of the court's consolidating these two interrelated cases.

Welcome to Room No. 11 of Bryant's Bleak House.








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                   Re: UK National Archives On UFOs - Pope

From: Nick Pope <nick.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 22:36:16 -0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 08:01:56 -0500
Subject: Re: UK National Archives On UFOs - Pope


>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 1:03 PM
>Subject: UFO UpDate: UK National Archives On UFOs


>Source: The National Archives - UK

>http://www.catalogue.nationalarchives.gov.uk/rdleaflet.asp?sLeafletID=389

>11-05-04

>Research Notes 6

>Research notes have been compiled by staff in The National
>Archives and other government departments in the course of their
>work to assist staff and researchers. They have been created
>from a wide variety of sources and are related to specific
>queries. Research notes should not be considered comprehensive
>and it is likely that further information can be found by
>undertaking bibliographic research and searching the Catalogue
>(www.catalogue.nationalarchives.gov.uk).

>Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)

<snip>

The National Archives research notes on UFOs were adapted from
an article that Georgina Bruni and I wrote, documenting the
British Government's handling of the UFO issue up until the
Fifties.

A copy of the full article can be found at the following link:

http://www.nickpope.net/official_history.htm

This was not an official project undertaken in my capacity as an
employee of the Ministry of Defence. The article was written
after my tour of duty on the MOD's UFO project. The decision to
use this article as the basis of the official guidance issued by
the National Archives was not mine or the MOD's. It was a
decision taken solely by staff at the National Archives.

Best wishes,

Nick Pope








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               Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -

From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 22:40:01 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 08:03:51 -0500
Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 11:22:16 -0600
>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB

>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 17:40:37 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB 'Beam'

>><snip>

>>Why do you phrase your advertisments in such a deliberatly
>>confrontational way? Is it because you actually *want* them to
>>be refused in order to provide confirmation for your theories
>>government censorship? If fact, from the wording above, it's not
>>even clear what kind of information you are seeking that might
>>attract "whistleblowers".

>>I suspect that really you're just trying to wind-up the
>>authorities for your own satisfaction, and I think a more
>>neutrally phrased advertisment might produce more productive
>>results.

>Be that as it may, this was a disheartening drubbing on a guy
>who asked for feedback in the first place, when all that really
>needed to be said was an inclusive admonition that a little more
>tact might harden the point of his pick a little bit. I can
>understand Mr. Bryant's outrage, at any rate, and can admire his
>constructive and lawful approach in dealing with it. I admire
>his pluck and courage... why can't you?

Because it is pointless, ineffective, and makes ufologists look
like motivated cranks. I'm sure Larry Bryant knows this, but he
seems to have his own agenda in attempting to put these
unnecessarily provocateive adverts into service newspapers, and
letting us all know about it when they are understandably
rejected.


--
John Rimmer
Magonia Magazine
www.magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/00/newmag.htm








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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 16:48:52 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 08:06:37 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 10:51:31 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 09:58:35 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 12:32:12 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>You chose instead to insult my character,
>>impugn my sensibility, and mock my style.

>You get so offended when someone disagrees with you. Can't a
>person just have a different opinion than you and not get
>lambasted by your sometimes rude, insulting verbosity?

<snip>

>Finally, regarding our difference in viewpoints, I think
>dreamers are fine and realists are fine. It takes all kinds in
>this world. Both optimists and pessimists are needed. But there
>is no need for rancor, only for courteous debate and discussion!

Hi James,

In case you missed it, Alfred has made it quite plain that in
his view, the time for courtesy is past, and he has taken the
proverbial gloves off.

While I am certainly not a Lehmberg yes-man, there is cause for
reflection on this.

We live in a time when ignorance is exalted, when an unsavory
clinging to outmoded beliefs rules the day, when an errant boob
revealed on a medium rightly called the *boob tube* is
considered obscene while bombing, maiming and killing are called
'freedom on the march'.

We have leaders who are suspicious of intellect, and who gain high
office by appealing to our fears and prejudices rather than our
hopes and dreams, and then pack their team with like-minded drones
who spout the party line because it is the party line.

We live in a Lewis Carroll world in which a good education is
available only to those who detest it, and where religion
dictates policy.

The feeble cries of Anarchy Now, dimmed from time and
repetition, seem more fitting now than ever.

Your views are suspect because of their rigidity, and their
adherence to something you call realism, when what is real is
all too often based on nothing more than the popular viewpoint.
That it is the popular viewpoint is a danger sign to those who
understand that majorities often rule, but they do not
necessarily represent the truth.

In this light, I find much more comfort with Mr. Lehmberg's
reactionary rhetoric, and even, I daresay, in his often
labyrinthine prose.

Note... I am not defending Mr. Lehmberg, nor do I follow
lockstep with his pronouncements. He is utterly capable of
providing his own defense.

I am simply sickened by the developments we have become
accustomed to calling progress, by what is considered just, and
what is considered impossible, impractical and unrealistic.

So as we threaten other nations for their nuclear ambitions
while we devise new and more insidious nuclear weapons, while we
decry tainted elections elsewhere while claiming a mandate in
our own, while we call tearing down forests conservation,
describe polluting the air as making it clean, and call the
death penalty justice while calling abortion murder, I am at a
loss to find a practical, realistic meaning to it all.

Koyaanisqatsi, indeed.

I am not so much a dreamer as one who is simply ready to awaken
from the nightmare.

Regards,

Kyle








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   Dec > Dec 8

                        Betty Hill Autographed Alien

From: Loren Coleman <lcoleman.nul>
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 18:16:48 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 08:09:35 -0500
Subject: Betty Hill Autographed Alien


It's come to this... as I must pay bills and make space for more
donated cryptozoological items coming in daily.

This is the ideal holiday gift for your favorite ufologist who
has everything.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5542055628


Thanks for looking,

Loren








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              CCCRN News: Canadian Crop Circle Mapping Project

From: Paul Anderson <paulanderson.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:14:23 -0800
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 08:11:01 -0500
Subject: CCCRN News: Canadian Crop Circle Mapping Project



CCCRN NEWS
E-News from the Canadian Crop Circle Research Network

December 7, 2004

http://www.cccrn.ca

_____________________________


CANADIAN CROP CIRCLE MAPPING PROJECT

A new mapping project by Paul Anderson is nearing completion,
documenting for the first time the distribution of all known
formation reports on both national and provincial/territorial
maps (currently 269 from 1925-2004; see the Crop Circles in
Canada Archives on the web site).

This is the the most comprehensive mapping done of Canadian
formations to date, including historical reports from all
available research resources (personal accounts, archives,
databases, etc.), a significant number of which have been
reported to CCCRN over the last several years.

Locations for each provincial/territorial map will also be
numbered and listed alphabetically for easy reference. The maps
will be posted to the web site once completed. These maps will
then be later combined with geological maps to further evaluate
any possible geological connections with formation locations.

The Crop Circles in Canada Archives have also been updated to
include statistical breakdowns of formations by crop /
vegetation as well as by province / territory and year. The
format of the older archives is still in the process of being
updated for consistency with more recent years. All reports are
now also listed by individual year, instead of the previous
"1950s, 1960s, etc." for older archives.

_____________________________


CCCRN News is the e-news service of the Canadian Crop
Circle Research Network, providing e-mail updates with the
latest news and reports on the crop circle phenomenon in
Canada, as well as other information on CCCRN-related
projects and events, sent free to your e-mail

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send an e-mail with either
Subscribe CCCRN News or Unsubscribe CCCRN News in the
subject line to: cccrnnews.nul

c. CCCRN, 2004








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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:23:55 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 08:14:33 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 10:51:31 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 09:58:35 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 12:32:12 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>You chose instead to insult my character,
>>impugn my sensibility, and mock my style.

>You get so offended when someone disagrees with you.

Nonsense. I get offended when I perceive I'm being insulted,
impugned, or mocked to _any_ degree, by _any_ person, and for
_any_ reason. To paraphrase a little Melville, Sir, I'd strike
the sun if it offended me. I'm not one to turn the other cheek.

>Can't a
>person just have a different opinion than you and not get
>lambasted by your sometimes rude, insulting verbosity?

Of course, Mr. Smith, if a difference of opinion was all it was.
But it was not. Don't insult the forum by suggesting it was. As
to rude and insulting verbosity? Well -- there you go again...

Moreover, it's not a Lambaste, Mr. Smith, it's a "Lehm-baste"
<LOL> - what's 'affectionately' known over here, for years now,
as getting "Lehmberged". Thanks for helping to coin a term for
it. It only happens to the richly deserving, usually some
pompous dragon that comes strutting out of its CSICOPian cave,
and actually, Sir, has yet to happen to you.

>I don't think I insulted your _character_.

Cheese and rotted milk, Mr. Smith. Your perceptions are not in
line with your insights.

>I imagine you are
>sincere and intelligent and don't hurt small animals and likely
>give to the Salvation Army. What of it? But, if I have insulted
>your character then I apologize.

Perhaps I over-reacted to your veiled characterization of me as
an automated dispenser of (inane?)obscurities, a man who can't
stand and deliver, and an opium user?

>Regarding "impugning your sensibility", I cannot think how I did
>this. Impugn means (note: to confirm the meaning of the word for
>discussion, not that you don't know the meaning) "to challenge
>or to call into question", usually the integrity of truth of a
>person, but in this case you say sensibility (I assume mental
>responsiveness and awareness). If you are offended that I am
>challenging your awareness of the reality/practicality of the
>various proposed projects, then I suppose I am guilty.

Mr. Smith (a man who must call the kettle black regarding
accusations of verbosity), you must be aware that human beings
can do (and have done) anything they put their minds and hearts
to. Lately we even re-create God in our own image, so we won't
belabor that. Your manner in response (actually a lack of same)
to my expressions regarding stepping stone asteroids has
provided abundant cause for me to be offended. Offended by the
assumptions you seem to make. Offended by your inappropriately
pedantic manner. Offended by your reflex disrespect. Offended by
your inability to step outside the box in a forum that typifies
it... I could go on...

>Doesn't
>seem like a big deal in a discussion.

This could be something else you might be wrong about.

>Sadly, you seem to take
>offense to a free discussion of ideas.

I'd suggest you seem to take offense when your readership won't
reflexively genuflect at your portentous arrogance, inflated
hubris, and sneering manner.

>What do you want? A choir
>of yes-men?

I don't even want the choir. I demand respect, is all.

>Is the fabric of your dreams so delicate that it
>cannot withstand my non-aggressive remarks?

Astonishing! As a person who believes that if heaven can fall it
probably _should_ fall, I may be seen also as a person who won't
have inordinate difficulty defending my dreams or giving up on
them altogether when it's appropriate. Moreover, a sneer _is_ an
aggression, Sir.

>It seems that
>viewpoint's like mine should provide less of a wet blanket to
>you than an incentive to figure out how to achieve your dream.

Nonsense. I suspect that this was not your intention, Mr. Smith.
Your manner is an impedance, Sir, and not an incentive. Besides,
your conventional wisdoms about asteroid mining and
transportation fall to pieces the moment we detect a planet-
killer bearing down on us in fact. You know that to be true.

>Sure, on Star Trek someone dreamed up communicators weirdly like
>cell phones. Did this mean anyone did anything to make cell
>phones due to the Star Trek dream? No. It was based on market
>forces and independent realists who took an idea into the real
>world.

Independent realists _inspired_ by 1930s pulp magazines, half a
century of quality science fiction, _and_ Star Trek, of course.
Art Clark writes compellingly about communications satellites
and they materialize into existence. It's almost that simple,
Mr. Smith. Some dreamer had to have the idea first.

>Regarding mocking your style, I think mocking is too aggressive
>a term.

You might have another 'think' coming, Sir.

>But I do think it is very hard to understand your
>opinion sometimes as derived from your prose. I, for some odd
>reason, cannot process mentally some of your paragraphs.

We can take them word for word, Sir. Trouble is, they oftimes
get into areas that the respondent isn't comfortable getting
into.

>An
>impressive feat I may say, but there is a law of diminishing
>returns and I reach that limit too often with your paragraphs.

The delete key _may_ be appropriate, Sir, in as much as you seem
to have a predilection for mocking and sneering, and I won't sit
still for it. Antithetical to your (I think self-imposed) lack
of understanding , other folks have reported that the
communication becomes clearer on subsequent readings you
intimate you're not up for. Pity.

>But then this may simply be my own limited mental ability, so I
>am sorry for being unable to understand what you are writing in
>those cases.

Unwilling more than unable, I'd suggest. Your mental ability is
not in question, Sir. Neither is mine.

>Also, your liberal sprinkling of "Sirs" reminds me
>of an English manservant addressing his employer.

...And that's so ludicrous it must then be my insistence on a
certain formality in contention.

>You, in fact,
>dilute the meaning and power of "Sir" by its repetitive use
>which seems to be of no more importance, in context, than a
>colon or question mark.

...or an expletive, Mr. Smith?

>"Sir" should really be used when it is
>meant and I FEEL that you do not in most cases.

I guess my definition of appropriate manners diverges from
yours, considerably.

>But this is a
>personal decision in your style and I have no right to ask you
>to stop.

You think?

>I chime in with a Sir or two to try to make you feel
>comfortable.

That provoked a pronounced snort over here on this end, Mr.
Smith, and like Wendy Connors wrote, required a little clean-up
on CRT and keyboard.

>Sorry it did not work and you think I am mocking
>you.

Alone and without complication, this sentence would only have
gained an apology accepted. Complicated as it was with all that
has gone before I can only stand with arms akimbo and eyes
askance.

>Finally, regarding our difference in viewpoints, I think
>dreamers are fine and realists are fine. It takes all kinds in
>this world. Both optimists and pessimists are needed. But there
>is no need for rancor, only for courteous debate and discussion!

No argument with any of that, Sir. Would that you had taken
your own lesson. But that's all behind us now... <g>

So... ever see a UFO?


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







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                   Re: Good News For Causality? - Maccabee

From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 22:52:12 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 08:17:36 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Maccabee


>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 12:02:01 +0000
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>>From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>>
>>To: Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 18:13:39 -0800
>>Subject: Good News For Causality

>>Physicists in Switzerland have confirmed that information
>>cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light.

>Having a second shot 'cos it seems _someone_ may be trying to
>orchestrate a dumb-down (of joe public) over experimental
>results that have already been kept fairly quiet for some
>decades now.

>It's all about "entanglement info" - which is shown to travel
>over arbitrary distances 'instantaneously' - no matter how far,
>with whatever intervening!

>http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/aspect1/

>Clearly that "info" cannot be traveling via any form of radiation
>or energy known to modern science - unless someone is keeping a
>tight lid on it.

>But there are simple experiments _anyone_ can do to demonstrate
>that mysterious force, which the scientists cannot or will not
>explain.

"...demonstrate that mysterious force..." You mean demonstrate
the "force" that corresponds to "entanglement" or have you in
mind some other "force?"

>What experiments?

>Spin a coin on a table, or a spinning-top, or ride a bicycle or
>motor-bike.

>Yup - all those have `unexplained stability' - staying upright
>mainly - which science can't understand or explain (although
>you'll find many long "descriptions").

>That stability obviously (IMHO) comes from the same force that
>gives `inertia' - another unexplainable phenomenon - to mass
>(because that weird stability is merely `added inertia').

So you explain one "unknown" - for example, why a spinning top
stays on its point - with another "unknown"  - a force that
"creates" inertia?

Incidently, you could ask the same question with regard to
linear motion without rotation: why does an air hockey puck keep
traveling in one direction after you push it (until it hits a
wall)? It's the same "spooky" inertia (which I call basic
Newtonian "memory"... see:

http://brumac.8k.com/AbductionInLife/INTELLECTON.htm

Perhaps the spookiest "force " around is memory; without it
there would be no "existence"... or, if there were existence,
no one would realize it.

>And, almost as obviously, from the same "instantaneous force"
>which holds matter together and links all `particle info' -
>universally.

Matter is generally held together by electromagnetic forces and
when enough matter is collected in one "small" volume, gravity
forces (whatever they are; warped spacetime with the amount of
warp determined by the mass... whatever that is) become
important.

>Now that was fairly easy to grasp even for dumb clucks like us -
>so why is mainstream science acting so scared?

>Ask about any of the above effects and you'll get a forced laugh
>- "Ha-ha You're not asking me about spinning-tops are you?" (or
>gyroscopes etc)

Actually, the bottom line is, that we don't really have a clue
as to what is _really_ going on!








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                Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO

From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 22:52:44 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 08:19:34 -0500
Subject: Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO


>From: Brad Sparks <RB47x.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 14:45:50 EST
>Subject: Re: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO Results?

>>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 10:42:24 EST
>>Subject: Anyone Review The Smoking Gun Site's UFO Results?

>>I'm sure you've all heard of this website:

>>http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ufo.html

>>They obtained some documents in a brief reply when they inquired
>>about UFOs from the government.

>It's just the garbage Blue Book AF press release! Why is anyone
>wasting time with this monotonous trash?

Obviously the 'naive people'  at The Smoking Gun didn't get the
'rest of the story' from the FBI (1600 more pages!) which
includes some_really_ interesting statements about the UFO
situation made by AF intelligence in 1952 and saved in the FBI
file - see the UFO FBI Connection.









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               Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 08:17:01 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 13:08:55 -0500
Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 22:40:01 +0000
>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 11:22:16 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB

<snip>

>>>I suspect that really you're just trying to wind-up the
>>>authorities for your own satisfaction, and I think a more
>>>neutrally phrased advertisment might produce more productive
>>>results.

>>Be that as it may, this was a disheartening drubbing on a guy
>>who asked for feedback in the first place, when all that really
>>needed to be said was an inclusive admonition that a little more
>>tact might harden the point of his pick a little bit. I can
>>understand Mr. Bryant's outrage, at any rate, and can admire his
>>constructive and lawful approach in dealing with it. I admire
>>his pluck and courage... why can't you?

>Because it is pointless, ineffective, and makes ufologists look
>like motivated cranks.

Canted Nonsense, Mr. Rimmer. You only demonstrate that you
either didn't hear a word I said, or you are deliberately making
selective commentary. And forgetting, Sir, that positive
mainstream regard for ufologists has not been demonstrated as
one of your major concerns and is patently ludicrous because the
discredit of ufologists and ufology seems an occupation with
you, your crocodile tears of concern, now, only wrap you in the
mantle of the biased ideologue. You play yourself false, Sir.
I'm certain I'm not the only one to notice.

You are not an arbiter in this discussion, Mr. Rimmer. You are
too obviously partisan.

>I'm sure Larry Bryant knows this, but he
>seems to have his own agenda in attempting to put these
>unnecessarily provocateive adverts into service newspapers, and
>letting us all know about it when they are understandably
>rejected.

I suspect you don't have the slightest idea what Mr. Bryant
'knows', Mr. Rimmer. Moreover, his agenda is refreshingly plain,
forthright, and ethical whereas the agenda of the garden variety
'klasskurtzian' is decidedly less so. If we had more Larry
Bryant's and a soup'ce less Johann Rim'mar we might be a little
closer to getting our mainstream back, is my suspicion. Cranks
are not the cause, Sir. They are a symptom provoked by a disease
(an low pressure information void) facilitated by you and yours.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net








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   Dec > Dec 8

                   Re: Good News For Causality? - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 08:33:27 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 13:10:47 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Lehmberg


>From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 22:52:12 -0500
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 12:02:01 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>>>From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>>
>>>To: Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 18:13:39 -0800
>>>Subject: Good News For Causality

>>>Physicists in Switzerland have confirmed that information
>>>cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light.

<snip>

>Actually, the bottom line is, that we don't really have a clue
>as to what is _really_ going on!

My point exactly. When everything you 'know' is likely wrong,
maybe we could be a little more 'inclusive' regarding
extrapolation into an unknown with a known almost as unknown as
the unknown we'd pretend to attempt to identify.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 08:08:59 -0800 (PST)
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 13:17:49 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:23:55 -0600
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 10:51:31 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered


Mr.Lehmberg,

I find it difficult to deal with your prose. Perhaps it
is some failing in me. The thing is, it seems that whenever
I make a remark it seems to offend you or insult you!
(And I am sure that remark just did! And also that one!)

I am used to communicating to engineers/scientists. I have never
come across someone like you before who seems to be very sincere
but who takes offense at many statements I make! I feel like the
kid in the classroom who doesn't raise his hand anymore because
of being snapped at by the teacher.

If I wanted to be rude, believe me I can, but I don't think that
accomplishes anything! It shows poor thinking and lack of
argument.

>Perhaps I over-reacted to your veiled characterization of me as
>an automated dispenser of (inane?)obscurities, a man who can't
>stand and deliver, and an opium user?

Regarding "automated dispenser of obscurities" (Inane? don't put
words in MY mouth!), you mentioned something (about prolonged
life which I inferred meant downloading consciousness into
computers. In that sense you _would_ be automated, but alive!
That you would behave in the same manner as in corporeal life
and provide complicated prose (obscurities if you will), I think
is a safe assumption.

That I was wrong in your desired method for prolonged life
showed a lack of imagination and comprehensiveness on my part.
Your concept of prolonging life using stem cells and such would
SEEM possible within 50 years however I must point out to the
dreamer that if this _was_ made possible, it is highly unlikely
that our civilization of only 50 years development is going to
allow it to be used on any except the elite and rich. The reason
is clear, there are too many people right now and too many old
people who can no longer be productive. Increasing the life span
of everyone will destroy our planet because of limited resources
(people are not going to give up their right to have lots of
babies).  So it is clear that you or I will not get the nice
drugs to live forever, only the guys at the top (unfortunately,
in our world, the cream doesn't rise to the top, mainly the
dregs). So we will end up with a world being controlled by
people like the Supreme Court only more youthful, never
retiring, making the world in their image, while we more
ephemeral people come and go.

Did I say you _were_ an opium user? No, I meant that dreamers in
the past had opium dens to live in opium dream worlds! If you
are offended, better to simply ask for clarification in a
courteous manner rather than blaze an inferno at me!

>you must be aware that human beings
>can do (and have done) anything they put their minds and hearts
>to.

No. You are wrong. There is no world peace. There is no fusion
reactor. There is no cancer vaccine. There is no population
control (not War/Famine, but abstinence,etc).

>Your manner in response (actually a lack of same)
>to my expressions regarding stepping stone asteroids has
>provided abundant cause for me to be offended.

Actually, "stepping stone asteroids" _is_ witty.

>...Offended by the
>assumptions you seem to make. Offended by your inappropriately
>pedantic manner. Offended by your reflex disrespect. Offended by
>your inability to step outside the box in a forum that typifies
>it... I could go on...

One man's "pedantic manner" is another man's straightforward
prose. Disrespect? I can be disrespectful if you want some
examples, but I have found it to be counter-productive. I can
step outside the box better than most, but what you seem to
really want is just a bunch of grinning yes-men to nod and
wisely not comment (no comment is acceptance). All I do is point
out technical considerations and practical realities, but you
can't stand that! As I said before, we can dream about
impossible things to no avail. But when you want to make them
possible, you have to consider the practicalities!

>I'd suggest you seem to take offense when your readership won't
>reflexively genuflect at your portentous arrogance, inflated
>hubris, and sneering manner.

Incredible! I don't expect genuflection! How can you ever even
reach these conclusions is amazing! Arrogance! Hubris! Sneering!
Most ridiculous! My comments can be taken or left where they
are. If you don't like them, simply ignore them Mr. Lehmberg!
Maybe I should simply do the same with you.

>I don't even want the choir. I demand respect, is all.

But please tell me exactly how to show you respect. I could
address you as Mr. Lehmberg. I can avoid calling you names. I
can avoid criticizing your prose style.

>Moreover, a sneer _is_ an aggression, Sir.

Well, I want you to know that in composing my responses I do not
sneer. I simply use critical thought and as little emotionalism
as possible. I am not banging the keyboard with my Pepsi or
cursing or foaming at the mouth! As for textual sneering, this
is more complicated and is apparently in the eye of the reader.
If I am being aggressive in this way, I cannot filter it because
it is not apparent.

>Nonsense. I suspect that this was not your intention, Mr. Smith.
>Your manner is an impedance, Sir, and not an incentive.

You don't know how engineering works apparently. To solve
engineering problems you _have_ to go out of the box but reality
and practicality of funding/resources and time are needed to
determine optimal solutions. Thus, my manner is a critical part
of the problem solving process. And for you, it really should be
an incentive to simply respond with appropriate counterarguments
rather than attacking the messenger.

>Besides,
>your conventional wisdoms about asteroid mining and
>transportation fall to pieces the moment we detect a planet-
>killer bearing down on us in fact. You know that to be true.

It does not "fall to pieces". It is completely a part of my
"practical manner". Specifically, if there is a known
intersecting asteroid, then the damage calculations will show
the amount of money lost due to the damage. Then the world will
weigh that against the cost of moving the asteroid. A trade
study will be performed and a trade space searched for options
and funding profiles/technology development scenarios and
bottlenecks/critical paths. Then, when a reasonably costed
program is determined, it will be implemented. But note that all
these resources are being taken from other research programs or
society sustinence programs. Someone will be on the losing end
of the stick! Without an asteroid impact threat, such spending
redistribution will not occur.

>Independent realists _inspired_ by 1930s pulp magazines, half a
>century of quality science fiction, _and_ Star Trek, of course.
>Art Clark writes compellingly about communications satellites
>and they materialize into existence. It's almost that simple,
>Mr. Smith. Some dreamer had to have the idea first.

I will agree that there IS something referred to as a "meme"
that is the infusion into society of an accepted idea which can,
somehow, influence future outcomes. How this works is unknown. I
simply state that the dream is the easy part, while the
practical implementation takes a long time. I can easily write a
computer program that searches a large design space which is
essentially "dreaming". But practical design solutions must meet
development cost and time (and other) criteria or they will not
be realized (at least given current physics or groundrules).

>>regarding prose difficulties<<

>We can take them word for word, Sir. Trouble is, they oftimes
>get into areas that the respondent isn't comfortable getting
>into.

Sorry, no. It is just that the sentence structure is either too
complicated or apparently irrelevant. But don't worry, I feel
the same about some of Ms. Rand's or Mr. Melville's books, so
you are in good company.

>The delete key _may_ be appropriate, Sir, in as much as you seem
>to have a predilection for mocking and sneering, and I won't sit
>still for it. Antithetical to your (I think self-imposed) lack
>of understanding , other folks have reported that the
>communication becomes clearer on subsequent readings you
>intimate you're not up for. Pity.

Well, if it was the Bible, I would wish to consider multiple
readings, but I would not equate your prose with It's meaning.

>>But then this may simply be my own limited mental ability, so I
>>am sorry for being unable to understand what you are writing in
>>those cases.

>Unwilling more than unable, I'd suggest. Your mental ability is
>not in question, Sir. Neither is mine.

Okay we are both smart. Perhaps, there is merit in your remark.
I _am_ unwilling. But I think it due to laziness in trying to
understand unusual concept formulations. Maybe I have a
subconscious fear of such sentence structure due to too many
English courses.

However, I would put the ball in the writer's court simply
because if the writer has trouble getting his point across to
his audience, what use is he? I have to write technical reports
and presentations all the time. If I come across with some hard
to understand work, I will get nailed for it!

>>Also, your liberal sprinkling of "Sirs" reminds me
>>of an English manservant addressing his employer.

>...And that's so ludicrous it must then be my insistence on a
>certain formality in contention.

Okay, so if you like the guy, you add no Sirs, but if you
dislike him or are opposed to him you do add Sir. Interesting.
Well, I will try to ignore them since they don't help or hurt
the issue at hand.

>>You, in fact,
>>dilute the meaning and power of "Sir" by its repetitive use
>>which seems to be of no more importance, in context, than a
>>colon or question mark.

>...or an expletive, Mr. Smith?

I don't use expletives in my posts. Are you implying that you
_mean_ "Sir" to be an expletive. That would be very subtle and
clever of you if so... something I would not do.

>>"Sir" should really be used when it is
>>meant and I FEEL that you do not in most cases.

>I guess my definition of appropriate manners diverges from
>yours, considerably.

I suppose. It just seems that you scatter them like birdseed.
Whatever.

>>I chime in with a Sir or two to try to make you feel
>>comfortable.

>That provoked a pronounced snort over here on this end, Mr.
>Smith, and like Wendy Connors wrote, required a little clean-up
>on CRT and keyboard.

Really? Well, I must be more careful!

>>Sorry it did not work and you think I am mocking
>>you.

>Alone and without complication, this sentence would only have
>gained an apology accepted. Complicated as it was with all that
>has gone before I can only stand with arms akimbo and eyes
>askance.

Still, I mean it. It is hard to figure out how to react to your
comments. I shall omit the use of "Sir" to stop "mocking" you.

>>Finally, regarding our difference in viewpoints, I think
>>dreamers are fine and realists are fine. It takes all kinds in
>>this world. Both optimists and pessimists are needed. But there
>>is no need for rancor, only for courteous debate and discussion!

>No argument with any of that, Sir. Would that you had taken
>your own lesson. But that's all behind us now... <g>

>So... ever see a UFO?

Yes. Over D.C. A black disc in front of the Sun visible only
because of fog and sun glasses. Not a sun spot or helicopter.
Seen in the morning for 4 miles on Rt 66 going toward D.C..
Stayed in same spot relative to the Sun's surface. Angle implied
at stratospheric altitude (or somewhat below) over D.C.. Either
a military airship platform (but this was 3 yrs prior to 9/11)
or alien vehicle. Either option could use a relatively simple
camoflauge technique to not be seen EXCEPT when in front of the
Sun. My guess is that our military had no such platform, indeed
they are funding work right now for such platforms.








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   Dec > Dec 8

                        Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 10:14:52 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 13:21:17 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 18:53:04 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 16:04:37 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Clark

>>This from the guy who once championed "birth trauma" -
>>"something [that] we don't even know exists" - as an
>>"explanation" for the abduction phenomenon.

>>Now it's time for Peter to take the gospel to all those SETI
>>types who are forever "referring to something [that] we don't
>>even know exists," speculating about its nature, and working on
>>strategies to contact it.

Peter lets this one go by. Gee, I wonder why. Well, folks, I'll
tell you: Peter loves to bash ufologists but knows his place
when it comes to authority figures.

>Sorry Jerry but I have never been a champion of the birth trauma
>hypothesis, and am very sceptical of it. To be fair however it
>did have some of the properties of s scientific theory. It
>failed because it was falsified by what we know (or think we
>know) about the organisation of the neonates brain and sensory
>abilities.

In reality, Magonia extolled the birth-trauma "hypothesis"
enthusiastically when Alvin Lawson first proposed it, and Peter
sang in the choir, that is, when he wasn't proposing the
Americans imagined abduction experiences because they fear
Hispanics. If it were worth my time, which it isn't, I'd dig
through old issues of the magazine for the appropriately
embarrassing quotes. Still, I'll take Peter's word for it that
he no longer believes it, and congratulate him for his good
sense, at least on this matter.

>As I keep saying, the problem with the ETH and its more exotic
>bretheren is that they are unfalisifiable infinitely elastic
>hypotheses.

If one holds falsifiability to be a criterion - a notion
generally now regarded by scientists as creaky and old-
fashioned, strongly disputed by Karl Popper's many critics - it
is true that only wreckage, machinery, and bodies are likely to
settle the issue. That's one reason, by the way, that I am
cautious in everything I've written about the ETH. Another
reason, of course, is that it's fun to drive pelicanists nuts.
Having nothing better to do with their time, they have devoted
many furious words to bashing me for my fence-sitting and
reading my thoughts. Out of that they've created a strawman, and
that's the one Peter now attacks.

Short of wreckage, machinery, and bodies, we're dealing with a
problem for which no solution is immediately in sight. But then
the other hypotheses - such as the ones Peter favors - haven't
exactly been falsifiable, either, and if anything less useful.
I've yet to see a falsifiable version of the psychosocial
hypothesis and/or the pelicanistic one - they are, of course,
"unfalsifiable" and "infinitely elastic," as we learn with each
"sceptic" posting on this List and with each issue of Magonia.
If you're a pelicanist, you can just make it up as you go along,
and if that weren't fun enough, you get to accuse everybody else
of being irrational and pseudoscientific for doing exactly what
you're doing. Golly, who wouldn't want to be a pelicanist?

>Jerry has made this point on a number occasions about
>paranormal explanations but seems to have a slight difficulty
>realising that invoking a technology so advanced as to be like
>magic is only verbally different from a paranormal explanation.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, except that
pronouncements like these seem to give the likes of Peter great
satisfaction as he goes about conjuring up ever more and more
elastic, magical pelicans. Since it was Arthur Clarke who made
the comparison of ETH technology to magic, I urge you to take
your quarrel to him. Oh, wait a minute; he's an authority
figure, isn't he? Sorry.  Never mind.


Jerry Clark








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   Dec > Dec 8

               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 08:34:11 -0800 (PST)
Fwd Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 13:22:44 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 16:48:52 -0600
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 10:51:31 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>Your views are suspect because of their rigidity, and their
>adherence to something you call realism, when what is real is
>all too often based on nothing more than the popular viewpoint.
>That it is the popular viewpoint is a danger sign to those who
>understand that majorities often rule, but they do not
>necessarily represent the truth.

As I said, a balance in dreaming and reality is needed. Dreams
can provide "memes" into societal consciousness and culture that
may influence reality. All I provides was considerations for the
next step. All dreams can fit into what engineer's call the
"design trade space" which is every concievable way to do
something. Then, the selection of the optimal dream or design is
based on practical matters (cost, weight, reliability, safety or
a complex combination). So I respect dreams. Realism is a tool
to pick out the best approach. It may not even be related to
popularity, although this could be one of the criteria to filter
out dreams/designs.

>I am simply sickened by the developments we have become
>accustomed to calling progress, by what is considered just, and
>what is considered impossible, impractical and unrealistic.
>So as we threaten other nations for their nuclear ambitions
>while we devise new and more insidious nuclear weapons, while we
>decry tainted elections elsewhere while claiming a mandate in
>our own, while we call tearing down forests conservation,
>describe polluting the air as making it clean, and call the
>death penalty justice while calling abortion murder, I am at a
>loss to find a practical, realistic meaning to it all.

I sympathize with your feelings, I feel that way too (not that I
am a liberal/Democrat). Its just that humanity's definition of
progress is wrong. I am somewhat of a Luddite, oddly, based on
the feeling that any tech we develop will find a way to cause
negative results.

I mean, something like better medicine/drugs you would think is
a no brainer. YES, that is good to do! But no, it causes a
population problem. And it promotes reproduction of genetically
inferior individuals. How about better food production? Same
problem. Transportation/communication/ energy/chemistry all lead
to us more easily destroying or torturing people.

But realism shows to me that this is the way humanity is. It has
taken alot of time for humanity to reach this state. The efforts
of us few disenchanted souls to change it will not make a
difference in the total outcome. You can't expect any practical,
realistic meaning to reality other than what you make it.
Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, the best policy
still seems to be to help those around you as best you can and
to do no harm (unless they really deserve it ;).








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   Dec > Dec 9

                      The Night Aliens Called On Lennon

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:32:56 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:32:56 -0500
Subject: The Night Aliens Called On Lennon




Source: The Telegraph - London

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=3D/arts/2004/12/08/ftgeller08=.xm
l


12-07-04


The Night Aliens Called On Lennon

They came in the darkness and had bug-like faces. Stranger
still, they left a weird egg-shaped object behind. Uri Geller
recalls his friend John Lennon's encounter with the unknown

There is an egg-like object in my pocket. It was given to me by
John Lennon. And it was given to him by... well, I'll come to
that.

We were eating in a restaurant in New York City. Yoko was with
us, so this was after their big break-up and reconciliation.
Yoko was expecting their child, Sean, and John was excited - he
was going to love this baby day and night: feed him, change him,
teach him to talk, teach him to love music.

He did all of that. And he was going to watch him grow into
adolescence, through the tumbles from bicycles and terrors of
schooldays, from reading to dating to college. He never got to
do that. John started talking about UFOs.

He said he believed life existed on other planets, that it had
visited us, that maybe it was observing us right now. He took me
to a quieter, darker table, lit a cigarette and pointed its
glowing tip at my face.

"You believe in this stuff, right?" he asked me. "Well, you
ain't f---in' gonna believe this.

"About six months ago, I was asleep in my bed, with Yoko, at
home, in the Dakota Building. And suddenly, I wasn't asleep.
Because there was this blazing light round the door. It was
shining through the cracks and the keyhole, like someone was out
there with searchlights, or the apartment was on fire.

"That was what I thought - intruders, or fire. I leapt out of
bed, and Yoko wasn't awake at all, she was lying there like a
stone, and I pulled open the door. There were these four people
out there."

"Fans?" I asked him.

"Well they didn't want my f---in' autograph. They were, like,
little. Bug-like. Big bug eyes and little bug mouths and they
were scuttling at me like roaches."

He broke off and stared at me.

"I've told this to two other people, right? One was Yoko, and
she believes me. She says she doesn't understand it, but she
knows I wouldn't lie to her. I told one other person, and she
didn't believe me.

"She laughed it off, and then she said I must have been high.
Well, I've been high, I mean right out of it, a lot of times,
and I never saw anything on acid that was as weird as those
f---in' bugs, man.

"I was straight that night. I wasn't dreaming and I wasn't
tripping. There were these creatures, like people but not like
people, in my apartment."

"What did they do to you?" Lennon swore again. "How do you know
they did anything to me, man?" "Because they must have come for
a reason."

"You're right. They did something. But I don't know what it was.
I tried to throw them out, but, when I took a step towards them,
they kind of pushed me back. I mean, they didn't touch me. It
was like they just willed me. Pushed me with willpower and
telepathy."

"And then what?"

"I don't know. Something happened. Don't ask me what. Either
I've forgotten, blocked it out, or they won't let me remember.
But after a while they weren't there and I was just lying on the
bed, next to Yoko, only I was on the covers.

"And she woke up and looked at me and asked what was wrong. I
couldn't tell her at first. But I had this thing in my hands.
They gave it to me."

"What was it?" Lennon dug into his jeans pocket. "I've been
carrying it round ever since, wanting to ask somebody the same
question. You have it. Maybe you'll know."

I took the metal, egg-like object and turned it over in the dim
light. It seemed solid and smooth, and I could make out no
markings. "I've never seen anything like it."

"Keep it." John told me. "It's too weird for me. If it's my
ticket to another planet, I don't want to go there."

When we first met on November 28, 1974, almost exactly 30 years
ago, he was suffering terribly from his separation from Yoko.
His drug abuse and drinking, linked to the sorrow of Yoko's
recent miscarriage, had driven them apart, and John desperately
wanted to mend the relationship.

He just didn't know how to make the first move. The night Lennon
and I were introduced, Elton John was playing at Madison Square
Gardens. Elton was trying to persuade the ex-Beatle to get up on
stage with him, and John was torn - he wanted to perform but he
was scared.

Finally, he turned to me and offered a deal, as though I were a
negotiator sent by God: "I'll sing," he said, "but you have to
make Yoko call me."

Like all of John's jokes, this one was a plea from the heart,
wrapped in a sardonic quip. Yoko phoned John out of the blue, 36
hours later. I think John always believed I had beamed a mind-
control ray at her. For my part, I think that of all the
synchronicities that have shaped my life, that was one of the
strangest.

John Lennon was a compulsive doodler. The last autograph he ever
signed, 15 minutes before Mark Chapman gunned him down outside
his home at the Dakota Building, on December 9, 1980, features a
double portrait of himself and his wife, Yoko Ono. The drawings
are done in a couple of lines - the style is unmistakable and so
are the faces.

I always marvelled at John's skill as an artist. There is no
doubt that, if he'd been tone deaf and tuneless, the boy who
created The Beatles could have become a successful painter or
illustrator. During the last year of his life, we met most weeks
to chat over a coffee in one of the hotels near our New York
homes.

Sometimes John would bring Sean, who was about four years old
then. The rocker had put his music career on hold while the
child was small. John once told me how bitterly he regretted
that while his first son, Julian, was a toddler, he himself was
devoting his energies to the stage or the studio, or would be
out partying with friends.

"You don't get those years back," he said. "I'm not going to
miss a minute while Sean is growing up."

That is the greatest tragedy of my friend's death. He had
finally learned what made him happy, and then he was robbed of
it. What really interested me about John was not his incredible
life, his fame or his talent, but his deep spirituality.

I too was working out what made me happy - I'd realised at last
that buying watches and eating six helpings of dessert before
making myself throw up was not the path to nirvana.

The shock of Lennon's murder was one of the powerful forces that
drove me to quit New York and spend a year in Japan, undergoing
a spiritual detox. John spoke with passion about Japanese views
of life, and I am certain that Yoko's philosophies were at the
core of his last years.

I was woken on the day John was shot by a call from a friend,
Roland, a publisher who lived opposite the Dakota.

"He's dead," Roland sobbed. "They killed John." I dressed in a
few seconds and ran across town: somehow I had to see the house
to believe the news. The radio reports weren't enough.

If John really were dead, if this wasn't some sick media hoax,
then there would be people outside his home with candles and
prayer bells. They were there, in their hundreds already.

I didn't have to push my way through the crowd; I simply stood
and stared across the road, and then walked away through Central
Park with the tears running down my face.

Now, 24 years on, when I hold the cold, metal egg in my fist, I
have a strong sensation that John knew more about this object
than he told me. Maybe it didn't come with an instruction
manual, but I think John knew what it was for.

And whatever that purpose was - communication? healing? a first-
class intergalactic ticket? - it scared him. I wish I could have
warned him... that however scary aliens seem, it's the humans
you have to fear.


[UFO UpDates thanks http://www.anomalist.com & Richard Hendricks
 for the lead]







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   Dec > Dec 9

               Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:33:36 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:33:36 -0500
Subject: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences




Source: News-Medical.Net...

http://www.news-medical.net/?id=6732

12-007-04


Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

Previous research has shown that paranormal experiences can be
achieved via electromagnetic stimulation of the temple lobe. Now
scientists from Uppsala and Lund universities in Sweden are
calling into question how the experiments were set up and
therefore questioning the results. Their study involving
identical magnetic field equipment produced no such
relationship.

Previous research has reported that as many as 8 out of 10
individuals have religious or paranormal experiences when their
brain's temporal lobe has been exposed to ultra weak, complex
magnetic fields. Study participants have experienced a sensed
presence of a sentient being, although the participant has been
sitting all by him- or herself. Many participants have made
religious interpretations of the sensed presence.

A conclusion that could be drawn from these findings is that
religious experiences can be easily accomplished through
electromagnetic stimulation of the temporal lobe. Accordingly,
these sensational results have been given wide media attention.
Such a magnetic field stimulator can also be purchased on the
Internet. However, in the previous studies, it is unclear if
participants and experimenters have known about research
questions and experimental conditions, which is referred to as
experimental "blindness".

For an experiment to yield credible results, it should be
"double-blind". In this context, this means that neither the
participant, nor the experimenter that interacts with him or
her, knows whether the participant belongs to the experimental
condition (magnetic fields activated) or control condition (no
magnetic fields activated). The reason for this methodological
rule is that any differences between the groups may otherwise
have been caused by some irrelevant factors. For instance,
participants in the experimental condition may unconsciously
have been treated in such a way that the experiences have been
induced for other reasons than the magnetic field exposure.

In a joint project, researchers from Uppsala and Lund
University, Sweden, performed a double-blind experiment to test
if results from previous studies could be reproduced.
Approximately 90 undergraduate students in theology and
psychology participated in the study. The magnetic field
apparatus utilized was identical to that used in previous
studies. Results showed that the magnetic fields did not cause
religious or paranormal experiences. However, highly suggestible
individuals had paranormal experiences to a larger extent, but
this had nothing to do with the magnetic fields.

Paranormal experiences were particularly pronounced among
participants with personality traits indicating openness to
shifts in consciousness and a new age lifestyle orientation.
Hence, our results show that the sensational conclusions about
the effects of magnetic field exposure that were drawn in
previous studies should be questioned.

http://www.uu.se/



[UFO UpDates thanks http://www.anomalist.com & Richard Hendricks
 for the lead]








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   Dec > Dec 9

                         UK Government Files On UFOs

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:40:23 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:40:23 -0500
Subject: UK Government Files On UFOs




Source: Phenomena Magazine - UK

http://www.phenomenamagazine.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0&this_cat=Area+51&actio
n=page&obj_id=2109

12-08-04


UFOs In The 1960s
From The Archives

Government Files On UFOs

By: Nick Redfern
Phenomena US Editor In Chief

Sources:

Declassified British Air Ministry files, Reference Numbers: AIR 2/17318 and AIR
2/16918

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had in my files a whole
range of UFO reports and encounters that I had never published
and that I would begin to make available for the Phenomena
audience on a regular basis. The following data all dates from a
clearly defined period in the early 1960s in the UK and
demonstrates the sheer scale and diversity of UFO reports that
were investigated by the British Air Ministry at the time.

In mid-January 1963, the Wiltshire town of Corsham was the scene
of a notable UFO encounter involving a retired Royal Air Force
officer whose report attracted the attention of Air Intelligence
at the MoD. And it may not be without significance that Corsham,
Wiltshire, is the home of RAF Rudloe Manor - a British Royal Air
Force base that was for years the location for classified UFO
investigations undertaken by the RAF.

On the morning of 15 January 1963 Mr. J.E. Hipkin of Chippenham
telephoned the Station Adjutant (S.A.)at RAF Colerne to report
an unusual experience that had occurred the previous afternoon.
Following established guidelines, the S.A. at Colerne asked him
to submit a report in writing. It was at shortly after 5.30 p.m.
on 14 January 1963, Mr. Hipkin said, when something decidedly
unusual caught his eye in the sky over the town. He began:

"The object was a dull orange glow terminating with a tail of
light of considerable length; the tail being for the best part
parallel but ending in a point. As the point source of the
orange glow appeared to be the rear of the vehicle and therefore
an outlet, it was perhaps significant that I could not see any
shape whatever ahead of the glow. There was no audible sound
whatever."

Mr. Hipkin elaborated further: "I estimated that I held the
object in view for approximately five seconds during which it
passed through an arc at a steady altitude and a phenomenal
speed. My estimate of the altitude is certainly not more than
three hundred feet and I place the nearest point of passing at
some two thousand yards distant. The course of the object was
almost due north; perhaps a few degrees east of north.

"Upon reflection one point comes to mind, as the object moved
towards the point where it passed from sight I did not observe
any change in intensity of light as one may possibly expect when
the rear of the motor is presented to the eye. This I find odd
in itself when considering the character of the subject."

Mr. Hipkin then made a highly significant point: "Perhaps I
should say that I have served almost fifteen years in the RAF as
a S.N.C.O. [Author�s Note: Senior Non-Commissioned Officer] and
have no small experience of aircraft. Whatever the object was I
feel quite sure it was not an aircraft in the accepted senses
nor was it debris entering the earth�s atmosphere.

"Living in this area I am accustomed to seeing a large amount of
Air Traffic and I cannot relate this sighting to any normal
flying machine." He concluded: "I have been careful not to
colour my story with exaggeration or wishful thinking and look
forward to hearing more of this matter."

From RAF Colerne, Mr. Hipkin�s report found its way to the
Ministry of Defense at Whitehall and ultimately to Air
Intelligence. The witness, it concluded, had merely been
mistaken by nothing more sinister than the Echo II space
satellite.

Of course, it is quite true that people do mistake satellites in
earth orbit for something potentially far more exotic; however,
it should not be forgotten that in this case, the witness was a
trained observer with the Royal Air Force of fifteen years
standing. Not only that, he was adamant that the object was at a
height of no more than three thousand feet and at one point came
within two thousand yards of his location. It goes without
saying that if a satellite were to come within two thousand
yards of British soil, a calamity of unprecedented proportions
would occur microseconds later when it would inevitably slam
into the ground!

Whatever the truth of the matter, Mr. Hipkin was informed of the
MoD�s conclusion and the report was quietly filed away in the
Ministry�s archives.

Eight months after the incident at Corsham, Wiltshire an event
occurred at Beckenham, Kent, that bore all the hallmarks of an
encounter with one of the fabled Foo Fighters of the Second
World War. And as with the previous case, the witness had a
military background: he had served during the hostilities of
1939-45 with an anti-aircraft detachment and until 1961 was
attached to a territorial unit of the British Army.

As Mr. W. Hooper informed the Air Ministry: "At 0150 hrs on
Tuesday the 27th August I was awakened by my wife to see what
appeared to be something in flames falling from the sky,
slightly N.W. of my house. This object appeared to be a ball of
incandescent gas, red and black and was about a foot in
diameter, and gave the impression of intense heat. It dropped
like a stone from approximately 1000 ft to 500 ft, then stayed
still for about 2-3 seconds, then started moving at an
incredible speed in a Northerly direction and was out of sight
in a matter of about 4 seconds. As it went away the wind brought
a slight humming sound to us and the red and black appearance
turned slightly yellow.

"I would be grateful if you could throw any light on the matter
for me and would like especially to know if you had anything
showing on your radar screens at the time I have stated. I am
convinced that the object was powered as it travelled against
the wind, and think what we saw may have been some sort of
exhaust gas or flame."

Possibly anticipating that Whitehall would offer a totally down-
to-earth explanation for what occurred, Mr. Hooper closed his
letter thus: "I hope you will not try and persuade me that the
object was a meteorological balloon as these as far as I know
could not possibly travel against the wind."

In this particular case, Air Intelligence once again asserted
that a solution had been found. Mr. Hooper, came back the
conclusion, had been fooled by a "fireball." That the UFO had
hovered in the air for two to three seconds was ignored by Air
Intelligence; as was the fact that Mr. Hooper�s anti-aircraft
work during the Second World War would have given him first-
class observational skills. UFOs have been in our public
consciousness for six decades.

Three weeks later, on 16 September 1963, Flight Lieutenant A.J.
Brown of RAF Middleton St. George, near Darlington, received
details of an encounter with an unidentified aerial intruder
reported by one O. Filon of County Durham. Undercover of a
Restricted memorandum forwarded to Whitehall, Flt. Lt. Brown
mailed a copy of Mr. Filon�s report, which read thus:

"At approximately 10.25 p.m. last night (sun. 15th) my son
called me into his bedroom. He pointed out a light looking
exactly like a star. It was moving towards us in what appeared a
very slow fashion. I at first took it to be a plane but the
light was too bright and it appeared to be at a great height.
The light then appeared to be zig-zagging. Not as an aircraft
would, i.e. with a bank or curve at each new leg of flight but
with an immediate change of direction.

"When almost overhead the light underwent a course change of
approx. 90 degrees. The line of flight was again constant and it
headed away in an E.S.E. direction. After a short time it
appeared stationary. This was for maybe three to four minutes.
The light suddenly appeared to go out, then just for a fraction
of a second it seemed to be dark blue, then it was gone. The
only conclusion I can make out is that it was moving outwards!
The whole thing lasted for approx. 15 mins. and was seen by my
wife, my son and myself."

And again, there was the crucial factor so present in the
overwhelming majority of those cases discussed thus far: "I
would like to point out that during the war I was a radar
operator, a trained supervisor, one of six selected for the
whole of the M.E. Command." Needless to say, the Air Ministry
again dismissed the case. "The man saw a satellite," Air
Intelligence informed the office at Whitehall that handled UFO
reports from the general public.

Barely a week after, a UFO incident took place at Peterborough
that involved both civilian and military witnesses. The facts
were set forth in a two-page Restricted report from Sergeant
T.G.M. Kendall at RAF Wittering Northants., who graphically
relayed to the Air Ministry what took place; and since this
particular report is of some significance, I reproduce its
contents in total:

"Sir, I have the honour to report the following facts for your
consideration. I was NCO in charge [of the] Operations Room at
2240 hours on 26th September, 1963 when I received a telephone
call from Mr. STRICKSON of [witness�s address] who, in company
with Mr. QUANTRELL of the same address, saw what he considered
to be two unidentified flying objects. The objects were in view
in the first instance from 2000-2100 hours. During that time two
orange coloured balls of light travelled from the South to the
East in a zig-zag fashion, then were seen again moving from West
to East. They were then seen to orbit overhead for some ten
minutes during which time three or four objects left the two
first mentioned and then rejoined them. Mr. Strickson was not
able to estimate the range or the altitude of the sightings, but
considered them to be 'higher than an aeroplane but lower than a
star'.

"I received a further call from Mr. Strickson at 2250 hours
reporting two objects blue in colour, higher than the previous
sighting, and travelling very quickly. At 2320 hours Mr.
Strickson informed me of two sightings which had taken place at
2305 hours when two objects were seen to move west to east in
close formation one behind the other, the one in front being
appreciably brighter than the one behind.

"At 2330, 2340 and 2350 hours, I received calls from S.A.C.W.
[Author�s Note: Senior Aircraftswoman] Marshall, the Duty PBX
Operator, who had seen a bright orange light moving north to
south which had turned south in the first instance and
subsequently orbited overhead. At one time she thought that she
had heard engines but was not sure. As a result of these calls,
I joined S.A.C.W. Marshall outside the PBX building and saw at
0010 and 0020 hours two orange lights approx. 30 seconds apart
which appeared from W.S.W. at a constant altitude heading
approx. 100 degrees, flying what I considered to be a left hand
race track pattern. I lost sight of the objects as they
described a descending left hand turn onto the reciprocal of the
visible leg. The sightings were exactly 10 minutes apart and
speed, direction and altitude appeared to be constant.

"Flying Officer Gastrell was Duty Operations Officer when these
sightings were reported. On his instructions I informed the Duty
Operations Officer No.3 Group of the various reports. He in turn
contacted the Duty Operations Officer at Air Ministry. The Duty
Operations Officer at Air Ministry required a full report to be
submitted to Air Ministry D.D.I. Tech [Author�s Note: Deputy
Directorate of Intelligence, Technical] giving full particulars
of all witnesses. A met. Report giving the conditions at two
specimen times during the period of sightings is attached to
this report. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient
Servant, T.G.M. Kendall, Sergeant."

{IMG4L]Once again the Air Ministry quickly came up with a
solution. All of the witnesses (including trained military
observers) had been fooled by an air-to-air refuelling
operation. However, an examination of the files pertaining to
the case show that, in reality, this was simply the Ministry�s
best "guesstimate," as no such refuelling operation was ever
officially confirmed as having taken place.

Stay tuned for more reports from the archives.


[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]









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   Dec > Dec 9

                        Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow?

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:45:59 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:45:59 -0500
Subject: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow?




Source: JPL Labs/NASA

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040524a/site_B115_nav
cam_180_cyl_L-B118R1_br2.jpg

05-24-04


Very Strange Martian Artefact

Click image to zoom in


[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]











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   Dec > Dec 9

                     Last Rocketeers Set Sights On Mars

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:54:38 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:54:38 -0500
Subject: Last Rocketeers Set Sights On Mars




Source: Red Nova

http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=109378

12-08-04


Last Rocketeers Set Sights On Mars


HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - Four men and one woman, all around 90 years
old, gather in a conference room and pour themselves coffee -
rocket fuel for the last of the original rocketeers.

Just outside, in Rocket Park, looms some of their handiwork:
Gemini and Mercury rockets, a lunar lander and a gigantic
rusting Saturn V from the Apollo program.

These five people were among 118 German rocket scientists
bundled up and brought to the USA after World War II. Working
for the Nazis, the rocket scientists had made Hitler's deadly
V-2s. Reconstituted in Huntsville, the group vaulted U.S.
rocket technology ahead by a decade and developed the rockets
that allowed their adopted country to win the space race.

The group's inspirational leader, Wernher von Braun, helped
persuade President Kennedy to make his famous commitment to put
a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

Today, only 12 of that group are still living, including the
five gathered here recently to help raise money to restore the
Saturn V outside. Even as the remaining rocketeers fade away,
they are suddenly relevant again to a new generation.For almost
30 years after Apollo, the American public seemed indifferent to
space. But now, technology entrepreneurs - members of a
generation raised on Star Trek and Star Wars - are again making
space sexy.

Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen funded SpaceShipOne, which this
fall won the X Prize for boosting civilian space travel.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has started a private company that
will work toward putting people on Mars. Elon Musk, who founded
online bill-paying service PayPal, has started a space company.
Mogul Richard Branson is aiming to be the first to put hotels in
space.

To this new generation, the German rocketeers are an
inspiration. For the rocketeers, the techies are reviving their
dearest hope: that man will go to Mars.

"If private industry takes tourists into space, it might uplift
the whole program again," says Konrad Dannenberg, 92, a
propulsion expert on Apollo. "I'm very hopeful."

Ernst Stuhlinger, 92, who was von Braun's right-hand man,
twinkles when asked about the new generation's dreams of Mars
flights. "We old-timers have been thinking that way for a very
long time."

Forced to make missilesThe rocketeers have long been haunted by
their earlier lives.

In the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of research into the new idea
of launching rockets into space. A young von Braun took the
lead, launching his first rockets in 1934. As World War II
approached, the Nazis created a rocket team under von Braun at a
secret base on an island at Peenemunde, Germany. They were
ordered to make military missiles, not spaceships.

The team developed the V-2, which killed 2,500 British
civilians. The rockets were built by concentration camp labor in
tunnels.

The rocketeers have always said they had no choice. They say
they wanted to build rockets to go to the moon and Mars, not to
carry explosives. "We couldn't even talk about space flight,"
Dannenberg says. "Von Braun was at a party and talked about it
with some people, and the Nazis found out and put him in jail."
He was later released, but the message was clear.

As Germany's defeat seemed certain in 1945, the rocketeers made
a calculated move. "It was clear nothing was going to happen in
Germany in space after the war," Dannenberg says. If the
rocketeers wanted to pursue their dream, they would have to go
elsewhere. The group decided they'd have their best shot with
the Americans. They hid their research papers in a mine shaft,
forged travel documents, and as many as 500 people - scientists
and their families - moved toward the approaching American Army
- avoiding the Gestapo, who might have arrested or shot them.
They holed up in an abandoned fortress in the Alps.

Von Braun sent his younger brother, Magnus, off on a bicycle to
try to find the Americans. He stumbled across Pvt. Fred
Schniekert of Sheboygan, Wis., and tried to explain that a whole
team of rocket scientists wanted to surrender. Schniekert said,
"I think you're nuts," but relayed the message to his superiors,
who recognized the value of the rocketeers.

The Army raced to Peenemunde to get there before the Soviets.
The rocketeers' papers and every project and spare V-2 part were
loaded on 300 rail cars that were shipped to the USA. And then
the U.S. government took its own calculated risk: It transferred
the 118 former enemy rocket scientists and their families to
Fort Bliss, Texas, and eventually to an abandoned military base
in Huntsville.

Beating Russia to the moonOver the next decade, the rocketeers
didn't have much to do. "We called ourselves PoPs - prisoners of
peace," Stuhlinger quips. John F. Kennedy was elected president
in 1960 and soon after fell from grace with the failed Bay of
Pigs invasion of Cuba. A few years before, the USSR had beaten
the USA to space with its Sputnik satellite.

"Kennedy wanted to do something to regain America's prestige,"
Stuhlinger recalls. Kennedy asked Vice President Lyndon Johnson
to write letters seeking advice. One went to von Braun.

Stuhlinger has copies of memos that bounced between von Braun
and the White House. Von Braun laid out everything he knew about
the capabilities of U.S. and Soviet rockets. He concluded that
the USA would have little chance of beating the Soviets to a
manned space lab, but would have a "sporting chance" of beating
them to an orbit of the moon and "an excellent chance" of
beating them to a moon landing.

In other words, the USA didn't go to the moon because it was
there. We went because we could get there first.

In a speech in May 1961 Kennedy laid out one of history's great
mission statements: "This nation should commit itself to
achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man
on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

It could not happen without the German rocketeers.

"The irony is that in the 1960s, we went from nothing to landing
a person on the moon in eight years," says space entrepreneur
Musk. "Today it would take two or three times as long, and
that's crazy."

Astronaut Walter Schirra, 81, who flew three space missions, was
one of the seven original Mercury astronauts when he heard about
Kennedy's speech. "I couldn't believe we'd made that
commitment," he recalls. "So many things happened so fast. I'd
just flown Mach 2 for the first time in 1958." To get to the
moon would require speeds of Mach 25, which would take engines
60 to 70 times more powerful. "That's a big leap."

The von Braun team numbered 400 in 1961. It quickly swelled to
8,000. But the Germans were the leaders, and von Braun was the
star. "That was important," Stuhlinger says. "We had a von
Braun. There is no von Braun today."

"If the Germans had not been here, the technology would've been
delayed by 10 years, 15 years," says Mark Smith, who knows the
Germans from his years as CEO of Adtran,a Huntsville tech
company. "No group of people is indispensable, but they shrunk
the time frame."

Rules about federal contracts and processes were tossed. "We
could make decisions in almost no time," says Walter
Haussermann, who led development of guidance controls. He
remembers talking with IBM about supplying the mission's
computers. He was able to say yes in two days. "Today, it would
take years," he says.

Thanks to the Germans' experience, glitches rarely slowed the
project. The only disaster: a fire in the Apollo 1 that killed
the three-man crew. Manned flights were delayed for nearly two
years to make sure it didn't happen again. Ask the Germans how
they accomplished so much so quickly, and they struggle for an
answer. They note the commitment from Kennedy, the military and
the American public - all pulling toward a single goal. Schirra,
who often worked closely with the Germans, says the space race
was like a years-long adrenaline rush. "It was a competition
with Russia, and we had to beat them," he says.

Mostly, though, the Germans seem nonchalant, as if it were easy
to put a man on the moon in eight years. "We all believed it
could be done," Dannenberg says with a shrug.

New generation takes overSo now comes a new age.

Interest in space dropped after the first moon landings. Travel
to Mars seemed unlikely. Discouraged, the Germans dropped out of
NASA. Von Braun died in 1977.

But a young generation at NASA has put two robot rovers on Mars
and wowed the public. President Bush has talked of Mars
missions. Mostly, though, entrepreneurs have picked up where the
rocketeers left off.

"We need to exceed where we were with the Apollo program," says
Musk, whose company, SpaceX, plans its first orbital launch next
year. "We have to go to Mars with people. A lot of people take
for granted that that's the direction we're heading in, but
unless there's a dramatic reduction in cost, there won't be
anything like that. Somebody has to try to step in and try to
save the day."

Musk made a fortune from PayPal, which he sold to eBay for $1.5
billion. He's pumping much of it into SpaceX. He also helped
fund the X Prize.

The public might be ready for Apollo-like excitement again.
SpaceShipOne is on the cover of Time as 2004's most amazing
invention. The cover of the December issue of Wired proclaims
"The New Age of Exploration." Bezos' secretive space start-up,
Blue Origins, says on its Web site that it's "developing
vehicles and technologies that, over time, will help enable an
enduring human presence in space."

To do so is the enduring last wish of the rocketeers.


Source: USA TODAY


[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]








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   Dec > Dec 9

                           Secrecy News - 12/08/04

From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 14:08:03 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:59:47 -0500
Subject: Secrecy News - 12/08/04


SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2004, Issue No. 109
December 8, 2004


**      INTELLIGENCE REFORM BILL APPROVED IN HOUSE
**      2005 INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION CONFERENCE REPORT
**      SOME NEW CRS PRODUCTS
**      ISLAMIC RULINGS ON WARFARE
**      GLENDA JACKSON, MP CONFRONTS IRAQ WAR SECRECY


INTELLIGENCE REFORM BILL APPROVED IN HOUSE

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 is
on its way to becoming law, having been passed by the House of
Representatives on December 7 by a vote of 336-75.

The full ramifications of the intelligence reform package are
unknown and perhaps unknowable, given the enormous size of the
legislation and its frequent opacity.

With respect to secrecy policy, there were several notable
developments.

The Act's rejection of intelligence budget disclosure - despite
the unanimous recommendation of the 9/11 Commission and the
endorsement of the full Senate - is a setback that tends to
reinforce the arbitrary and excessive secrecy that the 9/11
Commission found in the intelligence bureaucracy.

On the more positive side, the Act revivifies the dormant Public
Interest Declassification Board, formally established four years
ago but never convened, and assigns it the additional task of
"reviewing" congressional requests for declassification of
particular records. Though the Board will have no independent
authority to speak of, it may turn out to serve as a useful
forum for adjudicating classification disputes.

Perhaps the most important secrecy-related feature of the
Intelligence Reform Act is what is not in it: the authority to
create an entirely autonomous new classification system for
intelligence. As noted by Kate Martin of the Center for National
Security Studies, previous versions of the Act appeared to grant
such authority to the Director of National Intelligence, with
potentially fearful consequences.

But with the assistance and timely intervention of Senator
Patrick Leahy (D-VT), that bullet has been dodged:

"The conference report does not expand authority under which
information is classified, which is pursuant to Executive Order
or other Presidential directive, but rather directs the DNI to
establish and implement guidelines for the intelligence
community for the purpose of such classification of
information," according to the conference report explanatory
statement.

The text of the conference report on the intelligence reform
bill (House Report 107-796, 770KB) is here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_rpt/h108-796.html

A 26-page summary of the conference report prepared by the
Senate Governmental Affairs Committee is here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_rpt/s2845-summ.pdf

The December 7 House floor debate and vote on the measure is
here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_cr/h120704.html


2005 INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION CONFERENCE REPORT

The conference report on the intelligence authorization for
fiscal year 2005 (which began October 1) has finally been
completed. A copy of the document (House Report 108-798) is
posted here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_rpt/h108-798.html

Senators Rockefeller, Levin, Wyden and Durbin declined to sign
the conference report because they objected to "continued
funding of a major [classified] acquisition program that they
believe is unnecessary and the cost of which they believe is
unjustified," the report notes obliquely at the end.


SOME NEW CRS PRODUCTS

"Port and Maritime Security: Potential for Terrorist Nuclear
Attack Using Oil Tankers," December 7, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RS21997.pdf

"Intelligence Community Reorganization: Potential Effects on DOD
Intelligence Agencies," updated December 6, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32515.pdf

"Homeland Security Advisory System: Possible Issues for
Congressional Oversight," updated November 12, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/RL32023.pdf

"Emergency Communications: The Emergency Alert System (EAS) and
All-Hazard Warnings," updated November 12, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32527.pdf

"Continuity of Operations (COOP) in the Executive Branch:
Background and Issues for Congress," updated November 8, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/RL31857.pdf

"Potential Military Use of Airships and Aerostats," updated
November 11, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RS21886.pdf


ISLAMIC RULINGS ON WARFARE

A new study published by the US Army War College identifies
central themes pertaining to war in Islamic theology, argues
that they have been misinterpreted by Islamist militants, and
proposes an interpretation of key texts that the authors say
could serve to inform an ideological opposition to Islamist
militancy.

See "Islamic Rulings on Warfare" by Youssef H. Aboul-Enein and
Sherifa Zuhur, US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute,
October 2004:

http://www.fas.org/man/eprint/islamic.pdf


GLENDA JACKSON, MP CONFRONTS IRAQ WAR SECRECY

Official investigation into the decision to go to war in Iraq
seems to have fizzled out in the United States, along with such
other inconvenient matters as Bush Administration policy on
torture. But in the United Kingdom, at least, the origins of the
Iraq war are still something of a live issue.

According to a recent article in the New Statesman, British
Attorney General Lord Goldsmith was pressured by the US
government in 2003 to advise the British government that
unilateral military action in Iraq would be legal even without
specific authorization from the United Nations.

Lord Goldsmith had initially been a skeptic on this point, the
Statesman article said, but his mind was changed by a February
2003 meeting with John B. Bellinger III of the National Security
Council. The White House telephone directory identifies Mr.
Bellinger as Senior Associate Counsel to the President and NSC
Legal Adviser.

See "The law chief who bowed to Blair" by John Kampfner, New
Statesman, November 22:

http://www.jkampfner.net/articles/ns221104.html

Exactly what did Mr. Bellinger of the NSC tell Lord Goldsmith in
2003 to change his mind?

That's what Glenda Jackson, the brilliant actress who is now a
Member of Parliament for the Labour Party, wanted to know.

She posed the question to the UK Solicitor General on November
30.

The answer came back: "These were confidential Government to
Government discussions and their content is covered by legal
professional privilege." See:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/11/glenda113004.html



_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to
secrecy_news-request.nul
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.

OR email your request to saftergood.nul

Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html

Secrecy News has an RSS feed at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.rss

_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web:  www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood.nul
voice: (202) 454-4691








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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 9

                   Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Sparks

From: Brad Sparks <RB47x.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 14:23:27 EST
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:01:46 -0500
Subject: Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise - Sparks


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 10:26:41 -0000
>Subject: Re: The UFO Guy Comes To Boise

<snip>

>3. Is there even one authenticated case of UFOs "crashing on
>government property"? Which government property was
>lucky enough to experience this ET visit?

You are missing the point of the third-hand account of the lecture:
The "one" case was simply Roswell.

 You are adding a lot of extra verbiage and making a big mystery
out of a very standard UFO subject these days, regardless of
what truth if any there is in the Roswell "case" (it depends on
whose "case" it is).

It does turn out the Roswell crash site is on US Govt property,
overseen by the Bureau of Land Mgt. Whether it has always been
BLM land or not, I do not know.









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   Dec > Dec 9

                  Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson

From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 21:24:18 +0000
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:03:16 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson


>From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 22:52:12 -0500
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>So you explain one "unknown" - for example, why a spinning
>top stays on its point - with another "unknown"  - a force that
>"creates" inertia?

Bruce,

I know how you must feel.

Maybe I should've put a health-warning on that message, for
anyone who's been taught formal physics in last half-century.
Why? - Because I say, along with Lee Smolin, that "there is at
least one good reason not to believe the physics that is taught
in most courses... It's not true."

Present day physics is in a mess. Like you said "we don't really
have a clue as to what is _really_ going on".

In the last twenty years or so all the confident ideas of
"Standard Models" (including your electromagnetic cause of
matter), of "Gas Laws", of "Black Hole Theory" (actually
Singularity Theories), of "Quantum Theory" and "Relativity
Theories", have _all_ been discovered to be "flawed" or
"incomplete" (see "Blind Science").

That is, they're _not_ true.

And the top physicists know the rules aren't true - but they
aren't encouraged to say so, outside of a very small circle of
"experts".

Why are those rules still being taught in most colleges?
Mainstream science hasn't anything to put in their place, and
our "leaders" think there'll be a panic if everyone finds out.

I'll say again - mainstream science _doesn't_ know reason or
cause of  a) matter, b) mass, c) inertia (and lots of other
things but those three are basic and interdependent).

Which of course means they haven't a clue where the _extra_
inertia of a spinning coin or a "top" or even a bike comes from
(because they don't know where `ordinary' inertia comes from -
 but it's got to be the _same_ source).

And mainstream science similarly can't say how "entanglement
info" is transmitted at far FTL speed, thru all obstacles,
apparently linking particles instantaneously throughout the
universe.

http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/aspect1/

Here's two summations - "Physics is in all sorts of trouble" -
 Hilary Lawson - (21st Cent.) and "What the scientists say now
is likely to be false" - Nigel Calder - NOW, quoted in Blind
Science.

Spin that coin!

Ray D


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Perceptions" http://www.perceptions.couk.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~








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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 9

               Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -

From: Brad Sparks <RB47x.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 16:24:18 EST
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:08:19 -0500
Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 22:40:01 +0000
>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 11:22:16 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB

>>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 17:40:37 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB 'Beam'

<snip>

>>>Why do you phrase your advertisments in such a deliberatly
>>>confrontational way? Is it because you actually *want* them to
>>>be refused in order to provide confirmation for your theories
>>>government censorship? If fact, from the wording above, it's not
>>>even clear what kind of information you are seeking that might
>>>attract "whistleblowers".

>>>I suspect that really you're just trying to wind-up the
>>>authorities for your own satisfaction, and I think a more
>>>neutrally phrased advertisment might produce more productive
>>>results.

>>Be that as it may, this was a disheartening drubbing on a guy
>>who asked for feedback in the first place, when all that really
>>needed to be said was an inclusive admonition that a little more
>>tact might harden the point of his pick a little bit. I can
>>understand Mr. Bryant's outrage, at any rate, and can admire his
>>constructive and lawful approach in dealing with it. I admire
>>his pluck and courage... why can't you?

>Because it is pointless, ineffective, and makes ufologists look
>like motivated cranks. I'm sure Larry Bryant knows this, but he
>seems to have his own agenda in attempting to put these
>unnecessarily provocateive adverts into service newspapers, and
>letting us all know about it when they are understandably
>rejected.

He has completely ignored the "feedback" telling him to tone it
down if he wanted to get the ads accepted and, instead of
listening to the friendly advice, he comes back with ever more
hostile and confrontational proposed ads for "feedback" which
will be ignored again. So no wonder the "feedback" is getting
more outraged and less 'friendly'.

Nick Pope on Nov 28 even drafted out for him a smartly worded ad
that might have had a better chance of being accepted and
published, but he chose to _stonewall_ Pope and not even give
him the courtesy of a response. See Pope's post:

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/nov/m28-005.shtml

And he complains about official "stonewalling"! How about
responding to Nick Pope, Sir! And I don't mean you in Canada
either.

Furthermore the complaints against the government are not even
about withholding of UFO documents anymore but about an entirely
secondary issue of SEARCH FEES being waived. The actual core
issues of UFO documents and coverup are receding farther and
farther into the background, Sir.








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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 9

             Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 13:43:30 -0800
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:20:35 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren


>From: Brad Sparks <RB47x.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:06:21 EST
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 09:16:25 -0800
>>Subject: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>Having always been annoyed by the apparent hypocrisy that
>>Astronomers exibit (specically SETI folk)in regards to
>>evidence/data towards Ufology, I posed the following question to
>>Frank Drake:

><snip>

>>However, the rules of evidence for mainstream astronomy and
>>UFOlogy are actually the same. In both cases we look for well-
>>observed, calibrated data, which can be verified by repeat
>>observations or experiments, best done by more than one
>>observer.

Brad,

Thanks for 'chiming-in' - your opinion is very much respected:

>Drake says best done by more than one observer, but not a rigid
>rule, so it does not always have to be the case.

>Drake should have been reminded of the various phenomena in
>astronomy and astrophysics which are validly accepted one-shot
>brief observations, not repeatable, and not repeated except in the
>sense that something similar happens again at unpredictable
>random times  -  such as meteor fireballs, gamma-ray bursts,
>and supernovas. These are like UFO incidents in that respect.

I made the point when I said, "it is a "transient uncontrollable
unpredictable event" in reference to UFO sightings, opposed to
observing a "fixed celestial body."

>>FW: Allow me to play devil's advocate based on your affirmation
>>of equality in regards to evidentiary protocol of Astronomy and
>>Ufology.

><snip>

>>1). Can we state emphatically that there aren't "other forces"
>>in the universe that aren't currently known that would "mimic
>>the pull" caused by gravity of a "Jupiter sized planet?" Could
>>another "space borne" object of the same mass cause the wobble?

>>2). Are there other actions that could affect "Doppler Shift,"
>>or any other form of detection in the same manner that "star
>>wobble" does, e.g., pulsations etc.?

>>3). Given the fact that the most detection methods of "extra-
>>solar planets" is relatively new, (with technology expanding by
>>leaps and bounds) and not without controversy, i.e.,( "Barnard's
>>Star and possible planetary bodies, David Gray's disputation of
>>51 Peg,") isn't possible that either "new information" could
>>surface, or the interpretation of the data may change, and
>>affect the current conclusions?

>>IMHO if the answers to any of the afore mentioned questions is
>>"unknown" or "it's possible," then that would leave "some"
>>doubt, albeit little to the "absolute existence" of extra-solar
>>planets based on the current methodologies used for their
>>reality; that said, what we're left with is strong
>>"circumstantial evidence" in support of the "theory" of extra-
>>solar planets."

><snip>

>After Drake read this he no doubt came away confirmed in his
>mind once again that UFO activists are typical extremist
>fanatics who can't meet a scientific argument headon with solid
>scientific facts so they nitpick around the edges arguing for
>the most extreme positions, with special pleading "it's remotely
>possible... it could be... maybe" etc. Either you have solid
>scientific evidence of UFO's or you don't. He must conclude once
>again after 40 years of similar encounters with UFO enthusiasts
>that they don't have any solid scientific evidence, and
>furthermore they are too naive even to realize that they don't.

First let me say that I don't think my correspondence with Drake
confirmed anything for him - his mind is/was made-up, and he
doesn't want to be bothered with the evidence. Very much like
Carl Sagan.

I posed the questions about "extra-solar planets," in
particular, because I feel that is what we get from them -
 nitpickism, if you will. When the subject of "evidence" was
brought up in the debate between Stan and Seth, Seth nitpicked
what Stan brought to the table, he clearly didn't want to hear
what Stan had to say, and there was nothing "scientific" about
his criticism.

Brad, I think you misunderstood the reasoning behind my
questions in regard, in this instance to "extra-solar planets,"
or better, the "evidence" for ESPs - the idea was to show the
hypocrisy that Astronomers exhibit in relationship to how they
perceive evidence to support their ideologies, and how those
rules change apparently, for Ufology.

Drake himself said: "...some things are still speculations, of
course. Rogue planets are one. There are no observations of such
a planet. But it is fair to speculate they exist from our
growing modeling of what takes place as a planetary system is
formed, and the prediction from this modeling that some planets
will be ejected from the system. Indeed, it would be amazing if
this did not occur."

He says, "it's fair to 'speculate' they exist from our growing
modeling"; yet he certainly isn't that lax with regard to
anything Ufological.

>What they want to hear about is cases where top scientists have
>made the observations, multiple observers, triangulations,
>measurements, calibrations, instruments, quantitative data,
>error bars, etc.

As I pointed out to Drake, although there are obvious advantages
in "scientific study" for a "fixed celestial body" this doesn't
negate the fact that there is "ample scientific evidence" to
study in regards to Ufology.

>Instead of the tired old repetitions of Arnold, Roswell,
>Rendlesham, and other controversial cases, let's hear more about
>cases like the world's leading meteoritics astronomer who with 3
>other witnesses sighted a 200-foot white ellipsoidal object
>maneuvering at high speed in and out of clouds at known distance
>in broad daylight, with all the numerical data, date, time,
>azimuths, elevations, angular size, speeds, distance, error
>bars, etc. Or the Defense Dept.'s top R&D official who sighted a
>600-foot metallic sphere hovering in braod daylight which shot
>up out of sight, and was witnessed in part by an airline pilot
>whose plane the official saw in the sky, and who provided a
>triangulation that confirmed the DOD official's distance
>estimate. Or the supersecret ELINT (Electronic Intelligence)
>aircraft on a training mission that tracked a radar-emitting UFO
>pacing and overtaking the jet at the same time that a known
>ground radar was also detected on the ELINT equipment, thus
>providing the world's first real-time "calibration" of a UFO
>instrumented measurement which proved the accuracy and working
>condition of the equipment, and which detection was further
>confirmed by the crew's visual sighting and ground and airborne
>radar tracking of the UFO. Or the Army and AF UFO tracking
>networks that obtained multiple triangulations of UFO's, etc.

I never mentioned specific cases to Drake, only "evidence in
general," and the fact that there is more then enough for
"scientific investigation."

>It is typical of the UFO community to not have its act together,
>unable to cite the best scientific evidence for UFO's because it
>does not have the foggiest notion of what "best scientific
>evidence" looks like or what it means. Typically a UFO
>enthusiast thinks the "best" cases are simply his favorite pet
>cases, selected out of emotional sentimental attachment, without
>any rational scientific basis. A rational scientific set of
>criteria will _prefer_ scientists and engineers as witnesses
>(_prefer_ not exclude all others), sightings lasting 1 minute or
>more, multiple witnesses, angular size Full Moon or greater, and
>of course have all the damned date-time-location-azimuth-
> elevation data, too. If any of the criteria are to be relaxed
>in a given case then the rest of the case had better make up for
>it in some other way. Scientists who are genuine are not
>unreasonable and just want to have a reasonable case presented,
>and not something sloppy, ill-conceived, or scatter-brained.

Whether or not the "UFO community has it's act together" is
irrelevant. The question posed to Drake was why he and other
Astronomers like himself, seem to have "different rules" in
regards to "their" methodologies used concerning evidence
presented for their theorems about Astronomical related items,
and that of Ufology.

>Typically the UFO proponent in desperation will cite some big
>500-page or 1,000-page tome and say "All the UFO proof is in
>there! Go read it!" Whereas in fact the huge tomes are hopeless
>hodge-podges of bad cases, good cases, mediocre cases, erroneous
>cases, all intermixed according to some order (maybe
>alphabetical or chronological) that has nothing whatsoever to do
>with selecting best cases according to any scientific or quasi-
>scientific criteria ("criteria" is plural by the way, and
>"criterion" is singular). Indeed those few books were not really
>written for the purpose of presenting the best scientific case
>for the UFO to scientists. They were written for other worthy
>purposes, but let's not kid ourselves, though, they were not
>specially designed to state the case to scientists.

>Busy scientists want to read something in a familiar format with
>data presented in a familiar knowledgeable fashion, that does
>not run to hundreds and hundreds or thousands of pages. They're
>not going to read through huge books, multiple books, looking
>for something they don't even think is there, with not a clue as
>to what to look for. However if they saw a scientifically
>smartly presented case they would know it. If they were
>presented a list of scientific criteria for best UFO cases they
>could assent to them and grasp the strength of the case made
>based on those criteria.

>Another typical intellectually lazy tactic of the UFO community
>is to point to the 100,000 pages of AF UFO files and say "It's
>all in there! Go see for yourself. There's plenty of evidence of
>UFO's!" Drake is not going to set aside the better part of a
>year of his life going through 100,000 pages on a clunky
>microfilm reader! Let me tell you I've spent weeks doing that
>and after a while you literally get dizzy from the moving images
>across the screen. It's not good for your health.

>But the UFO community has had these microfilms for almost 30
>years now since their public release by the National Archives on
>July 12, 1976, and yet there has been almost nothing done to
>process and sift through these cases for what McDonald estimated
>could be about 3,000 to 4,000 Unknowns. With supposedly
>hundreds, maybe thousands, of UFO investigators and researchers
>there should have been plenty of manpower and money to
>systematically go through the 94 microfilm reels and pick out
>the best UFO cases for further study. But this was never done.

>For my part I have been going through what AF files I can afford
>to go through with limited time and resources. I have started a
>Comprehensive Catalog of 1,500 Blue Book Unknowns which is
>available on various websites such as CUFOS, NICAP, NIDS, and at
>least one ripoff website, but note that the latest revision is
>Version 1.7 and anything earlier is out of date. I am working
>with the Blue Book Archive Project started by Will Wise, to try
>to get the entire BB files, both sanitized and unsanitized
>versions, online on the Web for easy access by researchers
>worldwide.

>Ultimately this effort will enable a powerful scientific case
>for the UFO to be presented to the scientific community in a
>well- packaged readable format, where they don't have to be
>overloaded with too much data mixed in with so much noise, and
>won't be told to go read through 100,000 pages themselves.

Your work and thoughts are (personally speaking) very much
appreciated and respected Brad; however, I think your response
has "morphed into something else beyond the topic posed to
Drake.

It shouldn't have to be up to Ufologists to present anything to
any scientific body - the phenomena itself dictates that! The
very essence of science mandates investigation! One of two
things is going on with Drake et al., either he/they are not
being forthright in the public arena, or he/they are negligent
in their responsibilities as scientists when it comes to
Ufology; specifically those involved with SETI, as they have the
mindset that there is advanced ETI, they just apprently believe
that ETs are stuck at our level of technology when it comes to
getting from point A to point B.

>>FW: Here I have to respectfully disagree; you stated that the
>>criterion for the rules of evidence for mainstream astronomy and
>>UFOlogy are actually the same. In both cases we look for:

>>1). Well-observed, calibrated data.

>>2). Verification by repeat observations or experiments.

>>3). Multiple observers.

>See above where I've more than answered the above points.

>>First let me clarify some points: The bulk of UFO reports over
>>the last 60 years after thorough investigation, can be
>>attributed to more conventional explanations, e.g., known
>>aircraft, celestial bodies etc.; however, the ones addressed
>>here are the smaller percentage that cannot be explained in a
>>conventional manner.

><snip>

>Well first off that's just not true. The "bulk of UFO reports
>over the last 60 years after thorough investigation" have _not_
>been attributed to conventional explanations, IFO's, etc. The
>bulk of reports have _not_ been thoroughly investigated or
>cursorily investigated. Most "UFO" cases are neither properly
>screened UFO cases under Hynek's screening protocol, nor
>definitely established IFO's, nor thoroughly investigated. They
>are in a limbo state.

For sake of argument, I was trying to stay on course about UFOs
that were seemingly 'structured craft' as opposed to just a
light in the sky, etc.

>In the early days of Blue Book, the IFO's and hoaxes were
>running at about only 11%. Let me repeat, there were only 11%
>IFO's and hoaxes. There were 27% Unknowns. Then they introduced
>a highly misleading statistical trick whereby all the Possible
>and Probable categories of IFO's were lumped all together as if
>they were definitely Known IFO's, and this inflated the IFO's by
>about another 40% quite dishonestly. And then they started
>shoving the 23% Insufficient Data cases into those Possible
>IFO's, and many of the Unknowns as well. Eventually they would
>say there were only a few percent Unknown or Unidentified, all
>based on dishonest statistical tricks. And we in the UFO
>community still fall prey to the same AF trick year after year
>repeating the same falsehood. We never learn.

In the end, Drake's answer to my main question was that the
rules of evidence for mainstream astronomy and Ufology are
actually the same. He further stated, "In both cases we look for
well-observed, calibrated data, which can be verified by repeat
observations or experiments, best done by more than one
observer." He concluded by stating, "when it comes to UFO
reports, none of the evidence criterion are satisfied. No
observations can be repeated. None has ever been definitively
recorded. So the rigid standards of science are far from met."

I took issue with that and addressed his declaration, point by
point. I didn't use specific case studies although I was
prepared to, and had the dialogue continued it seems to me that
it would have been only natural for him to ask for examples.
That of course hasn't happened - yet.

In my view, a good portion of Astronomers, in particular SETI
folk, are biased with regard to how they measure evidence
between Astronomy and Ufology; what is good for the goose should
be good for the gander. A good many of their claims are based on
circumstantial evidence; in fact, Drake goes beyond theory
and  says there is "no doubt" even though there is argument
among his own peers, and many major Astronomical discoveries,
and/or theories in support thereof are relatively new, as well
as the technologies to discover them.

The point is that undoubtedly, as what has happened in the past,
i.e., mindsets changing with new discoveries and improved
technologies, this will again re-occur, and the theories will
change. As Sagan said, "In physics, as in much of all science,
there are no permanent truths; there is a set of approximations,
getting closer and closer, and people must always be ready to
revise what has been, in the past, thought to be the absolute
gospel truth."

When entering the scientific arena all bias should be left at
the door, and that doesn't seem to be the case with Drake and
many of his colleagues.


Respectfully,

Frank Warrren








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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 9

               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 15:56:31 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:29:00 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 08:08:59 -0800 (PST)
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:23:55 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 10:51:31 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>Mr.Lehmberg,

>I find it difficult to deal with your prose. Perhaps it
>is some failing in me. The thing is, it seems that whenever
>I make a remark it seems to offend you or insult you!
>(And I am sure that remark just did! And also that one!)

I find your prose mawkishly insinuating, confiningly judgmental,
and inappropriately sarcastic. I don't consider my kind
assessment a failing at all. Moreover, you made at least one
comment last response that was _almost_ inoffensive. <g> I had
begun to entertain some hope for you. I trust this was
understandable enough?

>I am used to communicating to engineers/scientists. I have never
>come across someone like you before who seems to be very sincere
>but who takes offense at many statements I make!

Yes - there are many different kinds of people on the planet -
 persons with all manner of constructive sensibility, folks who
are offended by officiousness and by persons protesting too
loudly when they're expected to take what they're dishing out...

Hey - you're a wet blanket... get used to it or dry out.

>I feel like the
>kid in the classroom who doesn't raise his hand anymore because
>of being snapped at by the teacher.

Funny - if we can ride the classroom metaphor a little more, I
would have said you're doing a great impersonation of a kid
standing on his desk throwing a tantrum because a fellow student
doesn't mind parsing his paradigm for him. I suspect the real
headmaster's going to stick his head in here momentarily. LOL!

>If I wanted to be rude, believe me I can, but I don't think that
>accomplishes anything! It shows poor thinking and lack of
>argument.

Wow - please be rude! I want to see if I can detect a difference!

>>Perhaps I over-reacted to your veiled characterization of me as
>>an automated dispenser of (inane?)obscurities, a man who can't
>>stand and deliver, and an opium user?

>Regarding "automated dispenser of obscurities" (Inane? don't put
>words in MY mouth!), you mentioned something (about prolonged
>life which I inferred meant downloading consciousness into
>computers. In that sense you _would_ be automated, but alive!
>That you would behave in the same manner as in corporeal life
>and provide complicated prose (obscurities if you will), I think
>is a safe assumption.

>That I was wrong in your desired method for prolonged life
>showed a lack of imagination and comprehensiveness on my part.
>Your concept of prolonging life using stem cells and such would
>SEEM possible within 50 years however I must point out to the
>dreamer that if this _was_ made possible, it is highly unlikely
>that our civilization of only 50 years development is going to
>allow it to be used on any except the elite and rich.

Remember you said that, sir. I suspect it's going to come up
again...

>The reason
>is clear, there are too many people right now and too many old
>people who can no longer be productive.

How Malthusian of you.

>Increasing the life span
>of everyone will destroy our planet because of limited resources
>(people are not going to give up their right to have lots of
>babies). So it is clear that you or I will not get the nice
>drugs to live forever, only the guys at the top (unfortunately,
>in our world, the cream doesn't rise to the top, mainly the
>dregs). So we will end up with a world being controlled by
>people like the Supreme Court only more youthful, never
>retiring, making the world in their image, while we more
>ephemeral people come and go.

The irony is that you were accusing _me_ of verbosity. But
seriously, I'm more amused at how far afield you can attempt to
wander on this given it was you, at the start, who intimated in
your thinly veiled criticism of me, and I paraphrase, that I was
a drug addicted dreamer with a relevancy problem. <g>

>Did I say you _were_ an opium user? No, I meant that dreamers in
>the past had opium dens to live in opium dream worlds! If you
>are offended, better to simply ask for clarification in a
>courteous manner rather than blaze an inferno at me!

Better to be a little more clear at the start and preclude the
"blazed inferno" in the first place, I should think.

>>you must be aware that human beings
>>can do (and have done) anything they put their minds and hearts
>>to.

>No. You are wrong.

No Sir. It's you living an irrationality... here's how:

>There is no world peace.

You think a rabid corporate military industrial complex is
_remotely_ interested in facilitating world peace? We don't
_want_ world peace.

>There is no fusion reactor.

You think petro-chemical corporations are remotely interested in
providing us cheaper power? We don't _want_ fusion... hot, cold,
or cosmic.

> There is no cancer vaccine.

...But there is a medical system and pharmaceutical mega corps
who treat Cancer like a cash cow, along with Diabetes, heart
disease and a plethora of others. You think these companies are
_remotely_ interested in removing their hands from the teats of
that cow? We don't _want_ a cure of most diseases. We'd rather
'manage' them for a profit.

>There is no population
>control (not War/Famine, but abstinence,etc).

...But there is an un-elected class who has discovered that the
more human beings you have on habd the less you have to pay any
one of them a simple respect. You think this class is _remotely_
interested in controlling the size of our population. We, the
aggregate and manipilated we... don't _want_ population control.

Who's it _really_ living in a fantasy land, Mr. Smith.

>>Your manner in response (actually a lack of same)
>>to my expressions regarding stepping stone asteroids has
>>provided abundant cause for me to be offended.

>Actually, "stepping stone asteroids" _is_ witty.

I'm a paragon of easy mirth and grace, too, Mr. Smith.

>>...Offended by the
>>assumptions you seem to make. Offended by your inappropriately
>>pedantic manner. Offended by your reflex disrespect. Offended by
>>your inability to step outside the box in a forum that typifies
>>it... I could go on...

>One man's "pedantic manner" is another man's straightforward
>prose.

Your straightforwardness carries a barb you'd have break of in
the conversational wound, Sir, and I point out that you moan the
loudest (and the longest) when these barbs are returned to you
with a little english.

>Disrespect? I can be disrespectful if you want some
>examples, but I have found it to be counter-productive.

Oh please do! In as much as we have already achieved the
counter-productiveness, I'd like to see how far you're will to
go to press your point... which has by now wandered way off
topic.

>I can
>step outside the box better than most, but what you seem to
>really want is just a bunch of grinning yes-men to nod and
>wisely not comment (no comment is acceptance).

Pity... I've found them remarkably hard to find at the UpDates
forum... or maybe you're making some _more_ accusations of what
you might, yourself, be guilty.

>All I do is point
>out technical considerations and practical realities, but you
>can't stand that!

I can stand that with alacrity, Sir. It's _you_ seems to be the
person most upset by criticism. You're a wet blanket; get over
it. As you've already admitted by virtue of your warm and fuzzy
worldview example above... it's _you_ living in the dream world.

>As I said before, we can dream about
>impossible things to no avail. But when you want to make them
>possible, you have to consider the practicalities!

That's not the bone of contention here, Sir. But you _do_
demonstrate a propensity to wander vast fields of self generated
explication in an ongoing quest to whistle past your graveyard.
The cracks between your meager senses are wide, Mr. Smith.

>>I'd suggest you seem to take offense when your readership won't
>>reflexively genuflect at your portentous arrogance, inflated
>>hubris, and sneering manner.

>Incredible! I don't expect genuflection!

You likely have a different word for it?

>How can you ever even
>reach these conclusions is amazing! Arrogance! Hubris! Sneering!
>Most ridiculous!

Only perhaps, Mr. Smith.

>My comments can be taken or left where they
>are. If you don't like them, simply ignore them Mr. Lehmberg!

...Can't... it's my job <g>

>Maybe I should simply do the same with you.

You can quit any time you want to.

>>I don't even want the choir. I demand respect, is all.

>But please tell me exactly how to show you respect.

I've been pretty clear, Sir.

>I could
>address you as Mr. Lehmberg. I can avoid calling you names. I
>can avoid criticizing your prose style.

I suspect you refuse to get it at all. You're a wet blanket...
deal with it.

>>Moreover, a sneer _is_ an aggression, Sir.

>Well, I want you to know that in composing my responses I do not
>sneer.

You might have a different word for it.

>I simply use critical thought and as little emotionalism
>as possible.

With a measure of pedantic sarcasm, a pinch of intellectual
abusiveness, and a dollop of arrogant pride. Or please otherwise
explain the length, breadth, and girth of your ongoing riposte
in this thread.

>I am not banging the keyboard with my Pepsi or
>cursing or foaming at the mouth! As for textual sneering, this
>is more complicated and is apparently in the eye of the reader.
>If I am being aggressive in this way, I cannot filter it because
>it is not apparent.

Well, I guess we'll just have to "keep on keeping on," in the
vernacular.

>>Nonsense. I suspect that this was not your intention, Mr. Smith.
>>Your manner is an impedance, Sir, and not an incentive.
>
>You don't know how engineering works apparently.

My father was an engineer. He worked for a time around Stanton
Friedman on Nuclear propulsion at AeroJet General (another thing
we could have if we wanted it), I think it likely I understand
engineers and engineering a little better than you'd think.

>To solve
>engineering problems you _have_ to go out of the box but reality
>and practicality of funding/resources and time are needed to
>determine optimal solutions.

Oh come on, Mr. Smith. How far afield do you feel you have to
wander to prove a point that has not in any way being contested.
I said you're a wet blanket and I stand by it.

>Thus, my manner is a critical part
>of the problem solving process. And for you, it really should be
>an incentive to simply respond with appropriate counterarguments
>rather than attacking the messenger.

But you don't have a message, so much, Mr. Smith. You only have
agenda... presently one to 'win' a discussion you suspect you're
out of your depth on, and so all this literary sturm and drang
to cover for it.

>>Besides,
>>your conventional wisdoms about asteroid mining and
>>transportation fall to pieces the moment we detect a planet-
>>killer bearing down on us in fact. You know that to be true.

>It does not "fall to pieces". It is completely a part of my
>"practical manner". Specifically, if there is a known
>intersecting asteroid, then the damage calculations will show
>the amount of money lost due to the damage. Then the world will
>weigh that against the cost of moving the asteroid. A trade
>study will be performed and a trade space searched for options
>and funding profiles/technology development scenarios and
>bottlenecks/critical paths. Then, when a reasonably costed
>program is determined, it will be implemented. But note that all
>these resources are being taken from other research programs or
>society sustinence programs. Someone will be on the losing end
>of the stick! Without an asteroid impact threat, such spending
>redistribution will not occur.

Right! All your practicalities fall to pieces, and new
practicalities evolve at a speed necessary to counteract the
threat. Tomato ... to-mah-to, Mr. Smith.

>>Independent realists _inspired_ by 1930s pulp magazines, half a
>>century of quality science fiction, _and_ Star Trek, of course.
>>Art Clark writes compellingly about communications satellites
>>and they materialize into existence. It's almost that simple,
>>Mr. Smith. Some dreamer had to have the idea first.

>I will agree that there IS something referred to as a "meme"
>that is the infusion into society of an accepted idea which can,
>somehow, influence future outcomes. How this works is unknown.

Snort - that's easy. We, in the aggregate, want it ... and it
happens. It's really that simple in the long alien view.

>I
>simply state that the dream is the easy part,

No sir - that's the hard part... everything else is in a descent
from the idea. Everything else is a corruption of it. Everything
else is an approximation of it. I think you owe creativity a
little more respect, Sir.

>while the
>practical implementation takes a long time. I can easily write a
>computer program that searches a large design space which is
>essentially "dreaming". But practical design solutions must meet
>development cost and time (and other) criteria or they will not
>be realized (at least given current physics or groundrules).

Now you're starting to sound like the adults in a Peanuts
cartoon. Maybe that's why the adults sounded that way in them, I
suppose. They really were missing the point and their
explications so much yadda-yad, as a result.

>>>regarding prose difficulties<<

>>We can take them word for word, Sir. Trouble is, they oftimes
>>get into areas that the respondent isn't comfortable getting
>>into.

>Sorry, no. It is just that the sentence structure is either too
>complicated or apparently irrelevant.

Ok... here's what's going on so you can't say it wasn't said...

It is done, simply, the way it is done out of respect for the
language, and in extension, the reader, Sir. I'm not going to
talk down to the reader, no, or poke teasingly and forgettablely
at the reader's lowest common denominator! NO!

Expect an intelligence, and many times _get_ an intelligence.
Expect Homer Simpson and get him _every_ time.

I am going to use, arguably, the best word available, in my
estimation, _regardless_, Mr. Smith! They aren't words that will
be used only one time, good Sir, they will be used again and
again, in all my pieces fore and aft, for good reason. They are
words that open up new dimensions in time and space for the
individual who goes to the trouble of finding out what they mean
that _first_ time... a simple cut and paste into "Google" on the
internet for instant gratification and an expansion to the
interior of a reader's intellectual bubble! Grasp closer to
reach! Take a step up on a new definition and see farther than
you did before! Finally, I write the best, most considered, and
most respectful kind of language I am capable of producing.

It's a song, Mr. Smith. Songs meant to be sung again and
something wrung from them on every singing.

I can do _no_ less in as much as there are persons reading it! I
_must_ respect that. Moreover, different words put the reader's
head in different places, and with the fact of that dwindling
commodity (of diversity) evaporating rapidly in a contrived
global homogenization of slothful mediocrity as you read, the
reader needs all the difference she can get her sweaty little
cognitive hands on, whether he knows it or not!

The kind of language I'm talking about (and trying to employ
here) has an appreciation imbued by the user to treat the
language as if it were a box of verbal paint. In it are
aspirations to make every word a picture, every sentence a
portrait, and every collection of sentences a virtual holograph.
All things being equal I'd write in a language that begs to be
revisited, like a song, or like classic words of yore. That's
what I aspire to here, with no shame, no embarrassment, and no
guile, either. I would be of respected service, as would any
sociophile.

Words _are_ paints and magics and tools and weapons! They travel
in time, and are as eternal as they are made and preserved. They
are teachers, leaders, and entertainers. They are efficiency.
They are efficacy. They are immortality! I would be immortal...
how about you?

Decidedly, words are the very COIN and FABRIC of cultural
memory! In as much as they paint better, more durable and longer
lasting pictures, they are the ART of primary expression! Our
culture will survive much, much longer than those of antiquity
because (outside the threat of idea [and therefore book!]
burning CSICOPians, or the electricity stops working), the
consolidation of it is going to be very hard to forget. Believe
it!

Finally, enough people _do_ get it, and have acquired a taste for it so that it
is _not_ required that you do. too.

>But don't worry, I feel
>the same about some of Ms. Rand's or Mr. Melville's books, so
>you are in good company.

Now there's too little too late, Mr. Smith. Besides, I don't
feel your being _entirely_ sincere with the comparison.

>>The delete key _may_ be appropriate, Sir, in as much as you seem
>>to have a predilection for mocking and sneering, and I won't sit
>>still for it. Antithetical to your (I think self-imposed) lack
>>of understanding , other folks have reported that the
>>communication becomes clearer on subsequent readings you
>>intimate you're not up for. Pity.

>Well, if it was the Bible, I would wish to consider multiple
>readings, but I would not equate your prose with It's meaning.

It's an ongoing letter to my fellow humans, Mr. Smith.

>>>But then this may simply be my own limited mental ability, so I
>>>am sorry for being unable to understand what you are writing in
>>>those cases.

>>Unwilling more than unable, I'd suggest. Your mental ability is
>>not in question, Sir. Neither is mine.

>Okay we are both smart. Perhaps, there is merit in your remark.

Wow! How much nicer this would have gone for both of us had you
couched its like, closer to the front of our shared consternation.

>I _am_ unwilling. But I think it due to laziness in trying to
>understand unusual concept formulations.

Seems to me 'real' engineers have had to overcome 'similar'
problems...

>Maybe I have a
>subconscious fear of such sentence structure due to too many
>English courses.

>However, I would put the ball in the writer's court simply
>because if the writer has trouble getting his point across to
>his audience, what use is he?

I've had some small indication that I have been of use to
persons in a literary sense, Mr. Smith. Maybe they'd have been
more acceptable had they sung your praises initially instead of
pointing out your conjectured need for them.

>I have to write technical reports
>and presentations all the time. If I come across with some hard
>to understand work, I will get nailed for it!

UpDates is decidedly bereft of the reports and presentations you
allude to, Mr. Smith. It might be one of the reason you are
here.

>>>Also, your liberal sprinkling of "Sirs" reminds me
>>>of an English manservant addressing his employer.
>
>>...And that's so ludicrous it must then be my insistence on a
>>certain formality in contention.
>
>Okay, so if you like the guy, you add no Sirs, but if you
>dislike him or are opposed to him you do add Sir. Interesting.

It's manners, Sir.

>Well, I will try to ignore them since they don't help or hurt
>the issue at hand.

How good of you. Thanks.

>>>You, in fact,
>>>dilute the meaning and power of "Sir" by its repetitive use
>>>which seems to be of no more importance, in context, than a
>>>colon or question mark.

>>...or an expletive, Mr. Smith?

>I don't use expletives in my posts. Are you implying that you
>_mean_ "Sir" to be an expletive. That would be very subtle and
>clever of you if so... something I would not do.

We went to different highschools together, Mr. Smith... then I
went to war. I would imagine we've traveled some pretty
disparate paths.

>>>"Sir" should really be used when it is
>>>meant and I FEEL that you do not in most cases.

>>I guess my definition of appropriate manners diverges from
>>yours, considerably.

>I suppose. It just seems that you scatter them like birdseed.
>Whatever.

Yes, Sir - I'm ready to give discussion of them up when you are.

>>>I chime in with a Sir or two to try to make you feel
>>>comfortable.

>>That provoked a pronounced snort over here on this end, Mr.
>>Smith, and like Wendy Connors wrote, required a little clean-up
>>on CRT and keyboard.

>Really? Well, I must be more careful!

Too late - after this engagement my monitor and keyboard look
like a splatter-guard. <g>

>>>Sorry it did not work and you think I am mocking
>>>you.

>>Alone and without complication, this sentence would only have
>>gained an apology accepted. Complicated as it was with all that
>>has gone before I can only stand with arms akimbo and eyes
>>askance.

>Still, I mean it. It is hard to figure out how to react to your
>comments. I shall omit the use of "Sir" to stop "mocking" you.

Ok - but you gotta drop the "quotes" too.

>>>Finally, regarding our difference in viewpoints, I think
>>>dreamers are fine and realists are fine. It takes all kinds in
>>>this world. Both optimists and pessimists are needed. But there
>>>is no need for rancor, only for courteous debate and discussion!

>>No argument with any of that, Sir. Would that you had taken
>>your own lesson. But that's all behind us now... <g>

>>So... ever see a UFO?

>Yes. Over D.C. A black disc in front of the Sun visible only
>because of fog and sun glasses. Not a sun spot or helicopter.
>Seen in the morning for 4 miles on Rt 66 going toward D.C..
>Stayed in same spot relative to the Sun's surface. Angle implied
>at stratospheric altitude (or somewhat below) over D.C.. Either
>a military airship platform (but this was 3 yrs prior to 9/11)
>or alien vehicle. Either option could use a relatively simple
>camoflauge technique to not be seen EXCEPT when in front of the
>Sun. My guess is that our military had no such platform, indeed
>they are funding work right now for such platforms.

..._Do_ tell! UFOs _are_ a puzzle. Nest ce' pas? They are a
neat end-run around too much 'practicality' or at least a
different flavor of it... so says Dolan and Jabobs and Mack and
Friedman. They are an ongoing epiphany for me, Mr. Smith,
sincerely.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







   UFO UpDates
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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 9

              Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan

From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 23:13:24 -0000
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:31:27 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan


>From: Brad Sparks <RB47x.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:06:21 EST
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 09:16:25 -0800
>>Subject: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

<snip>

You mentioned meteors and meteorites.

I do believe that the lack of actual UFO hardware is the biggest
obstacle to scientific acceptance.

Meteorites were in a similar position for many decades. It took
several large falls, culminating in the L'Aigle fall in 1803, to
finally convince the scientific academy (in France) that
Chladni's ideas were correct and that meteorites actually fell
from the sky, and came from outer space.

I feel UFOs (assuming they are nuts & bolts spacecraft) will
never be accepted until & unless real hardware is found and
produced. If this proves very elusive, too bad: we shall have to
wait until such hardware, preferably in abundance, turns up.
Then, and only then, will there be a chance of finally proving
UFO reality to the scientific establishment. There is no clear
alternative.

It is useless to give the oft-repeated response that the
authorities already possess this hardware but are keeping it top
secret. This standard ufological rejoinder will cut no ice with
the scientific establishment (or the media), and you cannot
really blame them for poking derision at it. Ufology is too
world-wide for this 'buck passing' to be valid.

Hardware is needed, and sooner rather than later.


CDA








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   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 9

               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 17:47:40 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:45:20 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 08:34:11 -0800 (PST)
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 16:48:52 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 10:51:31 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

<snip>

>Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, the best policy
>still seems to be to help those around you as best you can and
>to do no harm (unless they really deserve it ;).

Hi James,

As I expected, we agree more than we disagree. In your final
paragraph we find the meeting of the minds.

To repeat...

"... the best policy still seems to be to help those around you
as best you can, and to do no harm..."

This List is a forum for those that do not accept the party
line. We are tasked with... and provided space for... discussing
the UFO question in a free-form and decidedly theoretical
context. Dreamers are not only welcome, but it is darned near a
requirement.

When we discuss, and find argument, the goal is to 'help those
around us as best we can', and this is accomplished by pointing
out the flaws in logic that stem from accepting the status quo
as the benchmark whereby to measure validity, or to show the
error of a flatly incorrect technical interpretation, vis a vis
Dr. Maccabee or Mr. Sparks.

But there's more... there is an emotional context for the
discussion as well.

While Dr. Maccabee can expound on the technical minutiae that
often prove a case, and while Brad Sparks can reflect on the
technical aspects of radar returns and decry the ignored pile of
hard data that is already available, and while Dick Hall can
recite chapter and verse a long list of very compelling cases,
and Stan Friedman can lecture ad infinitum on issues of saucer
crashes in the desert southwest, we all share an emotional
connect with the field.

Mr. Lehmberg is less bashful about it than most, and he has made
it plain that he no longer feels that casual dismissal is
innocent. That you and your comments represent what constitutes
the 'enemy' is not a result of his incivility, but a decided
policy of engagement. He no longer politely accepts the status
quo view, if he ever did. As he might himself comment, I admire
his pluck.

You might see Alfred, Bruce, Brad, Dick and Stan as disparate,
diverse voices. I see instead a unified front. Diverse in
expertise, disparate in writing styles, but all working to the
same purpose... to help those around them and do no harm.

The funny thing is, when dreamers dream, they harm no one. But
when a realist pooh-poohs a dreamer, the dreamer is cast aside
as so much detritus, until perhaps a later date when the dreamer
is vindicated. For the more passionate among us, your comments
literally mean war.

Like Roy Neary, we share a passionate belief in something we
know many do not. We seek to help those around us to see a more
expansive view, and to avoid the harm done... when we remain
silent. Like Roy Neary, many of us likely don't know exactly why
we are so... nor do we care.

When an argument is made, like yours, that bases progress on
practical realities, you are essentially advocating against that
passion as well as the opposing argument.

This is why you receive a response you find emotional. It is.

For decades these fine folks and many others have given much to
(in their minds)help those around them. I look at UFO photos to
find the good ones, and I let loose on the bad ones when I feel
strongly that it is a bad one. But I also keep looking, because
I believe very strongly that we do not know it all, and that our
mysteries are becoming more numerous and not less, and I believe
that most of us would agree that keeping this to ourselves...
not talking about it... would violate your rejoinder to 'do no
harm'.

I hope to help people see through the obvious fakes, the easily
identified, and the repetitively misinterpreted because those
pollute the channel of good evidence. I question and I argue,
not because I think the argument is weak but because only
through testing an argument can its strength be known. But
saying an argument here isn't real or practical is not
constructive, it is deconstructive, and in this forum, that
reads as destructive. Why? Because it doesn't help anyone
understand it, and it does harm to the debate, which is what we
have to work with in this forum.

If you want to help others and do no harm, perhaps you would do
well to take a step outside the box of engineering, cost/benefit
analysis, and idea space management, and question things more.
Perhaps your feeling that things cannot change would be found to
be in error. Perhaps if more and more reasonable practical
people like you dreamed more, what is practical and real might
begin to take on a different hue entirely.

The point of all this is to remind you that these are uncharted
waters... by design... and he that finds that 'here there be
monsters' should not be surprised to find so. He should also not
be surprised when his clearly demarked 'map' is considered
suspect out of hand.

Mr. Lehmberg is motivated by it, Mr. Hall and Mr. Sparks are
discouraged by it, Dr. Maccabee is unmoved by it, and Stan is
nothing if not resigned to it, but they all share a disdain of
it. The it is the assured expert opinion that labels their
efforts as outlandish, or that presumes a reality over which we
have demonstrated an infinite capacity to remain ignorant.

For my part, I think it is time indeed to stand for the 'other'
way of thinking, not because it is ridiculous and maybe wrong,
but because the reality in which I find myself today is all too
ridiculous, and in my view decidedly wrong. Acceptance is no
help, and does plenty of harm.

If we help you as best we can to convince you to make the leap,
to push the envelope, to dream for the sake of the dream, and
the sake of a possibly better future, we will have certainly
done no harm.

If you help as best you can to convince us to remain safely in
the box, to accept a reality we find inadequate at best, the
harm done is not easily measurable, if not altogether
incalculable.

The discussion here is not just talk. There are careers and even
lives at stake over this 'silliness'. You must accept that as
dispassionate as your posts may be intended, they are met with a
passionate retort because the passion is borne of years of
scorn, ridicule and dismissal. This is a burden which you have
not had to bear, comfort zones being what they are.

Please help as best you can, and do no harm.


Best Regards,

Kyle








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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 9

                       Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 00:10:05 +0000
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:52:20 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 10:14:52 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 18:53:04 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas

>>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 16:04:37 -0600
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions & Coffee Enemas - Clark

>>>This from the guy who once championed "birth trauma" -
>>>"something [that] we don't even know exists" - as an
>>>"explanation" for the abduction phenomenon.

>>>Now it's time for Peter to take the gospel to all those SETI
>>>types who are forever "referring to something [that] we don't
>>>even know exists," speculating about its nature, and working on
>>>strategies to contact it.

>Peter lets this one go by. Gee, I wonder why. Well, folks, I'll
>tell you: Peter loves to bash ufologists but knows his place
>when it comes to authority figures.

You obviously haven't been reading the last few UpDates. I
thought I had made it clear that I am unimpressed by the SETI
project and its anthropomorphic outlook. Quite a few ufologists
look really sophisticated in comparison. As for Frank Drake with
his idea of sending messages into the skies in the hope that the
God like aliens will give us the secret of peace on earth, with
immortality thrown in for good measure, the religious symbolism
is obvious

>>Sorry Jerry but I have never been a champion of the birth trauma
>>hypothesis, and am very sceptical of it. To be fair however it
>>did have some of the properties of s scientific theory. It
>>failed because it was falsified by what we know (or think we
>>know) about the organisation of the neonates brain and sensory
>>abilities.

>In reality, Magonia extolled the birth-trauma "hypothesis"
>enthusiastically when Alvin Lawson first proposed it, and Peter
>sang in the choir, that is, when he wasn't proposing the
>Americans imagined abduction experiences because they fear
>Hispanics. If it were worth my time, which it isn't, I'd dig
>through old issues of the magazine for the appropriately
>embarrassing quotes. Still, I'll take Peter's word for it that
>he no longer believes it, and congratulate him for his good
>sense, at least on this matter.

Magonia devoted one issue to an article by Lawson years back,
and I doubt if we ever referred to it since. I see that Jerry is
still going on about Hispanics. That was a throw away piece
about Dark Side ufology and the idea of aliens doing nasty
things in hangers in the desert. The piece never even mentioned
the word abduction. But if you want to go down that road just
look at what David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins are now saying about
the hybrids. Racial fears or what?

Presumably the fact that IUR published article after article on
the Roswell nonsense means Jerry was promoting it. Or was he
just publishing articles as they came along.

>>As I keep saying, the problem with the ETH and its more exotic
>>bretheren is that they are unfalisifiable infinitely elastic
>>hypotheses.

>If one holds falsifiability to be a criterion - a notion
>generally now regarded by scientists as creaky and old-
>fashioned, strongly disputed by Karl Popper's many critics - it
>is true that only wreckage, machinery, and bodies are likely to
>settle the issue. That's one reason, by the way, that I am
>cautious in everything I've written about the ETH. Another
>reason, of course, is that it's fun to drive pelicanists nuts.
>Having nothing better to do with their time, they have devoted
>many furious words to bashing me for my fence-sitting and
>reading my thoughts. Out of that they've created a strawman, and
>that's the one Peter now attacks.

>Short of wreckage, machinery, and bodies, we're dealing with a
>problem for which no solution is immediately in sight. But then
>the other hypotheses - such as the ones Peter favors - haven't
>exactly been falsifiable, either, and if anything less useful.
>I've yet to see a falsifiable version of the psychosocial
>hypothesis and/or the pelicanistic one - they are, of course,
>"unfalsifiable" and "infinitely elastic," as we learn with each
>"sceptic" posting on this List and with each issue of Magonia.
>If you're a pelicanist, you can just make it up as you go along,
>and if that weren't fun enough, you get to accuse everybody else
>of being irrational and pseudoscientific for doing exactly what
>you're doing. Golly, who wouldn't want to be a pelicanist?

Its up to those who propose that there are dramatically
anomalous phenomena out there to prove the point, its not up to
sceptics to demonstrate otherwise. Of course if anyone like Andy
Roberts or Dave Clark get out of their armchairs and investigate
these cases and come up with answers Jerry doesn't like he damns
them too.

>>Jerry has made this point on a number occasions about
>>paranormal explanations but seems to have a slight difficulty
>>realising that invoking a technology so advanced as to be like
>>magic is only verbally different from a paranormal explanation.

>I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, except that
>pronouncements like these seem to give the likes of Peter great
>satisfaction as he goes about conjuring up ever more and more
>elastic, magical pelicans. Since it was Arthur Clarke who made
>the comparison of ETH technology to magic, I urge you to take
>your quarrel to him. Oh, wait a minute; he's an authority
>figure, isn't he? Sorry.  Never mind.

It means that a _magical_ technology = magic. Can I make it
plainer than tha?

As for Arthur C Clarke, well the guy deserves the credit for
making a life time career out of one succesful prediction, but
have you read what was forcast for 2000 in say is 1961 Profiles
of the Future. I could go on about how his ideas were influenced
by being brought up in the days of the British Empire and
reading things like Boys Own comic in which plucky English
public schoolboys confounded the _natives_ by their display of
white man's technology etc. That's where the magical technology
comes from.


Peter (Pelican) Rogerson







   UFO UpDates
   A mailing list for the study of UFO-related phenomena
   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 9

               HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings - 12-08-04

From: Brian Vike - HBCC UFO Research <hbccufo.nul>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 18:11:43 -0800
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:58:27 -0500
Subject: HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings - 12-08-04


HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings

Release Date: December 8, 2004


Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan Shiny Metallic Cigar Shaped Object

Date: July-August 1969 ?
Time: ??

Message: Back in 1969, several members of my family and some
neighbors across the street saw a shiny metallic cigar shaped
object in the sky over the southwest area of Moose Jaw,
Saskatchewan. It hovered in the sky for several minutes and
then shot off. I was nearly 5 years old at the time and cannot
personally remember the incident. However, several calls were
placed to the airbase regarding the sighting and it was reported
in the Moose Jaw Times Herald. It was reported sometime in
July-August, I think.

Also, back in 1947 when my mom was a girl, she and a number of
students during recess at Westmount school in Moose Jaw saw
several strange objects in formation hovering and moving in the
sky above the school yard.

Thank you to the witness for this report.

-----------------------

Fulton County, New York Orange Cigar Shaped Object

Date: October 30, 1969
Time: 9:00 p.m.

Number of witnesses: 2
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Orange cigar shaped.

Full Description of event/sighting: A friend and myself stopped
outside the city. We got out of my car and I looked up into the
sky as it was a clear night with many stars visible.

I saw an orange cigar shaped object moving slowly from the
northwest. I told my friend to look at this. The object
eventually stopped and a piece of the same color fell from it.
We watched as the piece fell and then it burst into flames. The
object then moved off in the same direction it came from.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

--------------------

Sudbury, Ontario Circular Shaped Object

Date: August 1975
Time: Evening

Number of witnesses: 5
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Circular (distant)

Full Description of event/sighting: With friends in a row boat
near Sudbury Ontario I saw what I thought was a satellite. After
showing my friends this object we observed it for several
minutes. After a short time this object seemed to ricochet
across the night sky, we followed it. It stopped for a short
time then appeared to glow or seemingly smaller objects appeared
around the main one. Then in an instant it "skipped" or
"accelerated" itself out of our sight. I never reported this and
am not sure if any of my friends did.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

----------------------

St. Louis River, Cloquet Craft Shoots Laser-Type White Light

Date: May 5, 1984
Time: 10:00 p.m. to 11:55 p.m.

Number of witnesses: 5
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Like an upside-down ice cream cone.

Full Description of event/sighting: My son and his friend saw it
first, I was just coming home from having coffee at a local
restaurant. My son and his friend saw it go right over our
house, at an approximate altitude of 50 feet. The two boys, aged
9, were in my son's bedroom, and when they first saw it, it
scared them really bad, as they thought it was a "tornado" which
is what they told me it was, at first, when I found them jumping
up and down on the kitchen chairs after I first got home. Their
16 year old babysitter was on the other side of our house, ( a
long rambler) and did not see it at all until my friend and I
saw it.

The object had landed on the river bank, which we had a good
view of, and it was a red blinking light, at first. It blinked
in a really random order. Where it had landed is very
inaccessible to any person as it was on the very edge of a small
town, and the area was very swampy and inaccessible. So five us
sat at my dining room table, and we had an excellent view of it.
We were looking down at it as our house was atop a hill near the
river bank. The dining room had a sliding glass door, so we
watched the object from our dining room table.

At first, it just sort of "sat there." But after about an hour,
it rose up suddenly, and shot to the center of the St. Louis
River. I say shot, because that's how fast it moved! Right
before it shot to the center of the river, it changed colors,
from red, to a lime green, and then a dull white. We watched it
hover over the center of the river for about ten minutes, and as
we watched, it shot down a laser-type white light, down onto the
river.

The light was white, and it looked like a laser. We could not
see the effect it had on the river, however. It was dark out,
and although the light was very bright we could not see the
effect on the river, if any. I had my binoculars out, but they
were old and not very powerful.

So we sat and tried to figure out just what this thing could
possibly be.

After about ten minutes, the object shot back to the spot where
we first saw it on the riverbank. Then after the biggest share
of another hour, it rose up, and shot over the far hill,
stopping as it did so, to shine a brilliant white light on the
neighbor's house across the river from us. It moved west, then
east, then north.

Now the neighbors had gone to bed, apparently, as their lights
were all off. But when this object stopped right over their
house at a low altitude, well, all the lights came on in their
house!

So they must have seen the object right over the top of their
home.

I think my house was about 1/4 mile from the object when it
landed on the river bank. And the neighbor's house was about a
half mile from us. The St. Louis River is quite wide in that
spot, I'd say about 100 feet. It seems kind of weird that we and
those neighbors are the only ones who had a view of the object,
but I'm sure that is the case. The neighbor's house had just
been built that summer, it used to be wilderness. We had a very
exclusive view of that spot on the river.

The light it shone upon the neighbor's house was a brilliant,
white light, like a spotlight. Then all their lights came on!

After about five minutes, the object shot over the far hill and
I told the kids to go to bed as they would never see anything
like that object again as long as they lived. I no more than got
the words out of my mouth, and back "it came! It shined the
brilliant light right onto my house and then shot away to the
north and out of view.

It seemed as though the object could hear what I was saying to
the kids!

During the sighting, the kids got the idea of shining our
floodlights to see if it would respond. It did. It blinked at
us three times, the same amount of times the kids put the lights
on and off. So I told them to not repeat that, as it kind of
scared me to think that it might come closer to us.

The main thing that came through to me was the speed with which
this object moved. It was unbelievable. If we had blinked our
eyes we would have missed the motion. So it was super fast, and
super "unknown".

I did not call the police until after the sighting as I thought
the object would up and leave, and leave me with egg on my face.
 Now, of course, I wish I had called them during the sighting.

The following day I did call the police, and they said they had
no other reports of anything in the area. The neighbors had not
called either and I never went over to talk to them. I wish I
had now.

But I knew the neighbor was the clerk of our local court. So it
was too embarrassing for me to call him, in case they did not
all see the object, like we did.

I am sorry this was so wordy, but it was a very complicated
sighting, to be sure.

In any event, I am now a believer in UFOS. What we witnessed
that night, with blinking lights, was out of this world for
sure.

Also, during the sighting, the red light seemed to "pulsate."
Larger, then smaller, then larger, etc.

I am sorry I have waited so very long to report it, but it was
not until I got onto the internet, that things were accessible
to me.

Thank you.

Additional Information:

The weather: about 70 degrees F.

Sky conditions: CLEAR

Moon: No visible moon in that part of the sky that night.

Wind: No discernible wind.

My nine year old son saw it up close and he said it looked like
old pitted metal. The color of it was like old metal, kind of
dark grey or metal that has seen better days. It was light
enough outside for them to see it; it was just about dusk.

The boys at first dove under my son's bed as they were so
startled. I had them draw separate pictures of it, in different
rooms. They both drew a very good likeness of a spinning metal
object, with lights on the center, and top and bottom of it.

They both said it made a kind of "whooshing" sound.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

--------------------

Dallas, Texas Black Triangle Sighting

Date: 2002 ?
Time: Approximately around 3:00 - 4:00 a.m.

Hi, I came across your site and saw the video clips of that
triangular shape outside of Dallas. I'm not sure what that
particular thing is, but my daughter and I have witnessed a
flying craft of pretty good size, black, triangular with lights
flying east towards the Dallas skyline. This was about 2 years
ago when we started noticing this, we used to have to travel
interstate 30 every morning around 3:00-4:00 a.m.. We'd drive
super slow to watch it, but it always stayed behind clouds so
we'd only get a glimpse now and then. So, I wouldn't be a bit
surprised if what he has in these clips is something...Strange.

Thank you to the witness for this report.

--------------------

Apex, North Carolina Formation Of Lights

Date: Mid November, 2003
Time: Approx: 9:00 p.m..

Number of witnesses: 1
Shape of objects: Formation.

Full Description of event/sighting: I have taken a photo of what
I thought was 3 planets lined up, (although they had a red tint
to them). In the middle of November, 2003, I was coming home
after dark and noticed them above my head because I was closing
the sunroof on my car and just happened to look straight up. I
saw 3 lights the same distance apart, so I came in the house and
got my camera, but only took one shot, because I didn't think
that much of it because planets line up all the time. I put in
my computer and left it there until I had time to check it out.
I had forgotten about having it, and was cleaning out my files
this summer and found it. That's when I used the features on my
camera software and found anomalies. I have the simplest, most
inexpensive Kodak (CX 4200), but it makes good night shots
without the flash. The features I have are - brighten, enhance,
contrast, color-adjust, red-eye, darken, lighten. Those are the
ones I've used on this photo. And I can 'trim' (crop) a picture.

There are somewhat famous Ufologists in this country but two of
them seemed to brush off my report? One did, however, state if I
could pinpoint a certain date, he could verify if it is an
official star formation, or it isn't. I don't know the exact
date, although I'm sure it was in November of 2003 and it was
around 9:00 p.m..

I have several drafted emails waiting to send, with the pictures
if you'd like to see them; the original, as well as the ones I
used my camera features on.

I tend to think the others I've contacted think I'm trying to
present a hoax of some kind; This photo is all TOO clear. But I
am an average person with a cheap Kodak camera. I am a 54 year-
old female who's "seen things" all my life. I have always
believed UFO's existed and may come from elsewhere other than
this blue planet. The strangest thing is I don't remember at
what point I started believing that. I have always.

If it was a ship of some sort, what was it doing sitting over my
house? I live in the country, about 20 miles from the RDU
airport in Morrisville, and a long way from any military bases.
I think Fort Bragg would be the closest and it's hundreds of
miles, I'm not sure. We do have a nuclear power plant within 10
miles of my home. Shearan Harris (spelling?). I get their
notices each year in the mail; where the evacuation routes are
and all that other info.

Please let me know if you want to see the pictures. I hope so,
because I'd love for someone knowledgeable to tell me what this
was. If it moved, I don't know because I didn't go outside again
that night, but it wasn't moving when I took the shot

Thank you to the witness for the report and pictures.

The photos are going to be looked at and some answers hopefully
found for the witness.

--------------------

Chapala Jalisco, M=E9xico Saucer Shaped Craft

Date: September 11, 2004
Time: 3:30 p.m.

Here is the anecdote:

On Sep/11/2004 Chapala Jalisco, M=E9xico at about 15:30 pm. My
family and I went to dinner to the real Chapala Hotel (Ajijic
Jalisco, Mexico). We ate and then went to table next to the
pool, and I saw an object with a shape like a saucer with an
American-ball inside. I said look an UFO and it moved up an down
nearly of surface of the lake, we saw too an exhaust coming from
the object and suddenly go down to the surface of the lake and
it would navigate on the water for about 50 mts. then
disappeared.

Thank you to the witness for the interesting report and the
photos.

----------------------

Guadalajara Jalisco, M=E9xico

Date: October 16, 2004
Time:6:53 p.m.

Brian Vike:

On 10/16/04 Guadalajara Jalisco, M=E9xico,at about 18:53 pm. I was
walking in the street and I saw 1 glowing orb moving slow in to
the clouds. I had, my camera nearly to me because is not the
first time than I saw UFOs and I took 7 photos. I think it is
the same UFO Jeff Willes saw.

Additional Information.

Hi Brian, hope all is well:

The UFO was moving from east to west and the velocity was vary.
it has metallic texture in red and oval shape, the distance was
about 800 mts. The sight it was not near to the airport of any
kind military base. I didn't see any aircraft in the area or any
type of exhaust coming from the object.

Thank you to the witness for the report and photos.

--------------------

San Francisco, California Unknown Object

Date: November 12, 2004
Time: 4:15 a.m.

The sighting occurred on 11/12/2004. My girlfriend and I were on
the train, emerging from the subway to above ground, (we were
coming from the airport on the BART) and I was kind of spacing
out at the sky, when I noticed a black thing hovering near some
low clouds. It looked like a bird, but it wasn't moving at
all,and it was kind of far so it was hard to tell exactly how
large it was. I saw it for like 3 seconds, and I pointed it out
to my girlfriend, but when she look it disappeared behind the
clouds. Then 30 seconds later I saw it again and I pointed it
out to her.

We looked at it for another 15 seconds, but then the train kept
going and it either disappeared behind some clouds or a building
we went by. (I don't remember exactly) There were other people
on the train, but they seemed to keep to themselves as I was
pointing it out to my girlfriend. They might have noticed me
pointing it out but nobody else looked up to see as far as I
know. There were only a couple people by us who would have
noticed. San Francisco has a lot of hills, so I contemplated it
being the top of a very tall light or electric post on a hill,
but I saw nothing under it, and it was pretty high up, in front
of the clouds, I would estimate 500ft? But I am really bad at
estimating, so I could be wrong. I also would like to stress
that they were clouds, and not the fog San Francisco is so
commonly used to.

Additional Information:

I said it was around 500 ft high, but my estimation is really
bad. It was probably more 1000 or 5000, wherever low flying
clouds usually are. Also, a airline pilot made a report a few
days before mine that was remarkably similar. I also saw some
pictures that looked a lot like the UFO I saw. The more I think
about it there is no way it could have been a electric pole or
anything like that, I just doubted myself a lot more in the
beginning.

Thank you to the witness for this report.

---------------------------

Westland Michigan Colorful And Brilliant Light

Date: November 26, 2004
Time: 8:30 p.m.

Number of witnesses: 1
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Looked like a helicopter with lights all over it.

Full Description of event/sighting: This is not the first UFO I
have seen. In fact I have seen this and other UFOs before. I
have seen this same "copter" before but did not get a photo. I
used my Cannon Digital Elph S400. I estimate the object was 1/2
to mile away at approx. 500 feet. I have not done anything to
the photo except enlarge it to 200% given it's small size. When
you do so it becomes more strange. If you would like a copy of
the photo let me know.

Additional Information:

To answer your questions about the photo. The sky was overcast,
not raining and clear. The moon would have full but well behind
the overcast which is average for Michigan. The object traveled
from the S.W. to the N.N.E. at the speed of a small plane or
real copter, it even made a sound similar to a helicopter but
different. It traveled almost overhead at a very steady pace.

A week or so ago I saw a white light non strobe, like a reverse
spot light, in the clouds that came out of the west. There was
no sound until it turned almost overhead to the South and I
could hear a sound similar to a jet but no sonic boom. Given the
apparent speed I thought I would have heard at least one sonic
boom as the sound was far behind the object. Had I not been
looking at the very spot I would have missed seeing it as it was
visible for a few seconds. Followed by the sound. I also saw an
object that appeared to be round at approximately 10:30 pm with
five white non strobe lights and one red light in the middle.

Thank you to the witness for the report and photo.

Photos can be viewed at:

http://www.hbccufo.com/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=3D2098

------------------------
Garden Bay, British Columbia, Object Caught On Film

Date: November 27, 2004
Time: Approx: 6:00 a.m.

I returned a fellows telephone call today as he called to make a
report and to inform me that he had taken some photos and notice
a strange light in them. The man stressed that the object had to
be a long ways off when he filmed it.

He said there was a beautiful sun rise coming over the Victoria
area. The man said he could clearly see the lights from Nanaimo,
B.C. across the straight. Seeing it was a gorgeous morning with
the sun coming up he thought he might try to get a few shots of
the sun rise. The man set his camera up on his tripod so to make
sure he would have a steady shot.

He took one picture, then zoomed in a little, took that picture
and zoomed in a little more and took the last of three shots
with his camera. Nothing was seen other than the wonderful
sunrise at that time.

Later that afternoon he looked over the photos that were taken
that morning and noticed he captured something rather unusual on
film and it was moving. The three photos were taken over
approximately a one minute time span. In each of the pictures we
can easily see how the object had moved from one position to
another.

The fellow stated the object had to have been at a great
distance away, but still very bright. He estimates the object to
be over the inland of Vancouver Island.

On picture number GB4, or the very last photo posted here, the
fellow placed into the picture the object and it's position over
the one minute in which shows the moment of it. He has numbered
it's movements 1, 2, and 3.

Thank you very much to the person for the report and photos.

=A92004 GBBC Photography,Garden Bay, B.C.
http://www.garden-bay-bc.com

Photos can be viewed at:

http://www.hbccufo.com/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=3D2099

-----------------------

Saanichton British Columbia Unknown

Date: November 28, 2004
Time: 12:00 p.m.

I do not think this is a UFO, but the sight of it does puzzle
me. It is either the brightest star in the sky. a planet. or a
moon from another planet. I am talking about this bright object
that is mostly green with flickers of red and it has that white
star sparkle (the sparkle being white in color) and it moves
very, very slowly. last Sunday at around 12:00 p.m., It was in
the area of the big dipper.

It was sitting a little less than half way between the horizon
and straight above me, but silly me, I forgot to see if the
other stars were moving this slow as well. But it still is
peculiar, the color of it and its movement, thanks again for the
speedy reply

Thanks for reading,

Thank you to the witness for the report.

--------------------------

Honolulu, Hawaii Football Shape (Oval)

Date: November 28, 2004
Time: 10:30 a.m.

Location of Sighting: Above Waikiki Beach (During morning)
Number of witnesses: 2
Number of objects: 3
Shape of objects: Football shape (Oval)

Full Description of event/sighting: Around 10:30, My friend
(name removed) and I saw three mysterious looking objects
gliding literally right above the Waikiki beach. Now I can
definitely tell the difference between commercial airline planes
and funny oval shaped orange light. The three objects were
approximately a mile away from the beach/coast for about few
minutes gliding back and forth. It looked as if they were
creating an arc. The objects then gradually gained altitude as
they were still moving back and forth (Left and right in my
view). Eventually, those three objects got high enough to hide
behind the clouds. After the clouds cleared up, I realized that
they disappeared. I've sat there for almost half an hour in hope
of seeing "them" again, frankly, there were no more fancy ritual
dances from those three unknown objects. And if the government
says something about a weather balloon, ITS BS.

Thank you to the witness for this report.

---------------------

Mount Cobb, Pennsylvania Orb Sighting

Date: November 29, 2004
Time: 11:19 a.m.

Today 11/29/04, at 11:19 a.m., partly sunny, Mount Cobb, PA.
While observing a strange chemtrail (northwest) left by a
military plane (it started off white in color then to a smoky
gray color) I spotted an orb type of object, color white heading
south away from the chemtrail at great speed and it went behind
a cloud and did not reappear. So fast I didn't have time to
reach for my binoculars.

Thanks

Thank you to the witness for the report.

---------------------

Cochrane, Alberta Two Tear Drop Shaped Objects

Date: December 1, 2004
Time: Dusk

Number of witnesses: 2
Number of objects: 2
Shape of objects: Tear drops

Full Description of event/sighting: Good evening Brian. To try
to cut to the chase I recorded in my opinion a monumental video
I am so exited from Cochrane Alberta. The sighting I recorded is
amazing without a doubt. I need to be able to get it from a Sony
handicam to CD. The news showed a video that evening and
dismissed it as airplanes after 5 minutes and some blurry video
on TV (Same in many ways to some of the video I videotaped, but,
Brian mine has so much more. It has two white fireballs
streaking slowly across the sky one behind the other. It has a
snake like totally enormous curled at one end something floating
motionless without breaking up at all or changing, other than
one end of it, even after several minutes of taping. This vid
has a huge black rod shoot through it in two frames. My
girlfriend and I both saw it and dismissed it as a bird but when
looking over the tape again I realize its thin long and large
considering its almost two blocks away. This video has
everything.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

------------------

Coquitlam, B.C. Over Burke Mountain

Date: December 1, 2004
Time: Vary

Dec. 01 - approximately 08:30 AM -Beautiful clear sunny morning,
was just looking at all the snow on the mountains when I saw a
white streak flash across the south slope of Burke Mountain.
Object was moving so fast it was just a blur but there appeared
to be a white object about the size of a 737 at the head of the
streak. Object was about midway up the side of the Mountain. and
flew into a thick cloud which was hanging partly down the
mountain. I expected to see it come out the other side but
nothing appeared

11:00 AM. - Mainly sunny still, some overcast and fairly thick
layer of clouds along the mountain. tops. I noticed what
appeared to be a corkscrew shaped vapor trail suddenly appear
descending from the overcast down to near the top of Burke
Mountain. It reminded me of that cloud I saw last Jan. which had
the UFO at the bottom end of it and grabbed my binoculars but
didn=92t see anything. But as I was watching the vapor trail
suddenly extended itself in a big figure S towards the east. At
no time did I see anything thing which might be causing it. It
just seemed to materialize all in one piece which extended for
miles.

11:20 AM. - Still heavy cloud just touching the Mountain. tops
in places. I was looking at the top of Burke through my
binoculars, when all of a sudden a dark object shot out of the
cloud and flew a zig zaggy course around the peaks in a westerly
direction. Object was moving so fast it was just a dark blur so
I have no idea what it actually looked like but must have been
about the size of a commercial jet. Pretty sure no human being
could have been making turns that sharp and fast.

17:00 - Sky black intermittent overcast, Observed what appeared
to be a two engine commercial jet flying well below the normal
flight path. It appeared to be about Mission when I first saw
it. I looked through the binoculars and it just appeared to be a
normal jet. Single landing light on its nose and the green and
red marker lights on its wing tips. I glanced at my TV for just
a second and then looked back and it was gone. Waited for a
while to see if it reappeared but never saw it again. 17:20 -Saw
what appeared to be a standard jet heading westbound
approximately. 8000 ft. Watched it flying through a layer of
thin cloud and noticed the light pattern appeared to be
changing, the red and green wind tip lights went out and a
single large red light appeared on what I assumed was the
fuselage. I grabbed my binoculars again and started watching as
the plane flew out from the clouds and into a clear area the big
red light went out and the bottom of the entire wing lit up a
kind of yellowy orange colour, making it appear to be just a
large flying wing. The wing did not appear to be glowing
internally but I could not see any source for the light and
although it had what appeared to be flaps and spoilers, I could
not see any engines. If it was making any noise I didn=92t notice
it. Also the lights on the nose and fuselage could no longer be
seen. It then flew into a thicker layer of cloud and I didn=92t
see it again.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

---------------------

Surrey, B.C. Glowing Yellow Egg Shaped Object

Date: December 2, 2004
Time: Approx: 9:00 p.m.

Hi Brian, saw what appeared to be the same glowing yellow egg
shaped object again yesterday Dec. 2, at approx. 19:00 and again
at approx. 21:00. It was heavily overcast at the time and both
times the object appeared to rise almost vertically from the
area of the Fraser River almost directly north from my position.
Object doesn=92t leave any trail as it rises and climbs about the
speed of a ball of fire from a Roman candle. Both time it
climbed right up into the overcast. Approx. 2000 to 3000 ft.
before disappearing.

As for size about the same as a car headlight viewed from about
two city blocks. Some of those reports from India, regarding
their Fighters going down are getting rather interesting. I
wonder just what the heck is going on. Same with around the
Great Lakes and South of us.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

---------------------

Calgary, Alberta Large Silver Streak In Sky

Date: December 03, 2004
Time: 4:25 p.m.

Hi,

About 4:25 p.m. AB time I saw a large silver streak in the sky
west of the city of Calgary heading SW. Not to sure what it was
but watched it for a bit and at some points it looked like it
stops then starts up again. I know that there was a report
yesterday on the news about something similar and they said it
was an airplane? Ummmm I don't think so! In all the years I have
been alive I don't believe that. Wondering if you have any
explanation.

Thanks.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

--------------------

Santa Ana, California Unusual Sighting

Date: December 03, 2004
Time: 6.30 a.m.

Hi Brian I saw something today toward the mountain area. I was
going south on the freeway and I saw a very high cloud formation
no lights and two trails that looked like fighter jets escorting
it. I want to know if you saw these trails also it was about
6:30 a.m. in the morning they were far off in the distance if
you want to I will draw you a picture of it tonight and try to
email it to you this weekend. Thank you so much it had to be
about 35,000 feet it was clear and windy this morning.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

------------------

Sonora, California Object Slowly Pulsated A Bluish Glow

Date: December 5, 2004
Time: 5:24 and 5:44 p.m.

Number of witnesses: 1
Number of objects: 2
Shape of objects: Glowing Object and Pulsating Object

Full Description of event/sighting: I was sitting outside
watching the clouds roll in. The clouds were still just a light
haze, and the stars were dimly shining through, when a bright
light appeared almost directly above me. The light grew brighter
and brighter until it shone almost as brightly as the moon. As
it dimmed out, it began to move slowly to the Northwest, passing
one of the stars that I could still see through the haze. Twenty
minutes later, at 5:44 PM another light appeared to my
Northeast, heading North. This object slowly pulsated, dim then
bright, with a bluish glow at its brightest. As it moved North,
it began dimming out, while still pulsating. Both objects were
recorded on my Sony Camcorder.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

Brian Vike, Director HBCC UFO Research Home - Phone 250 845 2189
email: hbccufo.nul Website: http://www.hbccufo.com
Redirect: http://www.canadianufo.com HBCC UFO RESEARCH
Newsletter At:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HBCC_UFO_Newsletter/

HBCC UFO Research, Box 1091 Houston, British Columbia, Canada -
 VOJ 1ZO

------------------

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                   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal

From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:25:13 -0400
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:02:06 -0500
Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal


>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>Date: Thursday, December 09, 2004 8:33 AM
>Subject: UFO UpDate: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

>Source: News-Medical.Net...

>http://www.news-medical.net/?id=6732

>12-007-04


>Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

>Previous research has shown that paranormal experiences can be
>achieved via electromagnetic stimulation of the temple lobe. Now
>scientists from Uppsala and Lund universities in Sweden are
>calling into question how the experiments were set up and
>therefore questioning the results. Their study involving
>identical magnetic field equipment produced no such
>relationship.

<snip>

>http://www.uu.se/

Anybody out there speak Swedish? Judging by the abstract, this
justfiably should make everybody who hasn't already done so
reject the 'scientific' work of Michael Persinger and bandwagon
jumping of Susan Blackmore.

Michael Persinger also drew a nonsensical connection between
earthquakes and UFO sightings, if they were within hundreds of
miles and months of each other!

Sounds like excellent work done by the Swedes.


Stan Friedman








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                   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 07:05:15 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:04:23 -0500
Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal


>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>Date: Thursday, December 09, 2004 8:33 AM
>Subject: UFO UpDate: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences


>Source: News-Medical.Net...

>http://www.news-medical.net/?id=6732

>12-007-04


>Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

>Previous research has shown that paranormal experiences can be
>achieved via electromagnetic stimulation of the temple lobe. Now
>scientists from Uppsala and Lund universities in Sweden are
>calling into question how the experiments were set up and
>therefore questioning the results. Their study involving
>identical magnetic field equipment produced no such
>relationship.

<snip>

>http://www.uu.se/

On presumption... Ah-_ha_!

...And lo, the skies were filled abruptly with the flailing
forms of portentously petulant pelicanists, and those free-
thinkers without a minimum cover were showered with the effusium
of their energetic explication... I say unto ye, yea and
verily... Eminem...


alienview.nul  -:|:-
   www.AlienView.net









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               Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:13:31 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:29:14 -0500
Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB -


>From: Brad Sparks <RB47x.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 16:24:18 EST
>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB

>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 22:40:01 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB

>>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 11:22:16 -0600
>>>Subject: Re: Ad-Review Submission For The Bolling AFB

<snip>

>He has completely ignored the "feedback" telling him to tone it
>down if he wanted to get the ads accepted and, instead of
>listening to the friendly advice, he comes back with ever more
>hostile and confrontational proposed ads for "feedback" which
>will be ignored again. So no wonder the "feedback" is getting
>more outraged and less 'friendly'.

Steaming monkey paffle from high in an elitist canopy, Mr.
Sparks. That is not _remotely_ a justification for the
criticism's escalation, which I think is a result of another
underlying process (we can get into if you wanna) and otherwise
comes from some suspect sources, besides. Moreover, ignored or
not, Mr. Bryant has _your_ attention, Sir.

>Nick Pope on Nov 28 even drafted out for him a smartly worded ad
>that might have had a better chance of being accepted and
>published, but he chose to _stonewall_ Pope and not even give
>him the courtesy of a response. See Pope's post:

With all respect to a very even handed Mr. Pope, who _did_
provide a reasonable response or feedback based on the most
conventional of shopworn conventional wisdoms (_no_ criticism to
Mr. Pope) Mr. Bryant might have thought, as I would have, that
_that_ advice hasn't really moved us along substantively on the
ufological path for all its sterling collegiality, placating
calmness, and superior rationality. The opposition, Mr. Sparks,
is not predicated on following the same gentility or honoring
the same law. Perhaps, as a result of the shine-on we've all had
to endure for 50 freakin' years, Mr. Bryant would use what
remains of dwindling due process and evaporating rule of law as
a 'pick' to more forcibly pry at the lid we, every one of us,
know is there... ...roll up some legal paper into a few tight
tubes and poke out a few eyes. They grow back.

>http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/nov/m28-005.shtml

>And he complains about official "stonewalling"! How about
>responding to Nick Pope, Sir! And I don't mean you in Canada
>either.

You don't know that he didn't, Mr. Sparks, in the first place,
and where is it written that he has to demonstrate a touch-back
to you... an obviously hostile individual, in the second... and
hostile for reasons which could otherwise be explored for some
intellectual profit, I would think. One guy shooting off his
mouth to assorted government agencies shouldn't bother you so
much, given that he's been doing actionable things for years now
without a comment from you thus far, I recall. And please don't
say he discredits the field with his efforts. He wouldn't even
be doing what he is doing (...me either, for that matter) if the
ufological "knowledge void" contained any 'quality' information,
at all, and was catalogued there by data following science,
forthcoming government, and progressive philosophy/religion.
 Mr. Bryant, and myself, are symptoms of a condition, Sir, and
not its cause.

>Furthermore the complaints against the government are not even
>about withholding of UFO documents anymore but about an entirely
>secondary issue of SEARCH FEES being waived.

Which in _no_ way is non-pertaining, Mr. Sparks. Why should Mr.
Bryant pay _too_ much money for information we should, all of
us, have for _free_ anyway... especially when the cost is made
prohibitive so you _can't_ get the information out.

>The actual core
>issues of UFO documents and coverup are receding farther and
>farther into the background, Sir.

...And on that largely inaccurate note, Mr. Sparks, allow me to
admonish you for hiding behind Mr. Rimmer's very suspect
response and not communicating with me directly. The "Sirs"
were the tell tale on who you're really addressing, Sir... and
Mr. Rimmer 'shan't' save you.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







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   Dec > Dec 9

                  Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - White

From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:15:52 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:31:56 -0500
Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - White


>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:54:38 -0500
>Subject: Last Rocketeers Set Sights On Mars


>Source: JPL Labs/NASA

>http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040524a/site_B115_na
vcam_180_cyl_L-B118R1_br2.jpg

>05-24-04

I look forward to NASA's explanation as to how that is a "camera
lens artifact".


Eleanor White








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                 Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Miller

From: Stuart Miller <stuart.miller4.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 14:41:34 +0000 (GMT)
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:52:30 -0500
Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Miller


>From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:15:52 -0500
>Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow?


>>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:54:38 -0500
>>Subject: Last Rocketeers Set Sights On Mars

>>Source: JPL Labs/NASA

>>http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040524a/site_B115_n
avcam_180_cyl_L-B118R1_br2.jpg

>>05-24-04

>I look forward to NASA's explanation as to how that is a
>"camera lens artifact".


Eleanor,

Further, look into the background of the picture.

Notice the little white dot in the distance?


Stuart








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   Dec > Dec 9

                              Smith & Rogerson

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:53:21 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 10:01:34 -0500
Subject: Smith & Rogerson


James Smith and Peter Rogerson bring a sobriety to UFO UpDates
that I enjoy, and this despite the fact that I'm a fan of Alfred
Lehmberg, Kyle King, and Jerry Clark in particular.

Practicalities and tempered 'belief' about UFOs are rational and
the way of the world. That's why UFO buffs are seen as fringe by
the hoi polloi, and media (which is one level up from the great
unwashed).

While there is a kind of civility here at UFO UpDates, which
I've followed for a few years now, there is often a palpable
hostility amongst Listers. But the back-and-forth, the
colloquies, are usually stimulating, and often enlightening.

But that aside, there is a point to be made: capitalistic
enterprises are favored by government agencies (even during
"liberal" administrations, here and abroad) and businesses
obviously.

If UFO studies/investigations had a "raison d'etre" that was
seen as potentially profitable, everyone, unbelievers also,
would jump on board.

This is where James Smith hits his stride... he understands
that.

And Peter Rogerson opens the door to a number of scenarios which
may or may not be related to UFOs.

I've never understood why UFO aficionados don't work together to
establish a central facility and authority which could
accumulate funds and expertise to address the practicalities,
the science of "flying saucers" and the extracurricular aspects
that attend to the phenomenon.

How much trouble would it be to create a non-profit - not like
those which have been tried or started by those not fully
committed to the UFO mystery but, rather, inclined to self-
aggrandizement - which would gather funds and equipment and
make it available to whomever comes credentialed to the table:
those who are identified, legitimately, with UFO study? (Need I
name them?)

The non-profit facility would not exclude James Smith or
Rogerson surely, and would certainly include the visionaries
like King and Lehmberg, plus the bonafide UFO studiers,
Friedman, Hall, Clark, Maccabee, et al.

If persons are truly interested in resolving the UFO question,
because it would be beneficial or satisfy the insatiable
curiosity of those who hate unresolved mysteries, they would
gather their monies and wherewithal and make it happen, rather
than discoursing ad infinitum, ad eternum, ad nauseum.

But that's just my mundane rumination for today.

(I think I've been infected by the Lehmbergian verbosity, which
is quite wonderful, is it not?)


Rich Reynolds
Fort Wayne MediaWatch








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             Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 08:58:22 -0800
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 10:06:07 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 23:13:24 -0000
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Brad Sparks <RB47x.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:06:21 EST
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 09:16:25 -0800
>>>Subject: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

><snip>

>You mentioned meteors and meteorites.

>I do believe that the lack of actual UFO hardware is the biggest
>obstacle to scientific acceptance.

>Meteorites were in a similar position for many decades. It took
>several large falls, culminating in the L'Aigle fall in 1803, to
>finally convince the scientific academy (in France) that
>Chladni's ideas were correct and that meteorites actually fell
>from the sky, and came from outer space.

>I feel UFOs (assuming they are nuts & bolts spacecraft) will
>never be accepted until & unless real hardware is found and
>produced. If this proves very elusive, too bad: we shall have to
>wait until such hardware, preferably in abundance, turns up.
>Then, and only then, will there be a chance of finally proving
>UFO reality to the scientific establishment. There is no clear
>alternative.

>It is useless to give the oft-repeated response that the
>authorities already possess this hardware but are keeping it top
>secret. This standard ufological rejoinder will cut no ice with
>the scientific establishment (or the media), and you cannot
>really blame them for poking derision at it. Ufology is too
>world-wide for this 'buck passing' to be valid.

>Hardware is needed, and sooner rather than later.


Christopher,

It appears you've missed the crux of the thread; if hardware,
i.e., 'physical evidence' is needed for acceptance with the
scientific establishment with regard to Ufology, does that same
rule apply to Astronomy; if not why?


Frank Warren









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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:23:09 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 10:39:01 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 17:47:40 -0600
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 08:34:11 -0800 (PST)
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

Kyle,

Good post and it did help me understand more of your viewpoint
(and perhaps even Mr. Lehmberg's).

>The funny thing is, when dreamers dream, they harm no one. But
>when a realist pooh-poohs a dreamer, the dreamer is cast aside
>as so much detritus, until perhaps a later date when the dreamer
>is vindicated. For the more passionate among us, your comments
>literally mean war.

Point taken. I will be more careful. I admit that I have a
really difficult time with emotional (irrational?) thought, both
the understanding of it or the creation of it by myself. Because
of this failing in me, I will confine my remarks to meaningful
posts directly related to UFOs because I do not want to tread on
toes of those with more time invested in this forum.

In the case of my response to your original email, there was
_really_ nothing to be gained by anyone by my post. It was not
necessary for anyone to know the practicalities. And while I
would not go as far to think of myself as a wet blanket, I think
in retrospect that it missed the entire point of your original
post, which was mainly the crafting of an inspirational dream.

I think you are right that we need such dreams to motivate us, I
lost mine a while ago when I discovered how deadly dangerous
space was and how stupid it would be to go there, especially if
you want McDonalds and warm baths.


Regards,

James








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                   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:38:15 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 10:45:48 -0500
Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal


>From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:25:13 -0400
>Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

>Anybody out there speak Swedish? Judging by the abstract, this
>justfiably should make everybody who hasn't already done so
>reject the 'scientific' work of Michael Persinger and bandwagon
>jumping of Susan Blackmore.

>Michael Persinger also drew a nonsensical connection between
>earthquakes and UFO sightings, if they were within hundreds of
>miles and months of each other!

>Sounds like excellent work done by the Swedes.

Mr. Friedman,

As you know, duplicating experiments is dashed difficult in
every field. One contradictory report does not disprove a
positive report. Although it sounds like excellent work, one
cannot judge it without knowledge of the test protocol,
controls, equipment, calibrations, subject profiles, etc. And
then you have the aspects that were not reported (or even
dreamed of) which may be fundamentally different between the two
tests and require a knowledgable outside party to
witness/evaluate.

Given the vast number of tests Dr. Persinger has performed and
published, I would not so readily discount him.

Like cold fusion, we need more attempts at replication.

Also, look at how many parapsyhcological tests have been
replicated many times, with still a difficult time "proving" the
phenomena.

I don't support all of Dr.Persinger's theories, but at least he
is doing hard testing in a very controversial field.


Respectfully,

James








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                          Filer's Files #51 - 2004

From: George A. Filer <Majorstar.nul>
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 07:06:20 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 11:15:30 -0500
Subject: Filer's Files #51 - 2004


Filer's Files #51 - 2004, Skywatch Investigations
George A. Filer, Director MUFON Eastern
Vice President of Skywatch International
December 8, 2004, Webmaster: Chuck Warren

Discs and Flying Triangles Seen

The purpose of these files is to report the UFO eyewitness and
photo/video evidence that occurs on a daily basis around the
world and in space as reported each week. Many people claim it
is impossible for UFOs to visit Earth, I ask you only to keep an
open mind and watch the evidence we accumulate each week. These
Files make the assumption that extraterrestrial intelligent life
exists and my hypothesis is that of the over one hundred UFO
reports each week many represent factual UFO sightings in our
skies.

UFOs were seen over Arizona, California, Florida, Kentucky,
Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North
Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee,
and Wisconsin.  Sightings were also reported in Australia,
Canada, India, Netherlands, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom.

"When the long awaited solution to the UFO problem comes, I
believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step
in the march of science, but a mighty and totally unexpected
quantum jump."--Dr. J. Allen Hynek Northwestern University

Geminids Meteor Shower Monday

The best meteor shower of 2004, the Geminids, peaks on December
13th. It's the Geminids. The best time to look is Monday night,
around midnight when you can expect to see dozens of shooting
stars.

Mars - Structures Found

John E. Combest, Inspection Engineer writes, this Mars photo
distinctly shows the remains of a large square building along
with what may be the "concrete" foundations of destroyed
adjacent buildings.  It seems readily apparent to me that what
is shown is a large building which has a tall structure (chimney
or tower) adjacent to (or part of) the "south" wall of the
building. An interior rectangular structure is evident.  It
looks as if you can see down inside the building to view some
interior structures - as if the roof has been destroyed by
whatever force removed the outlying buildings from their
foundation. The original photo seems to be slightly out-of-
focus. Below the structured areas are a small group of possibly
domed structures.

Thanks to JPL and John E. Combest, Inspection Engineer
jecombest.nul

Mars - Billions of dollars are pumped into extraterrestrial
exploration each year in the search for the ultimate prize - the
discovery of life on other planets. But are we looking in all
the right places? Prof Steven A Benner, who is working with NASA
on the design of the next generation of Mars probes, believes
that life could flourish without any need for water. In the
December issue of Current Opinion in Chemical Biology, he and
his colleagues at the University of Florida describe how
organisms could survive in exotic environments such as on
Saturn's moon Titan.

Editor's Note: The question is: "Why do our group of Mar's
researchers without funds see hundreds of structures, and strong
evidence of intelligent life, while NASA/JPL refuses to
acknowledge anything but water on Mars?" I would be interested
in the scientific explanation of how natural forces produce
square structures and pyramids.

According to a Gallup Poll conducted in November, only 35
percent believe that Darwin's theory of Evolution is supported
by evidence. Forty-five percent believe that God created man in
present form, while 38 percent believe "man developed with God
guiding. Only 13 percent say man developed with no help from
God. Evolutionists have dominated text books for decades yet
most people disagree with the scientists. "Now we have better
evidence that intelligent life once existed on Mars, than for
the evolutionary theory that we came from primordial soup."

Mars - Rovers Report Wet Martian History

The most dramatic findings so far from NASA's twin Mars rovers
- telltale evidence for a wet and possibly habitable environment
in the arid planet's past - passed rigorous scientific scrutiny
for publication in a major research journal.

Eleven reports by 122 authors in Friday's issue of the journal
Science present results from Opportunity's three-month prime
mission, fleshing out headline discoveries revealed earlier.
Opportunity bounced to an airbag-cushioned landing on January
24, 2004. It is exploring a region called Meridiani Planum,
halfway around Mars from where its twin, Spirit, landed three
weeks earlier. They have driven a combined 5.75 kilometers (3.57
miles), nearly five times their mission-success goal.
Sedimentary rocks Opportunity examined, "clearly preserve a
record of environmental conditions different from any on Mars
today," report 50 rover-team scientists led by Dr. Steve Squyres
of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

"Liquid water was once intermittently present at the Martian
surface at Meridiani, and at times it saturated the subsurface.
Because liquid water is a key prerequisite for life, we infer
conditions at Meridiani may have been habitable for some period
of time in Martian history."

Several characteristics of the rocks suggest water came and went
repeatedly, as it does in some shallow lakes in desert
environments on Earth. That fluctuation, plus the water's
possible high acidity and saltiness, would have posed challenges
to life, but not necessarily insurmountable ones, according to
researchers. If life ever did exist at Meridiani, the type of
rocks found there could be good preservers of fossils, according
to Squyres,

Dr. John Grotzinger of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mer_main.html

Thanks to Jim Hickman Executive Director Skywatch International
Inc. http://www.skywatch-international.org

Arizona - Three Disks Spotted

TUCSON =96 Three disks were seen hovering in the sky on November
29, 2004, at 11:47 PM. The witness states, "They were flying in
formations that I have never seen before and they hovered, then
started to circle each other slowly, then they started to fly
faster until one by one they dropped straight down and
vanished." Thanks to Peter Davenport Director  www.UFOCenter.com
California =96 UFO Photographed

MODESTO =96 R. David Anderson took this picture in the fall of
2004 and these pictures show a variety of unusual light
formations created by the movement of what appears to be UFOs. I
have determined that most of these types of UFOs tend to change
shapes, so it is difficult to stipulate a specific shape ( with
the exception of the UFO at the bottom), which seems to have a
permanent shape of two cylinders connected by an extended
armature.

Thanks to R. David Anderson

SAN FRANCISCO =96 The witness said, "My girlfriend and I were
riding the train and noticed a black thing hovering near some
low clouds on November 12, 2004, at 4:15 PM." It looked like a
hovering bird and I pointed it out to my girlfriend, but when
she looked it disappeared behind the clouds. Thirty seconds
later we both saw it. We looked at it for another 15 seconds,
but then the train kept going and it disappeared behind some
clouds. It was pretty high up, in front of the clouds, I would
estimate 500 feet, but too big to be a bird? Thanks to Peter
Davenport Director  www.UFOCenter.com

Florida - Sphere of Light and Possible Abduction

ORLANDO - At 5:30 AM on November 21, 2004, I noticed an object
in the sky the size of a pea. It was a clear night but was still
dark out.  I thought this was an aircraft possibly in trouble
due to the speed and angle of descent compared to aircraft that
are approaching Orlando's airport. Then, the object came to a
sudden halt and hovered for about three seconds before
separating into three pieces. The original object kept its size
and shape, but two objects broke off the sides of the sphere.
The movement of both side objects was very symmetrical and they
left a weird trial of smoke. It reminded me of booster rockets
off the shuttle. I knew that all shuttle launches during take
off execute a pitch and roll immediately out into the Atlantic
so as to be far from land in the event of an emergency. The two
objects that broke off did not emit any light but the light from
the original object was enough to see these two objects separate
from the original and leave a trail of white smoke. Then a very
bright light lit up the whole sky, brighter than the sun like a
nuclear blast shining for about 35 to 40 seconds. Then the light
had shrunk back to its source in the sky in about five seconds.
The object still hovering in the same spot in the sky.

Then within a second, this object shot right back up into the
atmosphere at like light speed in an eastward angle. According
to local radio stations and the local CBS TV affiliate,
(www.local6news.com) hundreds of people in Orlando that were
traveling to work or on the road reported the blinding light.
Some drivers were running through traffic lights because they
couldn't tell if the lights were green or red. Thanks to Peter
Davenport Director  www.UFOCenter.com  BOCA RATON =96 The witness
went to bed with his wife about 1:15 AM while watching TV on
November 20, 2004. He remembers turning off the TV, and quickly
falling into a deep sleep. He states, "In what seemed an instant
I was awakened by my wife who asked, 'Where were you?" My
immediate response was "in our bed".  My wife then explained to
me that she awoke and I was not in bed with her, so she searched
the whole house and even walked to the guard house of our
community to see if the guard had seen me. Nobody had come into
the community.  Upon her return, she burst into the room and
found me in our bed. She stated that my car was in our driveway,
and that my wallet, cell phone and money was just as I had left
it which further upset her. The covers in our bed on my side
looked exactly as if I had pushed them down and left. I glanced
at the clock and it was about 2:30 AM, when she stormed into our
bedroom and awoke me.

I tried to comfort her and confirmed that I had not left our
bed, not even to use the bathroom.  In the morning, I asked her
to confirm what had happened during the night and she confirmed
I had been missing.  I am willing to have this event
investigated.  I am not sure what really happened, but the
evidence suggests I was some how physically missing form my home
for 45-60 minutes without my knowledge.  I was told to examine
myself for any marks, and did not find any. However, from the
base of my throat to the middle of my chest it is mildly red
like a sunburn.  Thanks to Peter Davenport Director
www.UFOCenter.com


Kentucky =96 Disk

LOUISVILLE =96 The witness reported, "My wife and I were sitting
on our balcony when a strange green aurora or haze that was with
a big disk in the middle floated past.  It kept hovering for
about half an hour.  It floated past inside a haze on November
16, 2004, at 10 PM. It then disappeared into the mist that had
formed after thirty minutes. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director
www.UFOCenter.com

Massachusetts - Sphere

HANCOCK =96 There was a bright blue sky, with no cloud covers in
sight. The witnesses were driving on a tree lined road an above
the tree line was a bright shining globe on November 13, 2004,
at 10:20 AM.  It was stationary, but looked to be glimmering. My
sister also saw it and after about seven seconds it just
disappeared. A shimmering globe appeared stationary for 7-10
seconds then just vanished. The view we had was unobstructed as
it was very high. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director
www.UFOCenter.com

Maryland =96 UFO Sighting

WOODLAWN - Bill Bean reports, "I just wanted to report a major
sighting that I had at 9:10 PM, from my home on November 29,
2004.  I observed a very large white disc shaped UFO hovering
and tilted downward in the southeast. It was about 5,000 feet in
altitude.  I watched it for nearly a minute and could not take
my eyes off it. This thing was very big and the white part was
very bright with black edges. I was in awe of this amazing craft
and didn't move. I initially thought the object to be the moon,
as I could see the light through a thin layer of clouds. But as
the clouds passed, I saw the entire shape of the UFO. Suddenly,
the stationary object swiftly moved away to the south and It
seemed to ride on the clouds and was descending.  It was like
watching a speedboat on the water. I've drawn a rough sketch of
it on my site. Thanks to Bill Bean "ttp://ufoman104.tripod.com

Michigan =96 Flying Triangle

CLIO =96 The witness reports seeing a flying triangle with three
white lights on each side on November 22, 2004, at 7:30 PM. He
states, "My Radio in my car cut out and my phone didn't have a
signal in a place where it should always have one." All it did
was hover over the intersection like a bobber floating in a
lake.  I parked my car and watched it for about five minutes.  I
reached for a pen and paper to draw the object, and when I
looked back up, it was gone. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director
www.UFOCenter.com

Minnesota =96 Cylinder

MINNEAPOLIS =96 The witness reports, "On November 12, 2004, at
1:15 PMI was traveling east on Hwy 55 and as I approached 46th
Street, I saw a silver cylinder shaped object without any tail
and wings traveling very slowly.  At times it was hovering
without motion above Walgreen's Drug Store.  Then the silver
metallic cylinder moved slowly from east to west.   I turned the
car around at 50th Street and by the time I reached 46th it was
gone. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director   North Carolina =96
Saturn UFO

I was looking at Filers Files #44, today, and noticed a
resemblance between the first photo showing an object near
Saturn and one of my images.  My photo, # 02219 is one of two
photos in a sequence.  We had a large UFO, and a small companion
heading straight toward us.


Image #02218 shows the main object at a moderate distance and
#02219 shows the object ten seconds later approaching us on a
direct course.  I saw the first image in the back of the camera,
then the second one.  We looked up into the sky but they were
totally invisible to the naked eye.  We had been steadily
shooting flash shots and knew they were checking us out probably
right over our heads at close range.

Thanks to Alan Caviness

New Mexico =96 Flying Triangle



BETWEEN CUBA and SAN ISIDRO =96 A flying triangle moving around 20
MPH, passed right in front of me heading north on State Highway
44 about 9:30 PM on November 17, 2004. The triangle was flying
very low and heading west from the Jemez Mountains. It had a
triangle shape with lights and was the size of a small air
plane. It was so close to me that I could throw a golf ball and
hit it since it was only 150 feet off the ground. When I rolled
down my window to watch as it passed right in front of me
without noise.  The triangle kept heading west over a small hill
and disappeared. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director
www.UFOCenter.com

New Jersey - Oval

RIDGEWOOD =96 The witness reports, "Our 8 year old son noticed
"UFO's" and called us out to witness four oval shaped lights
flying in formation; they were flying and going around in
circles (like a dance) on November 16, 2004, at 6 PM.  There
were three others that joined in, so a total of seven oval
shaped lights flew in formation for ten minutes maneuvering
overhead. They may have left trails since there were contrails
in the sky, but these may not be related.  They, then,
disappeared.  Thanks to Peter Davenport Director   MENDHAM =96 On
November 18, 2004, a lawyer stopped to get the mail at 6 PM, and
noticed four separate round lights in sort of a circle formation
flying well below an airplane.  They moved counterclockwise
incredibly fast and then moved in, toward each other and then
away. She says, "I then noticed another set of lights over my
neighbor's house and drove down my road  two-tenths of a mile
and noticed the left set of lights following right above my car
causing me to panic."I turned around and sped back to the top of
the driveway and tried to dial the police on my cell phone, but
I was not able to get it to work." I went to my neighbor who is
also a lawyer and asked her to come outside. She was in
disbelief as she saw the lights. There was nothing we could
think of that could explain what we were seeing. Thanks to Peter
Davenport Director  www.UFOCenter.com

New York - Thick Saucer Seen

ENDICOTT-VESTAL =96 A medical professional, while driving across
the Route 26 bridge to Vestal in upstate New York, saw a silver
metallic craft similar to a Mylar balloon flying on it's side
heading south on November 15, 2004, at 6:50 PM. It was coming in
and out of the cloud cover and covered about 1/3 of the sky in
under less than a minute. It appeared to be about a mile up, and
about thirty feet wide. It did not fly exactly straight and at
times changed course.  Many craft have been seen in this area,
but this is the first early morning one that I have seen. The
object was basically this shape: {____}. Thanks to Peter
Davenport Director   Ohio =96 Light

DUBLIN =96 The witness reports on December 1, 2004, "It was like
something out of a movie; an egg shaped craft actually landed
500 yards away off in a field at 9 AM." I am at work and can't
talk, but give me a call and I will give you the rest of the
story. You've got to hear this. Thanks to Peter Davenport
Director  www.UFOCenter.com

WARREN - The witness was driving with his Dad, and they saw an
unusually large number of jets flying over on November 13, 2004,
at 5:25 PM. We counted at least nine jets and were joking, "Hey,
I bet there's a UFO or something?" Out of the sunset sky there
glowed an intense bright red orb that slowly faded away and
disappeared. Then, it slowly brightened to an intense light,
then slowly faded away again. When the light faded, there was no
object visible like any craft, it was just like an orb slowly
brightening and fading away. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director
CLEVELAND =96 Around 3:15 PM on November 12, 2004, the witness
noticed several fighter jets in a perfectly clear sky and asked
co -worker to come outside and look at the fighter jets making
contrails. They counted eight fighter jets and the coworker
asked, "What is that?" I looked up and saw a perfect silver
circle going very, very fast - probably 3 or 4 times faster
than the jets.  It flew across the sky taking only about 20
seconds to fly over head and into the distance where we could no
longer see it. My co-worker and I agree we had never seen
anything like it before. It didn't have wings, and it didn't
leave a contrail like the fighter jets. The eight fighter jets
seemed to exquisitely change course shortly after it passed by.
Thanks to Peter Davenport Director  www.UFOCenter.com


FOSTORIA =96 George Ritter has captured another UFO that appears
to be a disc behind power lines.  It may be reforming as it
moves from one point to another and gaining altitude.  The area
where the UFOs are videotaped is limestone with large
underground caverns.  It is speculated that the UFOs can pass
through relatively solid earth.  This advanced technology could
be accomplished much like a television signal is transmitted
from one point to another.  Aliens have often been seen coming
through walls.  We have video of small balls of light videotaped
in abductees rooms passing through walls.  The technology is
apparently similar to the Star Trek series where they are able
to beam people and objects from one place to another. "Beam me
up Scotty" may be a reality. Thanks to George Ritter


Oregon - Disk

TERREBONE =96 The witness watched spinning circles of light above
his car that followed him for about 15 minutes at 10:30 PM, on
November 14, 2004.  A couple driving into town noticed some
circling lights right above them and above the cloud cover and
they were spinning in opposite directions of each other. The
lights made up one big disk like shape and followed right above
their car. The witness says, "I got scared and said that it was
following us, so I pulled over into a parking lot and it was
still right above us lingering in the clouds. I got so scared I
took off, and left town driving driving at 80 mph and it was
still following us. My boyfriend said that he saw something
black flying in front of it, but couldn't make out what it was.
It stopped following us as soon as there was no more cloud
cover.  Thanks to Peter Davenport Director  www.UFOCenter.com

Pennsylvania - Chevron

MONTGOMERYVILLE =96 The observer noticed a chevron-like object fly
into the Cassiopeia Constellation that was then joined by three
or four others that circled briefly, then, flew west on November
13, 2004, at 11:20 PM.  The objects flew in from different
compass points to join the first. They formed up and flew west
and disappeared. It was difficult to see any lights as they
moved quickly, but a red light on the first craft might have
been visible, although very dim. Thanks to Peter Davenport
Director  www.UFOCenter.com

Puerto Rico - Huge UFO

MAYAG=DCEZ - The witness was outside sweeping the porch at 7 PM,
when he looked towards the long mountain on the horizon and saw
a blue light on November 15, 2004.  It flew in a straight line
really fast. The blue light was pretty far away and the object
was very big as it crossed over the mountain.  It disappeared
when it flew behind a low cloud.  The witness reports having
other sightings. Thanks to  www.UFOCenter.com


SAN GERMAN - Edgar Morales  14 miles southeast of Mayaguez,
photographed an enormous UFO with blinking lights of blue and
green color with a cupola on the top of it.  Analysts who tested
the Morales photo declared that 'it was a real photo,' not
faked, and estimated that the strange object was at an altitude
of 5,000 feet and was at least 1,000 feet (300 meters) wide."
Thanks to Reinaldo Rios and Joseph Trainor Editor of UFO ROUNDUP
Vol.9, # 49 12/8/04

North Carolina  - Fast Flying Disk

RAEFORD =96 Two witnesses saw a gray color disk that kind of lit
up in the night sky and twirled around for about one minute on
November 18, 2004, at 12:34 AM.  It seemed to spin and hum as it
flew through the sky. It was perfectly flat and little lights on
the side blinked out of control. Thanks to Peter Davenport
Director  www.UFOCenter.com


South Carolina - Cylinder

AIKEN =96 The observer noticed a cylinder shaped object flying in
straight-line flight towards the southeast on November 18, 2004,
at 11:30 PM.  The cylinder was silver; and had no visible wings
or contrail.  It flew beneath the dispersed contrail of a higher
jet at about 12,000 feet. The cylinder was 9 times longer than
wide. It was flying at a speed similar to a jet airplane. Thanks
to Peter Davenport Director  www.UFOCenter.com

Tennessee - Metallic Cylinder

KINGSPORT - Kim Shaffer MUFON reports that on November 28, 2004
at 9 PM, a witness stated he nearly wrecked his car as he
watched a large orange illuminated object as it slowly passed
over the highway. It dispelled a smaller object which took off.
Two witnesses saw a slow moving reflective metallic, cylinder-
shaped object flying below lots of commercial aircraft. They
insisted this was not an aircraft.

CHUCKEY =96 On November 26, 2004, at 9 PM, a trained observer and
his wife reported a large slow moving triangular craft as it
moved to the southwest at 10,000 feet. The object was followed
by three small white lights that both witnesses described as
shaped like a comma.  Below these lights were four smaller star
like multi-colored lights. All moved in unison across the sky
for some 15 minutes.

TRI CITIES - Mysterious sonic booms were heard on November 21,
2004, but the Air Force's 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson
AFB, North Carolina states there were no flights of fighter
aircraft from that base over this area that day. The liaison
officer stated, that supersonic flight is strictly prohibited by
regulations. Supersonic flight is allowed over the ocean and out
west over training areas. Since "stealth" aircraft are incapable
of supersonic flight, this sonic event in which no aircraft were
present on radar, remains a mystery. www.mufontennessee.org

Wisconsin - Lights

FREDERICK - A series of lights of lights and craft are being
photographed over this northwest Wisconsin location. This one
was taken at 5:01 AM this summer. Thanks to Shawn.

Canada =96 Sightings Continue

HOUSTON, BC =96 Brian Vike reports, "On November 24, 2004,
starting at 6:15 PM, the sky came alive with numerous objects
being witness by multiple witnesses."  A lady telephoned us that
she and her husband were watching an extremely bright, fast
moving light traveling east over the top of Mount Harry Davis.
It was seen dropping in altitude and then rising back up again
repeatedly, as it flew. It was traveling much faster than a low
flying aircraft, but not as fast as a meteor. It was white, red
and orange and due to its brilliance no structure could be seen.
As it faded, two other extremely bright lights began to move at
a high rate of speed in opposite directions and vanished within
seconds. A second witness phoned at 7:20 PM, stating he watched
a craft with five lights fly southwest from the micro wave tower
on top Mount Harry Davis and over top their home just off
Highway 16 at a high rate of speed. The witnesses stressed the
craft moved so fast they had no chance to see any detail.

Brian turned off some of the lights in his home and sat watching
the mountain with his wife and a friend. At 7:40 PM, flying low
over Mount Harry Davis was a large, bright orange light which
was dropping in altitude rapidly and changing direction slightly
as it followed the top contour of the mountain.  Eventually it
dropped down behind the mountain and disappeared. This was not
an aircraft.

Brian states, "At 7:50 PM, off to the right of the micro wave
tower, I was able to see a bright white beam of light which
shone upwards from an area where there are no roads." At 8 PM,
my wife and friend give out a yell as a bright white light was
observed shooting skyward from the back side of the mountain.
The light went to a high altitude before it was gone. Thanks to
Brian Vike www.hbccufo.com

Australia - Flashing Lights

DARWIN -  On December 6, 2004, Laboratory technician Julie Lynn
was relaxing on the balcony with husband  Nigel at their Leanyer
home when they noticed the UFO about 8.30 PM.  "It was
fascinating to watch," she said "It hovered in the one place for
at least two hours but had moved significantly when we checked
on it again before we went to bed. The UFO was described as
being shaped like three connected ball-shaped spheres that
flashed blue, green and red from as many as six different light
sources.  Department of Defence spokeswoman Kelly Cooper said
the UFO was definitely not a secret military aircraft or RAAF-
related. The airport also denied the UFO could have been a plane
waiting to land.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11
599504%255E4  21,00.html  Thanks to Jim Hickman, BMET  Director
Skywatch International  http://www.skywatch-international.org


India - Sphere

PUNE - On November 12, 2004 at 7 PM I saw an aircraft like a
sphere in shape.  I can't explain what it was, but surely it was
not a plane from earth.  It was something like a sphere flying
in the sky.  It was so clear with some different colors of light
rays.  A ray came from it and hit the roof of my home.  Then, I
remembered that some time ago I installed a huge magnet on my
house roof.  Apparently, some current was flowing through it due
to a power leak, so it was generating magnetic rays.

Netherlands - Strange Lightned Circles

HELLEVOETSLUIS - My mother was driving in her car on November
20, 2004, at 8 PM,, she had just brought my brother to a friend.
While driving, she looked up in the sky and saw strange 'circle
lights' moving around. Lights were shining through the clouds.
She could not identify the object. Thanks to Peter Davenport
Director  www.UFOCenter.com

Portugal - Oval

VILA NOVA DE GAIA =96 When arriving home at 9:10 PM, on November
13, 2004, the witness saw a very big blue and white object near
his house falling from the sky very fast.  At first he thought
it was a plane crashing.  Then, it suddenly reduced velocity and
when it was only a 100 meters above the ground it disappeared
behind the trees.  There was no noise or the sound of a crash.
Thanks to Peter Davenport Director  www.UFOCenter.com

Sweden - Diamond Shaped Vessel

NYBRO - It was a cold rainy night on November 15, 2004, at
12:02 AM, when two friends were out walking when we saw a
diamond shaped vessel light up the sky. It came nearer as we
watched it and after a few minutes we could see that it was many
small lights in the shape of a diamond. After ten minutes it
flew away. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director  www.UFOCenter.com
 UK - UFO Sightings

THANKERTON, Scotland - A large round object was seen flying
very low over a small village on November 18, 2004, at 7 PM.
The object had many white lights all around and red flashing
lights on top. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director
www.UFOCenter.com

LONDON =96 The observer was out jogging, when he saw three lights
going back and forth constantly and at a very quick rate above
the scattered clouds on November 21, 2004, at 10:14 PM. The
lights flew a mile per second or more and stopped instantly.
They would go back, split into three and merge and play with
each other.   A police car with flashing lights tried to go
through some red traffic lights, and the lights in the sky
noticed and came directly above the police car and stopped, and
flashed as quickly as the police cars lights. They seemed to
mock the police car lights until they drove off.  Then the three
lights continued their back and forth movement. Thanks to Peter
Davenport Director  www.UFOCenter.com


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   UFO UpDates
   A mailing list for the study of UFO-related phenomena
   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 9

                       This Navy Sighting Was Dynamite

From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:29:24 -0700
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 12:46:42 -0500
Subject: This Navy Sighting Was Dynamite


[Fat-fingered after working the graveyard shift, therefore typos may
pop up. -Terry]


Flying Saucer Review, Volume 49/2, Summer 2004, pp. 21-23
Established 1955

http://www.fsr.org.uk


This Navy Sighting Was Dynamite

From the NICAP records
by
Major Donald E. Keyhoe

It was early in '59 when I learned of this hidden report - a startling
encounter with a UFO. The lead came in a brief message from Admiral
Delmar S. Fahrney, former Navy missile chief, whom I had known for years.

"Captain James Taylor, USN, Ret., has an important UFO sighting made by a
naval pilot and his crew. Call him at Spacetronics, Inc., in Washington,
District 7-9481."

That night, when Captain Taylor gave me this dramatic Navy report, I could
see why it had never been released to the public. Later, Admiral Fahrney
and I met at the Army-Navy Club and discussed the details. Fahrney knew,
as well as I did, of other hidden UFO cases - some of them highly
significant. But this one stood out in importance.

It had happened in 1956. Cruising at 19,000 feet, a Navy R7V-2 transport -
a four-engine Super-Constellation - was flying west across the Atlantic
Ocean. The next stop was Gander, Newfoundland. Final destination, Naval
Air Station, Patuxent, Maryland.

The night was clear, visibility unlimited. In the senior pilot's seat,
Commander George Benton was checking the dim-lit instruments. At thirty-four,
Benton had a decade of Navy flying behind him. He had made the Atlantic
crossing more than two hundred times. Back in the cabin were two extra
Navy air crews, en route home from foreign duty. Most of these men were
asleep. Including Benton's regular and relief crews, there were nearly
30 airmen-pilots, navigators and flight engineers aboard the Constellation.

As Commander Benton finished his cockpit check, he glanced out at the stars.
Then he leaned forward, puzzled. A few minutes before, the sea below had
been dark. Now there was a cluster of lights, like a village, about
twenty-five miles ahead.

Benton looked over at his co-pilot, Lieutenant Peter W. Mooney. "What do
you make of those lights?" Mooney peered down, startled.

"Looks like a small town!"

"That's what I thought." Benton quickly called the navigator, Lieutenant
Alfred C. Erdman. "We must be way off course. There's land down there."
"It can't be land." Erdman hurried forward from his map table. "That last
star sight shows..." He broke off, staring down at the clustered lights.
"Well?" said Benton. "They must be ships," said Erdman. "Maybe a rendezvous
for some special operation."


Giant Flying Saucers

"They don't look like ships," said Benton. He called Radioman John Wiggins.
No word of any unusual ship movements, Wiggins reported. And no signals from
the location of the lights. If they were ships, they were keeping radio
silence. "Wake up those other crews," Benton told Erdman. "Maybe somebody
can dope it out." In a few moments, two or three airmen crowded into the
cockpit. Benton cut off the automatic pilot, banked to give them and the men
in the cabin a better view.

As the transport began to circle, the strange lights abruptly dimmed. Then
several colored rings appeared, began to spread out. One, Benton noticed,
seemed to be growing in size. Behind him, someone gave an exclamation.
Benton took another look. That luminous ring wasn't on the surface - it
was something rushing up toward the transport.

"What the devil is it?" said Mooney. "Don't know," muttered Benton. He
rolled the Constellation out of its turn to start a full-power climb. Then
he saw it was useless. The luminous ring could catch them in seconds.

The glow, he now saw, came from the rim of some large, round object. It
reached their altitude, swiftly took shape as a giant disc-shaped machine.

Dwarfing the Constellation, it raced in toward them. "It's going to hit us!"
said Erdman. Benton had known normal fear, but this was nightmare. Numbed,
he waited for the crash.

Suddenly the giant disc tilted. Its speed sharply reduced, it angled on past
the port wing. The commander let out his breath. He looked at Mooney's white
face, saw the others' stunned expressions. Watching out the port window, he
cautiously started to bank. He stopped as he saw the disc.

It had swung around, was drawing abreast, pacing them at about one hundred
yards. For a moment he had a clear glimpse of the monster. Its sheer bulk
was amazing; its diameter was three to four times the Constellation's wing
span. At least thirty feet thick at the center, it was like a gigantic dish
inverted on top of another. Seen at this distance, the glow along the rim
was blurred and uneven. Whether it was an electrical effect, a series of
jet exhausts or lights from opening in the rim, Benton could not tell. But
the glow was bright enough to show the disc's curving surface, giving a hint
of dully reflecting metal.

Though Benton saw no signs of life, he had a feeling they were being observed.
Fighting an impulse to dive away, he held to a straight course. Gradually, the
strange machine pulled ahead. Tilting its massive shape upward, it quickly
accelerated and was lost against the stars.

Commander Benton reached for his microphone, called Gander Airport and
identified himself. "You show any other traffic out here?" he asked the
tower. "We had something on the scope near you," Gander told him. "But we
couldn't get an answer."

"We saw it," Benton said grimly. "It was no aircraft." He gave the tower
a concise report, and back at Gander teletype messages were rushed to the
U.S. Air Defense Command, the Commanding Officer, Eastern Sea Frontier, the
Director of Air Force Intelligence and the Air Technical Intelligence Center.

When the Constellation landed at Gander, Air Force intelligence officers met
the transport. From the start, it was plain they accepted the giant disc
sighting as fact. For two hours, Benton and the rest were carefully
interrogated[debriefed], separately and together: How close did the object
come? What was its size... estimated rate of climb... any electrical
interference noted... what happened to the other luminous rings?

From the answers to scores of questions, the majority opinion emerged. The
flying disc was between 350 and 400 feet in diameter, and apparently metallic.
No interference with ignition noted; instruments not observed and radio not
operating during this brief period. Time for the giant disc to climb to the
transport's altitude, between five and eight seconds, indicated speed between
1,400 and 2,200 knots; the disc had accelerated above this speed on departure.

Not all the men in the cabin had seen the luminous rings. Of those who had,
most were watching the huge disc approach and did not see the "rings"
disappear. If they, too, were flying discs, in a rendezvous as some
suggested, they apparently had raced off while the other one was checking
on the Constellation.

At one point, an Intelligence captain asked Benton if he had seen any
indication of life abroad the disc.


Intelligently Controlled

"No, but it was intelligently controlled, that's certain. Benton looked at
him closely. "That size, it would hardly be remote-controlled, would it?"
"I couldn't say," replied the Air Force man. Nor would he tell what the
Gander Airport radar had shown about the disc's speed and maneuvers.
"What's behind all this?" demanded Mooney. "Up to now, I believed the
Air Force. You people say there aren't any flying saucer..."

"Sorry, I can't answer any questions," said the captain. "Why
not? After a scare like that, we've got a right to know what's
going on." The Intelligence officer shook his head. "I can't
answer any questions," he repeated.

As quickly as possible, intelligence reports with full details were flashed
to the four Defense commanders already notified, with an extra message for
the Director of Naval Intelligence. After the Constellation reached
Patuxent, the air crews were interviewed[debriefed] again, by Navy order.
Each man made a written report, with his opinion of what he had seen.

Five days later, Commander Benton had a phone call from a scientist in a
high government agency. "I'm informed you had a close-up UFO sighting.
I'd like to see you."

Benton checked, found the man was cleared by the Navy. Next day, the
scientist appeared, showed his credential, listened intently to Benton's
report. Then he unlocked a dispatch case and took out some photographs.

"Was it like any of these?" At the third picture, Benton stopped him.
"That's it!" He looked sharply at the scientist. "Somebody must know
the answers, if you've got photographs of the things." The other man
took the pictures. "I'm sorry, Commander." He closed his dispatch
case and left.

At the time when I (Donald Keyhoe) learned of this case, I had served
for two years as Director of the National Investigations Committee on
Aerial Phenomena.








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   Dec > Dec 9

                   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 11:41:05 EST
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:01:09 -0500
Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal


>Source: News-Medical.Net...

>http://www.news-medical.net/?id=6732

>12-007-04


>Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

>Previous research has shown that paranormal experiences can be
>achieved via electromagnetic stimulation of the temple lobe. Now
>scientists from Uppsala and Lund universities in Sweden are
>calling into question how the experiments were set up and
>therefore questioning the results. Their study involving
>identical magnetic field equipment produced no such
>relationship.

<snip>

>In a joint project, researchers from Uppsala and Lund
>University, Sweden, performed a double-blind experiment to test
>if results from previous studies could be reproduced.
>Approximately 90 undergraduate students in theology and
>psychology participated in the study. The magnetic field
>apparatus utilized was identical to that used in previous
>studies. Results showed that the magnetic fields did not cause
>religious or paranormal experiences. However, highly suggestible
>individuals had paranormal experiences to a larger extent, but
>this had nothing to do with the magnetic fields.

<snip>

>http://www.uu.se/

Okaaaaay...

Now we've a study that invalidates the widely publicized 'magnet
hat' experiments. In addition we have the conclusions of the
late Dr. Mack that demolished the notion that abductees, in
general, suffered from some pathological source. That was one of
his conclusions.

So now it appears through real science that the nullification of
previous experiments and assumptions put to rest the 'duh'
factor.

Although I think Susan Blackmore is a babe, her presentations
bothered me as they came across as curt and lack objectivity.
She's super smart and I don't know what her latest conclusions
are so I'll have to brush up on her latest research.

I'm sure the public will be happy to hear that belief in God and
the Spirit don't categorize them as a candidate for a rubber
room, especially if members of the Christian Right who have tons
of money and won't get picked up with a giant butterfly net.

Perhaps this latest study will get out to the mainstream and let
the folks out there who have encountered the paranormal and can
then have peace of mind.

Which makes me think if the word paranormal is really
applicable. What's outside the norm in one point of history is
normal in another. Those old Biblical and other religious
stories of old may well be true, just that nowadays we've
replaced ghost with 'photonic intelligences' and angels with
'ETs' and miracles with 'mind over matter'.


Best,

Greg








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   Dec > Dec 9

               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 12:56:55 -0400
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:04:16 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:23:09 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 17:47:40 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 08:34:11 -0800 (PST)
>>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>Good post and it did help me understand more of your viewpoint
>(and perhaps even Mr. Lehmberg's).

>>The funny thing is, when dreamers dream, they harm no one. But
>>when a realist pooh-poohs a dreamer, the dreamer is cast aside
>>as so much detritus, until perhaps a later date when the dreamer
>>is vindicated. For the more passionate among us, your comments
>>literally mean war.

>Point taken. I will be more careful. I admit that I have a
>really difficult time with emotional (irrational?) thought,

James,

As well you should since it seems to cause more than enough
grief in this world. Another name for it might be fanaticism. In
all it's forms, religions being the chief among them,  it is a
scorge to be stamped out.

Having digressed I exit.

Don Ledger






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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 11:12:49 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:05:45 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:23:09 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 17:47:40 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 08:34:11 -0800 (PST)
>>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>Kyle,

>Good post and it did help me understand more of your viewpoint
>(and perhaps even Mr. Lehmberg's).


<snip>

Wow... an erg less testosterone and I might even squeeze out a
joyful tear. Every once in a while someone does something that
surprises me in a good way. This time it's you. Good _show_,
dude! I'm reshuffling your cards.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







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             Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Ledger

From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:46:31 -0400
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:11:12 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Ledger


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 23:13:24 -0000
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Brad Sparks <RB47x.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 17:06:21 EST
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

<snip>

>You mentioned meteors and meteorites.

>I do believe that the lack of actual UFO hardware is the biggest
>obstacle to scientific acceptance.

>It is useless to give the oft-repeated response that the
>authorities already possess this hardware but are keeping it top
>secret. This standard ufological rejoinder will cut no ice with
>the scientific establishment (or the media), and you cannot
>really blame them for poking derision at it. Ufology is too
>world-wide for this 'buck passing' to be valid.

We often throw around the term "scientific community" which is
as valid a term as "ufology" and too broad based.

Which "scientific community" are we referring to? The
pharmaceutical scientific community, the scientific research
divisions of the military complex, NASA's cloistered, federally
funded community [until they retire] the universities',
federally funded scientific communities, the medical scientific
community [i.e. the psychiatric field-which is no more exact
than ufology when it comes down to it and probably less so].

The point is each scientific community has its own vested
interest and sacred cow to protect - not to mention its funding.
An example of this is Physics versus Egyptology re the age of
the Sphinx. These communities fight amongst themselves.

This is too large a subject to get into for one person but I'm
sure most have had experiences where the co-called scientific
community has impacted their belief systems and not just where
it concerns the UFO phenomenon.

There is one common denominator to all of them and that is the
possible impact of the UFO phenomenon on their own communities
and it seems to filter through all of them.

Does anyone else feel that we are being sold a bill of goods by
those more interested in maintaining the status quo rather than
'what is'?


Don Ledger








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   Dec > Dec 9

                Re: This Navy Sighting Was Dynamite - Ledger

From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 14:07:18 -0400
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:17:00 -0500
Subject: Re: This Navy Sighting Was Dynamite - Ledger


>From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:29:24 -0700
>Subject: This Navy Sighting Was Dynamite

>[Fat-fingered after working the graveyard shift, therefore typos may
>pop up. -Terry]

>Flying Saucer Review, Volume 49/2, Summer 2004, pp. 21-23
>Established 1955

>http://www.fsr.org.uk

>This Navy Sighting Was Dynamite

>From the NICAP records
>by Major Donald E. Keyhoe

>It was early in '59 when I learned of this hidden report - a startling
>encounter with a UFO. The lead came in a brief message from Admiral
>Delmar S. Fahrney, former Navy missile chief, whom I had known for years.

>"Captain James Taylor, USN, Ret., has an important UFO sighting made by a
>naval pilot and his crew. Call him at Spacetronics, Inc., in Washington,
>District 7-9481."

>That night, when Captain Taylor gave me this dramatic Navy report, I could
>see why it had never been released to the public. Later, Admiral Fahrney
>and I met at the Army-Navy Club and discussed the details. Fahrney knew,
>as well as I did, of other hidden UFO cases - some of them highly
>significant. But this one stood out in importance.

>It had happened in 1956. Cruising at 19,000 feet, a Navy R7V-2
>transport - a four-engine Super-Constellation - was flying west
>across the Atlantic Ocean. The next stop was Gander,
>Newfoundland. Final destination, Naval Air Station, Patuxent,
>Maryland.

This is the Lt. US Naval Reserve, pilot Graham Bethune case.
Keyhoe used Benton to disquise his name.


Don Ledger










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   Dec > Dec 9

                        Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 12:27:49 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:37:43 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 00:10:05 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 10:14:52 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>You obviously haven't been reading the last few UpDates. I
>thought I had made it clear that I am unimpressed by the SETI
>project and its anthropomorphic outlook. Quite a few ufologists
>look really sophisticated in comparison. As for Frank Drake with
>his idea of sending messages into the skies in the hope that the
>God like aliens will give us the secret of peace on earth, with
>immortality thrown in for good measure, the religious symbolism
>is obvious

At last, we have something on which to agree. As non-ufologist
SETI critics have observed from time to time, at least the
ufologists base their hypotheses on a body of perceived
evidence. If you want evidence-free speculation about ETI, I
refer interested Listfolk to just about any book or other
monograph by a SETI enthusiast.

>Magonia devoted one issue to an article by Lawson years back,
>and I doubt if we ever referred to it since.

I think you could call this historical revisionism. The
Magonians were enchanted for a time with Lawson's silly ideas,
and they are discussed prominently - with straight face and
without giggling, treated in other words as entirely serious -
in a 1984 book written by Magonia's longtime editor John
Rimmer, The Evidence for Alien Abductions. If it were worth my
time (it isn't), I have no doubt that I'd find that birth trauma
figured in more than one long-ago article in Magonia. I'm sure
Peter is simply citing the longest and most focused of them. If
Rogerson and Rimmer want to tell us that they no longer feel as
they did 20 years ago, that's fine - neither do I on a number of
issues, ufological and otherwise - and even healthy. But the
fact that they once took serious heed of birth traumas as
abduction generators is a matter of record.

>I see that Jerry is
>still going on about Hispanics. That was a throw away piece
>about Dark Side ufology and the idea of aliens doing nasty
>things in hangers in the desert.

One of Magonia's many "throw away pieces," I'm afraid, and goofy
fantasies, drawing on nothing of empirical consequence, about
what Americans are supposed to think.

>The piece never even mentioned
>the word abduction. But if you want to go down that road just
>look at what David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins are now saying about
>the hybrids. Racial fears or what?

And on what do you make that leap? Evidence? Of course not.
Assertion and mind-reading? Of course.  The hybrid stuff is
curious, and while I resist a literalist interpretation, for
which the evidence is nowhere sufficient, I see no easy
explanation in sight. Unlike Magonians, I have no trouble with
those three little words "I don't know." My suspicion is that we
are dealing with anomalies of consciousness about which we know
too little to speak of too airily.

But of one thing I'm confident: the unsupported guesswork of a
non- American about the deepest secrets of the American psyche
is worth no serious person's time.

>Presumably the fact that IUR published article after article on
>the Roswell nonsense means Jerry was promoting it. Or was he
>just publishing articles as they came along.

Whatever it may or may not be, Roswell is not "nonsense" -
though that unflattering characterization certainly describes
much that has been written about it, of course - but Roswell
itself remains an interesting historical event and a continuing
mystery. Though I am inclined these days to doubt it was an
ETI-related event (I have my own ideas, but since I can't
produce evidence to support them, I don't publish them;
therefore, I guess, I am not a Magonian), there seems no doubt
that many interesting, unanswered questions remain. Further
research may lead us to new discoveries, perhaps some unexpected
ones which may cut through the stale current debates.

I look forward to continuing developments with interest, as I
would with any historical controversy. And yes, I think IUR has
done a good job of covering the unfolding story. Certainly, our
articles were based overwhelmingly on direct - and considerable
- investigation, as opposed to Peter's remarks above.

>Its up to those who propose that there are dramatically
>anomalous phenomena out there to prove the point, its not up to
>sceptics to demonstrate otherwise. Of course if anyone like
Andy >Roberts or Dave Clark get out of their armchairs and
investigate >these cases and come up with answers Jerry doesn't
like he damns >them too.

This is the same lazy, intellectually witless argument we too
often hear from thoughtless "sceptics." In fact, the only
persons who have no obligation to prove anything are those who
say nothing and who live their lives oblivious to, ignorant of,
or indifferent to the controversy in question. If they choose to
enter the debate, they have an obligation to employ logical
argument and to offer actual evidence in support of their
position. I take this, however, to be Peter's back-handed
admission that since in his estimation UFOs don't exist as
extraordinary anomalies, he can't be bothered with logical
argument or actual evidence - at this stage, alas, an
acknowledgement of the obvious.

Here is the late sociologist of science Marcello Truzzi, the man
who coined the phrase (which in his last years he rejected as
effectively without meaning) "extraordinary claims demand
extraordinary evidence." (No, Carl Sagan, usually credited, did
not invent the maxim. Basically, Truzzi concluded that the
twice-used "extraordinary" is largely a question-begging,
subjective judgment and that, moreover, the maxim has serious
flaws as a description of how science actually judges truth
claims. I know this from my many personal conversations with
Marcello, a close friend, who died, sad to say, before he could
write a paper or book elucidating his revised thinking.) Anyway:

"If a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that
he has a negative hypothesis... he is making a claim and
therefore also has to bear a burden of proof. Sometimes, such
negative claims by critics are also quite extraordinary... in
which case the negative claimant also may have to bear a heavier
burden of proof than might normally be expected.

"Critics who assert negative claims but who mistakenly call
themselves 'skeptics' often act as though they... have no burden
of proof placed on them at all... [But] if a critic asserts
that the result was due to artifact X, that critic then has the
burden of proof to demonstrate the artifact X can and probably
did produce such results under such circumstances.... Alas, most
critics seem happy to sit in their armchairs producing post hoc
counterexplanations."

>>>Jerry has made this point on a number occasions about
>>>paranormal explanations but seems to have a slight difficulty
>>>realising that invoking a technology so advanced as to be like
>>>magic is only verbally different from a paranormal explanation.

>>I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, except that
>>pronouncements like these seem to give the likes of Peter great
>>satisfaction as he goes about conjuring up ever more and more
>>elastic, magical pelicans. Since it was Arthur Clarke who made
>>the comparison of ETH technology to magic, I urge you to take
>>your quarrel to him. Oh, wait a minute; he's an authority
>>figure, isn't he? Sorry. Never mind.

>It means that a _magical_ technology = magic. Can I make it
>plainer than tha[t]?

Huh? Are you suggesting, then, that advanced technology would be
based on magic? Or is it your view that technological
development has reached its end, and that any testimony
concerning an ostensible technology beyond present understanding
can be discarded as delusional because, being hard to
comprehend, that technology would seem magical, and since magic
doesn't exist, therefore superior technology can't exist,
either?

Keep in mind, too, gentle and patient Listfolk, that Peter and
his fellow Magonians like to poke fun at technically trained
ufologists (e.g., Stan Friedman) who have gone to some length to
demonstrate how extensions of current technological principles
may explain how interstellar travelers could develop propulsion
and other systems which may enable them to get here.

Talk about unfalsifiable: Anybody who thinks a far superior
technology might look like magic to the naive, early 21st-
century observer is a fool. Meantime, those who argue that UFO-
extraterrestrial technology may not be so advanced, after all,
and that from current physical knowledge we can draw reasonable
inferences about otherworldly spacecraft propulsion... well,
those guys are fools, too.

As usual, with the Magonian/pelicanist school of rhetoric, it's
always a heads-you-lose, tails-we-win proposition.


Jerry Clark








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                   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal

From: David Rudiak <drudiak.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:39:32 -0800
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:45:39 -0500
Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal


>From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:25:13 -0400
>Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

>>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>>Date: Thursday, December 09, 2004 8:33 AM
>>Subject: UFO UpDate: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

>>Source: News-Medical.Net...

>>http://www.news-medical.net/?id=6732

>>12-007-04

>>Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

>>Previous research has shown that paranormal experiences can be
>>achieved via electromagnetic stimulation of the temple lobe. Now
>>scientists from Uppsala and Lund universities in Sweden are
>>calling into question how the experiments were set up and
>>therefore questioning the results. Their study involving
>>identical magnetic field equipment produced no such
>>relationship.

>Anybody out there speak Swedish? Judging by the abstract, this
>justfiably should make everybody who hasn't already done so
>reject the 'scientific' work of Michael Persinger and bandwagon
>jumping of Susan Blackmore.

>Michael Persinger also drew a nonsensical connection between
>earthquakes and UFO sightings, if they were within hundreds of
>miles and months of each other!

>Sounds like excellent work done by the Swedes.

Persinger's work has always struck me as crackpot stuff. He was
claiming that incredibly weak, fluctuating magnetic fields could
induce all sorts of things, from religious experiences and alien
abduction scenarios to making his laboratory mice drop dead.

In another life I was an experimental scientist involved in
stimulating the brain with magnetic stimulators. In the real
world it is actually quite difficult to stimulate the sensory
brain with these devices. To get even crude sensory responses,
such as flashes of light, we were using magnetic fields and
frequencies that delivered stimuli 10 to 100 million times
greater than what Persinger said he was using to get much more
profound reactions (complex hallucinations).

Persinger was claiming to get results with a firecracker that
other scientists couldn't get with an A-bomb. He was using
fields and frequencies on the order of what the average person
might experience cooking over an electric stovetop, or using an
electric shaver or hair drier. Anybody out there had any
religious experiences or been abducted by aliens while doing any
of these activities?

Thus it comes as no great surprise to me that Persinger's
results cannot be duplicated. The work was always deeply
suspect. But Persinger probably got a free ride because his
highly questionable claims could be marketed as "scientific"
explanations by pseudoscientific skeptics and the mass media and
then used to debunk things like UFOs and alien abductions.


David Rudiak








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                   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 13:51:37 EST
Fwd Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:55:11 -0500
Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal


>From: David Rudiak <drudiak.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:39:32 -0800
>Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

<snip>

>Persinger's work has always struck me as crackpot stuff. He was
>claiming that incredibly weak, fluctuating magnetic fields could
>induce all sorts of things, from religious experiences and alien
>abduction scenarios to making his laboratory mice drop dead.

That's too funny!

What's extra funny is that if magnetism or electromagnetism
could cause these events then everyone who uses a cell phone
would be calling aliens, God, Dr. Zachary Smith and Buddha.


Best,

Greg








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                 Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:52:51 -0700
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:32:30 -0500
Subject: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'


Fellow Listarians,

As you know I offered to accompany Ed Gerhman to the alleged
site of a crash/retrieval near Socorro, NM, he feels corresponds
to the description given by the cameraman of the infamous Alien
Autopsy film. I have prepared a preliminary report, which I
promised UFO UpDates denizens and it can be found at:

http://www.thewhyfiles.net/gehrman.htm

Thank you to Geoff Richardson of the Why Files for posting my
report. I hope readers find it of interest.

Unfortunately, I will be unavailable for further comments on the
matter and will be visiting the site several more times in the
coming year.


Wendy Connors
www.fadeddiscs.com








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                          Is It Time To Scrap SETI?

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:38:51 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:38:51 -0500
Subject: Is It Time To Scrap SETI?




Source: ABC News

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=3D311101&page=3D1


12-09-04


Commentary by Lee Dye


Is It Time To Scrap SETI?

Researchers Claim Listening For Signals From ET Is Futile

For all those folks out there who are counting the days until we
hear from some intelligent creature on another planet,
researchers now say we're not going to be able to eavesdrop on
the space alien equivalent of the "I Love Lucy" show.

During the few decades that scientists have searched
systematically for life elsewhere in the universe there has been
some hope that electromagnetic "leakage" from communications
systems on other planets =97 such as television broadcasts =97 might
be detectable from Earth. If that's the case, then radio
telescopes sweeping the sky might pick up those signals, giving
us a window onto other worlds, and finally answering that
increasingly overworked question, "Are we alone?"

Don't count on it, say researchers from three institutions. Any
advanced civilization would likely encode and compress their
communications to make their systems more efficient, just as
your computer compresses files that you send over the Internet,
the researchers argue in a report in a recent issue of the
"American Journal of Physics."

And that, they say, would make those signals indistinguishable
from the thermal radiation of stars, and thus impossible to
detect because it would seem like part of the universe's
background noise.

Even if we did somehow capture such a signal, we wouldn't know
it, says physicist Mark Newman of the University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor.

"If you don't know how to decode it, then you can't make out
what's going on," Newman says.

The Decompression Issue

A computer can't show a picture that has been compressed by
another computer unless it knows how to decompress it, and
likewise we couldn't decode a television signal that had been
compressed unless we already knew the code. And, Newman and his
colleagues argue, any advanced civilization which has used
wireless communications for even a few decades would surely have
figured out that it makes sense to encode.

We're already doing it, and we're just barely in the
communications age.

"This is something we already do in many of our transmissions,"
Newman says. "We encode (compress) them so they take up less
space and we can send them faster and send more messages."

To be fair, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or
SETI as it has come to be known, has never been wedded to the
idea that we could somehow tune in to alien television
broadcasts. Astronomer Frank Drake, who many consider the father
of the current effort, told me years ago that any such signal
would probably be far too weak to detect on Earth.

Thus the primary aim is to find signals that are intentionally
sent in our direction by another life form, and thus designed to
be easily detected by us. Newman has been informed of that by
many irate readers of his report who maintain that the search is
viable because no one is really listening for Lucy.

Yet much of the SETI literature does suggest that ordinary
communications signals might be detectable.

And that's what compelled Newman and biologist Michael Lachmann
of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, and computer
scientist Christopher Moore of the University of New Mexico in
Albuquerque to take a closer look.

The three built on the pioneering research of Claude Shannon, an
electrical engineer with Bell Labs who published two seminal
papers in the 1940s on information theory. Shannon demonstrated
that it is possible to compress data and thus distribute far
more information than would otherwise be possible. That work is
the foundation for much of today's communication technology.

Compressed data, however, looks like just a jumble of junk
unless it is decoded, and the researchers wondered if that would
apply to radio signals as well.

"In our paper we proved that there's an equivalent result for
radio messages," Newman says. "The most information-rich radio
message looks like thermal radiation, which is the standard kind
of radiation that we see in the sky. So that would make it
difficult to tell the difference between an intentional
transmission that was very efficient and just natural
phenomena."

Not a Peep in 10 Years

But what if someone out there really is trying to contact us?
That message would not likely be encoded because they =97 whoever
"they" might be =97 would want us to understand it.

"Then, of course, you could easily see it," Newman admits.

Which takes me back about a dozen years to a time when I sat on
the porch of Frank Drake's California home and listened to this
eloquent scientist talk about the passion in his life, somehow
finding ET.

He said all those years ago that routine signals from another
planet would spread out as they passed through space, weakening
as their footprint grew ever larger. And just as a flashlight
grows dimmer with distance, they would probably be far too weak
to detect by the time they reached Earth.

But what if someone is beaming a very tightly focused, high-
powered transmission directly at us? Surely we could find that
pretty easily.

Drake's enthusiasm has always been infectious, but I wondered
out loud how long that enthusiasm would last. With trillions of
stars out there, how long would he be willing to search? When
might he decide that perhaps he was on the wrong track, that
perhaps ET is illusive, or isn't interested in our primitive
society?

I don't have the notes from that meeting, and couldn't reach
Drake for this column, but I remember what he said. Picking a
number out of the air, he said if scientists hadn't found
anything in about 10 years, perhaps they would have to rethink
their program.

The SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., which Drake helped
found, has now grown into a large organization of more than 100
scientists and staffers, due largely to the largess of a number
of folks with very deep pockets.

It is more than 20 years old now.

And in all those years of searching, not a single signal has
turned out to mean anything at all. If ET is trying to reach us,
she must not be trying very hard.


Lee Dye's column appears weekly on ABCNEWS.com. A former science
writer for the Los Angeles Times, he now lives in Juneau,
Alaska.








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                  Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 13:23:11 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:42:05 -0500
Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - King


>From: Stuart Miller <stuart.miller4.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 14:41:34 +0000 (GMT)
>Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow?

>>From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:15:52 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow?

>>>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>>>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:54:38 -0500
>>>Subject: Last Rocketeers Set Sights On Mars

>>>Source: JPL Labs/NASA

>>>http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040524a/site_B115_
navcam_180_cyl_L-B118R1_br2.jpg

>>05-24-04

>>I look forward to NASA's explanation as to how that is a
>>"camera lens artifact".


>Eleanor,

>Further, look into the background of the picture.

>Notice the little white dot in the distance?


>Stuart

Hi Stuart and Eleanor,

This is a most intriguing photo. The impression I get is that
this is a look back at the way the rover came. Note the apparent
tread tracks.

If that is the case, the white dot would be the rovers landing
pod.

The path also however would indicate that the rover rolled over
the rather odd rectangular object. I find that odd, as well,
because it is obvious from the photo that the object could have
been avoided.

There is an interesting 'twist' along the top edge of the
object, almost directly in line with the wheel track path. I
don't know what to make of that, either.

My first reaction was indeed that it appears to be wood, which
of course would be in itself something, but with it's regular
edges and clearly sharply cleaved edges, the allusion to a
railroad tie or sleeper is apt to say the least. On further
examination, it seems that it could also be a stony formation,
as we've seem lots of squared corners and parallel striations or
fractures in photos of other areas on Mars.

But this is a very compelling image, and a good explanation
should be easy to produce, particularly if the rover in fact
drove over the thing.


Best,

Kyle








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              Central Research Facility [was: Smith & Rogerson]

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 15:10:04 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:45:59 -0500
Subject: Central Research Facility [was: Smith & Rogerson]


>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:53:21 -0500
>Subject: Smith & Rogerson

<snip>

>I've never understood why UFO aficionados don't work together to
>establish a central facility and authority which could
>accumulate funds and expertise to address the practicalities,
>the science of "flying saucers" and the extracurricular aspects
>that attend to the phenomenon.

I don't understand this either. I had thought in the 70's that
MUFON or APRO or NICAP would have been in a position to add
legitimacy to this research. But it seems that they were either
corrputed by human foibles/personality or outright
absconded/sabotaged by a murky blend of
government/industry(?)/academia.

>How much trouble would it be to create a non-profit - not like
>those which have been tried or started by those not fully
>committed to the UFO mystery but, rather, inclined to self-
>aggrandizement - which would gather funds and equipment and
>make it available to whomever comes credentialed to the table:
>those who are identified, legitimately, with UFO study? (Need I
>name them?)

It is hard. You require a talented, energetic leader that people
will listen to, who is open minded and pragmatic. This is a very
valuable resource and hard to find in the world. Sure you can
create an organization easily enough (fill out the forms, create
a web site), but the leadership, organizational skills needed by
the management of the organization cannot be underestimated. It
baffles me how to go about this. I think we really need a good
salesman who can sell the idea to a potential leader, either in
the corporate or academic realm. I am not saying Donald Trump is
a great leader, but he has shown a willingness to pursue rather
different part time work (his TV show). The leader need not be
full time but must somehow provide the saavy in creating a self-
sustaining/flourishing organization. A good salesman should be
easier to get, although they are rare gems.

>If persons are truly interested in resolving the UFO question,
>because it would be beneficial or satisfy the insatiable
>curiosity of those who hate unresolved mysteries, they would
>gather their monies and wherewithal and make it happen, rather
>than discoursing ad infinitum, ad eternum, ad nauseum.

Well, I think its about time we _stop_ paying for all the
UFO research. It really is not fair that UFO researchers have to
be driven into poverty because of their desire to answer the UFO
question. Using the non-profit organization, fund raising
activities can be generated and self sustaining mechanisms
created.








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               Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 14:54:20 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:49:46 -0500
Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered -


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:23:09 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 17:47:40 -0600
>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 08:34:11 -0800 (PST)
>>>Subject: Re: First Quasi-Satellite Of Venus Discovered

>Kyle,

>Good post and it did help me understand more of your viewpoint
>(and perhaps even Mr. Lehmberg's).

<snip>

>I think you are right that we need such dreams to motivate us, I
>lost mine a while ago when I discovered how deadly dangerous
>space was and how stupid it would be to go there, especially if
>you want McDonalds and warm baths.


Hi James,

We indeed, reach. Very civil and sincere response... and very
much appreciated.

It is a rare and cool moment when a discussion here ends with an
'up' note.

A nice point at which to lay this thread to rest, perhaps.

Merry Christmas and God bless us, every one.

And a nod to Mr. Lehmberg and ebk... thank you.


Kyle








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                   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal

From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 16:55:35 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:54:10 -0500
Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal


>From: David Rudiak <drudiak.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:39:32 -0800
>Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

<snip>

>To get even crude sensory responses, such as flashes of light,
>we were using magnetic fields and frequencies that delivered
>stimuli 10 to 100 million times greater than what Persinger said
>he was using to get much more profound reactions (complex
>hallucinations).

I've never looked, in detail, into Persinger's setup, but his
work was of some interest to our electronic harassment group,
and several years ago, I spoke at length with Persinger's
technician, Stan Koren about his setup, a fellow ham radio
operator, VE3PSE.

Early on in Persinger's work, he used Radio Shack reed-style 5-
volt relays, with the reed contacts removed and a rounded-off
nail slipped through the relay core and more or less resting
against the test subject's skull.

A double-ended 5-volt power supply was throttled through a pulse
generator that for at least some of the experiments caused a
sharp pulse of current, I'm guessing here but maybe 100-200
milliamps in one direction immediately followed by a second
pulse in the opposite direction.

These sharp pulse pairs were tried at varying spacings in time,
and number in sequence.

I don't know what magnetic field intensities that might have
involved, but perhaps these setup details might mean more to Mr.
Rudiak.

When I spoke with Stan Koren, he was looking into replacing the
steel nails with powdered iron rods to sharpen up the pulses.

A year or so ago, I found the helmets for sale on the web, as
'The Stan Koren Helmet', for people to try for themselves.


Eleanor White








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                  Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Hatch

From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 14:06:28 -0800
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:55:34 -0500
Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Hatch



>Source: JPL Labs/NASA
>http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040524a/site_B115_na
vcam_180_cyl_L-B118R1_br2.jpg
>05-24-04

>Very Strange Martian Artefact
>Click image to zoom in

>[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]


Interesting!


Are we referred to the large 'log' lying left and right near the
Rover, or to the small white 'tombstone' way up and away near
the horizon?

Both are on the left half of the image. The techno-clutter at
bottom must be the Rover itself.


- Larry







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                 Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Tonnies

From: Mac Tonnies <macbot.nul>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 14:28:43 -0800 (PST)
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:57:14 -0500
Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Tonnies


>Source: JPL Labs/NASA

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040524a/site_B115_nav
cam_180_cyl_L-B118R1_br2.jpg

>05-24-04

>Very Strange Martian Artefact

>Click image to zoom in

>[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]

The bright object near the horizon is Opportunity's heat-shield.

The "rail tie" really does look like wood. I wish they'd take a
close look with the Rock Abrasion Tool.


=====
Mac Tonnies (macbot.nul)

Explore MTVI @ http://www.mactonnies.com

Posthuman Blues: http://posthumanblues.blogspot.com

New book: After The Martian Apocalypse

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/074348293X








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                 Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Holman

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 10:26:34 +1100
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:59:58 -0500
Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Holman


>From: Stuart Miller <stuart.miller4.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 14:41:34 +0000 (GMT)
>Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow?

>>From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:15:52 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow?

>>I look forward to NASA's explanation as to how that is a
>>"camera lens artifact".

Why wouldn't they argue that it is what it looks like - a rock?

>Eleanor,

>Further, look into the background of the picture.

>Notice the little white dot in the distance?

That's just Opportunity's backshell and parachute, jettisoned
during descent - I guess a breeze must have been blowing through.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040209a.html

By the way, there's a higher resolution version here:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040524a/site_B115_nav
cam_180_cyl_L-B118R1.jpg


Brett Holman








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer

From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 00:34:57 +0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 07:05:30 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 12:27:49 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 00:10:05 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>Magonia devoted one issue to an article by Lawson years back,
>>and I doubt if we ever referred to it since.

>I think you could call this historical revisionism. The
>Magonians were enchanted for a time with Lawson's silly ideas,
>and they are discussed prominently - with straight face and
>without giggling, treated in other words as entirely serious -
>in a 1984 book written by Magonia's longtime editor John
>Rimmer, The Evidence for Alien Abductions. If it were worth my
>time (it isn't), I have no doubt that I'd find that birth trauma
>figured in more than one long-ago article in Magonia. I'm sure
>Peter is simply citing the longest and most focused of them. If
>Rogerson and Rimmer want to tell us that they no longer feel as
>they did 20 years ago, that's fine - neither do I on a number of
>issues, ufological and otherwise - and even healthy. But the
>fact that they once took serious heed of birth traumas as
>abduction generators is a matter of record.

If you thought it was worth your time to search out back issues
of Magonia, and your (I believe personally inscribed) copy of
Evidence for Alien Aductions, you might spare yourself writing
nonsense like the above paragraph. It's clear that you could
conduct your own masterclass in historical revisionism. Lesson
one: never bother to walk over to a bookcase to check your
assumptions.

We devoted most of issue 10 (1982) to Lawson's theories, as they
were a subject of discussion in the UFO field at the time. We
even arranged a meeting in London for ufologists to discuss
Lawson's ideas with him. This produced debate both for and
against the BTH, and most of the attendees felt that the
discussion was worthwhile.

The following issue of Magonia contained an article by the
British researcher Ian Cresswell criticising Lawson's theory and
detailing a number of objections to it. There were also a couple
more pages by Lawson, drawing comparisons between abduction and
Near-Death Experience imagery, and a contribution in the letters
column from Christopher Allen, who from time to time adorns this
List.

Issue 12 contained an interesting article by one Jerome Clark,
called "Confessions of a Fortean Skeptic"; but as far as I can
see no further mention of the BTH appeared in our pages, and our
interest in subsequent issues appeared to stray more towards
discussion of the "earth lights" phenomenon.

If he can bring himself to re-read "Evidence for Alien
Abductions" - it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it - he
will see that I give the idea about four pages in a 160 page
book. My conclusion was that it was an interesting idea which
was worth further research, but definitely not proven. Not what
I would call "being enchanted" with Lawson's ideas, but Jerry's
threshold of enchantment may be lower than mine.

>Here is the late sociologist of science Marcello Truzzi, the man
>who coined the phrase (which in his last years he rejected as
>effectively without meaning) "extraordinary claims demand
>extraordinary evidence." (No, Carl Sagan, usually credited, did
>not invent the maxim. Basically, Truzzi concluded that the
>twice-used "extraordinary" is largely a question-begging,
>subjective judgment and that, moreover, the maxim has serious
>flaws as a description of how science actually judges truth
>claims. I know this from my many personal conversations with
>Marcello, a close friend, who died, sad to say, before he could
>write a paper or book elucidating his revised thinking.) Anyway:

Strange that Jerry should attack Peter Rogerson for allegedly
being in awe of authority figures, when virtually every post
he makes to this List contains an appeal to one of his regular
trinity of authority figures: Marcello Truzzi, Michael Swords
and James McDonald.

--
John Rimmer
Magonia Magazine
www.magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/00/newmag.htm







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   Dec > Dec 10

                    Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:24:17 +1100
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 07:15:11 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman


>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 21:24:18 +0000
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>>From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 22:52:12 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>>So you explain one "unknown" - for example, why a spinning
>>top stays on its point - with another "unknown"  - a force that
>>"creates" inertia?

>Bruce,

>I know how you must feel.

Maybe you do, but you've also avoided Bruce's question. Why do
you think you've achieved something by invoking one unknown to
explain another?

>Maybe I should've put a health-warning on that message, for
>anyone who's been taught formal physics in last half-century.

Please excuse my directness, but have you ever been taught
"formal physics" yourself? It's unclear to me why you think you
know better than the people actually doing this stuff for a
living.

>Why? - Because I say, along with Lee Smolin, that "there is at
>least one good reason not to believe the physics that is taught
>in most courses... It's not true."

That's some pretty impressive support you've got there - Lee
Smolin is a very smart guy, and a leading physicist. The only
trouble is, you have partially quoted him in a way which makes
it sound as though he is condemning physics as a whole. He
isn't, as the full quote shows:

"There is at least one good reason not to believe the physics
that is taught in most courses FOR NONSCIENTISTS. It isn't
true."

Emphasis added; from "Life of the Cosmos", see:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9780195126648&di
splayonly=CHP

He is criticising the physics that is taught to 'laypeople'. That
is a very different thing to criticising the physics taught to
'physicists'. It hardly means that modern physics is a house of
cards, as you imply.

>Present day physics is in a mess. Like you said "we don't really
>have a clue as to what is _really_ going on".

In fact, we have many clues. And we have figured out a lot of
what is _really_ going on. The rest is a work in progress, but
you seem to think that's somehow shameful, or a conspiracy, or
something.

>In the last twenty years or so all the confident ideas of
>"Standard Models" (including your electromagnetic cause of
>matter), of "Gas Laws", of "Black Hole Theory" (actually
>Singularity Theories), of "Quantum Theory" and "Relativity
>Theories", have _all_ been discovered to be "flawed" or
>"incomplete" (see "Blind Science").

This is not news. Quibbles over the precise contents of your
list aside, I was taught about the incompleteness of current
theories as a baby physicist over a decade ago. It's an
'opportunity', not a threat. It's why physicists bother to get
up in the morning.

>That is, they're _not_ true.

They are partial descriptions of some aspects of nature, more
accurate than any previous such descriptions. Perhaps that's not
"true", but it's extraordinarily useful, all the same.

>And the top physicists know the rules aren't true - but they
>aren't encouraged to say so, outside of a very small circle of
>"experts".

Firstly, as I said, nobody pretends we have a complete theory of
everything. Secondly, only somebody who has had little contact
with real, live physicists could possibly think there was some
sort of conspiracy of silence going on. Or that one was even
possible. Physicists actively attempt to undermine current
theories. It's what they do! Anyone coming up with a new
paradigm-busting theory or observation that can withstand
scrutiny will have made their career. But maybe this is harder
to achieve than you think.

>Why are those rules still being taught in most colleges?

Because they are useful.

>Mainstream science hasn't anything to put in their place, and
>our "leaders" think there'll be a panic if everyone finds out.

What is your basis for this assertion? Most people don't even
know what (eg) inertia is, so why would there be a panic if the
shocking truth of scientific ignorance about its origins were
revealed?

>I'll say again - mainstream science _doesn't_ know reason or
>cause of  a) matter, b) mass, c) inertia (and lots of other
>things but those three are basic and interdependent).

>Which of course means they haven't a clue where the _extra_
>inertia of a spinning coin or a "top" or even a bike comes from
>(because they don't know where `ordinary' inertia comes from -
> but it's got to be the _same_ source).

It's not "extra" inertia, it's simply a different form of
inertia. Is conservation of angular momentum really that
puzzling? No, we don't know where it "comes from", but then we
don't know where any physical law "comes from". But we know they
are there, we observe them, we describe them, we use them.
That's physics - the rest is metaphysics. And if we want to get
into that, then to me it's far more curious that inertial mass
and gravitational mass are the same, than that there is such a
thing as rotational inertia. That's very odd - inertial mass
could just as easily be a completely different property
altogether.

>And mainstream science similarly can't say how "entanglement
>info" is transmitted at far FTL speed, thru all obstacles,
>apparently linking particles instantaneously throughout the
>universe.

>http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/aspect1/

Yes, we knew that. But as has been shown previously (and as
Aspect himself says in the above presentation), to the best of
our knowledge, no useful information can be transmitted this
way. Perhaps this will change, but clearly Seth Shostak did not
deserve the scorn that was heaped upon him by several
listmembers for saying that no messages can travel faster than
light.

>Here's two summations - "Physics is in all sorts of trouble" -
>Hilary Lawson - (21st Cent.)

Who is Hilary Lawson that I should care what he thinks? I've
never heard of him, but upon googling, he appears to be a
postmodernist philosopher, which in fact makes me even less
inclined to care.

>and "What the scientists say now
>is likely to be false" - Nigel Calder - NOW, quoted in Blind
>Science.

Now Nigel Calder, at least, is a respected science journalist.
But he seems to have gone off the deep end. The above quote
comes from here:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/hay/story/0,14559,1230380,00.html

where he makes a couple of claims that are simply stupid.

"In any branch of science there are only two possibilities.
There is either nothing left to discover, in which case, why
work on it, or there are big discoveries yet to be made, in
which case, what the scientists say now is likely to be false"

This is a ludicrous dichotomy. In fact, there is a third
possibility, that there are 'small' discoveries yet to be made,
which is what most scientific research is in fact concerned
with. Moreover, even if there are big discoveries yet to be
made, that does not mean that 'everything' "scientists say now
is likely to be false", because it does not follow that all
previous knowledge has to be discarded or even revised.

For example, the previously unsuspected existence of dark
energy, now theorised to be responsible for the accelerating
expansion of the Universe, does not mean that astronomers are
wrong about the structure of the Milky Way, say, or the
composition of the Sun. There's no doubt that astronomers are
wrong about a lot things. But they are right about many more
other things. The same goes for physicists in general.

Calder also says:

"The vast number of scientists are not even trying to do
research that could lead to a Nobel prize because they don't
want to rock the boat."

Again, this is stupid. Most scientists know they are never going
to win a Nobel. Not every piece of research can be of Nobel
quality. That doesn't mean it's not interesting, useful or
important. I guess he wouldn't ever consider eating at a
restaraunt unless it had three Michelin stars, either.


Brett Holman







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   Dec > Dec 10

                Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Stevenson

From: Colin Stevenson <colsweb.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:42:47 +0000 (GMT)
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 07:23:10 -0500
Subject: Re: Mars Rail Tie/Sleeper/Shadow? - Stevenson


>UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>wrote:

>Source: JPL Labs/NASA

>http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040524a/site_B115_na
vcam_180_cyl_L-B118R1_br2.jpg

>05-24-04

>Very Strange Martian Artefact

>Click image to zoom in

>[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]

Quite obviously a Mars Bar deposited there by the Mars Bunnies
to block the path of the Rover :-)


Col








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   Dec > Dec 10

                   Re: Central Research Facility - Cammack

From: Diana Cammack <cammack.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 14:08:55 +0200
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 07:33:05 -0500
Subject: Re: Central Research Facility - Cammack


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 15:10:04 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Central Research Facility [was: Smith & Rogerson]

>>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:53:21 -0500
>>Subject: Smith & Rogerson

><snip>

>>I've never understood why UFO aficionados don't work together to
>>establish a central facility and authority which could
>>accumulate funds and expertise to address the practicalities,
>>the science of "flying saucers" and the extracurricular aspects
>>that attend to the phenomenon.

>I don't understand this either. I had thought in the 70's that
>MUFON or APRO or NICAP would have been in a position to add
>legitimacy to this research. But it seems that they were either
>corrputed by human foibles/personality or outright
>absconded/sabotaged by a murky blend of
>government/industry(?)/academia.

>>How much trouble would it be to create a non-profit - not like
>>those which have been tried or started by those not fully
>>committed to the UFO mystery but, rather, inclined to self-
>>aggrandizement - which would gather funds and equipment and
>>make it available to whomever comes credentialed to the table:
>>those who are identified, legitimately, with UFO study? (Need I
>>name them?)

>It is hard. You require a talented, energetic leader that people
>will listen to, who is open minded and pragmatic. This is a very
>valuable resource and hard to find in the world. Sure you can
>create an organization easily enough (fill out the forms, create
>a web site), but the leadership, organizational skills needed by
>the management of the organization cannot be underestimated. It
>baffles me how to go about this. I think we really need a good
>salesman who can sell the idea to a potential leader, either in
>the corporate or academic realm. I am not saying Donald Trump is
>a great leader, but he has shown a willingness to pursue rather
>different part time work (his TV show). The leader need not be
>full time but must somehow provide the saavy in creating a self-
>sustaining/flourishing organization. A good salesman should be
>easier to get, although they are rare gems.

>>If persons are truly interested in resolving the UFO question,
>>because it would be beneficial or satisfy the insatiable
>>curiosity of those who hate unresolved mysteries, they would
>>gather their monies and wherewithal and make it happen, rather
>>than discoursing ad infinitum, ad eternum, ad nauseum.

>Well, I think its about time we _stop_ paying for all the
>UFO research. It really is not fair that UFO researchers have to
>be driven into poverty because of their desire to answer the UFO
>question. Using the non-profit organization, fund raising
>activities can be generated and self sustaining mechanisms
>created.

As a development professional I have been close to a number of
NGOs started up by driven individuals, with good intentions.
Writing a proposal for funds (if you have a good idea)i s the
least of the problems  these organisations face. One, relevant
to this discussion, is the founder's syndrome, where the
organisation's founder is unable to give up his/her 'baby' to
anyone else, and continues to think that his/her input is the
most legitimate and worthwhile. These individuals set agendas,
micro-manage, exasperate newcomers, and block outsiders' new
ideas about what should be done or how to improve things.
Certainly they oppose anyone who threatens them and their
position. So, the problems you outline in UFO organisations are
not unique to them. What is needed (rather than a charismatic
individual) to establish a group is a bureaucracy, such as a
council, that can start the organisation and set/judge agenda,
activities, new material etc, based on an agreed and changable
standards, bringing in new people regularly.


Good luck!

Diana







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   Dec > Dec 10

                       Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 07:01:37 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 08:16:28 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 00:34:57 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 12:27:49 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 00:10:05 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>Magonia devoted one issue to an article by Lawson years back,
>>>and I doubt if we ever referred to it since.

>>I think you could call this historical revisionism. The
>>Magonians were enchanted for a time with Lawson's silly ideas,
>>and they are discussed prominently - with straight face and
>>without giggling, treated in other words as entirely serious -
>>in a 1984 book written by Magonia's longtime editor John
>>Rimmer, The Evidence for Alien Abductions. If it were worth my
>>time (it isn't), I have no doubt that I'd find that birth trauma
>>figured in more than one long-ago article in Magonia. I'm sure
>>Peter is simply citing the longest and most focused of them. If
>>Rogerson and Rimmer want to tell us that they no longer feel as
>>they did 20 years ago, that's fine - neither do I on a number of
>>issues, ufological and otherwise - and even healthy. But the
>>fact that they once took serious heed of birth traumas as
>>abduction generators is a matter of record.

>If you thought it was worth your time to search out back issues
>of Magonia, and your (I believe personally inscribed) copy of
>Evidence for Alien Aductions, you might spare yourself writing
>nonsense like the above paragraph. It's clear that you could
>conduct your own masterclass in historical revisionism. Lesson
>one: never bother to walk over to a bookcase to check your
>assumptions.

>We devoted most of issue 10 (1982) to Lawson's theories, as they
>were a subject of discussion in the UFO field at the time. We
>even arranged a meeting in London for ufologists to discuss
>Lawson's ideas with him. This produced debate both for and
>against the BTH, and most of the attendees felt that the
>discussion was worthwhile.

>The following issue of Magonia contained an article by the
>British researcher Ian Cresswell criticising Lawson's theory and
>detailing a number of objections to it. There were also a couple
>more pages by Lawson, drawing comparisons between abduction and
>Near-Death Experience imagery, and a contribution in the letters
>column from Christopher Allen, who from time to time adorns this
>List.

>Issue 12 contained an interesting article by one Jerome Clark,
>called "Confessions of a Fortean Skeptic"; but as far as I can
>see no further mention of the BTH appeared in our pages, and our
>interest in subsequent issues appeared to stray more towards
>discussion of the "earth lights" phenomenon.

>If he can bring himself to re-read "Evidence for Alien
>Abductions" - it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it - he
>will see that I give the idea about four pages in a 160 page
>book. My conclusion was that it was an interesting idea which
>was worth further research, but definitely not proven. Not what
>I would call "being enchanted" with Lawson's ideas, but Jerry's
>threshold of enchantment may be lower than mine.

>>Here is the late sociologist of science Marcello Truzzi, the man
>>who coined the phrase (which in his last years he rejected as
>>effectively without meaning) "extraordinary claims demand
>>extraordinary evidence." (No, Carl Sagan, usually credited, did
>>not invent the maxim. Basically, Truzzi concluded that the
>>twice-used "extraordinary" is largely a question-begging,
>>subjective judgment and that, moreover, the maxim has serious
>>flaws as a description of how science actually judges truth
>>claims. I know this from my many personal conversations with
>>Marcello, a close friend, who died, sad to say, before he could
>>write a paper or book elucidating his revised thinking.) Anyway:

>Strange that Jerry should attack Peter Rogerson for allegedly
>being in awe of authority figures, when virtually every post
>he makes to this List contains an appeal to one of his regular
>trinity of authority figures: Marcello Truzzi, Michael Swords
>and James McDonald.

I left this unsnipped because I'd like evidence handy that for
all the graceful leaping of Mr. Rimmer's practiced literary
erudition he did not depart, by a scintilla of a measurable
amount, from Mr. Clark's _too_ kind response in this thread. In
the military it would have been rhetorically asked, "Yeah,
Rimmer's pretty... but can he fight?"

With regard to authority? Well - lets looks at the authorities
being appealed to, and the manner in which that appeal is
applied. Mr. Rimmer would have us believe that there is no
appreciable difference between apples and oranges as Truzzi,
Swords, and McDonald easily trump, on any level one cares to
debate, the _best_ that an opposition could, remotely, throw up
against them.

It remains that the easy rubric of "extraordinary claims
requiring extraordinary evidence," is crap. It is, paraphrasing
Jean Van Gemert, a 'think cloak' employing a duplicitous
mechanism of an ever retreating evidentiary horizon, to preclude
thinking - not to validate it! In other words, in Mr. Rimmer's
bizarro world, the evidence - to suit a corrupted status quo -
is never good _enough_ for the claim.

This is wrong, and offensively dogmatic in its wrongness.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net








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   Dec > Dec 10

                  Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson

From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 14:06:05 +0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:55:04 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson


>From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
>To: UFO Updates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:24:17 +1100
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

Brett,

You'll have to forgive (or not) my refusal to debate your page
of defensive quibbles. On analysis they're either specious,
mutually contradictory or attempts to put words in my mouth
(like "explain").

More constructively, here's a recap:

1) Mainstream science doesn't know reason or cause of a) matter,
b) mass, c) inertia (which is also _momentum_), the three basic,
vital foundations of the 'material' - protonic - universe and
all its particles. Therefore 'science' hasn't a clue where extra
inertia of a spinning top or coin comes from, altho' it must
have same source as 'ordinary' inertia (Occam's Razor).

That's an unknown 'Force' in the universe.

2)

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/oct/m31-007.shtml

gives details of NASA's noisily previewed 1999 test of "Allais
Effect" - of total eclipses on Foucault pendulums.

After the eclipse (which also 'produced/caused' waves of
earthquakes from Greece, Turkey to Taiwan, Japan with thousands
of fatalities) there was one 'wait and see' article from NASA:

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast12oct99_1.htm

then deafening silence!

I'll ignore subsequent claims of "atmospheric cooling causing
gravity change" or "ground cooling causing tilt" 'cos either
would take too long (not instantaneous) and produce only tiny
effects - nowhere near actual results.

That's an unknown "FORCE" in the universe.

3) Einstein Podolsky & Rosen experiment, reset by Bell's Theorem and
tested by Alain Aspect gave these results:

http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/aspect1/

click on last slide for review.

Aspect himself says/asks - on last slides - "Instantaneous
change! Faster than light signalling?"

That's an unknown 'Force' in the universe.

There you are Brett - it's easy. No defensiveness, no havering,
no quibbles, no personal remarks.

Just three clear positive statements.

Cheers,

Ray D

"There is no law of nature yet known to us but may be apparently
contravened by the action of more recondite laws or forces"
                                          -Alfred Russel Wallace


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Perceptions" http://www.perceptions.couk.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~








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   Dec > Dec 10

                        Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:06:29 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:57:52 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 00:34:57 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 12:27:49 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 00:10:05 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions


Hi, John,

>If you thought it was worth your time to search out back issues
>of Magonia, and your (I believe personally inscribed) copy of
>Evidence for Alien Aductions, you might spare yourself writing
>nonsense like the above paragraph. It's clear that you could
>conduct your own masterclass in historical revisionism. Lesson
>one: never bother to walk over to a bookcase to check your
>assumptions.

What follows is a long elucidation which in no way refutes what
I said, rather more succinctly, but it does give John the chance
to say "nonsense" yet again, and I suspect that's what it's all
about.

>We devoted most of issue 10 (1982) to Lawson's theories, as
>they were a subject of discussion in the UFO field at the time.
>We even arranged a meeting in London for ufologists to discuss
>Lawson's ideas with him. This produced debate both for and
>against the BTH, and most of the attendees felt that the
>discussion was worthwhile.

>The following issue of Magonia contained an article by the
>British researcher Ian Cresswell criticising Lawson's theory and
>detailing a number of objections to it. There were also a couple
>more pages by Lawson, drawing comparisons between abduction and
>Near-Death Experience imagery, and a contribution in the letters
>column from Christopher Allen, who from time to time adorns this
>List.

Isn't his last name spelled Allan?

>If he can bring himself to re-read "Evidence for Alien
>Abductions" - it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it - he
>will see that I give the idea about four pages in a 160 page
>book. My conclusion was that it was an interesting idea which
>was worth further research, but definitely not proven. Not what
>I would call "being enchanted" with Lawson's ideas, but Jerry's
>threshold of enchantment may be lower than mine.

Alas, my copy of your book was stolen, along with a whole boxful
of other books which I still miss, while we were moving my
possessions out of my Illinois apartment in preparation for my
move back to Minnesota in April 1989. I did, however, review
your book for Fate (mostly favorably, as I'm sure you don't
recall, though I took you gently to task on the birth-trauma
stuff). I found my old review just to be sure my memory of the
favorable treatment of birth trauma was accurate. At one point,
to your credit, you do admit the obvious, that BT is "far from
being proved," while apparently still good enough to take
seriously. One has on trouble imagining what you'd do with a UFO
proponent who did the same. The review is in the December 1984
issue of Fate, pp. 100 and 102.

>>Here is the late sociologist of science Marcello Truzzi, the
>>man who coined the phrase (which in his last years he rejected
>>as effectively without meaning) "extraordinary claims demand
>>extraordinary evidence." (No, Carl Sagan, usually credited, did
>>not invent the maxim. Basically, Truzzi concluded that the
>>twice-used "extraordinary" is largely a question-begging,
>>subjective judgment and that, moreover, the maxim has serious
>>flaws as a description of how science actually judges truth
>>claims. I know this from my many personal conversations with
>>Marcello, a close friend, who died, sad to say, before he could
>>write a paper or book elucidating his revised thinking.) Anyway:

>Strange that Jerry should attack Peter Rogerson for allegedly
>being in awe of authority figures, when virtually every post he
>makes to this List contains an appeal to one of his regular
>trinity of authority figures: Marcello Truzzi, Michael Swords
>and James McDonald.

These are "authority figures," huh? My, my, the strange, closed,
provincial world of the Magonian. I'll have to tell Mike Swords
what you said about him next time I see him; he'll be amused.
I'm sure that wherever they are now, Truzzi and McDonald are
smiling wistfully and murmuring, "If only...."

Jerry Clark







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                        Re: Central Research Facility

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:15:37 +0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:58:58 -0500
Subject: Re: Central Research Facility


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 15:10:04 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Central Research Facility [was: Smith & Rogerson]

>>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:53:21 -0500
>>Subject: Smith & Rogerson

>>I've never understood why UFO aficionados don't work together to
>>establish a central facility and authority which could
>>accumulate funds and expertise to address the practicalities,
>>the science of "flying saucers" and the extracurricular aspects
>>that attend to the phenomenon.

>I don't understand this either. I had thought in the 70's that
>MUFON or APRO or NICAP would have been in a position to add
>legitimacy to this research. But it seems that they were either
>corrputed by human foibles/personality or outright
>absconded/sabotaged by a murky blend of
>government/industry(?)/academia.

<snip>

Wrong! NICAP was very successful as long as it lasted (the track
record is there to see if people would only look, for example,
at www.nicap.org). We added a hell of a lot of legitimacy. The
problem all along was lack of financial support. Running a
successful organization requires a fairly large amount of money.
As I recall, we never had a six-figure annual budget and often
very much less than that. Also, NICAP didn't make it far into
the 1970s. It was pretty well burnt out by 1970 as far as
practical effectiveness. - Dick (Former Assistant Director and
Acting Director of NICAP).

P.S. I am still looking for someone with legitimate
historian/scholarly/journalistic credentials to do a history of
NICAP and the early UFO years. I have all the relevant
information and will cooperate fully with the right person.








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   Dec > Dec 10

                         Re: Alien Abductions - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:29:50 +0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:59:58 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Hall


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 07:01:37 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 00:34:57 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 12:27:49 -0600
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

<snip>

>>Strange that Jerry should attack Peter Rogerson for allegedly
>>being in awe of authority figures, when virtually every post
>>he makes to this List contains an appeal to one of his regular
>>trinity of authority figures: Marcello Truzzi, Michael Swords
>>and James McDonald.

>I left this unsnipped because I'd like evidence handy that for
>all the graceful leaping of Mr. Rimmer's practiced literary
>erudition he did not depart, by a scintilla of a measurable
>amount, from Mr. Clark's _too_ kind response in this thread. In
>the military it would have been rhetorically asked, "Yeah,
>Rimmer's pretty... but can he fight?"

>With regard to authority? Well - lets looks at the authorities
>being appealed to, and the manner in which that appeal is
>applied. Mr. Rimmer would have us believe that there is no
>appreciable difference between apples and oranges as Truzzi,
>Swords, and McDonald easily trump, on any level one cares to
>debate, the _best_ that an opposition could, remotely, throw up
>against them.

In terms of educational background, experience, and intellectual
acuity, that's a potent trio indeed.

>It remains that the easy rubric of "extraordinary claims
>requiring extraordinary evidence," is crap. It is, paraphrasing
>Jean Van Gemert, a 'think cloak' employing a duplicitous
>mechanism of an ever retreating evidentiary horizon, to preclude
>thinking - not to validate it! In other words, in Mr. Rimmer's
>bizarro world, the evidence - to suit a corrupted status quo -
>is never good _enough_ for the claim.

>This is wrong, and offensively dogmatic in its wrongness.

I like Budd Hopkins' variation on this theme, which throws it
back in the faces of the skeptibunkers: "Extraordinary events
require extraoordinary investigation" (as opposed to glib and
facile rejection).


 -- Dick








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                   Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal

From: David Rudiak <drudiak.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:03:14 -0800
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:03:06 -0500
Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal


>From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 16:55:35 -0500
>Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

>>From: David Rudiak <drudiak.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:39:32 -0800
>>Subject: Re: Magnetism Does Not Cause Paranormal Experiences

<snip>

Eleanor,

Thanks for the information. I once wrote a 50 page paper on the
many variables involved in optimizing magnetic
neuro-stimulation. To try to boil a very complex subject down
to the simplest terms, two key points of comparison between
commercial mag stimulators and Persinger apparatus are the power
output and the coil size

The power through the coils of the Persinger apparatus is
seemingly on the order of 0.5 to 1 watt (5V x .1 or .2 Amp). In
contrast, the most potent commercial mag stimulator when I was
working dumped about 500 joules of energy into a 100 microsecond
pulse for a peak power output of about 5 million watts!

Thus the difference in power outputs is on the order of 5 to 10
million!

Coil size is important because the magnetic field generated by
the coil falls off rapidly below the coil. What counts is how
much is left by the time one gets down to the cerebral cortex
(about 1.5 to 2 cm below the scalp) or even deeper. (We found,
e.g., that visual phosphenes were actually being generated below
the cortex in the white matter, about 4 cm deep.)

My calculations showed that flat coils about 10-12 cms in
diameter were optimal for stimulation at cortical depths.
Approximately 80-90% of the surface field strength remains at
these depths for coils of these sizes.

A relay solenoid is probably about 1/10th this diameter and
nonflat. The combination contributes approximately another
factor of 10 (or more) decrease in stimulus strength at the
required depths.

Overall the ratio of stimulus strength of a commercial magstim
to the Persinger apparatus is at least 50 million to 100 million
to one. That's like comparing a million dollars to a penny. Yet
Persinger is claiming is get more kick for his penny (complex
hallucinations like alien abductions) than other scientists are
getting for their million dollars. I don't buy it.

"Electronic harrassment," as I understand it, involves beaming
microwaves at people. It's not the same as magnetic
neurostimulation. For one thing, microwaves are in the gigahertz
frequency range, and the physiological effects have to do with
the electric field component of the electromagnetic field, not
the magnetic. At least some of the physiologic effects (such as
induced hearing) have to do with tissue heating rather than
direct nerve stimulation.

Persinger, in contrast, was claiming direct brain stimulation
with extremely weak magnetic fields in the low frequency wall
socket range (~60 Hz). It's like comparing apples and oranges.


David Rudiak








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              Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison

From: Diane Harrison <auforn.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:05:19 +1000
Fwd Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 22:57:38 -0500
Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison


Hi everyone,

I was in Darwin the night of the sighting, I guess I was in the
right place at the right time.

I've spoken to the witnesses Nigel & Julie Lynn and am presently
compiling a report. I have placed an enlarged colour image of
the object on the AUFORN web page for viewing:

http://www.hypermax.net.au/~auforn/Darwin.html

Nigel said at first he thought it might be a helicopter but
there was no noise and it didn't move. Nigel took a picture of
the object through his binoculars with his digital camera set at
6.1 mp.

The object was first sighted at approximately 20:30 hrs EST, in
a East South East direction at about 45 deg above the horizon.

Nigel & Julie watched the object for about 2 hours in which they
said in that time it did not appear to move in any direction.

The objects lights continually alternated red, green and blue
Nigel said they appeared like port and starboard lights on a
plane.  Nigel said it appeared there were also 6 points of light
which he could see with his naked eye.

Approximately 2 hours later at 00:30 hrs on Sunday it had moved
 to a position approximately 60 deg to the north of the first
position.

They did not see it move they just came outside at that time to
look again prior to going to bed.

Nigel  said he would appreciate any help in identifying the
object. Nigel said, what it is he certainly does not know and
obviously there is an answer.

I will keep you posted - still under investigation


Regards Diane Harrison
The Australian UFO Research Network

~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>
THE AUSTRALIAN UFO RESEARCH NETWORK
(A Non-Profit Organization)

E-Mail: auforn.nul
E-mail: ufologist.nul
http://www.hypermax.net.au/~auforn

ADMINISTRATION:

PO Box 738
Beaudessert 4285
QLD  Australia
Tel 07 55 487205
~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>
Australian UFO Research Network Hotline Number
          1800 77 22 88 Freecall
~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>

All NEW UFO Bookshop at
http://www.contactpublishing.com







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                    Re: Central Research Facility - Smith

From: Jim Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:25:07 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:25:16 -0500
Subject: Re: Central Research Facility - Smith


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:15:37 +0000
>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 15:10:04 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>Subject: Central Research Facility [was: Smith & Rogerson]

>Wrong! NICAP was very successful as long as it lasted (the track
>record is there to see if people would only look, for example,
>at www.nicap.org). We added a hell of a lot of legitimacy.

I remember "supporting" it as a teenager and getting the
newsletter. It seemed the most respectable at the time although
APRO had some better photos in their's and more intriguing
cases. MUFON seemed least professional back then, but heck, it's
survived!








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                    Re: Is It Time To Scrap SETI? - White

From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:39:36 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:27:30 -0500
Subject: Re: Is It Time To Scrap SETI? - White


>Source: ABC News

>http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=311101&page=1

>12-09-04

>Commentary by Lee Dye

>Is It Time To Scrap SETI?

>Researchers Claim Listening For Signals From ET Is Futile

<snip>

>Don't count on it, say researchers from three institutions. Any
>advanced civilization would likely encode and compress their
>communications to make their systems more efficient, just as
>your computer compresses files that you send over the Internet,
>the researchers argue in a report in a recent issue of the
>"American Journal of Physics."

Compressed data signals still have a degree of regularity, at
least data packet separator strings which would appear
regularly. I suspect that even though we might have a very tough
time decoding the packets, we would still see enough
regularities that compressed data would stand out against
thermal noise. I can't prove that, but if conventional
electromagnetic transmission were used, odds are pretty good the
compressed data would be sent using pretty well fixed length
packets, even by ETs.


Eleanor White








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                                  Geminids

From: Chris Rutkowski <rutkows.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:48:06 -0600 (CST)
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:32:00 -0500
Subject: Geminids


On Fri, 10 Dec 2004, The Norm wrote:

>Posted December 10, 2004
>at the space.com website

>"Strong Meteor Shower Peaks Monday Night"

>http://www.space.com/spacewatch/041210_geminid_meteors.html

>This article is also posted at the NBC website with the title
>"Your guide to a 'gem' of a meteor show"

>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6692779

>Quote from article:

>"Geminids rank as the year's most reliable display, and viewing
>conditions are ideal this year"

>-----

>Comment:

>I suspect that report "UFO sightings" probably increase
>substantially during meteor showers when there are conditions
of good visibility. Chris Rutkowski may have already
>statistically analyzed his national UFO data to determine if
>such a relationship exists.

I have discussed the problem of meteors and bolides with Geoff
Dittman and he will likely do a p-test or some other correlative
analysis of UFO data for the 2004 reports.

Informally, I have noted that while we do get some UFO reports
around peaks of meteor showers, some showers come and go without
any UFO reports, but we do get reports of bolides that are not
recorded by meteor observing sites and we also get many UFO
reports that do not occur anywhere near peaks of meteor showers.

So, while people do see brilliant meteors during meteor showers
and sometimes report them as UFOs, the number of UFO sightings
does not appear to peak with meteor shower peaks, at least not
from a look at the data. A more rigourous statistical study will
be done to address this issue.








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer

From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:21:15 +0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:38:35 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:06:29 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 00:34:57 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>If you thought it was worth your time to search out back issues
>>of Magonia, and your (I believe personally inscribed) copy of
>>Evidence for Alien Aductions, you might spare yourself writing
>>nonsense like the above paragraph. It's clear that you could
>>conduct your own masterclass in historical revisionism. Lesson
>>one: never bother to walk over to a bookcase to check your
>>assumptions.

>What follows is a long elucidation which in no way refutes what
>I said, rather more succinctly, but it does give John the chance
>to say "nonsense" yet again, and I suspect that's what it's all
>about.

Actually, it _does_ refute what you said, which is why I wrote
it, and I must assure Jerry that in the field of ufology I am
seldom short of excuses to say 'nonsense'.

>>We devoted most of issue 10 (1982) to Lawson's theories, as
>>they were a subject of discussion in the UFO field at the time.
>>We even arranged a meeting in London for ufologists to discuss
>>Lawson's ideas with him. This produced debate both for and
>>against the BTH, and most of the attendees felt that the
>>discussion was worthwhile.

>>The following issue of Magonia contained an article by the
>>British researcher Ian Cresswell criticising Lawson's theory and
>>detailing a number of objections to it. There were also a couple
>>more pages by Lawson, drawing comparisons between abduction and
>>Near-Death Experience imagery, and a contribution in the letters
>>column from Christopher Allen, who from time to time adorns this
>>List.

>Isn't his last name spelled Allan?

But of course! Once again your proof-reading skills give you an
opportunity to avoid making any more relevant comments - and I
suspect that's what it's all about.

>>If he can bring himself to re-read "Evidence for Alien
>>Abductions" - it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it - he
>>will see that I give the idea about four pages in a 160 page
>>book. My conclusion was that it was an interesting idea which
>>was worth further research, but definitely not proven. Not what
>>I would call "being enchanted" with Lawson's ideas, but Jerry's
>>threshold of enchantment may be lower than mine.

>Alas, my copy of your book was stolen, along with a whole boxful
>of other books which I still miss, while we were moving my
>possessions out of my Illinois apartment in preparation for my
>move back to Minnesota in April 1989. I did, however, review
>your book for Fate (mostly favorably, as I'm sure you don't
>recall, though I took you gently to task on the birth-trauma
>stuff). I found my old review just to be sure my memory of the
>favorable treatment of birth trauma was accurate. At one point,
>to your credit, you do admit the obvious, that BT is "far from
>being proved," while apparently still good enough to take
>seriously.

Doesn't sound too much like the "enchantment" and cheer-leading
you accuse Peter Rogerson of - a person who, as far as I can
recall, made no contribution at all to the debate in Magonia.
BTH was an idea put forward by someone who had actually done
some ufological experiments and had published the results. Yes -
 it was worth taking seriously, and it was worth discussing, as
is any novel theory that is put forward in a rational way.
Discussing such a theory - even perhaps saying that it is worthy
of further research - seems to me quite reasonable.

There was no further research into the BTH, people pointed out
the problems inherent in it, and the idea seems to have run into
the ground, but I make no apology for raising the topic in
Magonia.

>One has on trouble imagining what you'd do with a UFO
>proponent who did the same.

Does this sentence make any sense?

>>Strange that Jerry should attack Peter Rogerson for allegedly
>>being in awe of authority figures, when virtually every post he
>>makes to this List contains an appeal to one of his regular
>>trinity of authority figures: Marcello Truzzi, Michael Swords
>>and James McDonald.

>These are "authority figures," huh? My, my, the strange, closed,
>provincial world of the Magonian. I'll have to tell Mike Swords
>what you said about him next time I see him; he'll be amused.
>I'm sure that wherever they are now, Truzzi and McDonald are
>smiling wistfully and murmuring, "If only...."

A couple of other people responding to my comment, including the
ineffable Mr Lehmberg, certainly do regard them as authority
figures, and if you do not regard them as authority figures, why
does their wit and wisdom feature so often in your postings?

"Authority: [...] book, quotation considered to settle a
question, evidence, declaration that may be cited in support of
a statement, person whose opinion is accepted [...] on a
subject." Concise Oxford Dictionary.


--
John Rimmer,
from the strange, closed, provincial world of Magonia Magazine.
www.magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/00/newmag.htm







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              Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:54:10 +0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:38:58 -0500
Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -


>From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates <UFOUpdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:52:51 -0700
>Subject: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>Fellow Listarians,

>As you know I offered to accompany Ed Gerhman to the alleged
>site of a crash/retrieval near Socorro, NM, he feels corresponds
>to the description given by the cameraman of the infamous Alien
>Autopsy film. I have prepared a preliminary report, which I
>promised UFO UpDates denizens and it can be found at:

>http://www.thewhyfiles.net/gehrman.htm

>Thank you to Geoff Richardson of the Why Files for posting my
>report. I hope readers find it of interest.

>Unfortunately, I will be unavailable for further comments on the
>matter and will be visiting the site several more times in the
>coming year.

>Wendy Connors
>www.fadeddiscs.com

I guess I am just hopelessly dumb, since I can't find any link
to click on to read Wendy's report as the instructions tell us
to do.


 - Dick








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                  Re: Central Research Facility - Maccabee

From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 18:34:44 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:43:02 -0500
Subject: Re: Central Research Facility - Maccabee


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 15:10:04 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Central Research Facility [was: Smith & Rogerson]

>>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:53:21 -0500
>>Subject: Smith & Rogerson

><snip>

>>I've never understood why UFO aficionados don't work together to
>>establish a central facility and authority which could
>>accumulate funds and expertise to address the practicalities,
>>the science of "flying saucers" and the extracurricular aspects
>>that attend to the phenomenon.
<snip>
>
>Well, I think its about time we _stop_ paying for all the
>UFO research. It really is not fair that UFO researchers have to
>be driven into poverty because of their desire to answer the UFO
>question. Using the non-profit organization, fund raising
>activities can be generated and self sustaining mechanisms
>created.

The Fund for UFO Research was set up for this in 1979. Since
then it has disbursed over half a million dollars for UFO
related research - much of that went into the Roper about 10
years ago. However, there is no well-funded "institute of
ufology" or something comparable.








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   Dec > Dec 11

                        Fire Chief Prepares For UFOs

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 18:34:48 EST
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:48:30 -0500
Subject: Fire Chief Prepares For UFOs


Source: The Pulse-Journal - Liberty Township, Ohio

http://www.pulsejournal.com/news/content/news/2004/12/09/pj1209japantv.html

12-09-04


Deerfield Twp. prepared for UFO sightings
Deerfield Twp. fire chief interviewed by Japanese TV show

Thursday, December 09, 2004

Residents can feel at ease knowing if an Unidentified Flying
Object landed in the area, the Deerfield Twp. Fire Rescue would
be prepared for the situation.

Deerfield Twp. Fire Rescue Chief Bill Kramer is the co-author of
a 1992 manual that serves as a guide for fire departments in
disaster control. Along with Charles Bahme, Kramer penned a
chapter in the manual Fire Officer's Guide to Disaster Control
on how fire departments should react if a UFO lands.

The chapter intrigued producers of the Japanese game show
"Fountain of Trivia," which is based on 'useless knowledge',
independent California-based producer Sam Onoda said. On Monday,
producers from the show interviewed Kramer about the chapter in
the manual.

Kramer said fire rescue personnel would be the first called if a
UFO lands. Although there have not been any real encounters with
UFOs, Kramer said the chapter essentially deals with panic
control. He said there have been a number of incidents over the
years that have induced panic.

He said the chapter can be used if panic is induced in other
sightings, such as a few years ago in Cold Springs, Ky., with a
religious sighting. Kramer said the book was on hand with a fire
department in upstate New York when there were calls to the fire
department of flames in the sky over a field. Kramer said
investigators the next day saw burned circles in the field.

"They were prepared to use it, but didn't," he said.

The chapter directs firefighters to approach real or perceived
UFOs the same way as if they were approaching a hazardous
materials call =97 passively. Kramer said if an unknown situation
like this arises, a firefighter doesn't want to do anything that
could make the situation worse.

Onoda said the chapter on UFOs is fascinating to the Japanese
culture because, although some believe in UFOs, the majority of
the culture doesn't think much of it. The show will appear in
Japan on New Year's Day.

Kramer believes there is other intelligent life than on Earth,
and said he had, what he called, somewhat of a close encounter.

"I encountered things that were totally unexplainable," said
Kramer, a private pilot. "I believe there is life beyond what we
have on this planet. The closest thing I have seen were high
speed lights flying, faster than anything I have seen."

Kramer said the manual will be revised in about two years.

The show is re-aired in the United States under Hey! Spring of
Trivia on Spike TV, but Onoda is uncertain if the episode Kramer
will appear in a rebroadcast.








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                        Man Made UFOs, Kentucky Style

From: William H Bolt <AB5SY.nul>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 19:23:20 -0800 (PST)
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:51:16 -0500
Subject: Man Made UFOs, Kentucky Style


Space the final frontier.
Today your back yard.
Tomorrow the rubber rub
courtesy of the wife.....

Disclaimer: I know nuttin' about this guy, in fact you did not
receive this from me. You do have to admit he appears to be
enjoying himself.


http://www.geocities.com/~kentuckymufon/lifters.html









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                Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 01:05:58 -0600
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:54:56 -0500
Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - King


>From: Diane Harrison <auforn.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:05:19 +1000
>Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin

>I was in Darwin the night of the sighting, I guess I was in the
>right place at the right time.

>I've spoken to the witnesses Nigel & Julie Lynn and am presently
>compiling a report. I have placed an enlarged colour image of
>the object on the AUFORN web page for viewing:

>http://www.hypermax.net.au/~auforn/Darwin.html

<snip>

Hi Diane,

The image is interesting. If the photo was framing a subject 45
degrees up from the horizon, and the object is in the center of
the frame top to bottom, as it appears to be, the image should
include the Pleiades, which at 8:30pm on Dec. 4, 2004 would have
been in the ENE sky in the near vicinity, certainly in view
of this photographer's camera.

While the Pleiades don't hover in place for 2 hours and then move
north in an instant, they do move slowly to the north and further
up the sky, and by 12:30AM would have covered the approximate
distance if the viewer intended to say that the object had moved
to a position of 60 degrees from its 45 degree position. I can't
say without further information. I don't think he meant it moved
laterally 60 degrees because he said it moved north. and from ENE
you don't have 60 degrees to the north...it becomes west.

I found several images of the Pleiades which appear similar to the
image...

http://tinyurl.com/6od5e
http://tinyurl.com/62hx5
http://tinyurl.com/3w75f

This last image closely resembles the pattern of lights in the
UFO image. Factoring the unconventional camera to binoculars
setup, some distortion could be expected. Again more information
is required as to the specific equipment and configuration
involved.

Based on the absence of the Pleiades, the brightest objects in
the vicinity of the UFO position, and since the Pleiades are
visible even to the naked eye, I tentatively suggest that the
image is of the Pleiades. With more information on the
conditions... weather, camera specs, binocular specs,
camera/binoc interface method, etc.

The image as shown reveals the object as little more than a
pinpoint. The viewer said the camera was 'set to 6.1 MP'. I'm
not sure if this is a resolution indicator or not. If it is,
then I suspect that it is an interpolated 'hi-res' image. The
extreme magnification of the inset, coupled with this
interpolated (artificial) hi-res, if used, would render the
inset of little value in judging the appearance of the object
itself. Interpolated hi res is akin to digital zoom, where image
quality is sacrificed for a larger or seemingly closer subject.
The two are not directly related, but their deleterious effects
on very small subjects in digital photos is painfully well-
 known.

When taking digital photos of aerial phenomena, the best setup
is to have the camera set to its native resolution, with the
finest grain setting possible. The camera should be on a tripod,
and if you have a telephoto add-on lens, add it on. See if your
camera will export RAW format images. This will result in a file
that you can send elsewhere that represents the very closest
representation of what the camera actually recorded. Any good
photo analyst will be able to open the RAW file. Viewer software
is available on the web, so you can view them as well. You may
have to have PSP or Photoshop, though.

The camera RAW image will avoid the inevitable re-pixelization
of the JPG process, and will provide a pristine specimen for
analysis.

I realize that a typical UFO sighting would not afford the time
for the preparations I described. In the case of this sighting
however, there was ample time to acquire good images with the
camera alone, and time to compare size and shape over time. That
would have been excellent additional evidence.


Just my preliminary thoughts.

Kyle








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             1952 Military Engagement With UFOs Myth Or Mystery?

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:59:13 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:59:13 -0500
Subject: 1952 Military Engagement With UFOs Myth Or Mystery?




Source: Florida Today

http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/peoplestoryL1211UFO0.htm

12-10-04


1952 Military Engagement With UFOs Myth Or Mystery?

Port Orange man details the day in 1952 when Air Force took on
UFOs

By Billy Cox
Florida Today

In an account of a military engagement sure to leave critics
scoffing, a UFO investigator claims more than a dozen U.S. Air
Force jet fighters were destroyed by flying saucers on a single
day in 1952. But not before their guns and rockets crippled
several UFOs that wound up making emergency landings in rural
West Virginia.

"I know how it sounds," says Frank Feschino, the Port Orange
artist whose new book attempts to reconstruct what would be the
biggest dogfight since the Marianas Turkey Shoot in 1944. "But I
think it's going to come out real soon. There's a lot of guys
out there who know what happened but are too scared to talk."

Feschino's book - "The Braxton County Monster: The Cover-Up of
the Flatwoods Monster Revealed" (Quarrier Press, $29.95) -
 revisits a mystery that has been a part of West Virginia lore
for more than half a century.

At its core are a dozen eyewitnesses to a strange, robotic
creature that appeared on a hilltop following the crash of an
alleged meteor on the evening of Sept. 12, 1952. But following
an investigation that took 14 years to research and write,
Feschino claims the beginning of the incident involved a UFO air
battle that began in Florida, shifted to the Eastern seaboard
and ended in an Air Force whitewash.

Thirty five years ago this month, the USAF officially terminated
its UFO study, called Project Blue Book, by concluding there
were no national security aspects to the phenomenon. Arguably
the most hectic phase of Blue Book's 22-year existence was 1952,
when a record 1,501 reports were logged. July was the busiest
month. Warplanes were scrambled to chase nocturnal UFOs that
buzzed Washington, D.C., on consecutive weekends.

Even Patrick Air Force Base got splashed by the wave on July 18
of that year, when seven on-base airmen observed a series of
silent amber-red objects approaching restricted air space late
one evening. One UFO passed directly overhead before pulling a
180-degree U-turn and disappearing to the west. According to the
Blue Book reports, none of the objects were spotted on radar and
no planes were dispatched to confront them.

Blue Book ruled the avalanche of UFO sightings across the
southeast on Sept. 12, 1952, could be attributed to a meteor.

But no meteor showers were scheduled for that night, and the
Harvard Meteor Project, which tracked 2,500 cosmic fireballs
from 1952 to '54, recorded no activity on that date.

Feschino also quotes Indian Harbour Beach astronomer Hal
Povenmire, author of "Fireballs, Meteors and Meteorites," as
dismissing the meteor explanation. Povenmire declined to comment
on Feschino's book, but he reiterated his stance for FLORIDA
TODAY: "It definitely wasn't a meteor."

Retired Air Force Col. William Coleman, chief spokesman for Blue
Book in the 1960s and head of the USAF's Public Information
Office from 1969 to '74, wasn't around for the 1952
investigation, and could only speculate on the meteor theory.
"Occasionally, you'll get a loner when you're not passing
through a belt," he says from his home in Indian Harbour Beach.
"It'll come in on a flat trajectory, which means it'll be
exposed to a longer burn in the atmosphere and leave a longer
trail."

But Coleman is emphatic about one thing: No military aircraft
were ever destroyed during UFO encounters.

"Of all the (12,618) reports we collected, only 105 cases were
what we'd call 'worrisome,' from a military point of view," says
Coleman, who chased a UFO in a bomber in 1955. "These might
involve pilots seeing things in the air that also showed up as
solid objects on radar. Sometimes they'd pace our planes,
sometimes they'd depart abruptly. But we never lost anything to
hostile activity."

Speaking during a book-signing tour in Charleston, W.Va., where
sales are brisk, Feschino says he began looking into the
Flatwoods Monster case in 1990. Ten local kids and an adult,
Kathleen May, were alerted when a flaming, low-flying object
apparently went down early one Friday evening on a hilltop
outside rural Flatwoods. After hiking to investigate, they
stumbled upon a "monster," reported to be 12 feet tall, lurking
in a tree. It glided away upon an apron of flames, but not
before dribbling what appeared to be an oily fluid onto the
ground and their clothing.

Feschino says he grew more intrigued when he read scores of old
newspaper clippings about other UFO activity that night, from
Pennsylvania to Florida. Many reported objects trailing tails of
fire, following three separate westward trajectories from the
Atlantic Ocean. Especially compelling were newspaper reports
concerning the loss of an F-94 Sabrejet fighter over the Gulf of
Mexico earlier in the day.

Flying out of Tyndall AFB near Panama City with three other
jets, Lt. John Jones, the pilot, and radar operator Lt. John
DelCurto apparently got separated during bad weather, were
ordered to land at Moody AFB in Georgia before losing radio
contact, and presumably crashed after running out of fuel. Their
bodies were never recovered. Feschino doesn't buy that story.

When he attempted to locate official records of the incident
through military archives, Feschino says he got a bureaucratic
runaround and was informed paperwork on those pilots doesn't
exist. (Feschino interviewed DelCurto's brother in Oregon, and
took a photo of Jones' memorial marker in Ocala.) Upon matching
additional air defense activity that day with the numerous UFO
reports, Feschino began assembling time lines, integrating them
into maps, and produced a unified field theory that "as many as
20" American planes attacked, and were shot down by, UFOs.

"The Braxton County Monster" goes into exhaustive - not to
mention inferential, unsourced and highly speculative - detail
to support Feschino's other premise, that multiple sightings
over the Flatwoods area on Sept. 12 was a "rescue mission" to
salvage a damaged spacecraft.

"Of course you could cover this up," insists the Connecticut
native. "They do it all the time. Look at all the planes that
got shot down during the Cold War on missions that didn't
supposedly exist. They made up cover stories and told the
families back home all sorts of lies."

That's true, says historian William E. Burrows. But the author
of "By Any Means Necessary: America's Secret Air War" doubts
UFOs were in the mix.

The director of New York University's graduate program for
science and environmental reporting says up to 166 U.S.
servicemen were shot down over Russia, China and North Korea in
16 attacks between 1950 and 1969.

"They would always attribute it to navigational errors or
typhoons, because they had to say something to the wives and
kids," Burrows says. "It always bothered me, because these guys
were brave men who were made to look like nitwits. But I don't
believe in UFOs. And as soon as the Cold War ended, the UFO
sightings ended."

Feschino says Flatwoods had nothing to do with the Cold War. He
interviewed retired Army colonel Dale Leavitt who, on Sept. 12,
1952, said he got an order from the Air Force to investigate the
West Virginia crash site. Then with the National Guard, Leavitt
said he led a 30-man detachment to the area, where they found
minor debris and burned vegetation, which they forwarded to the
USAF. Before his death, Leavitt told Feschino he never learned
the results.

"I find it very strange that the military would send troops out
to investigate a meteor," Feschino says. "That doesn't make any
sense."

Feschino's efforts notwithstanding, the Flatwoods case will
likely remain the stuff of legend, pending military eyewitness
testimony. But that may not happen soon. Despite Blue Book's
assertion that the military is no longer interested in the
phenomenon, UFOs continue to fall under the cloak of national
security, according to John Greenewald.

A television producer who posts UFO-related government documents
on his Web site - www.blackvault.com - Greenewald showcases
Air Force manuals instructing pilots on how to report
unidentified flying objects. The system is called Communications
for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings (CIRVIS), and reports
are forwarded to the North American Aerospace Defense Command,
which tracks unidentified objects entering U.S. and Canadian air
space.

"They're hard to get," says Greenewald, "because NORAD says
they're exempt from FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests."

Contact Cox at 242-3774 or bcox.nul


Available online

The Braxton County Monster: The Cover-Up of the Flatwoods
Monster Revealed - by Frank Feschino (Quarrier Press, $29.95)
The book can be ordered online at www.flatwoodsmonster.com








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   Dec > Dec 11

                  Debate On Secret Program Bursts Into Open

From: Diana Cammack <cammack.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:50:55 +0200
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 08:06:47 -0500
Subject: Debate On Secret Program Bursts Into Open


'Space Warfare' Technology?

-----

Source: Truth Out - Sherman Oaks, California

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121104X.shtml


12-10-04

Debate On Secret Program Bursts Into Open
By Douglas Jehl
The New York Times

Washington - An intense secret debate about a previously
unknown, enormously expensive technical intelligence program has
burst into light in the form of scathing criticism from members
of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

For two years, the senators have disclosed, Republicans and
Democrats on the panel have voted to block the secret program,
which is believed to be a system of new spy satellites. But it
continues to be financed at a cost that former Congressional
officials put at hundreds of millions of dollars a year with
support from the House, the Bush administration and
Congressional appropriations committees.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking
Democrat on the panel, denounced the program on Wednesday on the
Senate floor as "totally unjustified and very, very wasteful."

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, later called it
"unnecessary, ineffective, over budget and too expensive."

Neither senator would say much more about what he was referring
to. Even in private on Thursday, most Congressional and
intelligence officials who were asked refused to comment about
the name, purpose or cost of the program. But former
Congressional and intelligence officials who oppose it said it
would duplicate capabilities in existence or in development, as
part of the country's vast network of satellites, aircraft and
drones designed for eavesdropping and reconnaissance.

Among the possibilities suggested by private experts, including
John Pike of Globalsecurity.org, a research organization in
Alexandria, Va., were that the system might be a controversial
unproven program to launch a reconnaissance satellite that
adversaries could not detect. Former Congressional officials
said they would discount speculation that the debate had to do
with any antisatellite space warfare capability.

A number of satellite programs in development, including a
Future Imaging Architecture system that Boeing is developing,
have been the subject of considerable public controversy,
because of technical problems and cost overruns. But current and
former government officials said they did not believe that the
Boeing program was the subject of the new dispute.

In addition to Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Wyden, two other
Democratic senators made their opposition public on Wednesday,
saying the money dedicated to the acquisition program could
better be transferred to other intelligence gathering as part of
what is widely understood to be the $40 billion intelligence
budget.

The program being disputed by the senators is to be financed
this year, but current and former government officials said
Republicans as well as Democrats intended to redouble their
efforts to block it.

The White House and the Central Intelligence Agency did not
respond to a request for comment about the dispute. The
Republican chairman of the House military appropriations
subcommittee, whose support for the program has been
instrumental in keeping it alive, also did not respond to a
request for comment.

The most specific public hints on the program were by Mr. Wyden,
who said on the Senate floor, "This issue must be highlighted,
because it is not going away."

"Numerous independent reviews," he said, "have concluded that
the program does not fulfill a major intelligence gap or
shortfall, and the original justification for developing this
technology has eroded in importance due to the changed practices
and capabilities of our adversaries. There are a number of other
programs in existence and in development whose capabilities can
match those envisioned for this program at far less cost and
technological risk."

The Senate Intelligence Committee first expressed concern about
the program three years ago, and it has voted to block it for
the last two years, Congressional officials said. A former
Defense Department official said of the program: "This is
something that does not pass muster and is indicative of the
inability of intelligence agencies to prioritize or make
decisions. There are billions of dollars of waste in the
intelligence budget."

A former Congressional official said that "hard decisions should
have been made to make choices" when Congress first authorized
and appropriated the money several years ago.

"Instead," the former official said, "the decision was made to
just go ahead with go with everything."

Even the $40 billion figure attached to the current intelligence
budget remains no more than an estimate, because spending
figures remain classified by law. But much of the budget is
widely understood to be devoted to the design, construction and
operation of satellites and other platforms used to collect
images, signals and other forms of technical intelligence.

Many critics have long complained that human intelligence
programs remain underfinanced, at least in relative terms. In a
directive last month, President Bush asked the C.I.A. to spell
out a plan and a timetable to increase its clandestine service
by 50 percent.

A compromise negotiated between the House and Senate this week
provides authorization for continued financing for the disputed
program. It was approved by 13 of the 17 senators on the
Intelligence Committee and all of their House counterparts.

Because the financing had been approved in a military
appropriations bill, Congressional officials said, the
authorizing committees did not have the power to transfer the
money to other intelligence programs.

But an unclassified version of the conference report released on
Wednesday reported that Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and
Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, both Democrats, along with Mr.
Rockefeller and Mr. Wyden, had refused to sign the compromise.

The report said the senators believed that the money dedicated
for what was described only as "a major acquisition program"
ought to be "expended on other intelligence programs that will
make a surer and greater contribution to national security."







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   Dec > Dec 11

              Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -

From: Geoff Richardson <geoff.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 12:59:30 -0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 08:36:51 -0500
Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:54:10 +0000
>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates <UFOUpdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:52:51 -0700
>>Subject: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>http://www.thewhyfiles.net/gehrman.htm

>I guess I am just hopelessly dumb, since I can't find any link
>to click on to read Wendy's report as the instructions tell us
>to do.


There is a paragraph at top of the page which provides access to
the report. Just click on PDF format or Word format.

Geoff Richardson








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                       Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:36:26 -0600
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 08:43:20 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:21:15 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:06:29 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 00:34:57 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>If you thought it was worth your time to search out back issues
>>>of Magonia, and your (I believe personally inscribed) copy of
>>>Evidence for Alien Aductions, you might spare yourself writing
>>>nonsense like the above paragraph. It's clear that you could
>>>conduct your own masterclass in historical revisionism. Lesson
>>>one: never bother to walk over to a bookcase to check your
>>>assumptions.

>>What follows is a long elucidation which in no way refutes what
>>I said, rather more succinctly, but it does give John the chance
>>to say "nonsense" yet again, and I suspect that's what it's all
>>about.

>Actually, it _does_ refute what you said, which is why I wrote
>it, and I must assure Jerry that in the field of ufology I am
>seldom short of excuses to say 'nonsense'.

Astonishing performance and a wonderful demonstration that while
it is obvious that you _can_ fight after a fashion, Sir, your
tools are sleight of literary-hand and well-oiled verbal presto-
digitation. These confident sounding but mal-applied tools are
a mechanism of distraction, only. They depend on too narrow a
focus, too complacent a philosophy, and too canted a world view
- rigid attitudes not remotely cognizant of "near endless time,
unguessed at space, and near infinite surface area" extant
around us. And not really 'interested' either. You don't suggest
answer to anything, Mr. Rimmer, you only ridicule question.

I trust this was "ineffable" enough for you, Sir, forgetting the
irony that I suspect you find me abundantly enough, if not
_distressingly_ utterable.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







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   Dec > Dec 11

              Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:30:17 +0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:33:57 -0500
Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -


>From: Geoff Richardson <geoff.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 12:59:30 -0000
>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:54:10 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>>From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
>>>To: UFO UpDates <UFOUpdates.nul>
>>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:52:51 -0700
>>>Subject: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>>http://www.thewhyfiles.net/gehrman.htm

>>I guess I am just hopelessly dumb, since I can't find any link
>>to click on to read Wendy's report as the instructions tell us
>>to do.

>There is a paragraph at top of the page which provides access to
>the report. Just click on PDF format or Word format.


Ah, so! I was interpreting "below" to mean down the page
somewhere and skipped right over the obvious. Thanks.

Very interesting report and well worth further investigation on
the merits of the evidence presented.


 - Dick








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              Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -

From: Bob Shell <bob.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:33:54 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 11:22:39 -0500
Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:30:17 +0000
>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

<snip>

>>>From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
>>>To: UFO UpDates <UFOUpdates.nul>
>>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:52:51 -0700
>>>Subject: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>>http://www.thewhyfiles.net/gehrman.htm

<snip>

>Very interesting report and well worth further investigation on
>the merits of the evidence presented.

I'm not sure interesting is the right word.

She uses the wrong year, 1948 instead of 1947, and refers to
drawings "made by the cameraman", which do not exist. Ray
Santilli had a professional artist make those drawings from
vague descriptions from the cameraman, so expecting them to
resemble the real site is rather silly. These two things and
others in her "report" betray an unfamiliarity with this case,
which could have been easily remedied with a little reading.

I am the one originally given the directions to the site, and I
tried several times to locate it. The road which leads to Ed's
site is only about four miles from Socorro's town limits and the
cameraman made it clear that they drove some distance from
Socorro before turning onto a "dirt track" which went to the
site.

Following his directions precisely at several different assumed
travel speeds always gets you up onto the Plains of St Agustin,
and an area with a number of dry lake beds, a specific feature
he made much of.

BLM personnel at Magdalena told me that this was the only area
they knew of with any dry lake beds, and showed them to me on
maps.

Personally, I don't think anyone has yet come near the real site.

Beyond that, I am still convinced that the AA film was actually
shot in 1947, although I still don't have a clue as to the
nature or origin of the things it depicts.


Bob Shell
(returning to lurk mode.)







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                       Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:19:59 +0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:21:09 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 12:27:49 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 00:10:05 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 10:14:52 -0600
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

<snip>

>>But if you want to go down that road just
>>look at what David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins are now saying about
>>the hybrids. Racial fears or what?

>And on what do you make that leap? Evidence? Of course not.
>Assertion and mind-reading? Of course.  The hybrid stuff is
>curious, and while I resist a literalist interpretation, for
>which the evidence is nowhere sufficient, I see no easy
>explanation in sight. Unlike Magonians, I have no trouble with
>those three little words "I don't know." My suspicion is that we
>are dealing with anomalies of consciousness about which we know
>too little to speak of too airily.

A point Magonia has been making for years. However most of the
hybrid stuff seems to be little more than s reflection of
peoples fear of the other. The people being denounced as hybrids
seem to be just folks who have various forms of physical, or
social disabilities whose lives are probably damned difficult
already, without Hopkins and Jacobs trying to turn them into
agents of a sinister conspiracy. The idea of mysterious
foreigners possessed of supernatural powers trying to infiltrate
society is an ancient motif, and one very much encountered in
anti-semitic fantasies. But I think you know that already.

>But of one thing I'm confident: the unsupported guesswork of a
>non- American about the deepest secrets of the American psyche
>is worth no serious person's time.

Actually several American cultural commentators have touched on
this. I suspect you think that Brits are as ignorant of America
as Americans are of Europe. A read through our papers would show
otherwise

>>Presumably the fact that IUR published article after article on
>>the Roswell nonsense means Jerry was promoting it. Or was he
>>just publishing articles as they came along.

>Whatever it may or may not be, Roswell is not "nonsense" -
>though that unflattering characterization certainly describes
>much that has been written about it, of course - but Roswell
>itself remains an interesting historical event and a continuing
>mystery. Though I am inclined these days to doubt it was an
>ETI-related event (I have my own ideas, but since I can't
>produce evidence to support them, I don't publish them;
>therefore, I guess, I am not a Magonian), there seems no doubt
>that many interesting, unanswered questions remain. Further
>research may lead us to new discoveries, perhaps some unexpected
>ones which may cut through the stale current debates.

The Mogul balloon story or something very like looks the best
explanation for the sequence of events surrounding the initial
publicity. Marcel finds something which doesn't look like a high
tech thing which might be either a Soviet or American secret of
some sort, thinks he can get browny points by providing a nice
safe answer to the flying disk question (flying disk not equally
spaceship in July 1947), only to find that it was a secret after
all, and is made to look a fool. Even worse when flying saucers
become equated with spaceships he becomes they guy who was so
dumb that he couldn't tell the difference between a spaceship
and a balloon. No wonder he wanted to get his own back

>I look forward to continuing developments with interest, as I
>would with any historical controversy. And yes, I think IUR has
>done a good job of covering the unfolding story. Certainly, our
>articles were based overwhelmingly on direct - and considerable
>- investigation, as opposed to Peter's remarks above.

>>Its up to those who propose that there are dramatically
>>anomalous phenomena out there to prove the point, its not up to
>>sceptics to demonstrate otherwise. Of course if anyone like
>Andy >Roberts or Dave Clark get out of their armchairs and
>investigate >these cases and come up with answers Jerry doesn't
>like he damns >them too.

>This is the same lazy, intellectually witless argument we too
>often hear from thoughtless "sceptics." In fact, the only
>persons who have no obligation to prove anything are those who
>say nothing and who live their lives oblivious to, ignorant of,
>or indifferent to the controversy in question. If they choose to
>enter the debate, they have an obligation to employ logical
>argument and to offer actual evidence in support of their
>position. I take this, however, to be Peter's back-handed
>admission that since in his estimation UFOs don't exist as
>extraordinary anomalies, he can't be bothered with logical
>argument or actual evidence - at this stage, alas, an
>acknowledgement of the obvious.

>Here is the late sociologist of science Marcello Truzzi, the man
>who coined the phrase (which in his last years he rejected as
>effectively without meaning) "extraordinary claims demand
>extraordinary evidence." (No, Carl Sagan, usually credited, did
>not invent the maxim. Basically, Truzzi concluded that the
>twice-used "extraordinary" is largely a question-begging,
>subjective judgment and that, moreover, the maxim has serious
>flaws as a description of how science actually judges truth
>claims. I know this from my many personal conversations with
>Marcello, a close friend, who died, sad to say, before he could
>write a paper or book elucidating his revised thinking.) Anyway:

>"If a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that
>he has a negative hypothesis... he is making a claim and
>therefore also has to bear a burden of proof. Sometimes, such
>negative claims by critics are also quite extraordinary... in
>which case the negative claimant also may have to bear a heavier
>burden of proof than might normally be expected.

While there might be a lot of disagreement on what extraordinary
means the general principle still holds. Here's an example,
suppose a correspondent from Canby emails me with one of three
claims;

A Last night I met Jerry Clark in Canby, we went to a local bar
and talked about a local ufo case and some of the latest country
music releases

B Last night I met Jerry Clark in Canby. He was wearing a
ballerina's tutu and fishnet tights and was out walking his pink
poodle Fifi

C Last night Im met Jerry Clark in Canby. He turned into a
grizzly bear and nearly bit my arm off

I'd say they were examples of an ordinary, extraordinary and
impossible claim. Is Jerry seriously saying that I shouldn't
need much much better evidence for the second proposition than
the first, and that I am wrong to say that virtually no evidence
could convince me of the truth of the third. Or that if a second
correspondent tells me in the second case, that that would have
been on the night of the Canby High School Alumni Outrageous
Fancy Dress Dance which regularly raises $50,000 for cancer
research, I should be as sceptical of that _rational
explanation_ as the original claim.

>"Critics who assert negative claims but who mistakenly call
>themselves 'skeptics' often act as though they... have no burden
>of proof placed on them at all... [But] if a critic asserts
>that the result was due to artifact X, that critic then has the
>burden of proof to demonstrate the artifact X can and probably
>did produce such results under such circumstances.... Alas, most
>critics seem happy to sit in their armchairs producing post hoc
>counterexplanations."

<snip>

>Keep in mind, too, gentle and patient Listfolk, that Peter and
>his fellow Magonians like to poke fun at technically trained
>ufologists (e.g., Stan Friedman) who have gone to some length to
>demonstrate how extensions of current technological principles
>may explain how interstellar travelers could develop propulsion
>and other systems which may enable them to get here.

>Talk about unfalsifiable: Anybody who thinks a far superior
>technology might look like magic to the naive, early 21st-
>century observer is a fool. Meantime, those who argue that UFO-
>extraterrestrial technology may not be so advanced, after all,
>and that from current physical knowledge we can draw reasonable
>inferences about otherworldly spacecraft propulsion... well,
>those guys are fools, too.

>As usual, with the Magonian/pelicanist school of rhetoric, it's
>always a heads-you-lose, tails-we-win proposition.

That, dear friends, is what we on this side of the puddle say is
the pot calling the kettle black. For the record Jerry has just
conceded that the ETH is an infinitely elastic hypothesis which
means different things to different people.


Peter Rogerson







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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 11

                        Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:31:05 -0600
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:27:18 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:21:15 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:06:29 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 00:34:57 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions


Sigh, John,

>>What follows is a long elucidation which in no way refutes what
>>I said, rather more succinctly, but it does give John the chance
>>to say "nonsense" yet again, and I suspect that's what it's all
>>about.

>Actually, it _does_ refute what you said, which is why I wrote
>it,

Uh, no, it doesn't, in point of fact. But if the resultant
huffing and puffing were something you needed to express, for
health or other reasons, I'm glad I gave you the chance.

>and I must assure Jerry that in the field of ufology I am
>seldom short of excuses to say 'nonsense'.

Sadly, though, it doesn't seem to make you feel any happier.
Perhaps you really ought to retire to some field which doesn't
require constant denunciation of those who aren't lucky enough
to be as smart as you are.

>BTH [birth-trauma hypothesis] was an idea put forward by
>someone who had actually done
>some ufological experiments and had published the results. Yes -
>it was worth taking seriously, and it was worth discussing, as
>is any novel theory that is put forward in a rational way.
>Discussing such a theory - even perhaps saying that it is worthy
>of further research - seems to me quite reasonable.

You've made my point for me, John, for which I thank you.

I can't, however, resist another observation: If some theorist/
experimenter had used comparably flimsy evidence and dubious
reasoning to argue for an abduction-as-literal-event hypothesis,
the explosive Rimmerian exhalation of the epithet "nonsense"
would have thundered through the land and deafened all in
hearing range. What you object to, it appears, is not nonsense
as such, but the nonsense that you don't like.

>There was no further research into the BTH, people pointed out
>the problems inherent in it, and the idea seems to have run into
>the ground, but I make no apology for raising the topic in
>Magonia.

>>One has [no] trouble imagining what you'd do with a UFO
>>proponent who did the same.

>Does this sentence make any sense?

No, it doesn't, because I typed "on" when I meant to type "no."
The sentence is corrected above. Sorry for the confusion.

>>>Strange that Jerry should attack Peter Rogerson for allegedly
>>>being in awe of authority figures, when virtually every post he
>>>makes to this List contains an appeal to one of his regular
>>>trinity of authority figures: Marcello Truzzi, Michael Swords
>>>and James McDonald.

>>These are "authority figures," huh? My, my, the strange, closed,
>>provincial world of the Magonian. I'll have to tell Mike Swords
>>what you said about him next time I see him; he'll be amused.
>>I'm sure that wherever they are now, Truzzi and McDonald are
>>smiling wistfully and murmuring, "If only...."

Yes, if only the world even knew who they were. If only their
word, like - say - Carl Sagan's or Elizabeth Loftus's or Stephen
Jay Gould's or whomever's, were regarded as near-definitive by
elite opinion.

If "authority" and "authority figure" were synonymous, the
latter phrase would not have needed to come into the language.

I have never personally met - outside anomalist circles (or
students, department colleagues, or family) - persons who have
heard of Truzzi, McDonald, and Swords (authorities, not mere
authority figures), much less been familiar with their
intellectual judgments. I doubt that you have, either. If I may
bring myself into the discussion briefly, I believe I am
something of an authority on the UFO controversy. If I may
judge, however, from my interactions with elites (e.g., major,
serious print and electronic media), I may safely conclude that
I am not an "authority figure." Nor, while you no doubt know a
lot about UFOs, are you. On our best days those quarters regard
as just another couple of guys with another couple of opinions.
Essentially, our job is not to provide answers, just quotes with
which to fill column or air space.

In their lifetimes Sagan in astronomy, Gould in evolutionary
biology, and (the still living) Loftus personified (or
personify) the sorts of authority figures to whom elites go for
the final word on contentious controversies (while remaining
oblivious to what these scientists' actual colleagues, those
best suited to hold an informed opinion of it, think of their
work). Truzzi et al. knew/know far more about anomalies-related
issues than the authority figures. But T/McD/S's assessments,
though based on considerable experience, hard thinking, and
mastery of a vast, often confusing literature, remain on the far
fringes of mainstream discourse and have affected it not at all.
The authority figures are those who get to define it, even if
all they know about it is that they don't like it.

But you know all this, John, and you're being, as always,
disingenuous, a quality that seems part of the pelicanist's job
description. Still, I can't resist:

To conflate Gould, Sagan, and Loftus with Truzzi, McDonald, and
Swords is to spout - oh, you know it's coming, and here it is -
nonsense.


Jerry Clark








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   Dec > Dec 11

              Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -

From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:11:47 -0700
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:29:56 -0500
Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -


>From: Bob Shell <bob.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:33:54 -0500
>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:30:17 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

><snip>

>>>>From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
>>>>To: UFO UpDates <UFOUpdates.nul>
>>>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:52:51 -0700
>>>>Subject: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>>>http://www.thewhyfiles.net/gehrman.htm

><snip>

>>Very interesting report and well worth further investigation on
>>the merits of the evidence presented.

>I'm not sure interesting is the right word.

>She uses the wrong year, 1948 instead of 1947, and refers to
>drawings "made by the cameraman", which do not exist. Ray
>Santilli had a professional artist make those drawings from
>vague descriptions from the cameraman, so expecting them to
>resemble the real site is rather silly. These two things and
>others in her "report" betray an unfamiliarity with this case,
>which could have been easily remedied with a little reading.

>I am the one originally given the directions to the site, and I
>tried several times to locate it. The road which leads to Ed's
>site is only about four miles from Socorro's town limits and the
>cameraman made it clear that they drove some distance from
>Socorro before turning onto a "dirt track" which went to the
>site.

>Following his directions precisely at several different assumed
>travel speeds always gets you up onto the Plains of St Agustin,
>and an area with a number of dry lake beds, a specific feature
>he made much of.

>BLM personnel at Magdalena told me that this was the only area
>they knew of with any dry lake beds, and showed them to me on
>maps.

>Personally, I don't think anyone has yet come near the real site.

>Beyond that, I am still convinced that the AA film was actually
>shot in 1947, although I still don't have a clue as to the
>nature or origin of the things it depicts.


Bob,

By your own admission you didn't use a four-wheel drive vehicle
and therefore didn't really investigate during the times you
perambulated around looking to no avail, since the site located
is off-road.

I have given photographic and sample evidence (submitted to
those who have the expertise to evaluate) of a site to be
considered and issuing a preliminary report that clearly states
that there is no evidence, as yet, that proves anything except
the site abnormalities that I have presented by evidentuary
methods. Driving around and looking, by itself, denotes nothing
of consequence when brought to the table.

Find the site you believe exists. Gather samples and
photographic nomenclature of the site. Submit samples for
independent review. Perhaps, then, you will be in a position to
at least present a _preliminary_ report of findings rather than
(paraphrased) "I drove around and found nothing."

Perhaps a re-read of the preliminary report will show that I
actually claim nothing, including a complete review of all data
accumulated regarding the AA claims. I reiterated more than once
that it was accomplished solely as an historical exercise. You
must have unfortunately glossed over that factuality, among
others.

I will look forward to your preliminary report with interest, if
and when, you locate what you claim is a site worthy of more
investigation. However, you'll need to leave the safety of the
roads to accomplish such a research mission here in New Mexico.


Wendy Connors
www.fadeddiscs.com








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   Dec > Dec 11

                    Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 04:17:13 +1100
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:31:21 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman


>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 14:06:05 +0000
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>You'll have to forgive (or not) my refusal to debate your page
>of defensive quibbles. On analysis they're either specious,
>mutually contradictory or attempts to put words in my mouth
>(like "explain").

I'm surprised - your webpages say that "comment & criticism is
welcome". Well, listmembers will make up their own minds as to
whether your refusal to answer direct questions is justified or
merely evasive. I will say that the only time I used the word
"explain", I was repeating Bruce Maccabee's question - where he
used precisely the same word, and you didn't accuse *him* of
putting words into your mouth. But looking back at what you
originally wrote, I can't see why you would object to my (or
Bruce's) use of the word "explain" in reference to what you
said:

>That stability obviously (IMHO) comes from the same force that
>gives `inertia' - another unexplainable phenomenon - to mass
>(because that weird stability is merely `added inertia').

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/dec/m08-013.shtml

Looks like an attempted "explanation" of inertia, of sorts, to me.

But if you ignore everything else in my previous post (or this
one, for that matter), please at least tell me why you insist on
quoting Lee Smolin in such an outrageously partial fashion? Or
at the VERY least, then tell me how my pointing this out is
either specious, mutually contradictory or an attempt to put
words in your mouth?

>More constructively, here's a recap:

>1) Mainstream science doesn't know reason or cause

But you do, naturally.

>of a) matter,
>b) mass, c) inertia (which is also _momentum_),

No. Inertia and momentum are related concepts, but are not the
same thing. They are not even measured in the same units
(inertia has units of mass, momentum has units of mass times
velocity).

>the three basic,
>vital foundations of the 'material' - protonic - universe and
>all its particles. Therefore 'science' hasn't a clue where extra
>inertia of a spinning top or coin comes from, altho' it must
>have same source as 'ordinary' inertia (Occam's Razor).

I have already responded to an almost identical spiel of yours;
as you refused to reply to that, I don't see much point in
trying again. I will add that many physicists think that mass
"comes from" the (as yet, undetected) Higgs boson, but I doubt
you'd accept that as an answer. I'm not sure what sort of answer
you'd accept though.

>That's an unknown 'Force' in the universe.

What do you mean by "Force"? It has two distinct (but related)
usages in physics. One is to describe that which causes objects
to accelerate (and by extension move). It's easy enough to find
an "unknown 'Force'" in this sense - such as the force that
caused my keys to mysteriously move from the bench to the top of
the microwave the other day! But ultimately, all such forces are
the result of one or more of the fundamental forces - strong and
weak nuclear, electromagnetism, and gravity. An "unknown
'Force'" in this sense would be big news indeed - but why you
think the mere existence of matter/mass/inertia might require a
new fundamental force puzzles me. Such a vague argument makes no
sense. As Wolfgang Pauli once said, "This isn't right. This
isn't even wrong."

>2)

>http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/oct/m31-007.shtml

>gives details of NASA's noisily previewed 1999 test of "Allais
>Effect" - of total eclipses on Foucault pendulums.

A press release or two on a website is hardly a noisy preview.

>After the eclipse (which also 'produced/caused' waves of
>earthquakes from Greece, Turkey to Taiwan, Japan with thousands
>of fatalities)

Oh, I nearly missed that. Evidence? I mean, you've done the statistical
legwork needed to prove this, haven't you?

>there was one 'wait and see' article from NASA:

>http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast12oct99_1.htm

>then deafening silence!

>I'll ignore subsequent claims of "atmospheric cooling causing
>gravity change" or "ground cooling causing tilt" 'cos either
>would take too long (not instantaneous) and produce only tiny
>effects - nowhere near actual results.

>That's an unknown "FORCE" in the universe.

See above. The Allais results are interesting, and I'd like to
see the NASA results too. (I doubt they are being supressed as
you imply - one of the two people involved left NASA in the
following year to start a company; see

http://www.mobular.com/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=FAQ&file=index&myfaq=yes
&id_cat=25&categories=Mobular+Executive+Team&parent_id=0#15684

This may have delayed publication of the results. Or perhaps
there was some other problem. But 5 years is still a long time.)

Anyway, I'd think a modification of gravity-as-we-know-it would
be a more likely result of any confirmation of the Allais
effect, than a whole new fundamental force. Occam's razor, yeah?

>3) Einstein Podolsky & Rosen experiment, reset by Bell's Theorem and
>tested by Alain Aspect gave these results:

>http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/aspect1/

>click on last slide for review.

>Aspect himself says/asks - on last slides - "Instantaneous
>change! Faster than light signalling?"

Yes, and if you read on, you'll see he answers his own question
in the negative. Look at slides 42 and 43 (cryptically entitled
"No faster than light signaling with EPR entangled pairs"). If
the observer at a tries to send a message to the observer at b
by changing the polarisation of his filter (thus instantaneously
changing the probability of polarisation at b), he will find
that in order for observer b to work out that the probability
has in fact changed, she will need to compare her results with
those of observer a (because it is a quantum and therefore
probabilistic system), but - this is the crucial part - that can
only be done classically, ie no faster than the speed of light.
So, faster than light signalling is not possible. Aspect
reiterates this conclusion in the quant-ph paper referenced on
that page - see p. 30 of

http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0402001

where he says that "It is important to note that such a non-
locality has a very subtle nature, and in particular that it
cannot be used for faster than light telegraphy." Again, in the
audio recording of his talk,

http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/download/colloq/aspect1.rm

at about 53 minutes 30 seconds in, Aspect says: "But at this
point, in case there are some journalists in the room, or it
goes on the air, I would like to insist that even with such a
strange property of the real world, we cannot signal faster than
light, and if you give me two minutes, I like [sic] to show it."
Does he need to be any clearer? Nonlocality - yes! FTL
signalling - no! As I said ... we knew that. Continually
repeating that URL proves nothing.

>That's an unknown 'Force' in the universe.

>There you are Brett - it's easy. No defensiveness, no havering,
>no quibbles, no personal remarks.

>Just three clear positive statements.

I don't know about that. But yes, words are easy - unfortunately,
physics is hard (one reason why I got out!), and you'll have to
master it if you want to overturn it.


Brett Holman








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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 11

              Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 18:44:25 +0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:33:12 -0500
Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -


>From: Bob Shell <bob.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:33:54 -0500
>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:30:17 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>>>From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
>>>>To: UFO UpDates <UFOUpdates.nul>
>>>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:52:51 -0700
>>>>Subject: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>>>http://www.thewhyfiles.net/gehrman.htm

>>Very interesting report and well worth further investigation on
>>the merits of the evidence presented.

>I'm not sure interesting is the right word.

>She uses the wrong year, 1948 instead of 1947, and refers to
>drawings "made by the cameraman", which do not exist. Ray
>Santilli had a professional artist make those drawings from
>vague descriptions from the cameraman, so expecting them to
>resemble the real site is rather silly. These two things and
>others in her "report" betray an unfamiliarity with this case,
>which could have been easily remedied with a little reading.

>I am the one originally given the directions to the site, and I
>tried several times to locate it. The road which leads to Ed's
>site is only about four miles from Socorro's town limits and the
>cameraman made it clear that they drove some distance from
>Socorro before turning onto a "dirt track" which went to the
>site.

>Following his directions precisely at several different assumed
>travel speeds always gets you up onto the Plains of St Agustin,
>and an area with a number of dry lake beds, a specific feature
>he made much of.

>BLM personnel at Magdalena told me that this was the only area
>they knew of with any dry lake beds, and showed them to me on
>maps.

>Personally, I don't think anyone has yet come near the real site.

>Beyond that, I am still convinced that the AA film was actually
>shot in 1947, although I still don't have a clue as to the
>nature or origin of the things it depicts.

Bob,

With all due respect, it's a hell of a lot more interesting than
a non-site that you haven't found! You seem to believe a priori
that it can't be important because it doesn't fit the
theoretical site that others claim exists. The point here is
that Gehrman has found a site containing some very interesting
features and evidence suggestive of a crash and some burning of
something from the top down, as it were.

I have personally never believed the cameraman's story at all,
but that is beside the point. This site is real, not
theoreticall; it exists, its location is known, Wendy has done
some important initial onstite documentation, and it deserves
open-minded investigation. What that investigation might
determine no one knows at this point. There could be a mundane
explanation. But if you examine Wendy's report you find features
for which there is no immediate and obvious explanation.


 - Dick








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   Dec > Dec 12

                    Re: Good News For Causality? - Shough

From: Martin Shough <mshough.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 19:56:48 -0000
Fwd Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 09:10:46 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Shough


>From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
>To: UFO Updates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 04:17:13 +1100
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 14:06:05 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>>3) Einstein Podolsky & Rosen experiment, reset by Bell's Theorem and
>>tested by Alain Aspect gave these results:

>>http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/aspect1/

>>click on last slide for review.

>>Aspect himself says/asks - on last slides - "Instantaneous
>>change! Faster than light signalling?"

>Yes, and if you read on, you'll see he answers his own question
>in the negative. Look at slides 42 and 43 (cryptically entitled
>"No faster than light signaling with EPR entangled pairs"). If
>the observer at a tries to send a message to the observer at b
>by changing the polarisation of his filter (thus instantaneously
>changing the probability of polarisation at b), he will find
>that in order for observer b to work out that the probability
>has in fact changed, she will need to compare her results with
>those of observer a (because it is a quantum and therefore
>probabilistic system), but - this is the crucial part - that can
>only be done classically, ie no faster than the speed of light.
>So, faster than light signalling is not possible.

Brett

You are probably wasting your time, just as I wasted mine back
on Nov 15 right at the start of this thread:

"Quantum entanglement shouldn't be misunderstood as indicating
faster-than-light displacement of mass, or FTL signalling
either. The correlation of entangled states at A and B does not
carry information from A to B because whether particle B is
spin-up or spin-down is only the difference between two random
outcomes. The entanglement of remote spin states is only
"information" for an imaginary observer who already has
knowledge of *both* A and B states, and this is why entanglement
does not conflict with special relativity: Knowledge of states
at A and B cannot be simultaneous for any real observer who is
constrained by the speed of light."

There's no point. Give up and stay home.


Best wishes,

Martin Shough








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   Dec > Dec 12

                        UFO Clipping Booklet [Redux]

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:48:42 -0500
Fwd Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 09:15:29 -0500
Subject: UFO Clipping Booklet [Redux]


We are pleased to tell UFO UpDates readers who sent stamps for
our little UFO Clipping booket that we've mailed (via Media
Mail) booklets, so far, to Carrie C., Laura C., Jean W., Carlton
W., Frank W., and Gary M.

(Those who sent $2 instead of 4 stamps will find a returned dollar inside
the booklet. We'd be remiss in taking that extra 50 cents from Listers
here, all fine people.)

We have a few booklets left, if anyone wants one.

Rich Reynolds
InterAmerica, Inc.
PMB 150, 619 E. Dupont Rd.
Fort Wayne, IN 46825
260-637-9810







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   Dec > Dec 12

                        Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:09:46 -0600
Fwd Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 09:29:43 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:19:59 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 12:27:49 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 00:10:05 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 10:14:52 -0600
>>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions


Peter and patient and gentle Listfolk:

>>>But if you want to go down that road just
>>>look at what David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins are now saying about
>>>the hybrids. Racial fears or what?

>>And on what do you make that leap? Evidence? Of course not.
>>Assertion and mind-reading? Of course. The hybrid stuff is
>>curious, and while I resist a literalist interpretation, for
>>which the evidence is nowhere sufficient, I see no easy
>>explanation in sight. Unlike Magonians, I have no trouble with
>>those three little words "I don't know." My suspicion is that we
>>are dealing with anomalies of consciousness about which we know
>>too little to speak of too airily.

>A point Magonia has been making for years.

No, it hasn't. Magonia has evolved into a conventionally, safely
"sceptical" journal, and more and more its editors define
themselves (sometimes in childishly boastful terms, as if they
were adopting a position that had never occurred to anybody
else, being less clever than they) as "sceptics." There was a
time, long ago, when Magonia, though it dissented from nuts-and-
bolts approach, presented the UFO phenomenon as raising
questions beyond current knowledge's capacity to answer. Now,
sadly, it takes conventionalist approaches which wouldn't be out
of place in the pages of Skeptical Inquirer.

As a longtime observer and onetime investigator of it, I doubt
that the abduction phenomenon is susceptible to explanation via
current knowledge. It is my impression that something strongly
anomalous is going on, that it takes its surface features from
the culture in which it is experienced but is not at its core
culturebound, and that the problem we have with explaining it is
that we know little - probably nothing - of the forces that may
be generating it. Facile, Magonia-style talk about its meaning
is, well, meaningless.

When I talk about "anomalies of consciousness," I mean
_anomalies_, not just dramatic manifestations of psychological
phenomena you can look up in any clinical textbook.

Beyond that, in my opinion, we may even lack a functional
vocabulary to describe anomalous experiences of the sort of
which abductions may be a subset. My thoughts on this are
developed in a long essay published in Stacy/Huyghe's journal
The Anomalist in 2000.

>However most of the
>hybrid stuff seems to be little more than a reflection of
>peoples fear of the other.

And on what do you base that? That's a sentence, expressing an
opinion resting on no demonstrable empirical evidence. It is no
more or less than a statement of faith. It doesn't say, as I do,
I don't know what's going on because so far no proposed
explanation seems to work; it says, to the contrary, that the
causes are fairly self-evident. So if they are that easily
discerned, where's the evidence?

One could as plausibly argue as follows: Your effort to domestic
abduction testimony into something that causes you no discomfort
and which does not challenge your orthodox worldview betrays
your own fear of the "other". Psychosocial ufologists amusingly
act as if they themselves are immune from psychosocial forces
(such as academic and lay disbelief traditions, not to mention
their own anxieties and hopes) which shade and distort their
thinking and presumption in ways of which they are often not
even consciously aware.

If I were willing to pontificate on as little evidence as you
customarily employ, I would pretend to read your mind, and
declare that you have a profound phobia against the notion of
otherworldly visitation and thus go to great lengths to deny
what you secretly are terrified is true. I could then go on to
pronounce that this is only to be expected, since it is a
British cultural trait to feel that way.

And if you say that's crap, hey, I won't argue with you. At
least maybe you will gain some sense from it of how your
arguments strike the rest of us.

>The people being denounced as hybrids
>seem to be just folks who have various forms of physical, or
>social disabilities whose lives are probably damned difficult
>already, without Hopkins and Jacobs trying to turn them into
>agents of a sinister conspiracy.

Who is being "denounced" as a hybrid? Names, please. I mean,
besides George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

>The idea of mysterious
>foreigners possessed of supernatural powers trying to infiltrate
>society is an ancient motif, and one very much encountered in
>anti-semitic fantasies. But I think you know that already.

Your point being that abductees, besides being racists, are
anti-Semites, too?

>>But of one thing I'm confident: the unsupported guesswork of a
>>non-American about the deepest secrets of the American psyche
>>is worth no serious person's time.

>Actually several American cultural commentators have touched on
>this. I suspect you think that Brits are as ignorant of America
>as Americans are of Europe. A read through our papers would show
>otherwise

You don't know anything about America and Americans, do you? All
I have to do to determine that is simply to read what you write
about us.

Though I know more about Britain, its culture, its history, its
politics, and its folklore than most of my fellow citizens (and,
for what it's worth, I am of English ancestry, once nearly
married a London woman, and am friends with an Englishwoman who
lives in our town [my wife and I had dinner with her and her
husband last evening, in fact]), it would never even occur to me
to make sweeping pronouncements about the psyches of British
people, or to concoct wacky "theories" about what goes on
secretly inside their heads.

To any of my fellow Americans on this List:

If you're aware that you and your fellow citizens are frantic
with fears of interracial/interethnic/intercultural marriage,
please speak up. And especially do so if you have reason to
believe that this fear is so overwhelming that susceptible
Americans are undergoing horrifying hallucinations about it.

It hadn't occurred to me till this moment that I guess I can use
my own family as an example of the real America. As I was typing
these words, it came to me suddenly that Peter could be talking
about me.

My daughter, who teaches in France, has a boy friend with whom
she has a very serious relationship. He happens to be a French
Muslim Arab. It hadn't occurred to me because relationships over
cultures, ethnicities, religions, and races are so common in
early 21st-Century America that (except among a few bigots on
the fringes) they scarcely raise eyebrows and not many give them
a whole lot of thought. (This was not true earlier in my
lifetime, but it is one of the profound and positive changes
that America, for all its shortcomings, has undergone in recent
decades.) In Nabil's case our extended family has never regarded
his background as anything but detail, irrelevant to our
concern, as it would be with any boy friend, that he treat her
right (and he does; he's a splendid young man).

Living in a small, conservative town, I am often subjected to
discourse that strikes me as idiotic, narrow, ignorant, or
poorly considered. Fear of interracial/intercultural marriage
has figured in no rant that I can remember. These are the sorts
of things you would know, Peter, if you actually lived among
Americans and thus had an actual understanding of how we think.

>While there might be a lot of disagreement on what extraordinary
>means the general principle still holds.

Yes, it's "extraordinary" if you say it is. Not helpful, Peter.

To use one example: the ETH is not inherently extraordinary. It
depends on how you look at it. If, as some astronomers guess,
the galaxy is thinly populated (or devoid of intelligent
civilizations other than our own), the ETH is more likely to be
extraordinary than it would be if, as other astronomers guess,
the galaxy is teeming with intelligent civilizations. In the
latter case, the _absence_ of ET visitors would be arguably the
extraordinary claim. In fact, as we all know, anti-SETI
scientists have actually used the alleged nonpresence of ETs on
earth (or easily observable from it) as evidence that
intelligent life is scant elsewhere.

I'm clipping your silly remarks, which don't address the simple,
obvious point - graspable to every non-Magonian on this List,
I'm sure - that only those who say nothing, who proceed as if
conventional opinion were correct and move on accordingly, have
nothing to prove. Science does not advance when only one side of
an argument has an obligation to speak accurately, to criticize
insightfully, and to provide the proper evidence to support its
position.

If you want to assert that some Americans are regularly falling
victim to incredibly vivid, science-fictional hallucinations
based on widespread (though undemonstrated) fear of mixed-race
marriage and children, you are making what would strike just
about any onlooker as an extraordinary claim. You have an
obligation to produce actual evidence, not further statements of
faith. And since you profess to believe in falsifiability and
don't want to be accused of hypocrisy, you surely must present
that hypothesis in falsifiable form.

>>"Critics who assert negative claims but who mistakenly call
>>themselves 'skeptics' often act as though they... have no burden
>>of proof placed on them at all... [But] if a critic asserts
>>that the result was due to artifact X, that critic then has the
>>burden of proof to demonstrate the artifact X can and probably
>>did produce such results under such circumstances.... Alas, most
>>critics seem happy to sit in their armchairs producing post hoc
>>counterexplanations."

>>Keep in mind, too, gentle and patient Listfolk, that Peter and
>>his fellow Magonians like to poke fun at technically trained
>>ufologists (e.g., Stan Friedman) who have gone to some length to
>>demonstrate how extensions of current technological principles
>>may explain how interstellar travelers could develop propulsion
>>and other systems which may enable them to get here.

>>Talk about unfalsifiable: Anybody who thinks a far superior
>>technology might look like magic to the naive, early 21st-
>>century observer is a fool. Meantime, those who argue that UFO-
>>extraterrestrial technology may not be so advanced, after all,
>>and that from current physical knowledge we can draw reasonable
>>inferences about otherworldly spacecraft propulsion... well,
>>those guys are fools, too.

>>As usual, with the Magonian/pelicanist school of rhetoric, it's
>>always a heads-you-lose, tails-we-win proposition.

>That, dear friends, is what we on this side of the puddle say is
>the pot calling the kettle black. For the record Jerry has just
>conceded that the ETH is an infinitely elastic hypothesis which
>means different things to different people.

Uh, your point being? Yes, there are different ET hypotheses,
just as there are different "sceptical" or otherwise non-ET
hypotheses. Why would one expect otherwise? As to the
"infinitely elastic," I don't know where that comes from; if
anything, published ET hypotheses in my estimation are so
similar in general contour (and so conservative) as to suggest a
failure of ETHers' collective imagination. You've made the same
point yourself. Are you just conjuring up criticisms when
convenient at the moment?

Unlike you, I am careful about what I say concerning the
ultimate nature of the UFO phenomenon because I appreciate, as
you don't, the difficulty of making meaningful hypotheses at
this stage of our massive ignorance. (After all, as Brad Sparks
astutely observed on this List a few weeks ago, in all of UFO
history, no more [at a generous estimate] than six months of
actual focused scientific investigation has been devoted to this
fantastically complicated problem.) In the meantime, we get
Magonians, pelicanists, and "sceptics," making it up as they go
along, as if - I am being generous here - it were all just
literary criticism. In their hands, in any event, it isn't
science.


Jerry Clark








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   Dec > Dec 12

                    Re: Central Research Facility - White

From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:11:43 -0500
Fwd Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 09:32:13 -0500
Subject: Re: Central Research Facility - White


>From: Jim Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:25:07 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:15:37 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

<snip>

You know, be it a board operating a central research facility,
or even a single seniour UFO researcher at first, I think both
would benefit from an effort to search for people who are
recognized as mainstream scientists who would be willing to help
out.

Help out by _anonymously_ drafting a procedure document for
either the central facility or even the seniour researcher.
This procedure document would be set up to govern how UFO data
should be collected and analyzed for total, undeniable,
compliance with "the scientific method".

Odds are you would find a few mainstream scientists who would be
willing to do this anonymously.

With such procedures in hand, the central research facility, and
perhaps many individual researchers could then start immediately
turning out work which undeniably qualifies as "real science".
Other seniour researchers could do the peer review.

There is no article in the scientific method I know of that
requires a scientist have a PhD.

The procedures themselves could be published for all the world
to see, and would include anonymized CV's of the anonymous
scientists who set it up.

This idea should be quite doable, and without much delay. It
should provide a major credibility boost for the field, and I
doubt if existing data would have to be excluded - mainly the
peer review and analysis phases would be where the new
procedures would kick in.


Eleanor White








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   Dec > Dec 12

                          Crooked Bush Saskatchewan

From: Barb Campbell <nwsurc.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 17:25:09 -0500 (EST)
Fwd Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 09:52:44 -0500
Subject: Crooked Bush Saskatchewan


Northwest Saskatchewan UFO Research Center

NWSURC File# SSR-04-19

I received a call regarding a curious site near Hafford,
Saskatchewan a few weeks ago. It piqued my curiosity so I
have arranged to visit the site sometime in April or May of
2005.

Apparently the site has drawn attention of others and no one
seems to know why this section of [aspen trees] bush is so
crooked. Bush surrounding the affected area seems to have grown
without the 'deformation'. I was told soil samples were also
taken and the results revealed nothing.

I am interested in hearing from individuals or other research
groups who may have information regarding this site.


Photo can be viewed at:

http://www.nwsurc.com/ssr-04-19.htm

[See also: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~remphre/crooked.shtml

http://www.umanitoba.ca/manitoban/20011031/features_3.shtml

http://www.virtualsk.com/current_issue/crooked_trees.html

 --ebk]

I am also interested in hearing from anyone who may have
witnessed any unusual sightings in the past.

I would also appreciate hearing from area farmers if:

- an animal was found mutilated on your property - even if you
  did not report the incident to local authorities

- you have observed unusual markings on your property

- you have observed unusual behavior in your animals

- a change in crop reproduction occured after a certain period

- anything strange or unusal has occured


NWSURC protects the identities of witnesses and any other
information which may lead to the discovery of the witnesses.
See NWSURC Privacy Policy at:

http://www.nwsurc.com/privacy.html

Stay tuned for further updates.

NWSURC thanks the witness for bringing this information forward.

Mail your response to:

Barb Campbell, NWSURC
Box 263
Maidstone SK S0M 1M0

Phone or fax: 1-306-893-4009

Email: contactus.nul

Web: http://www.nwsurc.com
NWSURC Forum: http://nwsurc.conforums3.com/

Member of UFORA Research Alliance








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   Dec > Dec 12

              Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -

From: William Sawers <ufsyntax.nul>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 11:46:12 +1000
Fwd Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 09:55:47 -0500
Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 18:44:25 +0000
>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>From: Bob Shell <bob.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:33:54 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

<snip>

>With all due respect, it's a hell of a lot more interesting than
>a non-site that you haven't found! You seem to believe a priori
>that it can't be important because it doesn't fit the
>theoretical site that others claim exists. The point here is
>that Gehrman has found a site containing some very interesting
>features and evidence suggestive of a crash and some burning of
>something from the top down, as it were.

>I have personally never believed the cameraman's story at all,
>but that is beside the point. This site is real, not
>theoreticall; it exists, its location is known, Wendy has done
>some important initial onstite documentation, and it deserves
>open-minded investigation. What that investigation might
>determine no one knows at this point. There could be a mundane
>explanation. But if you examine Wendy's report you find features
>for which there is no immediate and obvious explanation.

I agree with you Dick... I would be one of the only other people
that has a sample of the said rock face. From corresponding with
Ed Gehrman and recieving first-hand photos as well as the sample
I also am of the opinion Ed has come across something pretty
special, well worth a closer examination.

My sample of the blue material most definately looks "melted"
onto the rock itself.. The photographs also show an area of
this cliff face covered with the same material.

Just because this hints of alien autopsy doesnt mean it should
be trashed.


William








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              Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -

From: Edward Gehrman <egehrman.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 19:13:53 -0800 (PST)
Fwd Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 09:59:48 -0500
Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -


>From: Bob Shell <bob.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:33:54 -0500
>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>>>http://www.thewhyfiles.net/gehrman.htm

><snip>

>>Very interesting report and well worth further investigation on
>>the merits of the evidence presented.

>I'm not sure interesting is the right word.

>She uses the wrong year, 1948 instead of 1947, and refers to
>drawings "made by the cameraman", which do not exist.

Hi Bob,

You are correct that the year is 1947; I meant to correct
Wendy on this mistake but it slipped my mind. Sorry.

>Santilli had a professional artist make those drawings from
>vague descriptions from the cameraman, so expecting them to
>resemble the real site is rather silly.

As you and I have discussed several times, the actual process
that went into the making of the two site drawings is not at all
clear.

While it is true that the drawings were fashioned by an artist
other than the cameraman, their accuracy indicates to me that
they were not created from "vague descriptions" but from
photographs that must have been taken at the site by the
cameraman during his adventures there. They do not just
"resemble" the site, but depict its terrain and blue material
exactly as it is.

An artist could never reach this level of precision by hearing
vague descriptions and could never accomplish this feat by
chance.

<snip>>
>I am the one originally given the directions to the site, and I
>tried several times to locate it. The road which leads to Ed's
>site is only about four miles from Socorro's town limits and the
>cameraman made it clear that they drove some distance from
>Socorro before turning onto a "dirt track" which went to the
>site.

The cameraman made it clear that the dirt track he traveled was
the last road to the south before the Magdalena Mountains. That
is where I began my search.

He reported that he also drove by the red pillars which are
now called Box Canyon. Once on that dirt track there are only
a few options since this was only road into that back country in
1947.

The cameraman also drew a map showing the general location of
the site and this map is very accurate when compared with the
actual site. It definitely eliminates any notion that the
site is somewhere in the plains of San Augustine.

>Following his directions precisely at several different assumed
>travel speeds always gets you up onto the Plains of St Agustin,
>and an area with a number of dry lake beds, a specific feature
>he made much of.

It was my impression that the trip from Socorro to the crash
site took one hour and that is the same time it takes to get from
Socorro to the site I've described.

>BLM personnel at Magdalena told me that this was the only area
>they knew of with any dry lake beds, and showed them to me on
>maps.

I don't know what they were thinking because the site I'm
researching is an old lake bed and there is no disputing this
fact.

>Personally, I don't think anyone has yet come near the real site.

I think one brief visit to the site will change your mind.

>Beyond that, I am still convinced that the AA film was actually
>shot in 1947

Yes, we've always agreed about that.


Ed








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   Dec > Dec 12

                       Re: Alien Abductions - Gonzalez

From: Luis R. Gonzalez <lrgm.nul>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 10:10:46 +0100
Fwd Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 10:16:03 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Gonzalez


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:21:15 +0000
>Fwd Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:38:35 -0500
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:06:29 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>I found my old review just to be sure my memory of the
>>favorable treatment of birth trauma was accurate. At one point,
>>to your credit, you do admit the obvious, that BT is "far from
>>being proved," while apparently still good enough to take
>>seriously.

>Doesn't sound too much like the "enchantment" and cheer-leading
>you accuse Peter Rogerson of - a person who, as far as I can
>recall, made no contribution at all to the debate in Magonia.
>BTH was an idea put forward by someone who had actually done
>some ufological experiments and had published the results. Yes -
> it was worth taking seriously, and it was worth discussing, as
>is any novel theory that is put forward in a rational way.
>Discussing such a theory - even perhaps saying that it is worthy
>of further research - seems to me quite reasonable.

>There was no further research into the BTH, people pointed out
>the problems inherent in it, and the idea seems to have run into
>the ground, but I make no apology for raising the topic in
>Magonia.

>>One has no trouble imagining what you'd do with a UFO
>>proponent who did the same.

Oh, my God! Beating old dead horses again!

The peculiar BTH, a potentially good idea stretched beyond its
boundaries, as is usual in Ufology (I am thinking of Meaden's
vortexes or Albert Budden's EM allergies). At least, Lawson
offered some predictions to falsify his theory, that nobody
bothered to verify.

Nevertheless, I prefer the earlier Lawson, his study of
imaginary abductees, also never followed up by others (I only
remember something similar by Jenny Randles in Britain). Let me
point to a crucial diference with "normal" Ufology, worth
pondering:

Some years later, Lawson himself published in his own web page,
the transcriptions of _all_ his imaginary abductees' tapes.

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/6521/

Will be ever see something similar from the "pro" side? For
instance, from MUFON's Abductions Transcriptions Project?


Luis R. Gonz=E1lez Manso








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   Dec > Dec 12

              Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -

From: Josh Goldstein <lovolution.nul>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 23:27:07 -1000
Fwd Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 10:19:57 -0500
Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site' -


>From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:11:47 -0700
>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>From: Bob Shell <bob.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:33:54 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:30:17 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>><snip>

>>>>>From: Wendy Connors <fadeddiscs.nul>
>>>>>To: UFO UpDates <UFOUpdates.nul>
>>>>>Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:52:51 -0700
>>>>>Subject: Preliminary Report On Socorro 'Crash Site'

>>>>>http://www.thewhyfiles.net/gehrman.htm

>><snip>

>>>Very interesting report and well worth further investigation on
>>>the merits of the evidence presented.

<snip>

>>I'm not sure interesting is the right word.

<snip>

>I have given photographic and sample evidence (submitted to
>those who have the expertise to evaluate) of a site to be
>considered and issuing a preliminary report that clearly states
>that there is no evidence, as yet, that proves anything except
>the site abnormalities that I have presented by evidentuary
>methods. Driving around and looking, by itself, denotes nothing
>of consequence when brought to the table.

>Find the site you believe exists. Gather samples and
>photographic nomenclature of the site. Submit samples for
>independent review. Perhaps, then, you will be in a position to
>at least present a _preliminary_ report of findings rather than
>(paraphrased) "I drove around and found nothing."

>Perhaps a re-read of the preliminary report will show that I
>actually claim nothing, including a complete review of all data
>accumulated regarding the AA claims. I reiterated more than once
>that it was accomplished solely as an historical exercise. You
>must have unfortunately glossed over that factuality, among
>others.

<snip>

Hi Wendy,

Whether the site Ed led you to has anything to do with the
alleged saucer landing or not, it seems you have found some
genuine anomalies at the site.

I know next to nothing about the geology of New Mexico.

You found and photographed burn mark patterns and what you
described as mineral deposit patterns.

That evidence intrigues me.

You mentioned possible analysis of a sample of the alleged
mineral. How and when will it be tested and who will pay for the
analysis? You stated that you will be making return visits and
taking further photographs. Do you plan to make a site map and
outline the pattern of burns and mineral deposits? I am not sure
just what you meant by you would not be discussing it further. I
would just like to know what your plan is to determine what that
site represents.


Thank you,

Josh Goldstein








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   Dec > Dec 12

              Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison

From: Diane Harrison <auforn.nul>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:52:30 +1000
Fwd Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 10:23:47 -0500
Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 01:05:58 -0600
>Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin

Hi Kyle,

I can always rely on you Kyle to give me some good advise,
your e-mail was thought provoking and have tried a few
experiments to see if the object in Nigels photograph could
possibly be part of the constellation Pleiades.

I have superimposed the image from the link you sent me
over the image I was able to construct from Nigels photograph,
and have come up with some very interesting results.

One problem I'm having here Kyle is working out why if the star
Electra, 17 Tauri one of the stars in the Pleiades constellation
located at right ascension 3h 44.875m and declination 24=B0
6.800'. Why if Electra a relatively dim star with a magnitude of
4 (3.70) why was it so bright.?

>The image is interesting. If the photo was framing a subject 45
>degrees up from the horizon, and the object is in the center of
>the frame top to bottom, as it appears to be, the image should
>include the Pleiades, which at 8:30pm on Dec. 4, 2004 would have
>been in the ENE sky in the near vicinity, certainly in view of
>this photographer's camera.

Kyle I think I may have found the Pleiades in this image,
however, not being an expert in astronomy I could be wrong, and
again I have superimposed a different image which I found and
again I have come up with almost the same positioning as the
first image I superimposed.

Kyle have a look at the images and let me know what you think?

http://www.hypermax.net.au/~auforn/Darwin1.html

Please note Nigel & Julie saw the object in an ESE position not
ENE,?

Regards,

Diane Harrison
National Director of The Australian UFO Research Network
Australian Skywatch Director

~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>
THE AUSTRALIAN UFO RESEARCH NETWORK
(A Non-Profit Organization)

E-Mail: auforn.nul
E-mail: ufologist.nul
http://www.hypermax.net.au/~auforn

ADMINISTRATION:

PO Box 738
Beaudessert 4285
QLD  Australia
Tel 07 55 487205
~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>
Australian UFO Research Network Hotline Number
          1800 77 22 88 Freecall
~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>

All NEW UFO Bookshop at
http://www.contactpublishing.com








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   Dec > Dec 12

                 Recommended New Spanish Language UFO Books

From: Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos <ballesterolmos.nul>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 14:22:12 +0100 (CET)
Fwd Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 10:29:43 -0500
Subject: Recommended New Spanish Language UFO Books


Two new UFO books recently published in Spain:

Humanoides En Conil (Humanoids at Conil)
by Angel Carretero Olmedo
http://www.anomalia.org/e000.htm#bcf

Luces En Los Cielos (Lights in the Skies)
by Ricardo Campo Perez (Foreword by V.J. Ballester Olmos)
editorialbenchomo.nul


Other books in Spanish still available:

Ovnis Y Ciencias Humanas (UFOs and Human Sciences), by Ignacio Cabria
http://www.anomalia.org/e000.htm>

Expedientes Insolitos (The Anomalous Files)
by Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos
http://www.anomalia.org/g009.htm


Regards,

V-J








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer

From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 13:20:42 +0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:17:54 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:31:05 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:21:15 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

>Sigh, John,

5 points in Jerry Clark Bingo!

<A lot of to-ing and fro-ing snipped>

>>BTH [birth-trauma hypothesis] was an idea put forward by
>>someone who had actually done
>>some ufological experiments and had published the results. Yes -
>>it was worth taking seriously, and it was worth discussing, as
>>is any novel theory that is put forward in a rational way.
>>Discussing such a theory - even perhaps saying that it is worthy
>>of further research - seems to me quite reasonable.

>You've made my point for me, John, for which I thank you.

So what point was this Jerry? That discussing novel theories,
even if they ultimately prove to be flawed, is worthwhile? I
couldn't agree with you more ...

>I can't, however, resist another observation: If some theorist/
>experimenter had used comparably flimsy evidence and dubious
>reasoning to argue for an abduction-as-literal-event hypothesis,
>the explosive Rimmerian exhalation of the epithet "nonsense"
>would have thundered through the land and deafened all in
>hearing range. What you object to, it appears, is not nonsense
>as such, but the nonsense that you don't like.

... but now it seems you are you saying that no-one should even
have discussed Lawson's theories when he published them; that
Magonia should have checked with you to see whether or not we
should have polluted our pages (about ten pages in over thirty
years of publication) with a presentation of them, and that you
could have saved as a lot of bother by simply declaring them
"nonsense"?

>>There was no further research into the BTH, people pointed out
>>the problems inherent in it, and the idea seems to have run into
>>the ground, but I make no apology for raising the topic in
>>Magonia.

>>>One has [no] trouble imagining what you'd do with a UFO
>>>proponent who did the same.

>>Does this sentence make any sense?

>No, it doesn't, because I typed "on" when I meant to type "no."
>The sentence is corrected above. Sorry for the confusion.

Even the corrected version makes no sense (I had assumed the
'on' was a typo, but was naturally cautious of adding a [sic]
into the words of the Great Proofreader), mainly because I can't
think of anyone who's come along with a testable version of the
"abduction as literal event" hypothesis.

>>>>Strange that Jerry should attack Peter Rogerson for allegedly
>>>>being in awe of authority figures, when virtually every post he
>>>>makes to this List contains an appeal to one of his regular
>>>>trinity of authority figures: Marcello Truzzi, Michael Swords
>>>>and James McDonald.

>>>These are "authority figures," huh? My, my, the strange, closed,
>>>provincial world of the Magonian. I'll have to tell Mike Swords
>>>what you said about him next time I see him; he'll be amused.
>>>I'm sure that wherever they are now, Truzzi and McDonald are
>>>smiling wistfully and murmuring, "If only...."

>Yes, if only the world even knew who they were. If only their
>word, like - say - Carl Sagan's or Elizabeth Loftus's or Stephen
>Jay Gould's or whomever's, were regarded as near-definitive by
>elite opinion.

>If "authority" and "authority figure" were synonymous, the
>latter phrase would not have needed to come into the language.

>I have never personally met - outside anomalist circles (or
>students, department colleagues, or family) - persons who have
>heard of Truzzi, McDonald, and Swords (authorities, not mere
>authority figures), much less been familiar with their
>intellectual judgments. I doubt that you have, either. If I may
>bring myself into the discussion briefly, I believe I am
>something of an authority on the UFO controversy. If I may
>judge, however, from my interactions with elites (e.g., major,
>serious print and electronic media), I may safely conclude that
>I am not an "authority figure." Nor, while you no doubt know a
>lot about UFOs, are you. On our best days those quarters regard
>as just another couple of guys with another couple of opinions.
>Essentially, our job is not to provide answers, just quotes with
>which to fill column or air space.

Oops, I seem to have tripped over the chip on your shoulder!

John Rimmer
Magonia Magazine
www.magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/00/newmag.htm








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer

From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 18:39:38 +0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:21:16 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:09:46 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:19:59 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>The people being denounced as hybrids
>>seem to be just folks who have various forms of physical, or
>>social disabilities whose lives are probably damned difficult
>>already, without Hopkins and Jacobs trying to turn them into
>>agents of a sinister conspiracy.

>Who is being "denounced" as a hybrid? Names, please. I mean,
>besides George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Two that come to mind: the young student identified as "Raechel"
in the case reported in recent issues of MUFON UFO Journal, and
the family friend, Mr Paige, described in Bud Hopkins "Sight
Unseen" - possibly borderline autistic or suffering from
Asperger's Syndrome, but seen by Hopkins as a sinister hybrid.

>>The idea of mysterious
>>foreigners possessed of supernatural powers trying to infiltrate
>>society is an ancient motif, and one very much encountered in
>>anti-semitic fantasies. But I think you know that already.

>Your point being that abductees, besides being racists, are
>anti-Semites, too?

The point is that all these "antis" are aspects of a generalised
fear of "the Other" which is common to human societies,
worldwide. They are not exclusively American, as Jerry seems to
be implying.

>>>But of one thing I'm confident: the unsupported guesswork of a
>>>non-American about the deepest secrets of the American psyche
>>>is worth no serious person's time.

See above.

>>Actually several American cultural commentators have touched on
>>this. I suspect you think that Brits are as ignorant of America
>>as Americans are of Europe. A read through our papers would show
>>otherwise

After a previous discussion on UpDates (vide Archives) a number
of Americans wrote to me agreeing with me that this is a live
issue.

<snip>

>If you're aware that you and your fellow citizens are frantic
>with fears of interracial/interethnic/intercultural marriage,
>please speak up. And especially do so if you have reason to
>believe that this fear is so overwhelming that susceptible
>Americans are undergoing horrifying hallucinations about it.

Oh, now whose being disingenuous?

>It hadn't occurred to me till this moment that I guess I can use
>my own family as an example of the real America. As I was typing
>these words, it came to me suddenly that Peter could be talking
>about me.

>My daughter, who teaches in France, has a boy friend with whom
>she has a very serious relationship. He happens to be a French
>Muslim Arab. It hadn't occurred to me because relationships over
>cultures, ethnicities, religions, and races are so common in
>early 21st-Century America that (except among a few bigots on
>the fringes) they scarcely raise eyebrows and not many give them
>a whole lot of thought. (This was not true earlier in my
>lifetime, but it is one of the profound and positive changes
>that America, for all its shortcomings, has undergone in recent
>decades.) In Nabil's case our extended family has never regarded
>his background as anything but detail, irrelevant to our
>concern, as it would be with any boy friend, that he treat her
>right (and he does; he's a splendid young man).

So Jerry Clark's family is the epitome and model of American
society, is it? You may not wish to comment on the inner psyche
of the British, but credit us with some intelligence. I'm sure
the Clark family is the very model of racial tolerance,
inclusiveness and diversity, but despite your paen of praise to
the lovely town of Canby (see below), I'm sure that not everyone
in America are such paragons you may be an example of Real
America, but not the only one, surely?

>Living in a small, conservative town, I am often subjected to
>discourse that strikes me as idiotic, narrow, ignorant, or
>poorly considered. Fear of interracial/intercultural marriage
>has figured in no rant that I can remember. These are the sorts
>of things you would know, Peter, if you actually lived among
>Americans and thus had an actual understanding of how we think.

Thank you for assuring us that America is the one society on
Earth that has managed to eliminate racial hostility - or is it
just Canby? As a noted English jurist one said, "Chuck it,
Smith".


John Rimmer
Magonia Magazine
www.magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/00/newmag.htm









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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Harney

From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:10:10 -0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:23:10 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Harney


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:09:46 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

<snip>

>As a longtime observer and onetime investigator of it, I doubt
>that the abduction phenomenon is susceptible to explanation via
>current knowledge. It is my impression that something strongly
>anomalous is going on, that it takes its surface features from
>the culture in which it is experienced but is not at its core
>culturebound, and that the problem we have with explaining it is
>that we know little - probably nothing - of the forces that may
>be generating it. Facile, Magonia-style talk about its meaning
>is, well, meaningless.

>When I talk about "anomalies of consciousness," I mean
>_anomalies_, not just dramatic manifestations of psychological
>phenomena you can look up in any clinical textbook.

Of course all anomalies of consciousness can't be looked up in
any clinical textbook, as there is so much work to be done on
this subject. The abduction phenomenon can't be entirely
explained with reference to present knowledge for the same
reason. Talk of  mysterious "forces" does nothing to advance our
knowledge, only carefully planned and executed scientific
experiments and observations can do that.

Yet when scientific experiments are carried out they are
invariably attacked by ufologists for producing the "wrong"
answers, i.e. not mysterious enough.

<snip>

>Unlike you, I am careful about what I say concerning the
>ultimate nature of the UFO phenomenon because I appreciate, as
>you don't, the difficulty of making meaningful hypotheses at
>this stage of our massive ignorance. (After all, as Brad Sparks
>astutely observed on this List a few weeks ago, in all of UFO
>history, no more [at a generous estimate] than six months of
>actual focused scientific investigation has been devoted to this
>fantastically complicated problem.) In the meantime, we get
>Magonians, pelicanists, and "sceptics," making it up as they go
>along, as if - I am being generous here - it were all just
>literary criticism.

Bingo! (Look it up in archives if you don't know what I mean.)


John Harney








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                Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 15:33:11 -0600
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:26:26 -0500
Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - King


>From: Diane Harrison <auforn.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:52:30 +1000
>Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin

>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 01:05:58 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin

<snip>

>One problem I'm having here Kyle is working out why if the star
>Electra, 17 Tauri one of the stars in the Pleiades constellation
>located at right ascension 3h 44.875m and declination 24=B0
>6.800'. Why if Electra a relatively dim star with a magnitude of
>4 (3.70) why was it so bright.?

Hi Diane,

One thing to keep in mind is that even a digital camera has to
resolve stars through the atmosphere, and any single shot of the
night sky might not record even a few bright stars. Since stars
twinkle, a camera that can resolve stars without an extended
exposure might catch a particular star at the moment it's light
is scattered. This camera obviously was taking short exposures
since there is no smear or tracking lines. While this idea of
missing stars would be unlikely to involve the brightest
object(s) in the sky, some very visible ones might be lost to
the camera in a single shot. This could explain both the absence
of one or more landmarks, but also could explain a star being
much brighter than it actually is. If the camera imaged at the
precise moment that one of the dimmer stars was at 'max
twinkle', it could appear much brighter than in a series of
shots. This effect could explain your findings in aligning the
object image with the image of the Pleiadian cluster. I'll leave
it to our more astronomically inclined Listers to say whether a
4 out of 7 match is indicative of identification, under the
circumstances as described.

>Kyle I think I may have found the Pleiades in this image,
>however, not being an expert in astronomy I could be wrong, and
>again I have superimposed a different image which I found and
>again I have come up with almost the same positioning as the
>first image I superimposed.

>Kyle have a look at the images and let me know what you think?

>http://www.hypermax.net.au/~auforn/Darwin1.html

>Please note Nigel & Julie saw the object in an ESE position not
>ENE,?

I must be getting old and senile. After re-reading your initial
post, I realized I had mis-read. If the object was first sighted
in the ESE sky, then it plainly would not be the Pleiades...
unless the photographer had his time and position off by a
little.

Your new images of the object are much more revealing than the
one I saw initially, and with my handy copy of Starry Night
Backyard, I was able to get a screenshot of the night sky over
Darwin for the time and date in question, for use as a base, to
see if the object in overlay corresponds to a known astronomical
object.

Your posted overlay experiment is intriguing, and certainly
seems compelling, and we need to reconcile the eyewitness report
as to time and direction.

To attempt to duplicate your overlay experiment, I imported my
Starry Night screenshot and your image into Photoshop, and tried
overlaying your image over the screenshot. I did note while
running the clock forward in Starry Night from 8:30PM to 12:30AM
that from the ESE view, the stars seem to move further *up* the
sky moreso than to the north. I don't think the witness would
have described the movement of the stars in his view as toward
the north, but that's supposition alone. If this supposition is
correct however, then the movement of the object as described is
indeed interesting and unexpected for a known celestial object
in his view to the ESE.

As always, more information is needed for definitive analysis.
Time of photo would be good.

Approximate field of view...e.g., how big is moon when shot with
the camera in a similar setup? Or try re-imaging a known
constellation with similar setup. Knowing the scale would
provide easier cross-referencing with sky charts, etc. It would
also be interesting to know how much spherical aberration might
be expected from the camera/binocular setup. Perhaps the image
is more of a *fisheye* view or the opposite. It doesn't seem
logical that such a setup would provide an optically accurate
view, but again more information is needed. Is it a manufactured
interface for this purpose? Are there specs available?

Another thing I noticed in your image was a small smudge to the
upper right of the object. Starry Night notes a comet Machholz
that would have risen at 6:15PM on the 4th of Dec., would have
traversed the sky from the ESE, and set at 7:05am on the 5th. It
is possible that the camera caught this comet, and I'm using
this smudge as a point of beginning assuming it is the comet. Of
course, it may be just a smudge, but you gotta start somewhere.

If I use the smudge as the comet Machholz, and rescale, the star
in the upper right corner of the object image corresponds
somewhat with the star Acamar. If I use these two points as a
reference, the object in question appears to coincide with
Rigel...in Orion, but this seems unlikely in the absence of the
belt stars. I'm beginning to get a little dizzy. I don't envy
planet and asteroid hunters... this is eye-fatiguing work.

Based on Starry Night's orientation of the Pleiades, I would now
suggest that the object in question is actually Atlas and
Pleione. This is impossible to confirm without more information
to place it, 'the object', in some kind of context. If you
rotate your overlay 90 degrees or so counter-clockwise and
reduce it's size, you'll see what I'm seeing. This places the
Atlas/Pleione pair very close to the object, which definitely
appears to be 2 objects very nearly superimposed in the original
image. It also provides a near match on 6 stars if you count
Atlas and Pleione separately, the others being Alcyone, Maia,
Electra, and Merope. But this again is in contradiction to the
eyewitness report.

Diane, if you have a copy of the original digital photo, I'd be
interested in seeing what I can pull out of it. I'll honor any
restrictions on use. I'm just curious about this one. While the
digital process produces numerous spurious pixels, it is
possible to resample the image at a higher dot pitch, and then
you can better see the pixels that are truly square as an
artifact would be, and which are still *fuzzy*, indicating that
it is something other than artifact. This is because a bad pixel
will resolve as a perfectly focused square, while stars are
diffuse and indistinct even when in focus. The key is
resampling, because any other resizing process increases
artifact, and creates halos around even square pixels that make
distinguishing them from the rest all but impossible.

With this in mind, I think you have a good case for the
Pleiades, if the discrepancies with the eyewitness report can be
resolved.

Otherwise, I think further work on the original image might
yield a better overlay with which to compare known
constellations.

Excellent analysis. And good questions. You've got me very
curious about this image.

Thanks, and please forward a copy of the original if possible.

Best Regards,

Kyle








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               Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Holman

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:22:43 +1100
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:27:26 -0500
Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Holman


>From: Diane Harrison <auforn.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:52:30 +1000
>Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin

Hi Diane,

Thanks for the additional information.

>Please note Nigel & Julie saw the object in an ESE position not
>ENE,?

Yes, assuming the Lynns know their azimuth from their elbows, it
can't be the Pleiades, which at the time of the first sighting
were closer to NE (51 degrees), and at an altitude of 31
degrees, as opposed to the reported 45 degrees. At the time of
the second sighting, it had shifted "60 deg to the north" which
I interpret to mean 112.5 degrees (ie ESE) - 60 degrees = 52.5
degrees. At this time, though, the Pleiades were at an azimuth
of 340 degrees, ie NNW. But the report is ambiguous, and I may
not be interpreting it correctly - a clear estimate of the
azimuth and altitude at the time of the second sighting would
help.

Another problem with Kyle's suggestion is that the photo was
supposedly taken through binoculars, and leaving aside all the
problems of focus and stability without a proper setup, I would
expect the Pleiades to take up much more of the field of view.
See, eg

http://www.davidmalin.com/fujii/source/af7-01_72.html
http://www.davidmalin.com/fujii/source/af7-02_72.html
http://www.stargazing.net/urban/binocs.html

It also can't be Sirius as I suggested earlier; at the time of
the first sighting it would have been far too lowi (just above
the horizon), although in terms of azimuth it's a good fit. I
can't find any other bright stars that match the first position,
and at any rate an altitude of 45 degrees is a bit high for
atmospheric dispersion to be in effect, though not impossible.
Of course, one way to check if it is a star or planet would for
the eyewitnesses to go outside and have a look at the sky at the
same time, and see if they can see anything at the same position
as the UFO. (They could even try to find the Pleiades, and take
a photo.) But if the additional data you have provided is
correct, I don't think it was a star.


Brett Holman








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   Dec > Dec 13

                            UFO Spotted In China

From: Terry Groff <terry.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 05:24:31 -0600
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:31:23 -0500
Subject: UFO Spotted In China


Source: Mid Day News - Mumbai, India

http://ww1.mid-day.com/news/world/2004/december/99305.htm

12-13-04

UFO spotted in China: Report
By: AFP

Beijing: An unidentified flying object, or UFO, passed across
the large northwestern Chinese city of Lanzhou and apparently
exploded in the suburbs, state media said today.

The unusual sighting of two bright trails of light, reported by
several witnesses, took place Saturday shortly before midnight,
the China Times reported.

Police, working on the theory that it was a meteorite, went to
investigate the matter, but as of today they had found no
evidence of what caused the nightly phenomenon, an officer said.

A taxi driver told the paper he was in his car when everything
suddenly became "as bright as day."

When he pulled over, he saw a fireball with a tail of about
three meters darting across the sky, he said.

China has been hit by several waves of UFO sighting in recent
years, and the country has a research association devoted to the
study of possible extraterrestrial visits.








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                       Alien Twin Link For UFO Capital

From: Terry Groff <terry.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 05:27:35 -0600
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:34:20 -0500
Subject: Alien Twin Link For UFO Capital


Source: The Daily Record - Glasgow, Scotland

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=14972255&method=full&siteid=89488&
headline=alien-twin-link-for-ufo-capital-name_page.html

12-13-04


Alien Twin Link For Ufo Capital

The UFO capital of Scotland is set to be twinned with Roswell in
America.

Bonnybridge wants to link up with the New Mexico city where it
is claimed a flying saucer crashed in 1947.

The Stirlingshire town,known for hundreds of reported sightings
of strange objects in the skies, already plans to cash in on its
status by building a UFO visitor centre.

And councillors feel they can learn from Roswell's experience.

Since UFO--hunters claims of aliens' bodies being recovered from
the crash site, the city has become world famous and has a UFO
museum and research centre.

Falkirk Council's deputy provost, Billy Buchanan, the councillor
for Bonnybridge, will lead the Scots eight-strong delegation.

He said: 'Roswell has a population of just 50,000 but it is a
draw for thousands of tourists interested in the UFO phenomenon.

'That pumps millions into the local economy.

'However, we want to emphasise both places have more to offer
than UFOs and we hope to take along people with tourism and
business links to promote more general commercial tie-ups.'

Roswell Mayor Bill Owen said: 'We welcome the the twinning idea.

'It would appear to be an interesting possibility that would
benefit both our communities.'







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                  Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson

From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:53:36 +0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:44:57 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson


>From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
>To: UFO Updates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 04:17:13 +1100
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?


Brett,

Let's get a couple of things straight - for us laity (I don't
like use of loaded words like "lay" - reeks of exclusivity,
false pride and even hubris).

1) Quotes -
If one quotes <<in most courses ... It's not true>> the three
dots indicate words in between that _don't_ change the literal
or factual or statistical sense. Which is exactly true of that
quote. However you shouted "quoting ... outrageously partial".
That's specious my friend, next thing to deceit.

2) Momentum -
Brett, I hesitate to tell you, but everything we know is moving
- we don't know of anything that's really "at rest". But for
Newtonian convenience we pretend some things are not moving and
just have inertia (of mass); we say other things are moving
(it's all relative) and so have momentum, i.e.  mass x velocity
(relative to us).

In reality we know that everything in the universe is moving and
really has full momentum - hence inertia = momentum. The use of
two different words is partly historical and partly avoidance of
inconvenient questions from the class smart-alec.

[Actually, when I was teaching the obligatory math/physics to
some - highly qualified - military/other folk, I always found
the argumentative ones a real boon, moving things along in a
lively way. Conversely I  knew we'd have to start further back
with those addicted to jargon & buzz-words - no grasp of basic
principles. All physics is expressible in short words - else
it's waffle.]

Please, no more talk of science "high priests" alone fit for
"inner secrets" kept from "lay" folk.

If physics is true then everyone can and should understand it
and be taught it.

For background to this exchange (shall we call it "Unknown Force
in the Universe" - or "Failure of Physics"?) you can try -
http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/dec/m07-009.shtml
http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/dec/m09-008.shtml
http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/dec/m10-015.shtml

There's clearly some way to go.


Cheers

Ray D

"matter is essentially force, and nothing but force" - Alfred
Russel Wallace
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Perceptions" http://www.perceptions.couk.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~








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                    Re: Central Research Facility - Allan

From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:28:55 -0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:47:54 -0500
Subject: Re: Central Research Facility - Allan


>From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:11:43 -0500
>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

>>From: Jim Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:25:07 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

>>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:15:37 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

><snip>

>You know, be it a board operating a central research facility,
>or even a single seniour UFO researcher at first, I think both
>would benefit from an effort to search for people who are
>recognized as mainstream scientists who would be willing to help
>out.

>Help out by _anonymously_ drafting a procedure document for
>either the central facility or even the seniour researcher.
>This procedure document would be set up to govern how UFO data
>should be collected and analyzed for total, undeniable,
>compliance with "the scientific method".

>Odds are you would find a few mainstream scientists who would be
>willing to do this anonymously.

You probably would, but is anonymity really a good thing when
trying to promote credible UFO research? See below.

>With such procedures in hand, the central research facility, and
>perhaps many individual researchers could then start immediately
>turning out work which undeniably qualifies as "real science".
>Other seniour researchers could do the peer review.

>There is no article in the scientific method I know of that
>requires a scientist have a PhD.

>The procedures themselves could be published for all the world
>to see, and would include anonymized CV's of the anonymous
>scientists who set it up.

>This idea should be quite doable, and without much delay. It
>should provide a major credibility boost for the field, and I
>doubt if existing data would have to be excluded - mainly the
>peer review and analysis phases would be where the new
>procedures would kick in.

Is a central research facility not the very thing Hynek tried to
create when he launched CUFOS in 1974? Scientists and
technologists were expected to contribute and CUFOS was to be a
laboratory to study & investigate UFO reports.

Where is CUFOS now?

As for anonymous scientists, if ufology is to have any
credibility, that is the last thing we want.

CDA








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              Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan

From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:29:20 -0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:51:20 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan


>From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:46:31 -0400
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 23:13:24 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>I do believe that the lack of actual UFO hardware is the biggest
>>obstacle to scientific acceptance.

>>It is useless to give the oft-repeated response that the
>>authorities already possess this hardware but are keeping it top
>>secret. This standard ufological rejoinder will cut no ice with
>>the scientific establishment (or the media), and you cannot
>>really blame them for poking derision at it. Ufology is too
>>world-wide for this 'buck passing' to be valid.

>We often throw around the term "scientific community" which is
>as valid a term as "ufology" and too broad based.

>Which "scientific community" are we referring to? The
>pharmaceutical scientific community, the scientific research
>divisions of the military complex, NASA's cloistered, federally
>funded community [until they retire] the universities',
>federally funded scientific communities, the medical scientific
>community [i.e. the psychiatric field-which is no more exact
>than ufology when it comes down to it and probably less so].

>The point is each scientific community has its own vested
>interest and sacred cow to protect - not to mention its funding.
>An example of this is Physics versus Egyptology re the age of
>the Sphinx. These communities fight amongst themselves.

>This is too large a subject to get into for one person but I'm
>sure most have had experiences where the co-called scientific
>community has impacted their belief systems and not just where
>it concerns the UFO phenomenon.

>There is one common denominator to all of them and that is the
>possible impact of the UFO phenomenon on their own communities
>and it seems to filter through all of them.

>Does anyone else feel that we are being sold a bill of goods by
>those more interested in maintaining the status quo rather than
>'what is'?

The 'scientific community' (I actually wrote 'scientific
establishment') in the case of UFO acceptance is mainly
astronomers & biologists. I am assuming here that UFOs
eventually turn out to be alien spacecraft.

It may well be that there is substantial argument & debate if &
when hardware is finally produced. Therefore UFO reality (as ET
craft) will likely not be accepted at once even if such hardware
turns up.

But such hardware is a necessary start. As for "maintaining the
status quo" I am positive that when the physical evidence comes,
and in sufficient quantity, all those scientists who previously
derided the subject will be so 'over the moon' that they will
rapidly forget whatever they said in the past.

Another thing: No government on earth will be able to suppress
this fact, if & when it happens.


CDA








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                         Re: Alien Abductions - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:40:12 +0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:09:16 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Hall


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 13:20:42 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

<snip>

>mainly because I can't
>think of anyone who's come along with a testable version of the
>"abduction as literal event" hypothesis.

<snip>


John,

I disagree with others on this List who keep suggesting that the
ETH is not testable. It certainly is in principle, though the
test will never happen as long as people assume that UFOs are
all nonsense because it would cost a lot of money. If real,
physical, ET beings are coming and going in real, physical
craft, that would be detectable by satellite cameras, special
detection equipment placed on the moon, etc. Some would argue
that they have been so detected, but inevitably written off as
errors in the equipment because they don't fit current belief.
Of course, if UFOs are something else (like other dimensional
visitors) all bets are off.

Similarly, if abductions are real, physical events they should
be detectable by instruments. It won't do to say that the aliens
clouded the cameras, or whatever. In fact a major scientific
program to attempt to capture evidence of abductions on
instruments has recently been completed (I was in on its
planning and origination years ago) and the data are now being
analyzed. It was a carefully planned, double-blind study. A
report will be forthcoming sooner or later from the UFO Research
Coalition.


 - Dick








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                       Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:49:36 +0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:11:37 -0500
Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hall


>From: Terry Groff <terry.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 05:24:31 -0600
>Subject: UFO Spotted In China

>Source: Mid Day News - Mumbai, India

>http://ww1.mid-day.com/news/world/2004/december/99305.htm

>12-13-04

>UFO spotted in China: Report
>By: AFP

>Beijing: An unidentified flying object, or UFO, passed across
>the large northwestern Chinese city of Lanzhou and apparently
>exploded in the suburbs, state media said today.

>The unusual sighting of two bright trails of light, reported by
>several witnesses, took place Saturday shortly before midnight,
>the China Times reported.

>Police, working on the theory that it was a meteorite, went to
>investigate the matter, but as of today they had found no
>evidence of what caused the nightly phenomenon, an officer said.

>A taxi driver told the paper he was in his car when everything
>suddenly became "as bright as day."

>When he pulled over, he saw a fireball with a tail of about
>three meters darting across the sky, he said.

>China has been hit by several waves of UFO sighting in recent
>years, and the country has a research association devoted to the
>study of possible extraterrestrial visits.

Some day, on some distant planet, in some parallel universe,
people will begin to recognize the obvious descriptions of
fireball meteors, and news services will stop contaminating the
UFO database by labeling them 'UFOs'.


 - Dick








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                 "Crows As Clever As Great Apes, Study Says"

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 13:29:49 -0600
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:23:38 -0500
Subject: "Crows As Clever As Great Apes, Study Says"


I've written before that reasoning intelligence has likely
evolved on this planet many times, giving some indication to the
open minded how prevalent intelligence might be in even the
'local' universe. This includes all the cetacean examples, some
hive animals, vulpine occurrences, bonobo chimps - being
taught to talk/sign and reason, by the way -  and three
species of humankind we 'know' about... withered away in the
historically recent past. Comes one more reasoning being
perhaps.

We don't live in the universe we think we do. It's much, much
grander than that, and our individual salvation, I suspect.
Regardless, if it could be said that we're smarter than crows,
what might be smarter than us... and as consumed with its own
hubris?

alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net

-----

Source: National Geographic

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1209_041209_crows_apes.html

12-11-04

National Geographic News

Crows As Clever As Great Apes, Study Says...
By James Owen in London


Anyone who has watched crows, jays, ravens and other members of
the corvid family will know they're anything but "birdbrained."

For instance, jays will sit on ant nests, allowing the angry
insects to douse them with formic acid, a natural pesticide
which helps rid the birds of parasites. Urban-living carrion
crows have learned to use road traffic for cracking tough nuts.
They do this at traffic light crossings, waiting patiently with
human pedestrians for a red light before retrieving their prize.

Yet corvids may be even cleverer than we think. A new study
suggests their cognitive abilities are a match for primates such
as chimpanzees and gorillas.

Furthermore, crows may provide clues to understanding human
intelligence.

Published tomorrow in the journal Science, the study is co-
authored by Nathan Emery and Nicola Clayton, from the
departments of animal behavior and experimental psychology at
Cambridge University, England.

They say that, while having very different brain structures,
both crows and primates use a combination of mental tools,
including imagination and the anticipation of possible future
events, to solve similar problems. They base their argument on
existing studies.

Emery and Clayton write, "These studies have found that some
corvids are not only superior in intelligence to birds of other
avian species (perhaps with the exception of some parrots), but
also rival many nonhuman primates."

Increasingly, scientists agree that it isn't physical need that
makes animal smart, but social necessity. Group living tends to
be a complicated business, so for individuals to prosper they
need to understand exactly what's going on. So highly social
creatures like dolphins, chimps, and humans tend to be large-
brained and intelligent.

'Large Brains'

The study notes that crows are also social and have unusually
large brains for their size. "It is relatively the same size as
the chimpanzee brain," the authors said.

They say that crows and apes both think about their social and
physical surroundings in complex ways, using tool use as an
example.

Like apes, many birds employ tools to gather food, but it isn't
clear whether chimps or crows appreciate how these tools work.
It may be that they simply discover their usefulness by
accident. However, studies of New Caledonian crows, from the
South Pacific, suggest otherwise.

New Caledonian crows manufacture two very different types of
tool for finding prey. Hooks crafted from twigs are used to poke
grubs from holes in trees, while they also cut up stiff leaves
with their beaks, carefully sculpting them into sharp
instruments for probing leaf detritus for insects and other
invertebrates.

A New Caledonian crow in captivity learned how to bend a piece
of straight wire into a hook to probe for food. (Watch a video
of the crow doing this.)

Such sophisticated tool manufacture and use is unique in non-
human wild animals, according to Jackie Chappell, a UK-based
zoologist who has studied the birds.

Emery and Clayton compare the crow's handiwork to minor human
technological innovations. And because different New Caledonian
crow populations make these tools to slightly different designs,
some scientists take this as evidence of some form of culture,
as has been suggested in chimpanzees.

Other corvids may use memories of past experiences to plan
ahead.

In the case of Western scrub jays, a previous study by Emery and
Clayton suggests jays with past experience of pilfering food
caches collected by other jays can then use this knowledge to
protect their own caches.

Lab experiments showed that if a habitual thief was observed
while burying its own cache, it would later go back and move it
when no other bird was looking. Meanwhile, "innocent" jays did
not exhibit the same cunning.

Imagination?

The researchers also argue that such behavior suggests Western
scrub jays are able to second guess another's intentions, or, to
put it another way, get into another bird's mind. In which case,
this could be evidence for imagination.

Emery and Clayton write, "Western scrub jays may present a case
for imagination because the jays needed to have remembered the
previous relevant social context, used their own experience of
having been a thief to predict the behavior of a pilferer, and
determined the safest course of action to protect the caches
from pilferage."

Studies to assess similar cognitive abilities in apes have been
inconclusive, according to John Pearce, professor of psychology
at Cardiff University in Wales.

"[The Western scrub jay study] is some of the best evidence
going that one animal can understand what another is thinking,"
he added.

Pearce believes we can gain insights into the basic mechanisms
of human intelligence through the study of animals. He says
language is generally considered to be one of the major
divisions between human and animal intelligence, which makes
Western scrub jays especially noteworthy.

He said, "What's so interesting is that while Western scrub jays
may not have language, the research shows they've got many of
the intellectual abilities that humans have. This suggests that
many of our intellectual abilities which we think we need
language for perhaps we don't in fact need language for. That
then makes us try to understand these abilities in a different
way."

If we're as smart as we think we are, perhaps we need to keep an
even closer eye on those clever old crows.

c. 2004 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:01:53 -0600
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:41:09 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 13:20:42 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:31:05 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>5 points in Jerry Clark Bingo!

Sigh. Once again, the Magonian nine-year-old's idea of wit.

>>>BTH [birth-trauma hypothesis] was an idea put forward by
>>>someone who had actually done
>>>some ufological experiments and had published the results. Yes -
>>>it was worth taking seriously, and it was worth discussing, as
>>>is any novel theory that is put forward in a rational way.
>>>Discussing such a theory - even perhaps saying that it is worthy
>>>of further research - seems to me quite reasonable.

>>You've made my point for me, John, for which I thank you.

>So what point was this Jerry? That discussing novel theories,
>even if they ultimately prove to be flawed, is worthwhile? I
>couldn't agree with you more ...

Uh huh.

>>I can't, however, resist another observation: If some
>>theorist/ experimenter had used comparably flimsy evidence and
>>dubious reasoning to argue for an abduction-as-literal-event
>>hypothesis, the explosive Rimmerian exhalation of the epithet
>>"nonsense" would have thundered through the land and deafened
>>all in hearing range. What you object to, it appears, is not
>>nonsense as such, but the nonsense that you don't like.

>... but now it seems you are you saying that no-one should
>even have discussed Lawson's theories when he published them;
>that Magonia should have checked with you to see whether or not
>we should have polluted our pages (about ten pages in over
>thirty years of publication) with a presentation of them, and
>that you could have saved as a lot of bother by simply declaring
>them "nonsense"?

Uh huh. As a hypothesis addressing the abduction phenomenon,
birth trauma has as much utility as other curious notions to
which Magonia has devoted pages and discussion, such as
Americans' fear of mixed-race offspring, Hispanics, or whatever.

Since the rest of John's post is of even less substance or
relevance, I am snipping the rest of it. Those who want to see
it, or don't recall it (which is understandable), are referred
to his original.


Jerry Clark







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                       Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:40:54 -0600
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:42:57 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 13:20:42 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:31:05 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:21:15 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

>>Sigh, John,

>5 points in Jerry Clark Bingo!


How convenient for the progressively thinking! When Mr. Clark
gets justifiably if not minimally exasperated with on going and
rankly duplicitous 'leaping verbal fandango' of reflexive
pelecanistic ideologues... he gets points. Wonderful!

><A lot of to-ing and fro-ing snipped>
>

...and all of it yours, Sir.

>>>BTH [birth-trauma hypothesis] was an idea put forward by
>>>someone who had actually done
>>>some ufological experiments and had published the results. Yes -
>>>it was worth taking seriously, and it was worth discussing, as
>>>is any novel theory that is put forward in a rational way.
>>>Discussing such a theory - even perhaps saying that it is worthy
>>>of further research - seems to me quite reasonable.
>
>>You've made my point for me, John, for which I thank you.
>
>So what point was this Jerry? That discussing novel theories,
>even if they ultimately prove to be flawed, is worthwhile? I
>couldn't agree with you more ...

What a richly appointed and conversely appropriated _mask_ to
thrust over actual demonstrations of your cant, Mr. Rimmer! You
only hope to baffle the distracted fence-sitter, salve your
fellow pelicanists with a retort that only _sounds_ considered,
and assume the proud countenance of open-minded intelligence
with this paragraph. You hint in it that you are, and have ever
been, a balanced clearing house of novel theories and new ideas,
across the board, when nothing departs further from the truth,
Sir. You are a biased, completely partisan, hack, Mr. Rimmer,
and a creator of your own opposition.

>>I can't, however, resist another observation: If some theorist/
>>experimenter had used comparably flimsy evidence and dubious
>>reasoning to argue for an abduction-as-literal-event hypothesis,
>>the explosive Rimmerian exhalation of the epithet "nonsense"
>>would have thundered through the land and deafened all in
>>hearing range. What you object to, it appears, is not nonsense
>>as such, but the nonsense that you don't like.

>... but now it seems you are you saying that no-one should even
>have discussed Lawson's theories when he published them; that
>Magonia should have checked with you to see whether or not we
>should have polluted our pages (about ten pages in over thirty
>years of publication) with a presentation of them, and that you
>could have saved as a lot of bother by simply declaring them
>"nonsense"?

But _this_ (your immediately preceding) is the patent nonsense,
Mr. Rimmer. You know, in completeness and totality, that this is
_not_ what Mr. Clark is saying. Mr. Clark is saying that you are
an ideologue who would _not_ credit even an obvious correctness
if it offended your hubris, challenged your dearth of
intellectual courage, disrespected your shallow world view, or
invalidated your ardent homocentricity. Moreover, he thinks
you'll cherry-pick from the knowledge base or data set that
which supports your 'kasskurtzian' position or erodes, however
fallaciously, the position of your opposition. He thinks you
_drive_ data, Mr. Rimmer, and _avoid_ following it.

Accordingly, your Magoonian pages are polluted with a lot more
canted duplicity than just what's referenced here. You perform a
disservice, Sir, in my opinion to suggest that your publication
is remotely balanced, even minimally authoritative, or is in
_any_ way reflective of the most benignly unbiased. Your
publication grinds, decidedly, a less than perspicacious axe,
Mr. Rimmer.

>>>There was no further research into the BTH, people pointed out
>>>the problems inherent in it, and the idea seems to have run into
>>>the ground, but I make no apology for raising the topic in
>>>Magonia.
>
>>>>One has [no] trouble imagining what you'd do with a UFO
>>>>proponent who did the same.

>>>Does this sentence make any sense?

>>No, it doesn't, because I typed "on" when I meant to type "no."
>>The sentence is corrected above. Sorry for the confusion.

>Even the corrected version makes no sense (I had assumed the
>'on' was a typo, but was naturally cautious of adding a [sic]
>into the words of the Great Proofreader),

Well -- this was just uncalled for. Mocking insult usually is.
It's an indicator of the weakness of the employer's position,
usually. Transparently, it was an opportunity to distract the
casual reader, only, with a talking-momentum-breaking 'dodge',
when meaning is understood only too well and a distracting
literary device is used deflect a reader attention. Besides if
you knew it was a typo, as you admit, why call attention to it,
at all... _except_ as a device.

>mainly because I can't
>think of anyone who's come along with a testable version of the
>"abduction as literal event" hypothesis.


Still -- Is there quality information with regard to UFOs that
is 'hidden' from the rank and file individual? Almost certainly!
The huge volume of _extant_ evidence is of a quality that cannot
be forever ignored... even by Mr. Rimmer and his coterie of
constipated 'klasskurtzian' crones.

Yes, the quality anecdotal evidence, compounded with the vetted
photographic evidence, and then added to the documented
historical evidence, gives -every- indication that a ufological
contention regarding that phenomena _must_ be more real than
not... Moreover, when the preceding is framed by the serious
artistic evidence, qualified by the available physical evidence,
and then compellingly buttressed by the conclusively personal
evidence, I can only be annoyingly astonished by the continued
reluctance of _some_, like Mr. Rimmer, to face the highly
strange music that just cannot be _forever_ ignored and
marginalized... Does the information available justify attention
by the mainstream to perform a more 'in depth' investigation of
UFOs and an abduction phenomena? Absolutely!

But in Mr. Rimmer's self-skewed view, none of any-of-that is
happening because it can't _be_ happening - a priori. Data is
injudiciously plucked from complementary trees to support his
self-consoling contentions. Mainly, because of intellectual
cowardice, convenient institutional preservation, or pompous
hubris, his reflections are a duplicitous collage of literary
feints, verbal twists, and artful dodges to extend the life of a
world view that has outlived its usefulness... if it ever had
any, at all.

<snip>

>>I have never personally met - outside anomalist circles (or
>>students, department colleagues, or family) - persons who have
>>heard of Truzzi, McDonald, and Swords (authorities, not mere
>>authority figures), much less been familiar with their
>>intellectual judgments. I doubt that you have, either. If I may
>>bring myself into the discussion briefly, I believe I am
>>something of an authority on the UFO controversy. If I may
>>judge, however, from my interactions with elites (e.g., major,
>>serious print and electronic media), I may safely conclude that
>>I am not an "authority figure." Nor, while you no doubt know a
>>lot about UFOs, are you. On our best days those quarters regard
>>as just another couple of guys with another couple of opinions.
>>Essentially, our job is not to provide answers, just quotes with
>>which to fill column or air space.

>Oops, I seem to have tripped over the chip on your shoulder!


No Sir. You tripped over a well explicated paragraph
demonstrating how real authority must trump an authority
'figure' even as that authority 'figure' gets more column space
and corrupted mainstream attention. There's blood on _your_
knee, Mr. Rimmer, and your admonished "oops" is there only to
distract from the fact that you had your conversational hull
breached yet one _more_ time.

alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







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                  Re: Central Research Facility - Reynolds

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 09:48:20 -0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:48:42 -0500
Subject: Re: Central Research Facility - Reynolds


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:28:55 -0000
>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility


>Is a central research facility not the very thing Hynek tried to
>create when he launched CUFOS in 1974? Scientists and
>technologists were expected to contribute and CUFOS was to be a
>laboratory to study & investigate UFO reports.

>Where is CUFOS now?

>As for anonymous scientists, if ufology is to have any
>credibility, that is the last thing we want.


When I first broached the subject of a central UFO facility - a
topic which has strayed from my original intention - I was
suggesting a centralized facility with equipment and pertinent
data which could be shared and used by those in the UFO
community who are seen as credentialed, by those in the UFO
community... many seen here at UFO UpDates.

For some reason Eleanor White (and others) have brought in
members of the establishment, the very people who have squelched
UFO studies out of fear for their jobs or because they are
mainstream individuals who don't want to rock any scientific,
theological, or political boats.

The facility I envisioned would be run by those - many here,
right now - who are respected, even when they hold diverse
views.

I named Jim Smith, Peter Rogerson, Alfred Lehmberg, Jerry Clark,
Richard Hall, Stan Friedman (of course), Brad Sparks, Kyle King,
and others as holders of the keys to a facility which would
centralize data and technology for use by those they deem
serious... not antagonistic to various UFO theories and
hypotheses.

How Listers here keep getting back to outdated arguments about
CUFOS, NICAP, and other organizations baffles me.

(I could name the persons who post here who flummox the ideas of
others, for whatever reason, but I won't. They and you know who
they are.)


Rich Reynolds
Director
Fort Wayne MediaWatch








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:58:39 -0600
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:49:32 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark


>From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:10:10 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:09:46 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions


Patient and gentle Listfolk:

>Of course all anomalies of consciousness can't be looked up in
>any clinical textbook, as there is so much work to be done on
>this subject. The abduction phenomenon can't be entirely
>explained with reference to present knowledge for the same
>reason. Talk of  mysterious "forces" does nothing to advance our
>knowledge, only carefully planned and executed scientific
>experiments and observations can do that.

I am glad to read that Magonia now backs leading American
ufologists who are doing the same, and not just talking about it
by constructing "theories" out of thin air.  One hopes that John
Harney will now join the call for full funding for serious
research into abductions, UFO sightings, and related matters,
and not just by researchers who share his views and who can be
counted upon to tell him what he already believes.

Meantime, we can do what we can, based on what ideas and
resources are available to us.  And it is essential that we do
so.  For one specific, see Dick Hall's recent posting on the
abduction-monitoring project. Of course, all scientific inquiry
proceeds on the basis of what is possible (both within current
understanding and within available technical and financial
resources), and there is no guarantee that our technology and
intellectual imagination -- and cash -- are equal to the task.
 But one has to start somewhere.

>Yet when scientific experiments are carried out they are
>invariably attacked by ufologists for producing the "wrong"
>answers, i.e. not mysterious enough.

As of course do debunkers/pelicanists/"sceptics" (not "un-
mysterious enough") when results fail to validate their favored
beliefs.  (See, for but one example, pelicanist hero Philip J.
Klass's furious, booklength disputation of the unknowns in the
Condon report.)  And so do scientists with competing views.  It
happens every day, and here is the good news: We're all better
off for it.  The process serves truth, which is seldom so simple
as the Magonians would have it be.  It elucidates issues by
demanding closer attention to the many variables that define
phenomena and affect outcomes of research and experimentation
 Anyone who claims that certainty is easily obtained via some
magical formula (such as falsification) is not serving the
pursuit of truth.

As is always, however, the case in the provincial worldview of
the Magonian, only ufologists are guilty of what is in fact
innocent and common, not to mention arguably positive. Harney's
charge betrays, once again, the fundamentally polemical, as
opposed to scientific or scholarly, nature of the Magonia
project.

In the real world of competing scientific claims, it is no
intellectual or moral error to question a claim of
falsification.  The ostensibly simple concept of "falsification"
is in reality highly complicated, even fluid, and often anything
but conclusive.  That's one big reason why, though it is
certainly not entirely useless, it was largely abandoned as an
infallible characteristic of the scientific process after
criticism from a host of scientists and  philosophers (e.g.,
William Quine, Pierre Duhem).  Nature, like the UFO question, is
too complex, the numbers of variables too high and often
confounding.  As one scholar, not writing about ufologists,
observes:

"A major problem [with falsification] is that it is often
difficult to get agreement on whether or not a result is truly a
falsification. Adherents of a theory often reinterpret negative
results to avoid damage to their theory.  In practice,
establishing falsification can be as difficult as establishing
verification."


Jerry Clark









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                        New News On Roswell Fragment?

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:26:20 EST
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:50:53 -0500
Subject: New News On Roswell Fragment?


Was listening to Dr. Roger Leir and Whitley Streiber give a
chilling series of accounts on C2C with Art Bell.

I know many of you listened in as well to Dr. Leir covering the
latest data on alleged UFO debris samples and witnesses etc.

I was at the 50th Anniversary of the Roswell Incident with about
30 staff members from Parascope Magazine and I videotaped every
day and the big debris analysis conference which Dr. Leir
covered on last night's C2C show.

Quite startling update by he and Whitley Streiber! Had all the
pieces of a good movie, yet it's not funny when reports of
threats and ruined lives arise from UFO research. We've all read
or witnessed ourselves this nonsense going on for the past 50
years.

So what do we do now?

Best,

Greg








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Smith

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:44:48 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:51:45 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Smith


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:40:12 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>I disagree with others on this List who keep suggesting that the
>ETH is not testable. It certainly is in principle, though the
>test will never happen as long as people assume that UFOs are
>all nonsense because it would cost a lot of money. If real,
>physical, ET beings are coming and going in real, physical
>craft, that would be detectable by satellite cameras, special
>detection equipment placed on the moon, etc. Some would argue
>that they have been so detected, but inevitably written off as
>errors in the equipment because they don't fit current belief.
>Of course, if UFOs are something else (like other dimensional
>visitors) all bets are off.

The problem with satellites is that they normally use sensors
and not cameras. Thus when the sensor accumilates a data file
(image) it takes a substantial amount of time which reduces its
value as an indicator of UFOs. Video or camera snapshots would
be preferred. Examining ISS/Shuttle video has shown alot of odd
lights. Meteors (at least what LOOKS like meteors) are visible.
Flashing lights on the surface of the Earth are visible too (one
such flasher has been identified as a searchlight by visiting
the site). In addition to these sources, there are a number of
flashers or steady lights in orbit (not "near" the Earth
surface). These cannot be resolved to be ET craft, but rather
are more likely debris.

I had hoped that since a number of UFOs are bright or flash that
this method would be useful. But unfortunately, without useful
stereo video imaging, the orbiting lights are likely to always
be attributable to debris. Also, ISS/Shuttle video imagery is
infrequent and costly and covers only a part of the Earth
surface to only a certain level of resolution. To get Earth
coverage at the required resolution will require an expensive
constellation. Hopefully, it would be possible to piggyback on
LEO communication satellites.








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                       Re: Alien Abductions - Gonzalez

From: Luis R. Gonzalez <lrgm.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 16:57:21 +0100
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:53:16 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Gonzalez


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:40:12 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

><snip>

>Similarly, if abductions are real, physical events they should
>be detectable by instruments. It won't do to say that the aliens
>clouded the cameras, or whatever. In fact a major scientific
>program to attempt to capture evidence of abductions on
>instruments has recently been completed (I was in on its
>planning and origination years ago) and the data are now being
>analyzed. It was a carefully planned, double-blind study. A
>report will be forthcoming sooner or later from the UFO Research
>Coalition.

We have been hearing about these kinds of experiments (I even
suggested something similar a couple of years ago) for years.

One thing I wonder about the "carefully planned, double-blind
study" is if they contacted skeptics for help and/or
suggestions.

Can you offer names?

I can wait for the results, but surely you can give us some more
details about the design and objectives of the experiment, can't
you?


Luis R. Gonzalez Manso








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                      Re: UFO Spotted In China - Smith

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:10:37 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:54:04 -0500
Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China - Smith


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:49:36 +0000
>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>Some day, on some distant planet, in some parallel universe,
>people will begin to recognize the obvious descriptions of
>fireball meteors, and news services will stop contaminating the
>UFO database by labeling them 'UFOs'.

While I agree that they are not too useful from a UFO research
standpoint, these cases are still UFOs using the strictest
definition and unless we have a global meteor radar network
reporting system which I am not aware of (NORAD does have some
such service, but I doubt it is a world wide service), then we
MUST be left with calling it a UFO (with a fairly high
probability of being a fireball meteor).

As to contamination of the UFO database, that has already been
accomplished with Venus, various stars, airplanes, balloons,
etc.






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             Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:09:50 -0800
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:11:09 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:29:20 -0000
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:46:31 -0400
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 23:13:24 -0000
>>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>>I do believe that the lack of actual UFO hardware is the biggest
>>>obstacle to scientific acceptance.

>>>It is useless to give the oft-repeated response that the
>>>authorities already possess this hardware but are keeping it top
>>>secret. This standard ufological rejoinder will cut no ice with
>>>the scientific establishment (or the media), and you cannot
>>>really blame them for poking derision at it. Ufology is too
>>>world-wide for this 'buck passing' to be valid.

>>We often throw around the term "scientific community" which is
>>as valid a term as "ufology" and too broad based.

>>Which "scientific community" are we referring to? The
>>pharmaceutical scientific community, the scientific research
>>divisions of the military complex, NASA's cloistered, federally
>>funded community [until they retire] the universities',
>>federally funded scientific communities, the medical scientific
>>community [i.e. the psychiatric field-which is no more exact
>>than ufology when it comes down to it and probably less so].

>>The point is each scientific community has its own vested
>>interest and sacred cow to protect - not to mention its funding.
>>An example of this is Physics versus Egyptology re the age of
>>the Sphinx. These communities fight amongst themselves.

>>This is too large a subject to get into for one person but I'm
>>sure most have had experiences where the co-called scientific
>>community has impacted their belief systems and not just where
>>it concerns the UFO phenomenon.

>>There is one common denominator to all of them and that is the
>>possible impact of the UFO phenomenon on their own communities
>>and it seems to filter through all of them.

>>Does anyone else feel that we are being sold a bill of goods by
>>those more interested in maintaining the status quo rather than
>>'what is'?

Christopher, Don, Et Al.,

>The 'scientific community' (I actually wrote 'scientific
>establishment') in the case of UFO acceptance is mainly
>astronomers & biologists. I am assuming here that UFOs
>eventually turn out to be alien spacecraft.

First the fact that "some UFOs" are "ET craft," and the eventual
"acceptance" of that fact will "ripple" through "all the
sciences," and change "everything" as we now know it. (and in my
view, that's why Ufology is in the state it's in-suppression).

>It may well be that there is substantial argument & debate if &
>when hardware is finally produced. Therefore UFO reality (as ET
>craft) will likely not be accepted at once even if such hardware
>turns up.

History has shown us that most "major discoveries, theories and
advancements" in science, as well as the people who proposed
them "went against the status quo" and were not initially widely
"accepted" (putting it mildly) by "mainstream science," e.g.,
Copernicus, Galileo, Bruno etc.; of course this is the case with
ETH, and will be no matter what degree of evidence is put on the
table;, however, as with previous "mind-changing events" Science
(itself) has, and will be, the factor to "advance the status
quo."

>But such hardware is a necessary start. As for "maintaining the
>status quo" I am positive that when the physical evidence comes,
>and in sufficient quantity, all those scientists who previously
>derided the subject will be so 'over the moon' that they will
>rapidly forget whatever they said in the past.

A "necessary start" for theorem or fact that changes how science
looks at things i.e., "status quo," is the observation of a
phenomena, i.e., UFO sightings, followed by a recording of the
event; hardware, i.e., "physical evidence" is not "necessary."
Today, it is widely "accepted" that there are "133 extra-solar
planets" - "There is no 'physical evidence' to support this
theorem!" I might add "there is" indeed "physical evidence" in
regard to Ufology. (And I don't mean what is in possession of
the military).

>Another thing: No government on earth will be able to suppress
>this fact, if & when it happens.

>CDA

"Propaganda" and it's brother "censorship" are as much part of
government (particularly ours) as are "humps to a camel!" To
think that "a government" in this case ours, can't suppress a
major event, or keep a secret is the ultimate in naivety.

Respectfully,

Frank Warren









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                    More Correspondence With Frank Drake

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:11:41 -0800
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:31:24 -0500
Subject: More Correspondence With Frank Drake


Fellow Listerions,

Here is my most recent correspondence to Frank Drake after not
getting a response back from him to my last e-mail:


Dear Mr. Drake,

I am resending my previous e-mail to you in the hopes that
perhaps you overlooked it, or just haven't had time to respond in
kind. I do appreciate your thoughts to date and respect your
opinion, albeit in my view, an uniformed one. (In regards to
Ufology).

I would be happy to offer you "case histories" in support of the
points I made in my previous e-mail; I feel, if you looked at
the available data/evidence you would certainly change your
mindset about the criterion "being met" in support of ETH;
however, if your "mind is made up" and you don't want to be
bothered with the evidence/data, please do me the courtesy of
saying so, and I won't bother you with any further
correspondence.

Thank You,

Respectfully,

Frank Warren


Dear Mr. Drake,

Back in July a colleague of yours, Seth Shostak debated Stanton
Friedman on the idea that some UFOs are indeed ET spacecraft;
Friedman took the "pro position" and Shostak of course opposed
the notion.

One thing the two men agreed upon was that they both adhered to
the concept of =93intelligent life existing in the universe.=94 As
the debate progressed Shostak took issue with the evidence that
Ufologists in general present for their theorem=97this brings me
to my question:

It would seem that most of the ideologies presented today from
=93mainstream Astronomers=94 e.g., extra-solar planets, rogue
planets, black holes etc., are based on =93circumstantial
evidence=94; for example, the idea of =93extra-solar planets=94 is
deduced by a =93star=92s wobble=94; my observation, as well as the
question, is why the guidelines for Astronomers in regards to
evidence is acceptable in =93their field=94 but they won=92t apply the
same rules to Ufology.

I would certainly appreciate your thoughts on the =93evidence or
data methodologies=94 used in Astronomy, and why said
methodologies don=92t seem to be adequate for Ufology.


Thank You,

Respectfully,

Frank Warren


He replied:


Hi:

Well, it is hard to give a short answer to your query.

However, the rules of evidence for mainstream astronomy and
UFOlogy are actually the same. In both cases we look for
well-observed, calibrated data, which can be verified by repeat
observations or experiments, best done by more than one observer.
All the astronomical claims of actual existence you mention
are supported by such solid, repeatable evidence. The wobbles in
stars are seen to repeat, and to follow a complicated pattern
which fits precisely the wobble expected when a star is being
pulled on by a planet moving with a changing speed in an
elliptical orbit. This is a very definitive requirement, which
is met precisely by the observations. Furthermore, in some
cases there is more than the wobble to go on -- the light of the
star is decreased by just the right amount and with the complex
time history expected if the planet passes in front of the star.
And it repeats as it should. So there is no doubt here.

Some things are still speculations, of course. Rogue planets
are one. There are no observations of such a planet. But it is
fair to speculate they exist from our growing modeling of what
takes place as a planetary system is formed, and the prediction
from this modeling that some planets will be ejected from the
system. Indeed, it would be amazing if this did not occur.

When it comes to UFO reports, none of the evidence criterion
are satisfied. No observations can be repeated. None has ever
been definitively recorded. So the rigid standards of science
are far from met. As Carl Sagan said, "Grand claims require
grand evidence", and that evidence is not there.

 Frank Drake

I replied:

FW: Dear Mr. Drake,

Thank you for you for your expeditious reply to my inquiry.

FD: Hi:

Well, it is hard to give a short answer to your query.
Actually I was looking forward to a "detailed explanation."
However, the rules of evidence for mainstream astronomy and
UFOlogy are actually the same. In both cases we look for well-
observed, calibrated data, which can be verified by repeat
observations or experiments, best done by more than one
observer.

FW: Allow me to play devil's advocate based on your affirmation
of equality in regards to evidentiary protocol of Astronomy and
Ufology.

FD: All the astronomical claims of actual existence you mention
are supported by such solid, repeatable evidence. The wobbles in
stars are seen to repeat, and to follow a complicated pattern
which fits precisely the wobble expected when a star is being
pulled on by a planet moving with a changing speed in an
elliptical orbit. This is a very definitive requirement, which
is met precisely by the observations. Furthermore, in some
cases there is more than the wobble to go on -- the light of the
star is decreased by just the right amount and with the complex
time history expected if the planet passes in front of the star.
And it repeats as it should. So there is no doubt here.

FW: To be clear, (from a layman's [me] point of view) since we
have "empirical evidence" of our own sun's orbit presumably
being affected by the gravity (pull) of Jupiter (and other large
planets in our own solar system), and the orbit (wobble) seems
to be directly proportional to the mass of said planet; we
therefore can presume the "same effect" takes place in other
solar systems, with their stars, and although we cannot see the
planets, we can observe the wobble, via "Doppler Shift" etc.
Since the "wobble" is directly proportional to the "mass of a
planet" (at least it appears to be here, in our solar system) we
can determine the mass of said planet by mathematical equation.

In addition to the wobble of a distant star, going on the
assumption that it is indeed a planet's gravity causing the
wobble, one could assume that if said planet were to cross
between the earth and the star being observed, the light from
the star would be measurably diminished.

You finally, state, that "there is no doubt here." I take that
to mean that this is going "beyond theory" and is accepted as
fact . . . interesting.

First I'd like to state that the "circumstantial (indirect)
evidence" put on the table for "extra-solar planets" is more
then enough "for me," for validation of their existence;
however, playing "Devil's Advocate":

1). Can we state emphatically that there aren't "other forces"
in the universe that aren't currently known that would "mimic
the pull" caused by gravity of a "Jupiter sized planet?" Could
another "space borne" object of the same mass cause the wobble?

2). Are there other actions that could affect "Doppler Shift,"
or any other form of detection in the same manner that "star
wobble" does, e.g., pulsations etc.?

3). Given the fact that the most detection methods of "extra-
solar planets" is relatively new, (with technology expanding by
leaps and bounds) and not without controversy, i.e.,( "Barnard's
Star and possible planetary bodies, David Gray's disputation of
51 Peg,") isn't possible that either "new information" could
surface, or the interpretation of the data may change, and
affect the current conclusions?

IMHO if the answers to any of the afore mentioned questions is
"unknown" or "it's possible," then that would leave "some"
doubt, albeit little to the "absolute existence" of extra-solar
planets based on the current methodologies used for their
reality; that said, what we're left with is strong
"circumstantial evidence" in support of the "theory" of extra-
solar planets."

FD: Some things are still speculations, of course. Rogue planets
are one. There are no observations of such a planet. But it is
fair to speculate they exist from our growing modeling of what
takes place as a planetary system is formed, and the prediction
from this modeling that some planets will be ejected from the
system. Indeed, it would be amazing if this did not occur.
Agreed. When it comes to UFO reports, none of the evidence
criterion are satisfied. No observations can be repeated. None
has ever been definitively recorded. So the rigid standards of
science are far from met. As Carl Sagan said, "Grand claims
require grand evidence", and that evidence is not there.

Frank Drake


FW: Here I have to respectfully disagree; you stated that the
criterion for the rules of evidence for mainstream astronomy and
UFOlogy are actually the same. In both cases we look for:

1). Well-observed, calibrated data.

2). Verification by repeat observations or experiments.

3). Multiple observers.

First let me clarify some points: The bulk of UFO reports over
the last 60 years after thorough investigation, can be
attributed to more conventional explanations, e.g., known
aircraft, celestial bodies etc.; however, the ones addressed
here are the smaller percentage that cannot be explained in a
conventional manner.

The ones I speak of are of an "unknown airborne craft" that
exhibit characteristics beyond man-made technologies. It is
true, that this phenomena can't for the most part be repeated
"on demand" it is a "transient uncontrollable unpredictable
event"; however, it certainly does repeat, and observations are
to numerous to count. It of course isn't the same as observing a
"fixed celestial body" and doesn't have the same obvious
advantages for scientific research. It does/has re-occurred,
often, and can/has been recorded in a number of ways to allow
for scientific investigation; for example:

1). In most cases involving a "craft" there is "direct
evidence," i.e., "eye witnesses.

2). The craft "occupies space."

3). It moves as time passes.

4). It emits "thermal effects."

5). It exhibits light emission and absorption.

6). It effects the atmosphere.

7). It can be photographed.

8). It has left residual "after-effects," i.e., forensic
evidence etc.

9). It has caused electric, magnetic and gravitational
disorders.

10). It has been tracked by radar

The list goes on . . .

You've stated that none (UFOs) have been "definitively
recorded." This is inaccurate. UFOs, in this instance "unknown
craft" have been photographed, video taped, tracked by radar,
and those readings recorded. In addition, they have been pursued
by "our aircraft," and those of other countries.

Finally, "all" the criterion you cite for evidence have been met
for Ufology with one more addition, "eye witnesses." One only
need to look at the data. This is not to say that all the
questions have been answered; in fact, it evokes this one--"why
doesn't Ufology receive that attention it deserves from
mainstream science?"

You quoted one of Carl Sagan's often used statements; I might
add that he also said, " In physics, as in much of all science,
there are no permanent truths; there is a set of approximations,
getting closer and closer, and people must always be ready to
revise what has been in the past thought to be the absolute
gospel truth."

But back to the quote you mention, "grand claims require grand
evidence." Is what Ufologists suggest so grand, so far out? By
your own device, ("Drake's Equation") you suggest the number of
planets in our galaxy with intelligent, technological
civilizations. Is it so far out that one of these civilizations
is far more advanced then we, and have mastered space travel; or
travel in ways beyond our comprehension. Using our own
technological advancement as a baseline we have progressed in a
few generations to what only our ancestors could describe as
"magic" given some examples; think what might and most assuredly
would happen in thousands of years, or more! I've always found
it odd that intelligent people admit to advance ETI, yet believe
that when it comes to traveling to earth--they (ET) "played
hooky" from that class!

Omitting the evidence, the data, for a moment (regarding
Ufology) and agreeing on the common point(s) that there is
"abundant intelligent life in the universe," the question is not
"are they here," but "why wouldn't they be?

I would like to hear your thoughts on what I've presented, as
well as my last question if you would be so kind.

Thank you for your attention to this matter, and I look forward
to your response.


Sincerely,

Frank Warren











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                       Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:13:26 -0500
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:32:47 -0500
Subject: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?


Going through by Quality Paperback Book Club Review for
December, I see a book entitled "Faster than the Speed of Light?
The Story of a Scientific Speculation" by Joao Magueijo (called
a brilliant young maverick with an heretical new theory). 288
pages.

This might be must reading for all those (myself included) who
are tangled up in entanglement and the Quantum mystery.


Rich Reynolds








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                       Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:15:58 +0000
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:34:20 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:40:12 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 13:20:42 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

><snip>

>>mainly because I can't
>>think of anyone who's come along with a testable version of the
>>"abduction as literal event" hypothesis.

><snip>

>John,

>I disagree with others on this List who keep suggesting that the
>ETH is not testable. It certainly is in principle, though the
>test will never happen as long as people assume that UFOs are
>all nonsense because it would cost a lot of money. If real,
>physical, ET beings are coming and going in real, physical
>craft, that would be detectable by satellite cameras, special
>detection equipment placed on the moon, etc. Some would argue
>that they have been so detected, but inevitably written off as
>errors in the equipment because they don't fit current belief.
>Of course, if UFOs are something else (like other dimensional
>visitors) all bets are off.

>Similarly, if abductions are real, physical events they should
>be detectable by instruments. It won't do to say that the aliens
>clouded the cameras, or whatever. In fact a major scientific
>program to attempt to capture evidence of abductions on
>instruments has recently been completed (I was in on its
>planning and origination years ago) and the data are now being
>analyzed. It was a carefully planned, double-blind study. A
>report will be forthcoming sooner or later from the UFO Research
>Coalition.


Dick

You may be able to test your particular version of the ETH, but
if say 10 years go by and no such anomalies are detected, I
doubt many ETH ufologists will hold up their hands and say they
were wrong all along. They will either claim the evidence has
been supressed, or will go from your version of the ETH to some
other such as Aime Michel's or invoke Budd Hopkins's invisible
spaceships. But at least your proposal, even if doesn't detect
the spaceships, stands a reasonable chance of uncovering a
variety of interesting and poorly documented atmospheric and sub
space phenomena and would be worth undertaking for that alone.

If the abduction study shows some massive anomaly like abductees
disappearing or the grays materialising in front of fraud proof
CCTV cameras in a locked room, and this is confirmed by a
several detailed critical studies by non ufologists then us
pelicanists will have been proved wrong.

Peter Rogerson






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                    Re: Central Research Facility - White

From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 16:30:56 -0500
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:36:08 -0500
Subject: Re: Central Research Facility - White


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:28:55 -0000
>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

<snip>

>As for anonymous scientists, if ufology is to have any
>credibility, that is the last thing we want.


Well, I've read many posts in which UFO researchers have
lamented the fact that mainstream scientists "won't touch" the
field of Ufology.

Please note carefully: My proposal was not that the scientists
would do _any_ of the data handling and analysis. Merely that
they would take into account the data types available, and write
their procedures on how to handle it so that the procedures
would conform to the scientific method.

Such procedures would be made fully public, so anyone could
either challenge the procedures, _or_, could examine the
procedures and apply whatever confidence level they felt was
appropriate to the future efforts of UFO researchers.

I don't personally, in a matter like ufology, see anything wrong
with anonymity. After all, at least some peer review in
mainstream science is _also_ done anonymously, according to what
I've heard and read. Anonymity is a work-around which takes into
account how human beings think and do things.

I'm suggesting this is way better than nothing.


Eleanor White








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer

From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:12:49 +0000
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:37:50 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:40:12 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>John,

>I disagree with others on this List who keep suggesting that the
>ETH is not testable. It certainly is in principle, though the
>test will never happen as long as people assume that UFOs are
>all nonsense because it would cost a lot of money. If real,
>physical, ET beings are coming and going in real, physical
>craft, that would be detectable by satellite cameras, special
>detection equipment placed on the moon, etc. Some would argue
>that they have been so detected, but inevitably written off as
>errors in the equipment because they don't fit current belief.
>Of course, if UFOs are something else (like other dimensional
>visitors) all bets are off.

The other possibility, of course, is that their non-appearance
does not fit other peoples' current belief, so some explanation
has to be found for it!

>Similarly, if abductions are real, physical events they should
>be detectable by instruments. It won't do to say that the aliens
>clouded the cameras, or whatever. In fact a major scientific
>program to attempt to capture evidence of abductions on
>instruments has recently been completed (I was in on its
>planning and origination years ago) and the data are now being
>analyzed. It was a carefully planned, double-blind study. A
>report will be forthcoming sooner or later from the UFO Research
>Coalition.

This is fascinating. Just yesterday Peter Rogerson and I had
been discussing the possibility of testing claimed abduction
'repeaters' in a sleep laboratory with suitable monitoring
instruments, and a double- blind system of the instruments being
active and inactive without the subjects or experimenters
knowledge. I certainly look forward to seeing the results of
this experiment. Are you able, at this stage, to give any
indication of its nature?


--
John Rimmer
Magonia Magazine








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                   NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe Resigns

From: NASANews.nul
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 17:20:20 -0500 (EST)
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:39:45 -0500
Subject: NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe Resigns


Glenn Mahone/Bob Jacobs
Headquarters, Washington                Dec. 13, 2004
(Phone: 202/358-1898/1600)

RELEASE: 04-400

NASA ADMINISTRATOR SEAN O'KEEFE RESIGNS

Administrator Sean O'Keefe, who over the past three years
led the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through an
aggressive and comprehensive management transformation and
helped the agency through one of its most painful tragedies,
resigned today.

In his resignation letter to the President the Administrator
wrote, "I will continue until you have named a successor and in
the hope the Senate will act on your nomination by February."

"I've been honored to serve this President, the American people
and my talented colleagues here at NASA," said Administrator
O'Keefe. "Together, we've enjoyed unprecedented success and seen
each other through arduous circumstances. This was the most
difficult decision I've ever made, but it's one I felt was best
for my family and our future."

O'Keefe, 48, is NASA's tenth administrator. Nominated by
President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he
was sworn into office Dec. 21, 2001. It was the Administrator's
fourth Presidential appointment.

After joining NASA, Administrator O'Keefe focused his efforts on
successfully bringing financial credibility to the agency and
eliminating a $5 billion budget shortfall for the International
Space Station program. He introduced a number of innovative
management and budget reforms. He led all federal agencies in
the implementation of the President's Management Agenda, which
is designed to make government more responsive and efficient. In
three of the original five categories on the Agenda, NASA's
performance is at the highest standard.

The tragic loss of seven astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle
Columbia as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere during STS- 107
on Feb. 1, 2003, focused the nation's attention on the future of
America's space program.

Administrator O'Keefe directed significant changes in the Space
Shuttle's safety and management programs. He was a key architect
of the President's new Vision for Space Exploration, announced
in January during a historic speech at NASA Headquarters in
Washington.

The new Vision for Space Exploration led a transformation of
NASA and has positioned the agency to meet the challenges of
safely returning the Space Shuttle to flight, completing the
International Space Station, exploring the complexities of our
home planet, and going back to the moon, on to Mars and beyond.

"The President and Congress have demonstrated their faith in us.
We need to seize this opportunity," added Administrator O'Keefe.
"NASA has a new direction that will push the boundaries of
technology, science, space flight and knowledge, and will
inspire new generations of explorers for years to come and
secure this great nation's future."

Encouraging students to study mathematics, science and
technology has been a priority for the Administrator. In April
2002, he unveiled a new Educator Astronaut Program, in which a
select few of the most outstanding teachers would be chosen to
join NASA's Astronaut Corps. The new Educator Astronaut
candidates were introduced in May on Space Day and are in
training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

During his tenure, Administrator O'Keefe realized a number of
significant mission triumphs, including Cassini's exploration of
Saturn and its moons, the recent successful hypersonic test
flights of the X-43A and the historic landing of the twin Mars
Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity on the Red Planet in
January.

"NASA is the only agency in the world where its people are
allowed to dream big and then work to make those dreams come
true. Who wouldn't treasure the opportunity to be a part of
pioneering history?" added the Administrator. "I'm humbled by
the dedication and determination of the NASA Family and their
commitment to the future of exploration. I wish each of them the
very best. I am confident in their ability to carry out what
we've started," Administrator O'Keefe concluded.

Administrator O'Keefe first joined the Bush Administration as
the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget,
overseeing the preparation, management and administration of the
Federal budget and government wide- management initiatives.

"The extraordinary opportunities you have permitted me to assume
these last four years have been experiences of a lifetime," the
Administrator wrote in his resignation letter. "In the most
challenging moments during my service I have drawn considerable
strength, resolve and determination to do what's right by the
standards you set every day."

>From 1989 to 1992, Administrator O'Keefe served as Comptroller
and Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Defense.
President George H. Bush appointed him as the Secretary of the
Navy in July 1992.

Before joining then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney's Pentagon
management team, he served on the United States Senate Committee
on Appropriations staff for eight years, and was Staff Director
of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

His public service began in 1978 when he was selected as a
Presidential Management Intern.

Administrator O'Keefe is a Fellow of the National Academy of
Public Administration; a member of the Committee on Climate
Change Science and Technology; and a Fellow of the International
Academy of Astronautics.

During his academic postings, he was a Visiting Scholar at the
Wolfson College of the University of Cambridge, England; a
member of the Naval Postgraduate School's civil-military
relations seminar team; and conducted seminars for the Strategic
Studies Group at Oxford University.

Administrator O'Keefe served on the national security panel to
devise the 1988 Republican platform and was a member of the 1985
Kennedy School of Government program for national security
executives at Harvard University.

In 1993, President Bush and Secretary Cheney presented him the
Distinguished Public Service Award. He was the 1999 faculty
recipient of the Syracuse University Chancellor's Award for
Public Service; recipient of the Department of the Navy's Public
Service Award in December 2000; and has been awarded honorary
doctorate degrees from several prestigious educational
institutions. In March 2003 and 2004, he was recognized and
honored by the Irish American Magazine as one of the Top 100
Irish Americans.

He is the author of several journal articles and contributing
author of "Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future,"
released in October 2000. In 1998 he co- authored "The Defense
Industry in the Post-Cold War Era: Corporate Strategies and
Public Policy Perspectives."

Administrator O'Keefe earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1977 from
Loyola University in New Orleans and his Master of Public
Administration degree in 1978 from The Maxwell School of
Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, N.Y.

For more additional information about Administrator O'Keefe
and NASA, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

-end-


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                            Professional Amateurs

From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 15:30:49 -0700
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:42:10 -0500
Subject: Professional Amateurs


Source: The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12PROFESSIONAL.html?ex=1103890101&ei=
1&en=9f4deafcf7d045a3


12-12-04

Professional Amateurs
By Clive Thompson

In January, a man named Jay McNeil peered into his telescope and
discovered a nebula - a developing young star - out near the
Orion constellation. Professional astronomers worldwide hailed
the discovery. But McNeil himself is no credentialed scientist;
he installs TV satellite dishes for a living. Today's backyard
skygazers, it seems, use equipment so sophisticated that they
can beat out the world's biggest, well-financed observatories.

And that, according to Charles Leadbeater, a social critic,
should be no surprise. In a report titled ''The Pro-Am
Revolution,'' published by the London-based Demos policy center,
Leadbeater argued that a new breed of demi-expert is evolving,
collapsing the distinction between an expert and a tinkerer.
Cheaper technology offers amateurs increasingly powerful tools;
the Internet allows them to collaborate globally and train
themselves more rapidly. The upshot is that amateurs are
increasingly holding themselves to professional standards and
producing significant innovations and discoveries. The Linux
computer system was created by geeks working without pay in
their spare time, yet it now rivals Microsoft's best products.
Patients arrive at hospitals sometimes better informed about
their diseases than their doctors. And amateur lobbyists
promoted the Jubilee 2000 campaign, which helped persuade
Western nations to cancel more than $30 billion in third-world
debt.

In a way, pro-ams represent a return to our past: until the 20th
century, much science was conducted by amateur societies. But
the rise of pro-ams also reflects recent social changes. We're
living longer, which gives us more time to grow bored with our
cubicle jobs and to hunger for a richer life. ''You find people
in their 40's and 50's going back to the things they always
wanted to do in their youth,'' Leadbeater says. ''So they're
becoming musicians, gardeners, astronomers. Normally, we regard
leisure just as 'nonwork.' But these people treat their leisure
very seriously. They want to get things out of it.''

Leadbeater says that governments ought to find ways to encourage
the higher amateurism. After all, he claims that pro-ams live
healthier, more satisfied lives - to say nothing of all the
cool stuff they create. Professionals, too, should get used to
sharing the stage. Because if Leadbetter is right, the future
belongs not to the pros, but to the weekend warriors.


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company







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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Reason

From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:38:09 -0000
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:43:13 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Reason


>From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:10:10 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>Of course all anomalies of consciousness can't be looked up in
>any clinical textbook, as there is so much work to be done on
>this subject.

Wow, John, that just has to be the understatement of the day.

What exactly is an "anomaly of consciousness"? At the very
least, I should think, it presupposes some notion of what
constitutes non-anomalous consciousness. But at present we
don't even have a working definition of consciousness which
everyone can agree on, which pretty much makes "anomalies of
consciousness" a non-starter as an explanatory hypothesis.

Or to put it another way, "anomalies of consciousness" is about
as sensible an explanation as "anomalies of shopkeeping". It's
scientifically meaningless.

>The abduction phenomenon can't be entirely
>explained with reference to present knowledge for the same
>reason. Talk of mysterious "forces" does nothing to advance our
>knowledge, only carefully planned and executed scientific
>experiments and observations can do that.

Would you like to suggest some?

>Yet when scientific experiments are carried out they are
>invariably attacked by ufologists for producing the "wrong"
>answers, i.e. not mysterious enough.

Really? I hope you'll tell me about them some time. I've
subscribed to UFO UpDates for a couple of years now, and I
certainly don't recall any such experiments being described or
referred to here.


Cathy







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                         And Speaking Of Anal Probes

From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 16:22:27 -0700
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:47:32 -0500
Subject: And Speaking Of Anal Probes


I've always thought that should be 'rectal probes', BTW, but
then I've also always thought that people usually mean `vulva'
when they teach their kids to say`vagina')...

...a nicely rational and infuriated 1994 piece by James Gleick
on the egregious and late Dr. John Mack:


Source:

http://www.around.com/abduct.html

[excerpts:]

Though he is in all the machinery surrounding his book as true a
believer as can be, still, in the actual text, he engages in a
slippery form of rhetoric - as if somehow he still wanted to
hedge his bets. He writes of "the actual experience (whatever
the source of these experience may ultimately prove to be)."
What does John Mack really believe (assuming that the whole
thing isn't just a calculated scam)? Does he have any curiosity
about the technology of this species, on the one hand capable of
passing through walls and beaming people about on rays of light,
and on the other hand, sometimes reduced to flagging down cars?
Does he believe that creatures from another planet are grabbing
our fellow humans, pinning them down, and engaging in weird sex
with them? Literally?

Well, yes - and no. Certainly he writes as though he does, but
he also manages to avoid answering such tacky direct questions.
Sometimes he switches over to writing in terms of "the abduction
phenomenon" (Smartspeak) instead of "abductions" (Markspeak).
Mack says, "Our use of familiar words like 'happening,'
'occurred,' and 'real' will themselves have to be thought of
differently, less literally perhaps" - it's a sickeningly
corrupt style of hiding behind language. His writing is full of
phrases drained of all meaning: "the collapse of space/time";
"the alien being opened Ed's consciousness." And there is always
the ultimate hedge: "the problem of defining in what reality the
abductions occur."

We know some realities they aren't occurring in. They aren't
occurring in the reality Mack calls "the ontological framework
of modern science."

This is the reality where we might be tripped up by things like
"accepted laws of physics and principles of biology." They
aren't occurring in "the Judeo-Christian tradition" - Jews and
Christians have become such stick-in-the-muds compared to (no
surprise here) "Eastern religions, such as Tibetan Buddhism,
which have always recognized a vast range of spirit entities in
the cosmos... " Things that, after all, could not have really
happened, are constantly happening in "converging time frames"
or "another dimension." The game of let's-find-another-reality
turns someone like me into such a party-pooper, having to fall
back on the common-sense idea that reality is in fact...
 reality.

But it's not just a game. Mack is a practicing psychiatrist, and
he's toying with real people. There is "Ed," who first got in
touch with Mack in 1992 and "recalled" having been abducted,
raped (not Mack's word), and lectured to about "the way humans
are conducting themselves here in terms of international
politics, our environment, our violence to each other, our food,
and all that" - all this having supposedly occurred 31 years
earlier, in 1961, though Ed didn't begin to recall it until
1989.

In a chilling aside, Mack writes that Ed and his wife, "Lynn",
have had "a number of fertility problems, which may or may not
be abduction-related, including three or four spontaneous
terminations of Lynn's pregnancies." It's a reminder: This man
is practicing medicine. He is telling patients that their
miscarriages may be due to imaginary aliens. Why do the medical
licensing boards permit this?

<snip>

We are not fully rational creatures.

Our minds are not computers. We see people, we hear voices, we
sense presences that are not really there. If you have never
seen the face of someone you know, in broad daylight, clear as
truth, when in reality that person was a continent away or years
dead, then you are unusual.

Our memories cannot be trusted - not our five-minute-old
memories, and certainly not our decades-old memories. They are
weakened, distorted, rearranged, and sometimes created from
wishes or dreams. With or without hypnosis, we are susceptible
to suggestion.








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   Dec > Dec 14

                      Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hatch

From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 15:32:13 -0800
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:49:16 -0500
Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hatch


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:49:36 +0000
>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>From: Terry Groff <terry.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 05:24:31 -0600
>>Subject: UFO Spotted In China

>>Source: Mid Day News - Mumbai, India

>>http://ww1.mid-day.com/news/world/2004/december/99305.htm
>>12-13-04

>>UFO spotted in China: Report
>>By: AFP

>>Beijing: An unidentified flying object, or UFO, passed across
>>the large northwestern Chinese city of Lanzhou and apparently
>>exploded in the suburbs, state media said today.

<snip>

>Some day, on some distant planet, in some parallel universe,
>people will begin to recognize the obvious descriptions of
>fireball meteors, and news services will stop contaminating
>the UFO database by labeling them 'UFOs'.


Hi Dick:

Complete agreement here, with some confusion: AFP (Agence
France-Presse) is given as source, but they are usually more
cautious.

I'm wondering if the Mumbai Midday News juiced up an otherwise
dull account for the sake of circulation.  UFO sightings a
something of a buzz in India recently.


Best

- Larry







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   Dec > Dec 14

                       A Guide Into The UFO Wilderness

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:55:32 -0500
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:55:32 -0500
Subject: A Guide Into The UFO Wilderness




Source: The Star - Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=3D/2004/12/14/itfeature/9559=
513&sec=3Ditfeature

12-14-04


A Guide Into The UFO Wilderness
By Ahmad Sayuthi

The subject of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) and close
encounters with extraterrestrial beings never fails to create a
lot of interest and controversy. Believers and sceptics are
equally passionate, with each having their own references to
either advocate or contradict a given cause =96 with neutrals in
between not knowing who or what to believe.

With the advent of the Internet, even more material is now made
available for everyone to analyse in the hope of gaining a
better understanding of the subject. But there is a problem: The
researcher is usually left dazed and confused with so much raw
information swamping him. A guide is needed to show him the way
through the complicated world of the UFO phenomenon.

The World Internet UFO Directory(ISBN 89-5563-057-3) might do
just that.

Published by South Korea-based Lingua Franca (e-
mail:info.nul), it is the product of a project team
that spent countless hours sifting through and evaluating the
resources available. Those selected were then compiled to
provide a concise and convenient reference to several hundred
reference points for the phenomenon.

Project leader David Ritchie, from the United States, said the
large amount of new information about UFOs was the main reason
for producing the book. Despite the enormous task of sifting
through all the material, the team decided to take up the
challenge. "We thought there was a real need for an overview of
this information and to show Internet users where to find it,=94
he said.

Getting an overview does not mean simply selecting anything that
sounds interesting. Hoaxes are plenty when it comes to UFOs and
anyone can put up just about anything on the Internet.

Ritchie said the information had to be authenticated with
different sources before being selected. However, he readily
agreed it was not a bulletproof method in the hotly-debated
subject.

"It=92s a challenge to compile a factual reference about a
mysterious phenomenon where the difference between information
and misinformation may be impossible to establish,=94 he said.

The best that the team could do was to try.

The book was also compiled to counteract a perceived bias toward
reports and case studies from a small number of countries such
as the United States and Canada as well as west European
nations. In many UFO compilations, the rest of the world
apparently does not exist. UFO Directory plans to change that,
with reports coming from all over the world, including Malaysia.

Readers here might be flattered to know that Malaysia is
regarded as "outstanding in the field of UFO studies...=94

This comes about due to the activities of the little-known
Centre for Malaysian UFO Studies (CENMYOFUS,
www.geocities.com/cenmyufos), which is highly regarded by its
peers.

The book also points out something interesting and unique about
Malaysia =96 the high number of sightings involving tiny humanoids
of around 15cm since 1953. The descriptions of these Awang Kenit
are also consistent despite coming from different locations.

The case in Kampung Gobek, Kelantan, is also mentioned. It is of
significance due to the statements of multiple witnesses and the
physical evidence from an alleged UFO landing site in 2000.

The topics covered in UFO Directory are certainly wide-ranging.
The reference points are convenient and helpful for different
audiences, whether they are dedicated students of the UFO
phenomenon or a general audience seeking leisure reading.

For example, under Humanoids, it is explained that this term
refers to alleged aliens having the same basic bodily structure
as humans (head, trunk, legs and arms) but different in other
respects, such as the length of limbs and proportion of head
size to body size. Descriptions of close encounters follow, with
discussions and speculations of what they are, where they came
from and why they came here.

Other relevant reference points like the Adamski Case, Men In
Black, Montauk Project, Malaysia, Hallucinations and Hoaxes are
highlighted for further followup for readers to gain a deeper
understanding.

UFO Directory is not limited to just sightings of UFOs and
extraterrestrial life forms. It excels by also providing
articles and bibliographic references that introduce readers to
other facets of the phenomenon which were previously unknown to
many. Readers will feel a sense of breadth and complexity where
the book also involves subjects that include astronomy and
astrophysics, physiology, religion, psychology, history and
folklore.

And the entertainment world is not given a miss either as the
book looks at the material on radio, television and in the
movies that were inspired by the phenomenon over the years.
Among them are 2001: A Space Odyssey, The X-Files and
Independence Day, to name just a few. For many people, the
entertainment world has been their main source of influence when
it comes to interest in the UFO phenomenon.

UFO Directory is certainly not a one-sided sympathiser aiming to
convince readers of the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrial
life forms, as one might suspect at first. Although the book is
heavy with accounts of UFO and encounters with humanoids and
such, it comes with its fair share of UFO critiques too. Hoaxes
and fakeries are revealed and articles expressing scepticism and
suspicions of some sightings and encounters are also included to
provide balance.

Ritchie said the editors had avoided taking sides in specific
controversies and have attempted to include a broad range of
opinions.

He is well aware that different groups and individuals have
different beliefs and can be passionate and emotional about
them. Debates can sometimes get acrimonious as a result. This he
blames on individuals having a poor understanding of the UFO
phenomenon.

According to Ritchie, this will only change when people get more
acquainted with the different viewpoints, which the book
attempts to do by providing a diverse range of topics and
opinions.

Closet UFO buffs who have kept their interest hidden for fear of
being mocked and ridiculed will be encouraged to know that it is
now accepted as a legitimate field of study. Ritchie said the
phenomenon of UFOs runs deeper than simply being the exclusive
domain of people who are generally regarded as weird.

"It is no longer viewed entirely as a preoccupation of
eccentrics and fantasists. Ufology has become part of mainstream
culture and is acceptable to millions,=94 he said.

And with UFO Directory serving as a guide, their search for the
truth =96 which is said to be "out there=94 =96 might yield an
encounter which is out of this world.

Sample links from UFO Directory:

UFO Cults
religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/ nrms/ufos.html

UFO/Aliens: Malaysia
ufos.about.com/library/bldata/bl5mala. htm

Humanoid Encounters In Malaysia
www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1038.htm

Kidnapped by UFOs? =96 Interview with Carl Sagan
www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc19.htm









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   Dec > Dec 14

                             UFO Over Sunraysia?

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:09:20 -0500
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:09:20 -0500
Subject: UFO Over Sunraysia?




Source: ABC Radio News - Central Victoria, Australia

http://www.abc.net.au/centralvic/stories/s1264916.htm

12-14-04

UFO Over Sunraysia?

Reporter: Jonathan Ridnell, Simon Wallace and Jo Printz


Frank McCormack is adamant that the objects he and his family
saw in the sky over Mildura did not come out of a beer bottle.

"We were having a barbecue, I was busy cooking the barbecue," he
says.

"Yes, we were having refreshments, but it was far too early to
be seeing double, seeing things that were not there."

It was 7pm, with a clear sky, and still daylight when Frank's
daughter in law spotted an odd object in the sky. The rest of
the family sighted it as well.

"We finally spotted this shiny white object, coming in from the
east to come across towards Mildura," Frank says.

"We continued to look at it to see if we could establish what it
was, and then it became stationary. It stopped over Mildura. So,
while we were watching it, two similar objects came in from the
west. They just manoeuvred around like a rendezvous with the
stationary one, then they just departed and went back west -
 then the other one that was stationary then started to move
back towards the east."

Nobody who saw them could work out what they were, but Frank is
certain of what they weren't.

"It wasn't an aircraft, it wasn't a balloon, it wasn't a
helicopter - there was quite a bit of glare...from the sun, we
actually looked at them through binoculars but we still couldn't
define what they were.

"I think they were a long way up; I think they were too high for
a helicopter. If they had have continued in a straight line
across the sky, we'd have possibly thought they were
satellites."

Doug Moffert, from UFO Research, New South Wales, says Frank's
encounter is typical in some ways - especially in the 'round
table discussion' afterwards of 'could it be this, could it be
that', seeking an explanation.

While typical in that way, Frank is unusual in his willingness
to come forward and talk about what he saw.

To listen to the interviews, click the links below.

Listen via Real Player to: Frank McCormack relates what he and
his family saw in the skies over Mildura:

rtsp://media.abc.net.au/milduraswanhill/m989016.rm

Doug Moffert from UFO Research NSW talks to the ABC's Jonathan
Ridnell:

http://www.abc.net.au/milduraswanhill/stories/m989012.ram








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   Dec > Dec 14

                        Re: Alien Abductions - Clark

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:20:46 -0600
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:40:26 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Clark


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 18:39:38 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:09:46 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:19:59 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions


Patient and gentle Listfolk:

>>>The people being denounced as hybrids
>>>seem to be just folks who have various forms of physical, or
>>>social disabilities whose lives are probably damned difficult
>>>already, without Hopkins and Jacobs trying to turn them into
>>>agents of a sinister conspiracy.

>>Who is being "denounced" as a hybrid? Names, please. I mean,
>>besides George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

>Two that come to mind: the young student identified as "Raechel"
>in the case reported in recent issues of MUFON UFO Journal, and
>the family friend, Mr Paige, described in Bud Hopkins "Sight
>Unseen" - possibly borderline autistic or suffering from
>Asperger's Syndrome, but seen by Hopkins as a sinister hybrid.

Budd, not Bud, Hopkins. (Not a typo, as John will claim; this is
in fact a fairly common error in Magonian discourse.) Why are
Magonians so resistant to the correct spelling of names?
Christopher Allan is "Christopher Allen," and I've long been
"Jerry Clarke," while David Clarke is, ironically and amusingly,
"David Clark." To cite just four instances that come immediately
to mind.

Perhaps there is some psychosocial hypothesis which addresses
this mystery. Perhaps it is some British-specific cultural
pathology diagnosable only by Americans who have never resided
in the United Kingdom.

In any event:

"Raechel" and "Mr. Paige" are about as nebulous as "Ashtar" and
"Orthon," in other words not much different from the names one
conjures up in dreams, and neither to the point nor to the
question. Since here you're being a literalist and assuming (as
I, being more skeptical than you, am not) that these individuals
actually exist in event-level reality, let's have some specific
human beings with real names and addresses - you know, living,
breathing fellow homo sapiens whose suffering can be documented
and thus shown not to be endured only in the always fervent,
self-righteous imaginings of Magonians. Then we can settle the
issue and not have to rely merely on Rimmer's sinister
inferences. If we can find a "Raechel" with an actual last name
like a normal human being, we can look her up, and those who
have exploited her can be dealt with as sternly as they deserve.
Likewise with "Mr. Paige."

Speaking generally from my point of view: The hybrid claims I've
seen, while certainly curious, do not persuade me. In other
words, I am skeptical in the way that any sensible person who
has not been persuaded would be. At the same time, like anybody
else, I don't know much of anything with certainty, given claims
that so far apparently resist convincingly demonstrated
(ostensibly) orthodox and heterodox explanations, and about
which persons who prefer to confine their pronouncements to what
they can reasonably document tend not to make sweeping
statements. Like the overwhelmingly majority of my fellow
Americans and earthlings, I live my life on the implicit
assumption that alien hybrids do not walk among us and that,
while I occasionally encounter strange individuals, they are
probably not entities in whom unearthly blood courses.

Of course I will be interested in further developments which,
let us hope, shed more light on the issue than has heretofore
been shone. My suspicion is that the ultimate answer will not be
the one that either abduction literalists or Magonians espouse,
but one that may tell us something, if only about human
experience and perception, that we didn't know before. I expect
that in one way or another we will be surprised and fascinated.

>>>The idea of mysterious
>>>foreigners possessed of supernatural powers trying to infiltrate
>>>society is an ancient motif, and one very much encountered in
>>>anti-semitic fantasies. But I think you know that already.

>>Your point being that abductees, besides being racists, are
>>anti-Semites, too?

>The point is that all these "antis" are aspects of a generalised
>fear of "the Other" which is common to human societies,
>worldwide. They are not exclusively American, as Jerry seems to
>be implying.

If John read his own magazine, which I gather he doesn't, he
would know that Magonians are talking specifically about
Americans, with whom Magonians are obsessed and whose heterodox
views of abductions, UFOs, and anomalies in general occasion
much huffing, puffing, and outraged bloviating. Even Peter
Rogerson had the good grace and intellectual honesty not to
pretend otherwise in our recent exchange.

In any event:

John's point being that abductees, besides being racists, are
anti-Semites, too?

>After a previous discussion on UpDates (vide Archives) a number
>of Americans wrote to me agreeing with me that this is a live
>issue.

Always better, of course, to cite (alleged) anonymous sources
than have to produce actual evidence of widespread panic and
attendant extraordinary hallucinations about interracial
children disguised as ETs.

>>If you're aware that you and your fellow citizens are frantic
>>with fears of interracial/interethnic/intercultural marriage,
>>please speak up. And especially do so if you have reason to
>>believe that this fear is so overwhelming that susceptible
>>Americans are undergoing horrifying hallucinations about it.

>Oh, now whose being disingenuous?

Who's, not whose. And as usual the ever-disingenuous John evades
the question, which would be a perfectly reasonable one to
anybody not blinded by Magonianism.

Of course I, too, would want to dodge the question if I had no
evidence, beyond faith statement, to support a hypothesis which
frankly borders (I am being kind) on the crankish.

>So Jerry Clark's family is the epitome and model of American
>society, is it?

And what would John know about American families? Nothing to
speak of, it appears, since the point of my remarks has sailed
over the point on his head. As was surely clear to all non-
Magonians on this list, my point was:

The Clarks are neither an epitome nor a model of an American
family, just a fairly typical one. Got that, John? Let me
repeat, with capital letters so that you don't miss them this
time: WE CLARKS ARE PRETTY AVERAGE AMERICANS. THERE ARE MILLIONS
OF FAMILIES LIKE OURS.

>You may not wish to comment on the inner psyche
>of the British, but credit us with some intelligence.

So you're not all Magonians?

>I'm sure
>the Clark family is the very model of racial tolerance,
>inclusiveness and diversity, but despite your paen of praise to
>the lovely town of Canby (see below), I'm sure that not everyone
>in America are such paragons you may be an example of Real
>America, but not the only one, surely?

If we want to talk about psychosocial expression, here we have
the usual Old World, condescending treatment of the rude
colonials, who sadly lack the wisdom - even about our own lives,
culture, and history - to heed the superior insights of their
onetime masters. Let's put it this way:

Chuck it, Colonel Blimp.

>>Living in a small, conservative town, I am often subjected to
>>discourse that strikes me as idiotic, narrow, ignorant, or
>>poorly considered. Fear of interracial/intercultural marriage
>>has figured in no rant that I can remember. These are the sorts
>>of things you would know, Peter, if you actually lived among
>>Americans and thus had an actual understanding of how we think.

>Thank you for assuring us that America is the one society on
>Earth that has managed to eliminate racial hostility - or is it
>just Canby?

I take it that John is denying the growing occurrence of
interracial/interethnic/interreligious marriage in America, the
facts notwithstanding (and facts should never, of course, get in
the way of a good Magonian "theory"), and the diminishing
instance of public and private racism in American life (not, as
he preposterously would have it, its total extinction; racism,
sad to say, will be, like any number of other social ills, a
long time getting to that happy place) - also evident to anyone
who cares to educate himself.

(For an example of what I'm talking about, consider the
observations of respected terrorism expert Peter Bergen. In the
Los Angeles Times for December 12, Bergen remarks that another
major terrorist attack on America would likely not be plotted on
our soil, but would be hatched within the growingly alienated
Muslim population of Britain and Europe. America's Muslims have,
Bergen writes, "rejected Osama bin Laden's ideas" because they
are better integrated into our society and more accepted here
than Europe's Muslim immigrants and citizens are in European
societies. Maybe, if you really believe that alien-hybrid
experiences are rooted in terror of foreigners and nonwhite
races, you should be wondering why your part of the world isn't
inundated with horrifying science-fictional hallucinations about
menacing hybrids.)

I would wager that I know a great deal, from decades'
concentrated reading, involvement in liberal political
movements, and personal observation and experience, about the
dynamics of American racism than John ever will. But then, it's
true, I'm only a colonial, and John's so much smarter than we
are.

John is also asserting implicitly (in defense of Magonians'
goofy guesswork about alien-hybrid claims) that 21st-Century
Americans are so panicked about their racial purity that the
very notion is triggering ultravivid science-fictional
nightmares routinely mistaken for waking experiences. I take it
that John believes all of modern America is the 1950s Deep
South. When and where, one might as well note, there was and is
zero - let me repeat, zero - evidence of a rash of science-
fictional hallucinations about hybrid human-alien children.
This in an apartheid culture obsessed with what was then called
"race mixin'," considered the ultimate cultural horror and
resisted legally, then (following the 1954 Supreme Court
decision Brown v. Board of Education and the rise of a powerful
civil-rights movement) illegally and often violently.

By denying the demonstrable and proclaiming the dubious, John
proves himself a true pelicanist. He has indeed earned his
wings. He gets extra points for, once again, mentioning the
name of the town in which I live - always a sure sign, as well,
of Magonian desperation. (Is anybody else's hometown mentioned
so often - or ever - in the postings of non-Magonians? Is the
mention of my place of residence supposed to be an insult? How
old are Magonians, anyway? Is theirs a children's crusade?)
Anyway, next time I see a pelican floating on the waters of our
local lake - named, I'm proud to say, after my late father - I
promise to think of John.

>As a noted English jurist one said, "Chuck it, Smith".

I guess we Americans are an inferior species, not knowing, or
caring much, who the above-mentioned Mr. Smith is. Let's hope,
however, that whoever he is, he has better sense than Mr. Rimmer
possesses.


Jerry Clark









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   Dec > Dec 14

               NORAD & Fastwalkers [was: UFO Spotted In China]

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:31:17 -0600
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:45:08 -0500
Subject: NORAD & Fastwalkers [was: UFO Spotted In China]


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:10:37 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:49:36 +0000
>>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>Some day, on some distant planet, in some parallel universe,
>>people will begin to recognize the obvious descriptions of
>>fireball meteors, and news services will stop contaminating the
>>UFO database by labeling them 'UFOs'.

>While I agree that they are not too useful from a UFO research
>standpoint, these cases are still UFOs using the strictest
>definition and unless we have a global meteor radar network
>reporting system which I am not aware of (NORAD does have some
>such service, but I doubt it is a world wide service), then we
>MUST be left with calling it a UFO (with a fairly high
>probability of being a fireball meteor).

<snip>

From AOO #24

Fastwalkers

That's a word that just drips incongruity and high strangeness,
isn't it?

"Fastwalker" is a term NORAD (North American Air Defense
Command) invented to categorize objects that approach from
space, enter our atmosphere, maneuver strangely about, and then
leave the atmosphere again in a manner that is... not consistent
with the aforementioned boosters, birds, and bolides! It is a
word also used to describe trans-lunar phenomena (tlp's):
anomalous objects with the particularly peculiar flavor of
*things* ufological... moving quickly across the face of the
full moon and filmed through quality telescopes on Earth... or
on shuttle flights... or on radar screens...

The Air Force NORAD facility, it has been convincingly reported,
observes these "fastwalkers" from its subterranean facility deep
inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, and tracks a rough average
of 500 of them (UFOs for the uninitiated) each YEAR as they
enter the Earth's atmosphere from deep space, maneuver around,
and then leave again. This is not a fiction. It corroborates a
similar report from AeroJet General engineers Lee Graham and Ron
Regehr, who have revealed to the well respected UFO researcher
Don Ecker documents indicating that AeroJet's DSP satellite
system, alone, routinely detects UFOs flying into Earth's
atmosphere from deep space... up to two to three times per
month.

But these ironically well cited stories can be dismissed as
fatuous fluff from "Philip's fabled foggy fringe of facile
fools..." until one stumbles, quite inadvertently (you
understand), upon corroborating evidence from an unlikely source
in an unlikely place and at an unlikely time. MY corroborating
evidence was picked up like a winning lottery ticket found in
the commode stall of a Baptist Church lavatory...

Here are the details.

As a function of my long military experience at Fort Rucker,
Alabama, I have a few enjoyable privileges left that come as a
result of it. One of these privileges is an invitation to the
annual "October Fest" that the German aviation Officers put on
every year (towards the end of September, oddly), for their
American allies, et al. At this fest (gonzo party!) there is
polka music, traditional German fest fare, and the best beer in
the known universe (imported deliciously unpasteurized (YUM!)
from the genuine breweries of the Fatherland. FREE! Life is
indeed GOOD at these (by invitation only) Teutonic soirees...
but I digress...

Towards the midpoint of the party my wife and I sat down at a
table with a woman she knew from the Fort Rucker German club.
The conversation got very lively, all the male participants were
abundantly sloshed and feeling expansive while expressing
themselves similarly with all guards well down. The females
graciously indulged us that - given how messy we are to both
tolerate AND clean up after... (after an abundant sloshing ...)
anyway...

One of the participants at this little ad hoc collection of
retired and active duty aviation officers was a very senior Army
lieutenant colonel who was just coming from a very interesting,
on topic, and unusual military assignment. He was a senior Army
liaison officer to the Airforce's facility at Cheyenne
mountain... NORAD, mentioned earlier. I sobered up pretty fast.

"How about those fastwalkers," I asked him in a lull of his
oration regarding NORAD. The broad smile came off his face like
I'd slapped him. UFOs ARE serious business, it seems.

"NORAD is not set up to see things like that," he admitted
astonishingly with a focused and _too_ narrow tightness.
"Like... see what exactly"? I asked with an evil grin.

"That's classified," he said frostily, all expansiveness in
retreat and guards coming up like fists.

The other guys and their wives noticed the immediate frost and
fell silent. What's the matter? Someone asked. What happened?

The good colonel just gave me an indication how weird things
really are... without violating any security oaths, I thought to
myself, but allowed, OUT loud, to the beleaguered colonel that I
didn't mean to put him on the spot about security issues, just
that I found the subject very interesting myself (and shouldn't
everyone?). The conversation went (too gratefully) back to party
talk, and the colonel and his wife were the first to leave.

Does anyone else see the veiled admission here? Does anyone else
see the incongruity of the exchange between the colonel and I?
Why the quick frost; why the terse (and blundering) reminder of
top level classification; why was he so put off? Maybe if he
told me he'd have to kill me, not as funny as it sounds, and
what's up with _that_?

Fastwalker... It's just a word, isn't it? That fascination of
facile fools mentioned earlier? Be that as it may, it was a word
that one very slightly ambushed colonel knew and apparently
knew, very well. It was also a word that held a lot of jaw
clenching import for him - forgetting that it was enough of a
word for one stranger to be abruptly and reflexively terse,
tensed up, and tight-mouthed with another. It was certainly
enough of a word to inject ill will into the encounter - when
seconds earlier good will flowed from fountains and a good time
was being had by all! Perhaps it's _more_ than just a word at
our cultural denouement. Nest ce' pas?

As regards the absence of my own observed fastwalkers? They've
been absent for so long now that I could begin to wonder if I
had ever seen them at all... but that I can review the previous
twenty-four pieces in this series (you're presently reading) for
evidence (and a personal record) of something indeed seen in
starry skies all over North America, points north AND south, and
overseas. But for this series I wouldn't (couldn't!) be so sure.
They've been veritably squeegeed from the after-midnight sky
THAT well, of late.

So I did see something, my testimony is a matter of public
record, and "fastwalker" IS a real word... indirectly, but
convincingly confirmed by one of the *players*.

UFOs _are_ real.


alienview.nul  -:|:-
   www.AlienView.net








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                     Re: Professional Amateurs - Cammack

From: Diana Cammack <cammack.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:49:11 +0200
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:47:03 -0500
Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs - Cammack


>From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 15:30:49 -0700
>Subject: Professional Amateurs

>Source: The New York Times

>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12PROFESSIONAL.html?ex=1103890101&ei
=1&en=9f4deafcf7d045a3

>12-12-04

>Professional Amateurs
>By Clive Thompson

>In January, a man named Jay McNeil peered into his telescope and
>discovered a nebula - a developing young star - out near the
>Orion constellation. Professional astronomers worldwide hailed
>the discovery. But McNeil himself is no credentialed scientist;
>he installs TV satellite dishes for a living. Today's backyard
>skygazers, it seems, use equipment so sophisticated that they
>can beat out the world's biggest, well-financed observatories.

>And that, according to Charles Leadbeater, a social critic,
>should be no surprise. In a report titled ''The Pro-Am
>Revolution,'' published by the London-based Demos policy center,
>Leadbeater argued that a new breed of demi-expert is evolving,
>collapsing the distinction between an expert and a tinkerer.

<snip>

>Leadbeater says that governments ought to find ways to encourage
>the higher amateurism. After all, he claims that pro-ams live
>healthier, more satisfied lives - to say nothing of all the
>cool stuff they create. Professionals, too, should get used to
>sharing the stage. Because if Leadbetter is right, the future
>belongs not to the pros, but to the weekend warriors.

This is not a new idea. Whatever you think of his politics, Karl
Marx put it well some time ago:

"as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each
man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is
forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter,
a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain
so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in
communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of
activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he
wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes
it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow,
to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in
the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind,
without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."








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                 Re: A Guide Into The UFO Wilderness - Groff

From: Terry Groff <terry.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:11:39 -0600
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:48:21 -0500
Subject: Re: A Guide Into The UFO Wilderness - Groff


<snip>

Some of the links were broken and I fixed them here.

>Sample links from UFO Directory:

>UFO Cults

http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/ufos.html


>UFO/Aliens: Malaysia

http://ufos.about.com/library/bldata/bl5mala.htm


>Humanoid Encounters In Malaysia

http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1038.htm


>Kidnapped by UFOs? - Interview with Carl Sagan

http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc19.htm


Please note on the "UFO Cults" link above that they have Kenneth
Arnold listed as the founder.


Terry








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                     Re: UFO Over Sunraysia? - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:37:17 -0600
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:50:14 -0500
Subject: Re: UFO Over Sunraysia? - Lehmberg


>Source: ABC Radio News - Central Victoria, Australia

>http://www.abc.net.au/centralvic/stories/s1264916.htm

>12-14-04

>UFO Over Sunraysia?

>Reporter: Jonathan Ridnell, Simon Wallace and Jo Printz

>Frank McCormack is adamant that the objects he and his family
>saw in the sky over Mildura did not come out of a beer bottle.


<snip>

We need to stop thinking in terms of these bogus conventional
wisdoms. You see, beer doesn't make you see paranormal objects,
bigfoot or UFOs, especially, in the context of a friendly back
yard bar-b-q, even if it might _hide_ the paranormal object,
bigfoot, or UFO actually there, or facilitate the easy
'forgetting' of these things. Beer, all by itself, does not
seriously degrade a "good observational instrument" Case in
point:

>From an essay on 'reverse' hypnotism...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hypnosis has a strange history shrouded in chicanery,
humbuggery, and a little something extra one can't put a finger
on. That little something extra is what keeps it around, makes
it useful, and justifies a harder look by science...

Sometimes it works.

One hears the word "hypnosis" and is overcome by images of stage
personalities suggesting to people that they can be transformed
into barnyard animals, dance a grand fandango, or be compelled
to quit smoking... but the program can be more insidious than
that...

If two thirds of the population can be effected by phenomena
that science can quantify (if not qualify) this seems to be a
ready mechanism for control by manipulative suggestions
delivered via a daily bombardment from a very tightly controlled
media - news print, radio, and television.

An individual buying in to the unceasing manipulations of the
contrived, distorted, and corrupted mainstream might even take
the next step in their "control" by hypnotizing themselves! In
effect, rendering themselves incapable of perceiving what is
there, plainly, to be perceived, and NOT, conversely, seeing
what is not there to be seen...

An illustration...

While on active duty years ago, and before I developed any
substantive interest in the ufological, I had a barbeque at my
home, one evening, with five or six couples in raucous
attendance. I was standing away from the group with two other
men - one AH-64 (Apache) instructor pilot, and a fixed-wing
driver who was an Army candidate for the astronaut program. The
sun had just gone down and dusk was washing out to the blackness
of night.

There was a lull in the conversation, and one of the men looked
up and said, "That's odd..." Pointing at the sky with his beer
hand, we all looked up at a black strip about as wide as a
little fingernail held at arm's length and flying diagonally
through the air! As it flew, one of the men remarked that the
craft had very peculiar position lights. These lights were white
strobes that ran from wing-tip to wing-tip, and then back
again... there was no evidence of the required red and green,
and no flashing anti-collision light...

"Well - it's got to be something..." someone said... so, with
that the object was forgotten, and all three of us returned to
the party. More beer was had by all, and the party continued
into the usual drunken mini-brawl that Army rotary-wing aviators
USED to be famous for...

I didn't remember this occurrence again for almost a decade, and
was reminded of it only by seeing a similar object in California
after I had developed an interest in UFOs. I would suggest that
my two fellow aviators and I followed the programming hypnosis
of "polite" society and ignored a sighting that should have been
VERY interesting to two professional instructor pilots and a
candidate astronaut!

But we were less than interested, and we ignored a genuine UFO
as a non-event - behavior on this end that now seems
_inexplicable_ to me. We hypnotized ourselves (followed our
social programming) and rejected the unsettling enigmatic for
the comforting mundane. We ignored what our eyes were reporting
to us and replaced it with an "accepted" routine. We turned our
back on the unexplained, likely occurring around us all the time
(unseen), and made it fit into what we are trained to find
culturally tolerable...

I've watched this process of denial (through self hypnosis) at
work twice now. At a rubber model airplane meet in Northern
California dozens of us watched a UFO fly by five times with
fewer and fewer people looking up to watch it fly with each
succeeding pass that it queerly made! ...Tell yourself enough
times that something's not there - and it's not there.

The article that I comment on, above, gives every indication
that science believes the human brain is capable of convincing
itself to perceive what is -not- there to be perceived. I would
suggest that it can also do the inverse of that. It can also
mask what is there to be seen, as plain as shining day. We won't
pay enough attention to that - given that we have to overcome
so much programming from our myopically conflicted culture.

But we must, ultimately, if we ever expect to see anything
really there, at all.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net








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                 Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:42:16 -0600
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:52:09 -0500
Subject: Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - King


>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:13:26 -0500
>Subject: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

>Going through by Quality Paperback Book Club Review for
>December, I see a book entitled "Faster than the Speed of Light?
>The Story of a Scientific Speculation" by Joao Magueijo (called
>a brilliant young maverick with an heretical new theory). 288
>pages.

>This might be must reading for all those (myself included) who
>are tangled up in entanglement and the Quantum mystery.


Hi Rich,

I hope that more books by mavericks with heretical ideas on this
subject are published.

For those of us that accept that some things are real because we
believe them to be, the more on this subject the better.

I remember learning about relativity from an excellent Time/Life
book as a child, Murder On The Relativity Express, was the title
of the story used to illustrate the theory. That
faster-than-light travel is impossible was a given in the story.
Even so, while watching Star Trek I was never compelled to smirk
at the thought of hyper-light travel. I figured we just didn't
know then what we'd know in the 23rd century. Based on the
changes I've seen in the time since, I cannot believe we will
still be arguing over faster-than-light travel for another two
hundred years.

Imagine what physicists of the late 19th century would have made
of super-string theory.

Hope springs eternal, and I hope this book... laudable or
laughable... is but a small sample of the heretical new theories
to come.

I'll hunt for a hardback version, as my sig-oth claims I'm way
too hard on paperbacks.

Perhaps you'd provide a review? <g>


Best Regards,

Kyle








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                Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Shough

From: Martin Shough <mshough.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:54:27 -0000
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 17:43:53 -0500
Subject: Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Shough


>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:13:26 -0500
>Subject: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

>Going through by Quality Paperback Book Club Review for
>December, I see a book entitled "Faster than the Speed of Light?
>The Story of a Scientific Speculation" by Joao Magueijo (called
>a brilliant young maverick with an heretical new theory). 288
>pages.

>This might be must reading for all those (myself included) who
>are tangled up in entanglement and the Quantum mystery.

It's an interesting and entertaining read, partly because of
Maguijo's acerbic attitude to many of his elders in the physics
community, whom he seems to regard as basically a bunch of
reactionary old farts defending outmoded institutions. However,
the variable-speed-of-light or VSL cosmology that he advocates
(the basic idea is not new and there is a spectrum of related
theories) does not have anything directly to do with quantum
entanglement. Information is a VSL universe still propagates at
the speed of light, but the speed of light in vacuo is allowed
to change over cosmic time.

Best
Martin Shough









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   Dec > Dec 14

                    Re: Central Research Facility - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:01:36 -0600
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 17:45:32 -0500
Subject: Re: Central Research Facility - King


>From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 16:30:56 -0500
>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:28:55 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

><snip>

>>As for anonymous scientists, if ufology is to have any
>>credibility, that is the last thing we want.

>Well, I've read many posts in which UFO researchers have
>lamented the fact that mainstream scientists "won't touch" the
>field of Ufology.

>Please note carefully: My proposal was not that the scientists
>would do _any_ of the data handling and analysis. Merely that
>they would take into account the data types available, and write
>their procedures on how to handle it so that the procedures
>would conform to the scientific method.

>Such procedures would be made fully public, so anyone could
>either challenge the procedures, _or_, could examine the
>procedures and apply whatever confidence level they felt was
>appropriate to the future efforts of UFO researchers.

>I don't personally, in a matter like ufology, see anything wrong
>with anonymity. After all, at least some peer review in
>mainstream science is _also_ done anonymously, according to what
>I've heard and read. Anonymity is a work-around which takes into
>account how human beings think and do things.

>I'm suggesting this is way better than nothing.


Hi Eleanor,

Anonymity in peer review is necessary to prevent authors of
papers from lobbying or attempting to influence individual
members of a peer review jury, and to combat the prospect of
collusion.

The authors of papers are rarely anonymous, since the chief goal
of peer-reviewed papers is to garner funding. It's hard to
provide funding to anonymous researchers.

While I agree with you that developing a scientifically
unassailable methodology for UFO research is a requirement,
perhaps it is best not to rely on 'mainstream science' to
provide it.

Science does not require a mainstream. In fact, the very idea of
a scientific mainstream is a construct of a protectionist
establishment, rather than a collection of scientists who
represent what is right or true.

Mainstream science is almost an oxymoron. Since mainstream
science does not have all the answers, obviously the answers lie
outside the mainstream. Yet the funding for research is often
withheld and deemed a waste if it is outside the mainstream. And
funding for mainstream science moves ahead based on a presumed
legitimacy proffered by... mainstream science. Tautological at
best. Ludicrous at worst.

We must not rely on the government-funded scientific mainstream
for our methodology, since we'd be relying on our worst enemy.
Can a level playing field even be possible under this scenario?

We need a maverick with heretical new ideas more than ever.


Regards,

Kyle








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                       Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Smith

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:44:23 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 17:46:48 -0500
Subject: Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Smith


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:31:17 -0600
>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>"Fastwalker" is a term NORAD (North American Air Defense
>Command) invented to categorize objects that approach from
>space, enter our atmosphere, maneuver strangely about, and then
>leave the atmosphere again in a manner that is... not consistent
>with the aforementioned boosters, birds, and bolides! It is a
>word also used to describe trans-lunar phenomena (tlp's):
>anomalous objects with the particularly peculiar flavor of
>*things* ufological... moving quickly across the face of the
>full moon and filmed through quality telescopes on Earth... or
>on shuttle flights... or on radar screens...

Well, I always thought "TLP" was transient lunar phenomena
and typically was a flashing or odd light patterns on the Moon's
surface.

>The Air Force NORAD facility, it has been convincingly reported,
>observes these "fastwalkers" from its subterranean facility deep
>inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, and tracks a rough average
>of 500 of them (UFOs for the uninitiated) each YEAR as they
>enter the Earth's atmosphere from deep space, maneuver around,
>and then leave again. This is not a fiction. It corroborates a
>similar report from AeroJet General engineers Lee Graham and Ron
>Regehr, who have revealed to the well respected UFO researcher
>Don Ecker documents indicating that AeroJet's DSP satellite
>system, alone, routinely detects UFOs flying into Earth's
>atmosphere from deep space... up to two to three times per
>month.

The DSP satellite is what I think you mean to be the DMSP
satellite. I will have to review their sensors, but it seems
hard to imagine how their optical data can capture a fast moving
bolide or UFO. Perhaps they have other sensors I am not aware
of. I do know that I have seen NORAD bolide reports which are
infrequent.

Also, regarding the oddity of bolides(meteors) going back out
into space, this is a frequent occurance simply based on the
trajectory of the object. Bolides (meteors) have also been known
to change course based on their odd shapes, composition,
trajectory and atmospheric density. Corliss lists some good
examples.

Whatever NORAD data has, its not going to give it up unless it
is in their interest.








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               Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Reynolds

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:48:57 -0500
Fwd Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 17:48:38 -0500
Subject: Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Reynolds


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:42:16 -0600
>Subject: Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

>>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:13:26 -0500
>>Subject: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

>>Going through by Quality Paperback Book Club Review for
>>December, I see a book entitled "Faster than the Speed of Light?
>>The Story of a Scientific Speculation" by Joao Magueijo (called
>>a brilliant young maverick with an heretical new theory). 288
>>pages.

>>This might be must reading for all those (myself included) who
>>are tangled up in entanglement and the Quantum mystery.

>I hope that more books by mavericks with heretical ideas on this
>subject are published.

>For those of us that accept that some things are real because we
>believe them to be, the more on this subject the better.

>of the story used to illustrate the theory. That
>faster-than-light travel is impossible was a given in the story.
>Even so, while watching Star Trek I was never compelled to smirk
>at the thought of hyper-light travel. I figured we just didn't
>know then what we'd know in the 23rd century. Based on the
>changes I've seen in the time since, I cannot believe we will
>still be arguing over faster-than-light travel for another two
>hundred years.

>Imagine what physicists of the late 19th century would have made
>of super-string theory.

>Hope springs eternal, and I hope this book... laudable or
>laughable... is but a small sample of the heretical new theories
>to come.

>I'll hunt for a hardback version, as my sig-oth claims I'm way
>too hard on paperbacks.

>Perhaps you'd provide a review? <g>

Kyle...

So I goes to QPB to order the book... lo and behold, it doesn't
show up at the web-site, using every search parameter extant.

I'm going back in (wish me luck) to see if it's there today.
Otherwise I'll have to call QPB, go through the place's damnable
phone menu and talk with a customer service representative... if
any are still there, and haven't been abducted or entangled
elsewhere.

(A little "review" will forthcome, should the book do so.)


Rich








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   Dec > Dec 15

                       UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 50

From: John Hayes <John.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:45:17 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 05:51:50 -0500
Subject: UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 50


Posted on behalf of Joseph Trainor.

<Masinaigan.nul>
==========================

      UFO ROUNDUP
Volume 9, Number 50
December 15, 2004
Editor: Joseph Trainor

E-Mail: Masinaigan.nul
Website: http://www.ufoinfo.com/roundup/


NIGHT SAUCER SIGHTED IN
HAMPTONS BAY, N.Y.

      On Wednesday, December 8, 2004, at 7:23 p.m., Sandra
Bilinski reported, "I was in my hot tub watching the skies
for shooting stars.  Very pretty at night to see them, as
the stars are very bright to the east" of her home in
Hamptons Bay, N.Y. (population 5,500), a town on Long
Island 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of the borough of
Queens in New York City.
      "As I was looking up, I saw the stars above me
disappear," Sandra added, "I then realized there was an
object in the sky above me.  It was dark with no lights.
I thought it was some space debris that was falling out of
the sky, but it was moving slowly with no signs of
friction and it wasn't falling.  It traveled over my house
for two or three seconds, and then disappeared when the
trees blocked my view."
      "While it moved over my house, and over me, it
rotated, but I saw no signs of an engine.  It was shaped
like a radar dish, the one with antennas and concave in
the middle.  It was dark grey or bluish and lighter at the
edges.  It appeared to be only 60 to 70 feet (18 to 21
meters) above my house and the size of a small car.  It
had no lights, no signs of hearing an engine of any type."
      "If it made any sound, I didn't know it because I had
the (water) jets on in the hot tub.  After it passed by, I
turned off everything in the tub and stayed in the water
as I was afraid."
      "I went in the house and called the state police."
      "Today I called the (New York) Air National Guard and
told them about it.  I am a very sane person.  I have
never seen anything like this before, and now I can't get
it off my mind.  No one seems to be able to tell me what
it was."  (Email Form Report)


THREE UFOs SPOTTED IN
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CAL.

      On Tuesday, November 30, 2004, at 6:30 a.m.,
Kimberlee Schultz was driving on Interstate Highway 405,
the San Diego Freeway in Huntington Beach, California
(population 185,594) when she spotted something unusual in
the morning sky.
      "They appeared to be traveling from a southwesterly
to a northeasterly direction," Kimberlee reported, "After
traveling on another freeway, I couldn't see them any
more.  I was facing east, and they were southwest of my
car.  The sky was bright and clear.  I noticed airplanes
all over the sky, and the reflection of the sun would make
them appear as a little speck, and some had a small trail
behind them."
      "This craft was large compared to the airplanes, and
it also had a trail.  There were also two smaller crafts
side by side in front of the large craft.  The larger
craft was at least 50 times bigger in size.  The smaller
crafts were also leaving trails of light, so I could tell
they were moving.  The smaller crafts were 100 times
larger than the airplane specks.  But seeing as how they
appeared to hover in the sky, maybe this is why they
appeared to be much larger."
      "Somewhat of a triangular shape on the large craft.
But the outlines were not well-defined.  It was almost a
little blob-like.  The two (smaller) crafts in front
looked more round.  This was rush hour in southern
California on a very busy freeway."
      "I was telling a co-worker about it, and she was
about 45 minutes northeast of where I was at the time, and
then she saw it at around the same time.  But she didn't
see the two lights leading the larger craft.  She thinks
she may have seen it from the back, and I was seeing it
from the side."
      Huntington Beach is about 20 miles (32 kilometers)
southeast of City Hall in Los Angeles.  (Email Form
Report)


FIVE DARK UFOs SEEN
IN LIBERTY, INDIANA

      On Sunday, December 5, 2004, at 3 p.m., Timothy
Bowman was driving to Brookville Lake, four miles (7
kilometers) west of Liberty, Indiana (population 2,061) to
take some photographs when he spotted a cluster of strange
objects approaching from the northwest.
      "I was driving down to take some photos of a lake,
which is about three miles or so southwest of Liberty on
Route 101," Timothy reported, "I turned right on the
Fearfeld Ramp road, went one mile south.  Five strange,
funny-shaped black dots appeared in the sky.  I got a
picture of it.  Looked like round objects up there.  I got
some more pics in a different location at the same place."
      The UFOs "were 16,000 feet (4,800 meters) up and at a
standstill.  No speed until departure...then zip, gone!
Never seen anything like them in my pics."
      Liberty, Ind. is on Routes 27 and 44 in Union County,
about 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of Indianapolis.
(Email Form Report)


BAT-WINGED UFO RETURNS
TO WASHINGTON, D.C.

      On Wednesday, December 8, 2004, at 11 p.m., Patrick
Schirmer was walking down Harrison Street N.W. in the
Friendship Heights section of Washington, D.C. when he saw
a strange object approaching from the north.
      "It approached from the north and headed due south,"
Patrick reported, "It was very low in the sky.  Completely
silent.  Dark in color and definitely NOT round.  It was a
large, bat-winged craft, flat and about 20 to 30 feet (6
to 9 meters) across.  It was slow-moving, too, almost like
a glider.  It went right overhead, without making a sound,
and continued south.  It was almost like a silent glider."
(Email Form Report)


INDIA'S SECRET AIR WAR
AGAINST THE UFOs

      Has India been fighting a clandestine air war against
UFOs since February 2004?
      Ufologist Daniel Wilson thinks so.  And he claims to
have found proof in the pages of the newspaper Times of
India.
      Wilson says there is a definite correlation between
the "unexplained" crashes of Indian Air Force (IAF)
fighter jets and UFO events in the subcontinent reported
in the media.  He cites the crash of an IAF Jaguar on
Thursday, February 26, 2004 as an example.
      That same evening, a UFO crossed the border from
India into Pakistan and landed just outside the village of
Chann Kalan.  Three aliens were seen leaving the strange
object by an Indian sentry, Constable Jagdish Parasad, who
was at the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) Post
Fatehpur at the time of the landing.  Patrols by the
Pakistani Rangers failed to find the three aliens.  (For
more on this case, see UFO Roundup, volume 9, number 9 for
March 3, 2004, "UFO lands in Pakistan; three aliens
sighted," page 5.)
      The same evening that UFO landed on the Pakistani
side of the border, an IAF fighter jet crashed in India's
Rajasthan state, Wilson reported.
      According to the Times of India, "The spate of
crashes of IAF fighter aircraft continues unabated.  In
yet another incident, a deep-penetration strike Jaguar
crashed in the Pokhran (mountain) range in Rajasthan on
Thursday," February 26, 2004.
      "The pilot, Wing Commander Ravi Khanna, died in the
crash."
      "The crash came soon after a MiG-21 crashed in the
Jamnagar area on (Friday) February 20, 2004, killing four
people on the ground."
      "The IAF has dispatched a special investigative team
to Pokhran because this is the second such crash within 20
days.  An IAF jet crashed in the same mountain range on
(Saturday) February 7, 2004."
      "Both the Jaguar and the MiG-21 were practicing 'live
bombing missions' ahead of India's biggest air power
demonstration at the Pokhran range, (Operation) Millenium
Vayu Shakti scheduled for March 14 (2004)."
(Editor's Note:  Elements of the U.S. Air Force also
participated in these maneuvers over Gwalior as part of
Operation Cope India 2004.)
      "In both crashes, as per eyewitness accounts, 'two
flashes' were seen before both mishaps."
      "'Both crashes are being attributed to technical
malfunction.  One reason could be that the live ammunition
being carried by the planes exploded accidentally, but the
(IAF) courts of inquiry will be able to provide the exact
reason,' said a source."
      "Wing Commander Khanna, who had got airborne from the
IAF Nal air base, was flying close to the ground for the
bombing maneuver.  He apparently tried to eject safely,
but his parachute apparently failed to open over the
target,' he added."
      "Fighter jets in the IAF include Sukhoi Su-30s,
Mirage 2000s, Jaguars, MiG-21s, MiG-23s and MiG-29s."
(See the Times of India for February 27, 2004, "Technical
snag attributed to Jaguar crash."  Many thanks to Daniel
Wilson for this news story.)



SPARKLING GREEN UFO
SEEN IN SWITZERLAND

      On Wednesday, December 1, 2004, at 9:15 p.m., the two
eyewitnesses were standing on a bridge in the south side
of Lausanne, Switzerland, overlooking Lake Geneva, when
they spotted an unusual green object in the night sky.
      "Me and my friend were walking on a city bridge in
Lausanne.  Suddenly, we both had an impulse to look south,
towards the lake.  About 30 degrees above the lake we saw
what appeared to be a kind of green firework."
      "We weren't much impressed, but this light continued
to show a comet's shape, flying from east to west.  It was
big, green and glowing and left some kind of (light)
trail.  The object was silent and slow.  It was unlike
anything I had ever seen."
      "My friend said, 'Is it a rocket or a satellite?'"
      "But I had seen them before, and it didn't look like
either of them."
      "A few days later (Saturday, December 4, 2004) I met
another witness who described the same arc or (flight)
path, the same colour and shape, and time.  Our local
newspaper didn't write a line about this.  Whatever it
was, it disappeared behind a building.  Vanished!  Evian
(the city of Evian-les-Bains, in France's department of
Haute-Savoie--J.T.) is on the other side of the lake and
saw nothing.  Now I am even more convinced that we are not
alone.  If you have any pictures of it, please contact me
by email."  (Many thanks to Jim Hickman, executive
director of Skywatch International, for this news story.)


      Well, that's it for this week.  Join us next week for
more UFO, Fortean and paranormal news from around the
planet Earth, brought to you by "the paper that goes home-
-UFO Roundup."  See you then!

UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 2004 by Masinaigan Productions, all
rights reserved.  Readers may post news items from UFO
Roundup on their Web sites or in news groups provided that
they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list
the date of issue in which the item first appeared.

E-Mail Reports to: Joseph Trainor <Masinaigan.nul>
or use the Sighting Report Form at:

http://www.ufoinfo.com/submit/sightings.shtml

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Website comments: John Hayes <webmaster.nul>

UFOINFO: http://www.ufoinfo.com

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UFO Reports and Experiences, UFO + PSI Magazine
plus archives of Humanoid Sighting Reports (Albert
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                      Re: UFO Spotted In China - Booone

From: Greg Booone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:47:27 EST
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 05:53:12 -0500
Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China - Booone


>From: Terry Groff <terry.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 05:24:31 -0600
>Subject: UFO Spotted In China


>Source: Mid Day News - Mumbai, India

>http://ww1.mid-day.com/news/world/2004/december/99305.htm

>12-13-04

>UFO spotted in China: Report
>By: AFP

>Beijing: An unidentified flying object, or UFO, passed across
>the large northwestern Chinese city of Lanzhou and apparently
>exploded in the suburbs, state media said today.

>The unusual sighting of two bright trails of light, reported by
>several witnesses, took place Saturday shortly before midnight,
>the China Times reported.

>Police, working on the theory that it was a meteorite, went to
>investigate the matter, but as of today they had found no
>evidence of what caused the nightly phenomenon, an officer said.


It's good that the folks in China are letting a story like this
out without the usual sloppy reporting done in the west.

No snide remarks or references to the silly. It's just a report.

Plain and simple.

One might figure that by now some other government, friend or
foe, would have as much trouble with UFOs as the U.S. has.
Crashed UFOs or whatever to call them, abductions, weird
critters and gizmos wandering about interfering with televisions
and frightening the blue collar folks and farmers.

One might figure that our foes would have taken advantage of the
widely known fact that the U.S. and it's allies are blatantly
hostile and elusive to UFO reports and that those same foes
could disrupt the entire western world with just one public
tongue lashing about the issue.

But no go.

Why? Because there is no global overwhelming conspiracy going
on. No way in heck you could shut up everybody all the time
everywhere as some have espoused. Nowadays it only takes a
matter of seconds for news to spread via the web. Just think
what would happen if Castro or that guy with the big glasses in
N. Korea or the Iranian president or any number of world
leaders, ex leaders, cabinet ministers or cowering henchmen of
note were to send just one danged email that they had seen
documents or had been at a meeting where the U.S. or Britain
sent menacing figures in drab clothing threatening retaliation
if the subject of UFOs were to leak into the public's hands.

Doesn't happen. Why? Are they getting subsidies from the U.S. to
shut up? Bribes, extortion/black mail?

I saw a list of possible UFO crashes

http://www.cseti.org/crashes/crash.htm

If you notice there are a handful prior to 1900 AD and then they
just pile in up to present day. Could be reporting is better or
just more people or whatever. Yet let's hypothesize and say just
10 UFOs crashed every 100 years since year 1 BC. That'd be about
200 crashed objects spread throughout the world. Probably most
in the ocean but still leaves some on land. Maybe some of these
remnants are in collections or to be discovered. Remote regions
too.

That's a teasing amount of debris. Yet it still doesn't explain
this so called massive coverup. Especially nowadays.

If Castro or any number of the foreign big shots were to stand
up and announce that the U.S. threatened them about UFO stuff
we'd be all over that story. Sure, 10 years ago he'd be called a
kook but with the web in full swing we wouldn't have the myopic
view from the askewed few determining what we had better believe
and speak about.

Just one. I'ld like just one other government to come forward
and speak it's piece. Just up and say it is under pressure not
to talk about UFOs because the U.S. is some hovering bully
afraid to let the secret out.

Ain't gonna happen cause there ain't no wolf in grandma's bed.


Best,

Greg








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                     Re: Professional Amateurs - Kaeser

From: Steven Kaeser <steve.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 12:11:52 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 05:54:30 -0500
Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs - Kaeser


>From: Diana Cammack <cammack.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:49:11 +0200
>Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs

>>From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 15:30:49 -0700
>>Subject: Professional Amateurs

>>Source: The New York Times

>>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12PROFESSIONAL.html?ex=1103890101&e
i=1&en=9f4deafcf7d045a3

>>12-12-04

>>Professional Amateurs
>>By Clive Thompson

>>In January, a man named Jay McNeil peered into his telescope and
>>discovered a nebula - a developing young star - out near the
>>Orion constellation. Professional astronomers worldwide hailed
>>the discovery. But McNeil himself is no credentialed scientist;
>>he installs TV satellite dishes for a living. Today's backyard
>>skygazers, it seems, use equipment so sophisticated that they
>>can beat out the world's biggest, well-financed observatories.

>>And that, according to Charles Leadbeater, a social critic,
>>should be no surprise. In a report titled ''The Pro-Am
>>Revolution,'' published by the London-based Demos policy center,
>>Leadbeater argued that a new breed of demi-expert is evolving,
>>collapsing the distinction between an expert and a tinkerer.

><snip>

>>Leadbeater says that governments ought to find ways to encourage
>>the higher amateurism. After all, he claims that pro-ams live
>>healthier, more satisfied lives - to say nothing of all the
>>cool stuff they create. Professionals, too, should get used to
>>sharing the stage. Because if Leadbetter is right, the future
>>belongs not to the pros, but to the weekend warriors.

>This is not a new idea. Whatever you think of his politics, Karl
>Marx put it well some time ago:

>"as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each
>man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is
>forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter,
>a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain
>so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in
>communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of
>activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he
>wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes
>it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow,
>to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in
>the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind,
>without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."

In a practical sense, most Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are
discovered by amatuer astronomers in their back yards, and not
by professional astronomers at the major telescopes they have
available to them.  The fact that the "tinkerers" have a voice
is nothing new and that's where a lot of revolutionary
technology started out.  The fact that there are so many amatuer
astronomers helps to provide coverage of the immense sky to be
examined, and their findings can be quickly verified, so they're
in a unique situation to garner respect from professionals.

But in a very real sense, the days of garage development of new
technologies is becoming more distant with the high cost of the
development process. Unless one is dealing with a completely new
technology that is easily manufactured with common materials,
it's almost impossible to build it in the garage anymore.
 That's not to say that ideas won't be developed everywhere from
the garage to the boardroom, but the ability to actually test
them and put them into practical use will likely take financing
and involves investors and bureaucracy.


Steve








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                       Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:06:14 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 05:58:28 -0500
Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hall


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:10:37 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:49:36 +0000
>>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>Some day, on some distant planet, in some parallel universe,
>>people will begin to recognize the obvious descriptions of
>>fireball meteors, and news services will stop contaminating the
>>UFO database by labeling them 'UFOs'.

>While I agree that they are not too useful from a UFO research
>standpoint, these cases are still UFOs using the strictest
>definition and unless we have a global meteor radar network
>reporting system which I am not aware of (NORAD does have some
>such service, but I doubt it is a world wide service), then we
>MUST be left with calling it a UFO (with a fairly high
>probability of being a fireball meteor).

>As to contamination of the UFO database, that has already been
>accomplished with Venus, various stars, airplanes, balloons,
>etc.

Yes, those too. Why _must_ we call fireballs UFOs when they
obviously are not, even provisionally? These things are very
easy to screen out in any systematic investigation. We used to
do so routinely at NICAP.

If anything, the labeling should work the other way around:
Highly probably a fireball on the basis of the reported
phenomenology, and only a UFO if more data comes in that
indicates otherwise.


- Dick








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                           Secrecy News - 12/14/04

From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:39:55 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 05:59:52 -0500
Subject: Secrecy News - 12/14/04


SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2004, Issue No. 111
December 14, 2004


**      JASON PANEL CALLS FOR "RADICAL CHANGE" OF CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM
**      REFLECTIONS ON THE MYSTERY SPY SATELLITE PROGRAM
**      SOME NEW CRS PRODUCTS
**      REVISITING THE OSIRAQ ATTACK


JASON PANEL CALLS FOR "RADICAL CHANGE" OF CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM

The present system of classifying national security information
"is unnatural, far from optimal, and... ought to be radically
changed," according to a startling new report prepared for the
Department of Defense by the secretive JASON scientific advisory
panel.

The JASON report presents a penetrating theoretical critique of
classification policy from the military point of view, and
proposes an alternate new construct.

The flaws in the current classification system are so great that
some military users are opting out of the system altogether,
according to the JASON report.

"Users are dissatisfied with the present system [and] are
electing to avoid entering the system entirely. For example,
Predator [unmanned aerial vehicle] imagery in Iraq is considered
Unclassified, but is protected by an ad hoc system of
operational practices."

"Underclassification of documents - often quietly justified as
necessary for ease in transporting documents between meeting
sites - is a well known practice."

At the same time, "the status of sensitive information outside
of the present classification system is murkier than ever...
'Sensitive but unclassified' data is increasingly defined by the
eye of the beholder."

A copy of the JASON report was obtained by Secrecy News.

What is most interesting about the report is that it goes beyond
critique to present the outlines of an alternate, idealized
information security policy.

Among the first steps, the authors say, is to define an
acceptable level of risk.

"As a nation we can afford to lose X secret and Y top secret
documents per year. We can afford a Z probability that a
particular technical capability or HUMINT source is
compromised."

Clearly, X, Y, and Z must be more than zero. Otherwise, "all
operations stop, because all operations entail some nonzero
risk."

The next step is to *increase* information distribution "all the
way up to the acceptable risk level."

"We have been living with systems that try to minimize risk,"
the JASONs note. "That is the wrong metric! We actually want
to maximize information flow," subject to the maximum acceptable
risk.

"Instead of minimizing risk, we actually want to ensure that it
is increased to its tolerable maximum (but no higher)."

The JASON authors then describe a notional information security
system that embodies this and other related principles.

The report does not consider the ways in which the existing
classification system serves the political and bureaucratic
interests of government agencies. Nor does it include an
analysis of the obstacles to change that would have to be
overcome to permit adoption of a new, risk-based system.

But the bottom line remains the same: "The present system of
classification, clearances, and access protection is broken."

A copy of the December 2004 JASON report, which is far more
interesting than its title - "Horizontal Integration: Broader
Access Models for Realizing Information Dominance" - is
available here (60 pages, 300 KB PDF file):

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/classpol.pdf

A selection of other JASON reports, which are not normally made
public even when unclassified, may be found here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/index.html


REFLECTIONS ON THE MYSTERY SPY SATELLITE PROGRAM

The unidentified intelligence program that aroused the public
opposition of several Senators last week because of its high
cost and questionable utility illustrates the inadequacy of
closed-door oversight of intelligence and its apparent
susceptibility to advocacy from corporate interests.

The secret program was pegged as a low-observable stealth
satellite reconnaissance program by John Pike of
GlobalSecurity.org. The projected program cost has nearly
doubled to $9.5 billion, Dana Priest of the Washington Post
reported on December 11, probably making it the largest single
item in the U.S. intelligence budget.

The whole episode "point[s] to a weakness in the whole
[intelligence oversight] process," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told
George Stephanopoulos on ABC News This Week December 12.

"It takes a leak to understand that billions of taxpayers'
dollars are being wasted that could be spent to make America
safer," he said.

"Do you think the public has a right to know more about this
program if it's so expensive?" Mr. Stephanopoulos asked Sen.
Susan Collins (R-ME).

"I do," she replied. "Obviously we have to protect national
security, but I think there are ways to have a debate."

"And one reason that I wanted the overall intelligence budget
declassified, that top number, is I think it would help foster
more public scrutiny and debate," said Sen. Collins, "and I
think that's been one of the problems."

"It's something I'm going to pursue in the future," she said
regarding budget declassification.


SOME NEW CRS PRODUCTS

A new report from the Congressional Research Service "provides
background data on United States arms sales agreements with and
deliveries to its major purchasers during calendar years 1996-
2003."

See "U.S. Arms Sales: Agreements with and Deliveries to Major
Clients, 1996-2003," December 8, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RL32689.pdf

Another new CRS report examines cooperation between the U.S. and
China on counter-terrorism policy and its impact on bilateral
relations between the two countries.

See "U.S.-China Counter-Terrorism Cooperation: Issues for U.S.
Policy," December 7, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RS21995.pdf


REVISITING THE OSIRAQ ATTACK

The 1981 attack by Israel on Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor
complex has become an archetype of "counterproliferation," the
use of force to prevent or reverse the acquisition of weapons of
mass destruction.

The Osiraq attack is reviewed in a recent Masters thesis based
on interviews with Israeli officials and a study of some more or
less unfamiliar source documents.

The author concludes generally that the attack did indeed slow
down the Iraqi WMD program, but that it had other less favorable
unintended consequences, had no deterrent effect, and is
unlikely to serve as a useful model for similar actions in the
future.

See "Israel's Attack on Osiraq: A Model for Future Preventive
Strikes?" by Peter Scott Ford, Naval Postgraduate School Masters
Thesis, September 2004:

http://www.fas.org/man/eprint/ford.pdf



_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to
secrecy_news-request.nul
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.

OR email your request to saftergood.nul

Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html

Secrecy News has an RSS feed at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.rss

_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web:  www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood.nul
voice: (202) 454-4691








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                       Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Smith

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:13:03 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:04:36 -0500
Subject: Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Smith


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:31:17 -0600
>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>Don Ecker documents indicating that AeroJet's DSP satellite
>system, alone, routinely detects UFOs flying into Earth's
>atmosphere from deep space... up to two to three times per
>month.

Sorry, I wrote without checking. There is DMSP and DSP with DMSP
able to image a spot twice a day versus DSP 10 second rate!
That's very cool and just what is needed for UFO spotting!








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                         Re: Alien Abductions - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:01:52 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:07:14 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Hall


>From: Luis R. Gonzalez <lrgm.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 16:57:21 +0100
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:40:12 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>Similarly, if abductions are real, physical events they should
>>be detectable by instruments. It won't do to say that the aliens
>>clouded the cameras, or whatever. In fact a major scientific
>>program to attempt to capture evidence of abductions on
>>instruments has recently been completed (I was in on its
>>planning and origination years ago) and the data are now being
>>analyzed. It was a carefully planned, double-blind study. A
>>report will be forthcoming sooner or later from the UFO Research
>>Coalition.

>We have been hearing about these kinds of experiments (I even
>suggested something similar a couple of years ago) for years.

>One thing I wonder about the "carefully planned, double-blind
>study" is if they contacted skeptics for help and/or
>suggestions.

Luis,

Are you suggesting that only self-styled skeptics understand
proper research procedures? I formally studied scientific method
at the university level and graduated with a degree in
Philosophy with emphasis on scientific philosophy. The
researchers include(d) PhD scientists and others with experience
in experimental science. I am not a spokesperson for the project
or a researcher on it; just someone who played a role in helping
to plan and organize it, administratively.

I think it is common knowledge that some of those on the project
were/are (the data gathering phase is now complete) Dr. Michael
Swords and Dr. Mark Rodeghier (social and physical sciences,
respectively), and Thomas P. Deuley, E.E. I doubt that they are
ready to talk about it yet because they are still in the data
analysis phase. When the study is completed, there will be a
full public report on it that includes a full description of the
methodology.

By mentioning the project, I was merely responding to this
thread about abduction research as I thought the information was
relevant and might be of interest.


 - Dick

P.S. Please excuse any typos; I am still recovering from the
'eye-opening' eye drops given to me today by an optometrist.









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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Harney

From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:03:51 -0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:11:10 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Harney


>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:38:09 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:10:10 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>Of course all anomalies of consciousness can't be looked up in
>>any clinical textbook, as there is so much work to be done on
>>this subject.

>Wow, John, that just has to be the understatement of the day.

>What exactly is an "anomaly of consciousness"? At the very
>least, I should think, it presupposes some notion of what
>constitutes non-anomalous consciousness. But at present we
>don't even have a working definition of consciousness which
>everyone can agree on, which pretty much makes "anomalies of
>consciousness" a non-starter as an explanatory hypothesis.

>Or to put it another way, "anomalies of consciousness" is about
>as sensible an explanation as "anomalies of shopkeeping". It's
>scientifically meaningless.

"Anomalies of consciousness" was Jerry Clark's phrase. I suppose
one could say abnormal mental states, but I'm sure you will know
the appropriate terminology. And it was obviously not intended
as an explanation, but as a description.

>>The abduction phenomenon can't be entirely
>>explained with reference to present knowledge for the same
>>reason. Talk of mysterious "forces" does nothing to advance our
>>knowledge, only carefully planned and executed scientific
>>experiments and observations can do that.

>Would you like to suggest some?

Some have already been carried out and I'm sure we are all
eagerly awaiting the results of the experiments briefly
mentioned by Dick Hall.

>>Yet when scientific experiments are carried out they are
>>invariably attacked by ufologists for producing the "wrong"
>>answers, i.e. not mysterious enough.

>Really? I hope you'll tell me about them some time. I've
>subscribed to UFO UpDates for a couple of years now, and I
>certainly don't recall any such experiments being described or
>referred to here.

You could try looking in the archives of this List. A number of
experiments have been described and there have been some lively
arguments. You took part in a recent thread concerning the
Goldsmith's College (London) abductee study.


John Harney








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              Exopolitics & The Methodological Bias Of Ufology

From: Michael E. Salla <exopolitics.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:05:38 -1000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:15:14 -0500
Subject: Exopolitics & The Methodological Bias Of Ufology


Exopolitics and the Methodological Bias of Ufology

Greetings All, I wish to respond to some of the comments made
towards Exopolitics by members of this forum. The study of the
UFO phenomenon has long been dominated by researchers whose
primary backgrounds have been in the natural sciences such as
Astronomy, Physics, Engineering, Aviation, etc. Donald Keyhoe,
Allen Hynek, Edward Ruppelt, and Stanton Friedman are some
examples of distinguished UFOlogists whose competence in these
fields have been a chief characteristic of their careers and
have won the admiration of many in the field of Ufology. The
methodologies used by =91Ufologists=92 in general has been to
rigorously use their professional training to work through UFO
reports, photographic evidence, FOIA documents, witness
testimonies, archival records, etc., to reach some agreement as
to what can be known with reasonable certainty regarding UFO
related evidence and the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH).

Ufologists view their research as consistent with natural
scientific standards which they aggressively defend against the
skepticism and dismissive attitudes thrown towards them by the
scientific community in general. Winning the respect of
mainstream scientists by using methodologies appropriated from
the natural sciences to produce top quality research that stands
the scrutiny of critics and skeptics has been an important goal
of Ufologists. In adhering to this high standard of natural
science methodology, Ufologists tend to be parsimonious and in
turn are dismissive of controversial sources of evidentiary
material or evidence that can=92t be substantiated using the
scientific standards promoted by Ufologists. This can be lauded
since gaining scientific acceptance for the rigorous research of
anomalous phenomena that substantiates the ETH is a desirable
goal. Yet on the other hand one can question what is the cost of
maintaining a rigorous natural sciences methodology that very
parsimonious in its approach to various evidentiary sources that
allegedly substantiate the ETH? There is also a bias here as to
what is scientific and what isn=92t.

The cost in my view is unnecessarily large which is why I=92m
appealing to Ufologists to move beyond the myopic focus of
gaining acceptance from scientific colleagues by using
methodologies appropriated from the natural sciences, and to
more seriously consider an exopolitical approach to the ETH.
There are many reasons that can be cited for why an exopolitical
approach is warranted in dealing with the UFO phenomenon and the
ETH.

One, the ETH behind the UFO phenomenon was never an exclusively
technical problem that required a natural scientific methodology
in addressing. There was also a very clear political and
national security dimension behind the UFO phenomenon and the
ETH. This is made very clear in events such as General Voyt
Vandenberg rejecting the initial

Estimate of the Situation presented by the Project Sign team in 1948
on grounds that were political and national security related rather
than technical - see:

http://www.ufoscience.org/history/swords.pdf

This and many other examples drawn from the national security
dimensions of the UFO phenomenon merits political analysis of
the ETH by researchers using methodologies derived from
political science. This necessarily requires breaking free of an
exclusive technical analysis by Ufologists using political
science methodologies, and moving into the arena of exopolitics.
Thus exopolitics focuses on the study of the key actors,
institutions and processes behind the UFO phenomenon and the
ETH.

Two, the general public overwhelming believe that the ETH is
true and that a political cover-up is underway. A 2002 Roper
poll confirmed that almost 70% of the US public support the ETH
and believe that a government cover up is underway:

http://www.scifi.com/ufo/roper/04.html

While it is legitimate to point out the science is not conducted
by public opinion polls, it is equally legitimate to point out
that public policy/national security policies are influenced by
public opinion. So while the natural sciences may dismiss the
relevance of public opinion in conducting pure science, this
approach is not shared by political science where public opinion
is any important factor in the formulation and implementation of
public policy and national security policy.

Three, the testimony of numerous whistleblowers that has been
compiled by the Disclosure Project (www.disclosureproject.com)
points to the extensive national security cover up of evidence
validating the ETH. Steven Greer=92s work in gaining the testimony
and/or commitment of up to 400 whistleblowers for possible
disclosure before a US congressional committee has brought into
the public arena a wealth of information that has great
exopolitical significance.

Finally, the overwhelming evidence provided by UFO sightings,
alleged extraterrestrial abductions/contacts, remote viewers,
and other evidentiary sources is overwhelming in scope and
details concerning the ETH. These reasons all contribute to the
central premise of exopolitics that evidence supporting the ETH
is overwhelming and we need to start thinking about the
political implications of the cover-up that has been underway
for more than five decades.

As far as criticisms of my own expolitics research is concerned,
let me set the record straight by saying that I don't consider
myself to be a UFO researcher or Ufologist in search of evidence
proving the existence of the UFO phenomenon, but a political
scientist using qualitative analysis of the various sources of
evidence pertaining to non-disclosure of an extraterrestrial
presence. I rely heavily on the testimonies of a variety of
whistleblowers in drawing my exopolitical analyses of various
issues relevant to the ETH.  The criteria I have used in
assembling these sources for my exopolitical analysis in have
included the following:

Coherence =96 testimony is marked by absence of conflicting
statements and internal contradictions;

Consistency =96 testimony is consistent with two or more
independent sources;

Motivation =96 individual is motivated to disseminate information
for legitimate purposes rather than out of a desire for
recognition, monetary compensation, or political advantage;

Integrity =96 individual displays high degree of principle in
responding to intimidation, harassment or other negative
behavior;

Independence =96 individual is not unduly influenced by government
intelligence agencies and/or extraterrestrial races;

Evidence =96 is there physical evidence to substantiate the claims
of witness/whistleblower/remote viewer;


The above criteria are helpful guides for any competent
researcher in determining the validity of a particular category
of testimony or evidence concerning the ETH. Due to these
criteria having a mix of objective and subjective features,
there is a need for the competent researchers to deal with the
available material using an inclusive or broad disciplinary
approach. A parsimonious approach as to what constitutes
credible evidence/testimony for extraterrestrial researchers is
untenable due to the inherent difficult of making conclusive
statements about the range of testimonies that
witnesses/contactees/whistleblowers make available. The subject
matter is often so exotic and government interference with
evidence, witnesses and whistleblowers is so pervasive that
excluding some categories of evidence is untenable and
methodologically unsound. While the above criteria may not
satisfy the parsimonious researcher seeking a restricted pool of
date from which to draw reliable conclusions that might impress
colleagues in the natural sciences, the above criteria provide a
safety net for ensuring reliable and accurate information for
research into the ETH.

Furthermore, there has also been criticism of my exopolitics
research in terms of my using "material from the internet"
rather than presumably reports, interviews and analysis gained
from field research, laboratory analysis and archival research
favored by `serious Ufologists'. This is what was actually said
in a Washington Post interview by Peter Carlson where I referred
to my use of the internet to support my exopolitics research on
the alleged Eisenhower-extraterrestrial meeting: `he [Salla]
says, he found evidence of ET visitations -- including the Ike
encounter -- on the Internet. "There's a lot of stuff on the
Internet," he says, "and I just went around and pieced it
together"'

http://www.exopolitics.org/Wash-Post-Ike%20and%20ETs.htm ).

Now the quote refers primarily to extraterrestrial visitations
and the Eisenhower-Extraterrestrial encounter where most of the
material for that meeting was found using sources available on
the internet. It should be pretty clear that evidence of an
Eisenhower-extraterrestrial meeting is not going to be readily
available using

FOIA requests, archival research, and involves citing some of
controversial whistleblower sources whose work is freely
available on the internet. In addition, I conducted a number of
interviews with various individuals with information on the
alleged Eisenhower meeting which I did not disclose in the
Washington Post article. While I see no problem in using
internet sources for building a case for an undisclosed
extraterrestrial visitation that resulted in a series of secret
agreements with the U.S. government, I was never claiming that
this was exclusive and sufficient for exopolitics research, and
I did use additional sources of information such as confidential
interviews to support this research.

The sources of evidence for the exopolitics research I conduct
are wide ranging and the internet is an acceptable though not
exclusive source of evidence for exopolitics. Part of the
problem with internet research is that there is an inherent bias
in Ufology which uses primarily methodologies appropriate to the
natural sciences, rather social sciences. The qualitative
methodologies I use involve analyzing the credibility,
coherence, consistency and clarity of whistleblowers whom I cite
and who I have interviewed in a number of cases. Ufologists
would instead focus on credentials and empirical evidence that
can be validated which in the case of controversial
whistleblowers.

The justification I use for the different exopolitical sources I
cite is found in an online study paper I published in January
2003:

http://www.exopolitics.org/Study-Paper1.htm

which was revised for the first chapter of my book, Exopolitics
(Dandelion Books, 2004). Many sources of whistleblower,
abductees/contactees, remote viewing and other information are
found on the internet. Some of the whistleblowers I cited gave
lectures/interviews or released material that is widely
available and in some cases ONLY available on the internet.
While the internet is an important source for gaining evidence
of the extraterrestrial visitations, this does not make it
exclusive, nor does it obviate the need for field work,
interviews, archival research and laboratory analysis when
appropriate. There is some sort of balance in qualitative and
quantitative methodologies required here and while elusive, this
is something worth exploring when it comes to the ETH.


Exopolitics is gaining popularity because the general public
have tired of Ufologists debating ad nauseum technical
information validating the ETH. The public are seeking objective
political analysis of the ETH which is substantiated by an
overwhelming body of evidence that validates the ETH, and how
and why government authorities are not disclosing information. I
hope that members of this discussion group giving exopolitics
research more serious attention rather than simply promoting
Ufology as a discipline that is based on the methodological
biases drawn from the natural science backgrounds of most
Ufologists. The cost for not taking exopolitics more seriously
is that Ufology risks losing touch with what most concerns the
general public about what evidence overwhelmingly points to as
an undisclosed extraterrestrial presence. The long term cost to
Ufology for not taking exopolitics seriously is Ufology risks
becoming an irrelevant hobby, or at worst, a complicit actor in
suppressing evidence supporting the ETH.


In peace

Michael E. Salla, PhD
www.exopolitics.org
drsalla.nul







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                         Re: Alien Abductions - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:10:35 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:16:57 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Hall


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:58:39 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:10:10 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 15:09:46 -0600
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>Patient and gentle Listfolk:

>>Of course all anomalies of consciousness can't be looked up in
>>any clinical textbook, as there is so much work to be done on
>>this subject. The abduction phenomenon can't be entirely
>>explained with reference to present knowledge for the same
>>reason. Talk of  mysterious "forces" does nothing to advance our
>>knowledge, only carefully planned and executed scientific
>>experiments and observations can do that.

>I am glad to read that Magonia now backs leading American
>ufologists who are doing the same, and not just talking about it
>by constructing "theories" out of thin air. One hopes that John
>Harney will now join the call for full funding for serious
>research into abductions, UFO sightings, and related matters,
>and not just by researchers who share his views and who can be
>counted upon to tell him what he already believes.

>Meantime, we can do what we can, based on what ideas and
>resources are available to us. And it is essential that we do
>so. For one specific, see Dick Hall's recent posting on the
>abduction-monitoring project. Of course, all scientific inquiry
>proceeds on the basis of what is possible (both within current
>understanding and within available technical and financial
>resources), and there is no guarantee that our technology and
>intellectual imagination - and cash - are equal to the task.
>But one has to start somewhere.

<snip>

Which brings to mind one of my favorite Charles Fort quotes,
which I used to have on a T-shirt along with his image:

"One measures a circle, beginning anywhere."


- Dick










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                         Re: Alien Abductions - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:25:08 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:18:20 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Hall


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:12:49 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:40:12 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>I disagree with others on this List who keep suggesting that the
>>ETH is not testable. It certainly is in principle, though the
>>test will never happen as long as people assume that UFOs are
>>all nonsense because it would cost a lot of money. If real,
>>physical, ET beings are coming and going in real, physical
>>craft, that would be detectable by satellite cameras, special
>>detection equipment placed on the moon, etc. Some would argue
>>that they have been so detected, but inevitably written off as
>>errors in the equipment because they don't fit current belief.
>>Of course, if UFOs are something else (like other dimensional
>>visitors) all bets are off.

>The other possibility, of course, is that their non-appearance
>does not fit other peoples' current belief, so some explanation
>has to be found for it!

Sorry, I don't understand what you are saying here.

>>Similarly, if abductions are real, physical events they should
>>be detectable by instruments. It won't do to say that the aliens
>>clouded the cameras, or whatever. In fact a major scientific
>>program to attempt to capture evidence of abductions on
>>instruments has recently been completed (I was in on its
>>planning and origination years ago) and the data are now being
>>analyzed. It was a carefully planned, double-blind study. A
>>report will be forthcoming sooner or later from the UFO Research
>>Coalition.

>This is fascinating. Just yesterday Peter Rogerson and I had
>been discussing the possibility of testing claimed abduction
>'repeaters' in a sleep laboratory with suitable monitoring
>instruments, and a double- blind system of the instruments being
>active and inactive without the subjects or experimenters
>knowledge. I certainly look forward to seeing the results of
>this experiment. Are you able, at this stage, to give any
>indication of its nature?


I just added a few comments in reply to Luis Gonzalez, but do
not wish to say much more about this, which would be premature
at this time. It is fair to say that broad spectrum detection
equipment of a very sophisticated nature was put into play with
a number of `repeater' abductees. Safeguards against cheating
(in the fullest sense) were incorporated; no further comment at
this time. I am not one of the researchers and am not a
spokesperson for them, but am generally informed about what is
going on.

I am glad to see you and Peter thinking along such logical and
sensible lines. Too bad that more professional scientists are
not involved, but given the lack of funding for hardcore science
research about UFOs and abductions it is understandable why this
is not happening.

 - Dick








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              Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison

From: Diane Harrison <auforn.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:46:38 +1000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:22:18 -0500
Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison


>From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
>To: UFO Updates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:22:43 +1100
>Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin

>>From: Diane Harrison <auforn.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:52:30 +1000
>>Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin

>Thanks for the additional information.

>Please note Nigel & Julie saw the object in an
>ESE position not ENE?

>Of course, one way to check if it is a star or planet
>would for the eyewitnesses to go outside and have
>a look at the sky at the  same time, and see if they
>can see anything at the same position as the UFO.
>(They could even try to find the Pleiades, and take
>a photo.) But if the additional data you have provided
>is correct, I don't think it was a star.

Firstly I would like to say thank you for taking an interest in
this analysis of Nigel's image and your contribution, every bit
of information helps.

As I've said I'm not an astronomer but I do have an interest in
it. I have noticed you're at one of Melbourne's university in
the physics department. Is this correct? If so, what is your
expertise in the area of physics? Just interested.


Brett, Nigel has informed me:

"We have looked on nights without cloud and have not seen the
same image since."


Nigel has since sent me an additional 3 photos taken without
binoculars. I will let you know what I find.


Regards,

Diane Harrison

National Director of The Australian UFO Research Network
Australian Skywatch Director

~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>
THE AUSTRALIAN UFO RESEARCH NETWORK
(A Non-Profit Organization)

E-Mail: auforn.nul
E-mail: ufologist.nul
http://www.hypermax.net.au/~auforn

ADMINISTRATION:

PO Box 738
Beaudessert 4285
QLD  Australia
Tel 07 55 487205
~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>
Australian UFO Research Network Hotline Number
          1800 77 22 88 Freecall
~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>








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                         Re: Alien Abductions - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:49:03 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:24:29 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Hall


>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:38:09 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:10:10 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>Of course all anomalies of consciousness can't be looked up in
>>any clinical textbook, as there is so much work to be done on
>>this subject.

>Wow, John, that just has to be the understatement of the day.

>What exactly is an "anomaly of consciousness"? At the very
>least, I should think, it presupposes some notion of what
>constitutes non-anomalous consciousness. But at present we
>don't even have a working definition of consciousness which
>everyone can agree on, which pretty much makes "anomalies of
>consciousness" a non-starter as an explanatory hypothesis.

>Or to put it another way, "anomalies of consciousness" is about
>as sensible an explanation as "anomalies of shopkeeping". It's
>scientifically meaningless.

To stick in my 2-cents worth, I have always liked the expression
'altered states of consciousness', which is subject to similar
definitional doubt, but the general idea can be understood. Lots
of things alter consciousness (whatever that is to begin with,
as Cathy points out): sleep, alcohol, LSD, cannabis, brain
damage, sleep deprivation, etc.

Over my many years of studying UFO reports and trying to analyze
their meaning, the idea has definitely occurred to me more than
once that some of the `altered appearance of the environment'
cases, and some aspects of abduction reports, are suggestive of
altered consciousness as a (partially) explanatory hypothesis as
opposed to other hypotheses.

The thought has occurred to me that some exterior Intelligence
has been playing games with our minds, causing us to think weird
things are happening that, in an objectively observable sense,
really are not happening. Talk about a non-falsifiable
hypothesis! It's just a speculation really. Then along came
Alexander D. Mebane. Lex, who died recently, was one of the most
intelligent, gifted thinkers I have ever known. After many
years of accepting the straight ET visitor interpretation, he
came to believe that the entire UFO phenomenon, including
abductions, was staged by "Daemons" who were playing mind games
with us and deliberatle leading us to think (falsely) that an
invasion was occurring.

Though I do not accept his interpretation entirely, his
arguments for this view are fascinating. I will be publishing
some exceprts of his letters in the next Journal of UFO History
in honor of Lex.


 - Dick










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              Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison

From: Diane Harrison <auforn.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:50:57 +1000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:27:44 -0500
Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Harrison


Hi Kyle,

Additional information from Nigel:


1: Weather conditions that night. Balmy tropical night, humid,
32 deg, no cloud early but wispy cloud later in the evening as
we were retiring.

2: Camera specifications, make and model: Kodak DX7630. 39mm-
117mm lens.

3: Binocular specifications, make and model: Pentax 7x50 field
7.1 deg

4: The camera/binoc interface method, used: Simply looked
through one lens of the binoculars for sight and simultaneously
took the photo through the other lens.

5: Time photo was taken. I believe between 21:00 and 22:00
hours.

I have attached another three photos taken at approximately the
same time, if I remember right, before I used the binoculars.


I now have 3 more images to look at, Kyle, I will let you know
what I find.


Regards,

Diane Harrison
National Director of The Australian UFO Research Network
Australian Skywatch Director

~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>
THE AUSTRALIAN UFO RESEARCH NETWORK
(A Non-Profit Organization)

E-Mail: auforn.nul
E-mail: ufologist.nul
http://www.hypermax.net.au/~auforn

ADMINISTRATION:

PO Box 738
Beaudessert 4285
QLD Australia
Tel 07 55 487205
~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>
Australian UFO Research Network Hotline Number
         1800 77 22 88 Freecall
~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>~~~~<>

All NEW UFO Bookshop at
http://www.contactpublishing.com








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              Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:51:07 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:02:46 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - King


>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:09:50 -0800
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:29:20 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

<snip>

>A "necessary start" for theorem or fact that changes how science
>looks at things i.e., "status quo," is the observation of a
>phenomena, i.e., UFO sightings, followed by a recording of the
>event; hardware, i.e., "physical evidence" is not "necessary."
>Today, it is widely "accepted" that there are "133 extra-solar
>planets" - "There is no 'physical evidence' to support this
>theorem!" I might add "there is" indeed "physical evidence" in
>regard to Ufology. (And I don't mean what is in possession of
>the military).

>>Another thing: No government on earth will be able to suppress
>>this fact, if & when it happens.

>"Propaganda" and it's brother "censorship" are as much part of
>government (particularly ours) as are "humps to a camel!" To
>think that "a government" in this case ours, can't suppress a
>major event, or keep a secret is the ultimate in naivety.


Hi Frank,

I'm sure that Ray Stanford, Stan Friedman, Dick Hall, Brad
Sparks and several others on this List would heartily agree.
What cannot be hidden can be easily propagandized into fraud or
kookiness.

It is amazing what can be hidden when national security is at
risk, and particularly today, when just about anything can be
considered a risk to national security. If someone came up with
a free energy device today, wouldn't that threaten our national
interests, and thereby our security? Same as aliens and UFOs,
and any faster-than- light stuff, too.

It's a topsy turvy world, and the maintenance of the status quo
is no longer adequate. No, the clock apparently needs to be
wound backward at every turn, to not only protect our interests,
but to bring our godforsaken culture back to the way things used
to be, when things were... better? The whole exercise sickens
me.

Things like life on Mars, UFOs from outer space, alien
abductions, and free energy are concepts just too uncomfortable
these days. Too threatening to the status quo, and not old-
fashioned common sense. I am hopeful that this too shall pass.
But not today.

We cannot afford the naivete to which you allude, Frank. We will
be paying the price for it for some time, however.

Best Regards,

Kyle








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   Dec > Dec 15

                      Re: Professional Amateurs - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:00:27 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:05:14 -0500
Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs - King


>From: Diana Cammack <cammack.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:49:11 +0200
>Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs

>>From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 15:30:49 -0700
>>Subject: Professional Amateurs

>>Source: The New York Times

>>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12PROFESSIONAL.html?ex=1103890101&e
i=1&en=9f4deafcf7d045a3

>>12-12-04

>>Professional Amateurs
>>By Clive Thompson

<snip>

>>Leadbeater says that governments ought to find ways to encourage
>>the higher amateurism. After all, he claims that pro-ams live
>>healthier, more satisfied lives - to say nothing of all the
>>cool stuff they create. Professionals, too, should get used to
>>sharing the stage. Because if Leadbetter is right, the future
>>belongs not to the pros, but to the weekend warriors.

>This is not a new idea. Whatever you think of his politics, Karl
>Marx put it well some time ago:

>"as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each
>man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is
>forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter,
>a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain
>so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in
>communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of
>activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he
>wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes
>it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow,
>to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in
>the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind,
>without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."

Hi Diana,

Very observant, and certainly applicable to the cited article.

Unfortunately, the United States has a very bad habit of
ignoring good ideas, or accepting them begrudgingly, when they
are perceived as being related to words like Communism.

Universal health care does not exist in this richest nation on
earth, because it's socialism... read Communism. (here in the US
they are the same thing). No matter if it is the right thing to
do.

Heck, we threaten boycotts of even our allies when they don't
agree with us.

Cultural humility is not something often exhibited in this
country, although its original architects certainly had it in
mind.

America has rightly garnered a perception abroad that we once,
and still do, apply to Soviet Russia.

That Marx made such a statement is no surprise, but that that
alone would make it harder for Americans to accept is not.

Regarding the pro/amateurs, the internet and cheap high-tech
together form the most revolutionary incubator for ideas the
world has yet produced. From astronomy to high-voltage *lifters*
to computer operating systems, collaboration between far-flung
but intimately connected *regular Joes* around the world is
changing the world faster than governments can contain it.

There's a lot that can be done outside the mainstream. Sometimes
the best ideas come from the most unexpected places, and the
least likely persons. Remember that relativity was thought up by
a crummy student who worked as a civil servant, not a physicist
with several degrees and tenure... and not an American.


Best Regards,

Kyle








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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 15

                         Re: Alien Abductions - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 17:04:02 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:06:50 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - King


>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:38:09 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:10:10 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>Of course all anomalies of consciousness can't be looked up in
>>any clinical textbook, as there is so much work to be done on
>>this subject.

>Wow, John, that just has to be the understatement of the day.

>What exactly is an "anomaly of consciousness"? At the very
>least, I should think, it presupposes some notion of what
>constitutes non-anomalous consciousness. But at present we
>don't even have a working definition of consciousness which
>everyone can agree on, which pretty much makes "anomalies of
>consciousness" a non-starter as an explanatory hypothesis.

>Or to put it another way, "anomalies of consciousness" is about
>as sensible an explanation as "anomalies of shopkeeping". It's
>scientifically meaningless.

>>The abduction phenomenon can't be entirely
>>explained with reference to present knowledge for the same
>>reason. Talk of mysterious "forces" does nothing to advance our
>>knowledge, only carefully planned and executed scientific
>>experiments and observations can do that.

>Would you like to suggest some?

>>Yet when scientific experiments are carried out they are
>>invariably attacked by ufologists for producing the "wrong"
>>answers, i.e. not mysterious enough.

>Really? I hope you'll tell me about them some time. I've
>subscribed to UFO UpDates for a couple of years now, and I
>certainly don't recall any such experiments being described or
>referred to here.


Hi Cathy,

I think John is referring to the examples like a photograph sent
to Mufon or NUFORC, and posted here. Often the object in the
photograph is to some a very mundane object perhaps photographed
in such a way as to lend it an apparent anomalous quality. To
others of course, it is more than this.

When these images are questioned, scrutinized, scientifically
analyzed and ultimately identified, there are parties which tend
to resist the interpretation, or ridicule the interpreter. This
leaves such cases solved in one person's book, and utterly
unexplained in others'. And yet both parties still believe in ET
craft.

Since we can never know for sure if a blur on a photo is bird or
Borg, there is never a true resolution.

Designing experimental protocols for handling UFO research and
data is problematical for just this reason, and anyone who
proposes such a thing must be cognizant of this dichotomy or be
doomed from the outset.

The UFO community must learn to agree that some photos are not
ET craft, and must agree that *Our best guess* is sometimes the
right thing to say, even if *Our best guess* is balloons, planes
or even *gasp* pelicans. We all must find enough common ground
to form a common front. Only then can we begin that culling
process, separating the wheat from the chaff, and begin to
attract thinkers from outside who can truly begin to effect
change in the perceived validity of the research.

You are spot on regarding anomalies of consciousness. Hard to
know what constitutes an anomaly of something we don't
understand to begin with. Psychology today is little different
than voodoo. The words are just a lot bigger. And it costs more
than a goat. <g>

Psychology alone cannot account for the abduction experience.
While I am unable to say that all abductions are real
experience, I am convinced that many are. I'm not sure that
psychology can adequately explain even the few that are not. Of
course, for all its big words, psychology has a far smaller
vocabulary than a voodoo priest on these kinds of subjects.

Pity, that. Seems there's more to relearn than to learn, in the
end.

Best Regards,

Kyle








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   Dec > Dec 15

                        Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer

From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 00:56:22 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:09:29 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Rimmer


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:20:46 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 18:39:38 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>Who is being "denounced" as a hybrid? Names, please. I mean,
>>>besides George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

>>Two that come to mind: the young student identified as "Raechel"
>>in the case reported in recent issues of MUFON UFO Journal, and
>>the family friend, Mr Paige, described in Bud Hopkins "Sight
>>Unseen" - possibly borderline autistic or suffering from
>>Asperger's Syndrome, but seen by Hopkins as a sinister hybrid.

>Budd, not Bud, Hopkins. (Not a typo, as John will claim; this is
>in fact a fairly common error in Magonian discourse.) Why are
>Magonians so resistant to the correct spelling of names?
>Christopher Allan is "Christopher Allen," and I've long been
>"Jerry Clarke," while David Clarke is, ironically and amusingly,
>"David Clark." To cite just four instances that come immediately
>to mind.

It is of course part of a sinister Magonia conspiracy to confuse
and confound our opponents by inducing an identity crisis in, as
Jerry so nicely puts it, "the point on the top of their heads."

>In any event:

>"Raechel" and "Mr. Paige" are about as nebulous as "Ashtar" and
>"Orthon," in other words not much different from the names one
>conjures up in dreams, and neither to the point nor to the
>question. Since here you're being a literalist and assuming (as
>I, being more skeptical than you, am not) that these individuals
>actually exist in event-level reality, let's have some specific
>human beings with real names and addresses - you know, living,
>breathing fellow homo sapiens whose suffering can be documented
>and thus shown not to be endured only in the always fervent,
>self-righteous imaginings of Magonians. Then we can settle the
>issue and not have to rely merely on Rimmer's sinister
>inferences. If we can find a "Raechel" with an actual last name
>like a normal human being, we can look her up, and those who
>have exploited her can be dealt with as sternly as they deserve.
>Likewise with "Mr. Paige."

So having, as you requested, identified two people named in
published reports as being "hybrids", Jerry moves the goalposts
and asks for their real names, addresses and, probably, social
security numbers.

Jerry, if you want to find out "Raechel's" real name I suggest
you ask Joan Bilodeaux who wrote her story in MUFON UFO Journal;
and if you want to find out who "Mr Paige" really was, I'm sure
your friend Budd Hopkins will be happy to give you full details.

Of course another way of reading your paragraph above, is that
the two people named do not actually exist - oh, sorry, "exist
in event-level reality" - and that someone has imagined them.
This may well be the case, but spreading the idea that some,
perhaps socially marginalised, individuals may be alien-human
hybrids has considerable dangers.

>Speaking generally from my point of view: The hybrid claims I've
>seen, while certainly curious, do not persuade me. In other
>words, I am skeptical in the way that any sensible person who
>has not been persuaded would be. At the same time, like anybody
>else, I don't know much of anything with certainty, given claims
>that so far apparently resist convincingly demonstrated
>(ostensibly) orthodox and heterodox explanations, and about
>which persons who prefer to confine their pronouncements to what
>they can reasonably document tend not to make sweeping
>statements. Like the overwhelmingly majority of my fellow
>Americans and earthlings, I live my life on the implicit
>assumption that alien hybrids do not walk among us and that,
>while I occasionally encounter strange individuals, they are
>probably not entities in whom unearthly blood courses.

You might make that assumption Jerry, but I do not think you can
speak for others.

>>>>The idea of mysterious
>>>>foreigners possessed of supernatural powers trying to infiltrate
>>>>society is an ancient motif, and one very much encountered in
>>>>anti-semitic fantasies. But I think you know that already.

>>>Your point being that abductees, besides being racists, are
>>>anti-Semites, too?

>>The point is that all these "antis" are aspects of a generalised
>>fear of "the Other" which is common to human societies,
>>worldwide. They are not exclusively American, as Jerry seems to
>>be implying.

>If John read his own magazine, which I gather he doesn't, he
>would know that Magonians are talking specifically about
>Americans, with whom Magonians are obsessed and whose heterodox
>views of abductions, UFOs, and anomalies in general occasion
>much huffing, puffing, and outraged bloviating. Even Peter
>Rogerson had the good grace and intellectual honesty not to
>pretend otherwise in our recent exchange.

The abduction narrative is one that is dominant in today's
ufology, and it is largely - though of course by no means
exclusively - an American phenomenon. Naturally most discussion
of it in Magonia (and I think there is rather less about it in
our pages than you might be leading List readers to believe) has
concentrated on American cases. However we have also discussed
other related instances of phenomena involving deviant social
attitudes to outsiders. I would refer you, for instance, to the
articles we published some time ago about the "Satanic Abuse"
panics. Although many of these cases were reported from America,
most of the discussion in Magonia concerned cases in Britain,
and the social, political and psychological context in which
they occured in this country.

>In any event:

>John's point being that abductees, besides being racists, are
>anti-Semites, too?

>>After a previous discussion on UpDates (vide Archives) a number
>>of Americans wrote to me agreeing with me that this is a live
>>issue.

>Always better, of course, to cite (alleged) anonymous sources
>than have to produce actual evidence of widespread panic and
>attendant extraordinary hallucinations about interracial
>children disguised as ETs.

Jerry, if you think I'm lying about this, please just say so.

As no-one is talking about widespread panic about interracial
children disguised at ETs, and your attempt to pretend otherwise
smacks of desperation.

I am well aware of the racial and ethnic tensions within British
society, and I come into contact with some of them during the
course of my work. These tensions do have effects in broader
society, and do give rise to a variety of irrational beliefs. I
refuse to believe that this does not happen in America as well.

>I take it that John is denying the growing occurrence of
>interracial/interethnic/interreligious marriage in America, the
>facts notwithstanding (and facts should never, of course, get in
>the way of a good Magonian "theory"), and the diminishing
>instance of public and private racism in American life (not, as
>he preposterously would have it, its total extinction; racism,
>sad to say, will be, like any number of other social ills, a
>long time getting to that happy place) - also evident to anyone
>who cares to educate himself.

I am not denying the growing occurence of interracial,
interethnic, and interreligious marriage in America. In fact I
think statistically Britain has one of the highest rates of such
marriages in Europe. However it is naive in the extreme to
assume that this is by itself a significant indicator of a
reduction in racial tensions within a society. Indeed, in some
cases, it may be the cause of a growth in racial hostility -
 this is certainly the case in some Asian communities in
Britain.

However, as Magonia has never claimed that racial tensions
"cause" abductions or that millions of Americas are suffering
from "horrifying science fictional hallucinations" as a result,
any further discussion on this topic would probably be better
conducted on a political or sociological discussion group than a
ufological one.

--
John Rimmer
Magonia Magazine
www.magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/00/newmag.htm









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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 15

                     Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 05:51:42 -0600
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:28:07 -0500
Subject: Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Lehmberg


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:44:23 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:31:17 -0600
>>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>"Fastwalker" is a term NORAD (North American Air Defense
>>Command) invented to categorize objects that approach from
>>space, enter our atmosphere, maneuver strangely about, and then
>>leave the atmosphere again in a manner that is... not consistent
>>with the aforementioned boosters, birds, and bolides! It is a
>>word also used to describe trans-lunar phenomena (tlp's):
>>anomalous objects with the particularly peculiar flavor of
>>*things* ufological... moving quickly across the face of the
>>full moon and filmed through quality telescopes on Earth... or
>>on shuttle flights... or on radar screens...

>Well, I always thought "TLP" was transient lunar phenomena
>and typically was a flashing or odd light patterns on the Moon's
>surface.

I did too and was surprised myself. Be that as it may, it might
not be productive to quibble over the parsed definitions of what
remains to be some pretty weird stuff -- despite a possible
error in class regarding the manner in which it is defined. I
may have gotten it wrong, but it doesn't really matter.

>>The Air Force NORAD facility, it has been convincingly reported,
>>observes these "fastwalkers" from its subterranean facility deep
>>inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, and tracks a rough average
>>of 500 of them (UFOs for the uninitiated) each YEAR as they
>>enter the Earth's atmosphere from deep space, maneuver around,
>>and then leave again. This is not a fiction. It corroborates a
>>similar report from AeroJet General engineers Lee Graham and Ron
>>Regehr, who have revealed to the well respected UFO researcher
>>Don Ecker documents indicating that AeroJet's DSP satellite
>>system, alone, routinely detects UFOs flying into Earth's
>>atmosphere from deep space... up to two to three times per
>>month.

>The DSP satellite is what I think you mean to be the DMSP
>satellite. I will have to review their sensors, but it seems
>hard to imagine how their optical data can capture a fast moving
>bolide or UFO. Perhaps they have other sensors I am not aware
>of. I do know that I have seen NORAD bolide reports which are
>infrequent.

That was my take, and this was the report. I'm open to
correction on the point. On point, I got an e-mail from another
stating:

"There is a funny story DP witness John Maynard* tells of being
in NRO Radar sat monitor room and noticing half the radar sats
were pointed into deep space.He asked regarding [them], [and]
was told, "you figure it out".

Ray Fowler tells of [a] GTE source, [reporting] objects
repeatedly arriving from cislunar space at 100km/sec slowing to
suborbital velocity.

So much for no ETH evidence folk[s]."

[* Disclosure Project witness - lg]

>Also, regarding the oddity of bolides(meteors) going back out
>into space, this is a frequent occurrence simply based on the
>trajectory of the object. Bolides (meteors) have also been known
>to change course based on their odd shapes, composition,
>trajectory and atmospheric density. Corliss lists some good
>examples.


Yeah - I understand many of these 'linger' to some extent.
Moreover, there's a multilevel evidentiary audit trail that this
is so, abundantly, if fractionally reflected in some 1.35
million posts right here at UpDates.

>Whatever NORAD data has, its not going to give it up unless it
>is in their interest.

Uh-huh... Increasingly? More reason to change the aggregate
rules... would you agree?

Respectful of your commentary, Mr. Smith, when it's all said and
done? The bizarre behavior of the Senior Army Liaison to NORAD
I'd referenced remains to give me righteous pause.

alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net








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   Dec > Dec 15

                      Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hatch

From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 04:38:34 -0800
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 20:12:54 -0500
Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China - Hatch


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:06:14 +0000
>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:10:37 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China


<snip>

>>>Some day, on some distant planet, in some parallel universe,
>>>people will begin to recognize the obvious descriptions of
>>>fireball meteors, and news services will stop contaminating the
>>>UFO database by labeling them 'UFOs'.

>>While I agree that they are not too useful from a UFO research
>>standpoint, these cases are still UFOs using the strictest
>>definition ...

>>As to contamination of the UFO database, that has already been
>>accomplished with Venus, various stars, airplanes, balloons,
>>etc.

>Yes, those too. Why _must_ we call fireballs UFOs when they
obviously are not, even provisionally? These things are very
easy to screen out in any systematic investigation. We used to
do so routinely at NICAP.

>If anything, the labeling should work the other way around:
Highly probably a fireball on the basis of the reported
phenomenology, and only a UFO if more data comes in that
indicates otherwise.

> - Dick



Hi Dick:

Personally, I wouldn't dream of calling something like this a
UFO, and wouldn't waste a second on it w/r to my database.

The only reason I chime in, is that this same discussion seems
to arise every so many months/years.

Yes, anyone can call a ballistic fireball a UFO, if there's some
need to split semantic hairs.  I prefer a more useful
terminology.


best

- Larry









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   Dec > Dec 15

                        Re: Alien Abductions - Reason

From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 12:42:18 -0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 20:14:12 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Reason


>From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:03:51 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions


>"Anomalies of consciousness" was Jerry Clark's phrase. I suppose
>one could say abnormal mental states, but I'm sure you will know
>the appropriate terminology.

I realize from previous experience that it takes a hammer and
chisel to get through to you, John, but you might have discerned
that I'm not much interested in the terminology. I'm interested
in the concepts which underly the terminology and whether those
concepts have been rigorously thought out or whether the
terminology is simply an excuse for lazy thinking.

"Abnormal mental states" may be a slight improvement over
"anomalies of consciousness", but not by much. If a person is
abducted into a flying saucer by aliens and whisked off to Outer
Andromeda or somewhere, then they're by definition in an
abnormal mental state because they're experiencing something
which our society does not consider normal. If a person
experiences abduction imagery as a result of organized seizures
in the temporal lobe then they're also by definition in an
abnormal mental state, for the same reason. Both abnormal mental
states have a physical cause - aliens on the one hand,
"abnormal" firing in the temporal lobe in the latter. In which
case the explanation for the abnormality has to be found at the
physical level.

However, if someone experiences PTSD as a result of war, rape,
disaster or abuse, then arguably it makes no sense to regard the
causal mechanism of that person's mental state as physical, even
though the proximate cause undoubtedly is physical. In this case
we are more likely to look for direct causes at the
psychological level. If you want to get involved in this area
then the first thing you have to do is start examining your own
Cartesian preconceptions. The real problem with your choice of
terms is that it obscures the level you actually want to look
at.

Then you need to define the mechanism of your explanation. You
need to specify what the mechanism does, how it operates, and
why it exists. You need to show that your mechanism is
functionally plausible and that it isn't blatantly ad hoc (this
last criterion, by the way, is one where purely psychological
explanations have a tendency to fall down badly). And then you
need to derive testable predictions from your model which
clearly discriminate it from other possible models.

Not that this is what necessarily happens - in fact in the
social sciences it hardly ever happens like this - but if
"carefully planned and executed experiments" means anything at
all, then this is surely it.

>And it was obviously not intended
>as an explanation, but as a description.

Albeit a description which presupposed an explanation, a point
you appear to have overlooked.


>Some have already been carried out and I'm sure we are all
>eagerly awaiting the results of the experiments briefly
>mentioned by Dick Hall.

Indeed. But one can hardly fail to note the results aren't even
in yet and already we've seen an outbreak of defensiveness from
the usual suspects. Mr Rogerson even went so far as to impose an
addtional condition in advance, that the results should be
replicated by "non-Ufologists". Presumably he believes that
Ufologists are more likely to produce positive results, from
which it presumably follows that Non-Ufologists are more likely
to produce negative results. Apart from the implications of
having researchers vetted for "ideological soundness", this has
the interesting effect that if his own premise is actually
correct, he's hedged himself into a position which is completely
unfalsifiable.

In any case, I will use my uncanny paranormal powers to predict
the following - whatever the outcome of the study, it will lead
to an almighty argument over methodology, after which everyone
will go back to believing what they believed already.

>You could try looking in the archives of this List. A number of
>experiments have been described and there have been some lively
>arguments. You took part in a recent thread concerning the
>Goldsmith's College (London) abductee study.

Yes, sorry, I'd forgotten about the Goldsmith's study. As I
recall though, that is primarily a data-gathering exercise,
rather than a specific test of a clearly defined hypothesis. As
for the Archives, it's true that experiments get cited from time
to time. But none that could honestly be described as "carefully
planned and executed".


Cathy








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   Dec > Dec 15

               Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Reynolds

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:50:31 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 20:15:17 -0500
Subject: Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Reynolds


>From: Martin Shough <mshough.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:54:27 -0000
>Subject: Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

>>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:13:26 -0500
>>Subject: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

>>Going through by Quality Paperback Book Club Review for
>>December, I see a book entitled "Faster than the Speed of Light?
>>The Story of a Scientific Speculation" by Joao Magueijo (called
>>a brilliant young maverick with an heretical new theory). 288
>>pages.

>>This might be must reading for all those (myself included) who
>>are tangled up in entanglement and the Quantum mystery.

>It's an interesting and entertaining read, partly because of
>Maguijo's acerbic attitude to many of his elders in the physics
>community, whom he seems to regard as basically a bunch of
>reactionary old farts defending outmoded institutions. However,
>the variable-speed-of-light or VSL cosmology that he advocates
>(the basic idea is not new and there is a spectrum of related
>theories) does not have anything directly to do with quantum
>entanglement. Information is a VSL universe still propagates at
>the speed of light, but the speed of light in vacuo is allowed
>to change over cosmic time.

Thanks Martin..

And this is more information than I'm going to get
from the book, since QPB is out of stock.

(I'll try Amazon, Powells, and our local library...
or ask Santa to leave a copy under my Xmas
tree.)

Rich









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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Reason

From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 13:51:06 -0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 20:16:20 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Reason


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 00:56:22 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>I would refer you, for instance, to the
>articles we published some time ago about the "Satanic Abuse"
>panics. Although many of these cases were reported from America,
>most of the discussion in Magonia concerned cases in Britain,
>and the social, political and psychological context in which
>they occured in this country.

Heavens, you really must tell me who authored these remarkable
documents. Most contributors to Magonia who've aired their
views here couldn't even define a psychological context, let
alone discuss one.


Cathy







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                     Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Hamilton

From: Bill Hamilton <skyman22.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:19:05 -0800
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 20:20:49 -0500
Subject: Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Hamilton


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:44:23 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:31:17 -0600
>>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>"Fastwalker" is a term NORAD (North American Air Defense
>>Command) invented to categorize objects that approach from
>>space, enter our atmosphere, maneuver strangely about, and then
>>leave the atmosphere again in a manner that is... not consistent
>>with the aforementioned boosters, birds, and bolides! It is a
>>word also used to describe trans-lunar phenomena (tlp's):
>>anomalous objects with the particularly peculiar flavor of
>>*things* ufological... moving quickly across the face of the
>>full moon and filmed through quality telescopes on Earth... or
>>on shuttle flights... or on radar screens...

>Well, I always thought "TLP" was transient lunar phenomena
>and typically was a flashing or odd light patterns on the Moon's
>surface.

>I did too and was surprised myself. Be that as it may, it might
>not be productive to quibble over the parsed definitions of what
>remains to be some pretty weird stuff -- despite a possible
>error in class regarding the manner in which it is defined. I
>may have gotten it wrong, but it doesn't really matter.

>>The Air Force NORAD facility, it has been convincingly reported,
>>observes these "fastwalkers" from its subterranean facility deep
>>inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, and tracks a rough average
>>of 500 of them (UFOs for the uninitiated) each YEAR as they
>>enter the Earth's atmosphere from deep space, maneuver around,
>>and then leave again. This is not a fiction. It corroborates a
>>similar report from AeroJet General engineers Lee Graham and Ron
>>Regehr, who have revealed to the well respected UFO researcher
>>Don Ecker documents indicating that AeroJet's DSP satellite
>>system, alone, routinely detects UFOs flying into Earth's
>>atmosphere from deep space... up to two to three times per
>>month.

>The DSP satellite is what I think you mean to be the DMSP
>satellite. I will have to review their sensors, but it seems
>hard to imagine how their optical data can capture a fast moving
>bolide or UFO. Perhaps they have other sensors I am not aware
>of. I do know that I have seen NORAD bolide reports which are
>infrequent.

<snip>

I correspond with Ron Regehr who worked on the DSP satellite as
an engineer at Aerojet General in California and who is now
retired in Utah. He gave several lectures on fastwalkers.

See: http://members.fortunecity.com/prisyura1/dsp.html







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               Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Hamilton

From: Bill Hamilton <skyman22.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:24:10 -0800
Fwd Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 20:22:21 -0500
Subject: Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Hamilton


>From: Martin Shough <mshough.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:54:27 -0000
>Subject: Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

>>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:13:26 -0500
>>Subject: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

>>Going through by Quality Paperback Book Club Review for
>>December, I see a book entitled "Faster than the Speed of Light?
>>The Story of a Scientific Speculation" by Joao Magueijo (called
>>a brilliant young maverick with an heretical new theory). 288
>>pages.

>>This might be must reading for all those (myself included) who
>>are tangled up in entanglement and the Quantum mystery.

>It's an interesting and entertaining read, partly because of
>Maguijo's acerbic attitude to many of his elders in the physics
>community, whom he seems to regard as basically a bunch of
>reactionary old farts defending outmoded institutions. However,
>the variable-speed-of-light or VSL cosmology that he advocates
>(the basic idea is not new and there is a spectrum of related
>theories) does not have anything directly to do with quantum
>entanglement. Information is a VSL universe still propagates at
>the speed of light, but the speed of light in vacuo is allowed
>to change over cosmic time.

I have Joao's book in my home library. If you want to read a paper
he wrote on VSL in PDF format, then use this link...

http://www.cvil.wustl.edu/~dawei/life/astronomy/vsl/9811018.pdf






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                Re: Exopolitics & The Methodological Bias Of

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 09:38:09 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:26:45 -0500
Subject: Re: Exopolitics & The Methodological Bias Of


>From: Michael E. Salla <exopolitics.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:05:38 -1000
>Subject: Exopolitics & The Methodological Bias Of Ufology

>Exopolitics and the Methodological Bias of Ufology

>Michael E. Salla, PhD
>www.exopolitics.org
>drsalla.nul

<snip>

Dr. Salla...

Your exopolitical approach to the UFO mystery/problem is quite
wonderful, intensely thorough, and unique.

But I have one quibble: the "general public" you refer to, and
seem to need, is comprised of dolts who can barely get through a
day without a slug of coffee, their soaps, or golfing.

I can see 'ufologists' gathering sightings and information from
the great unwashed, but to cater to what your approach suggests
- the general public's concerns with UFOs - would be a waste
of time, would it not?

The study of the UFO phenomenon (or phenomena) should be
conducted by curious, honest fanatics who see the mystery as
something more that the general public does (which is as odd
occurrences in the sky that momentarily baffle them as they hot-
tub or guzzle beer at backyard BBQ parties).

Anything slated for serious scrutiny, whether it's art, biology,
astronomy, cooking, roof repair - anything - should be indulged
in with a fevered passion that some here at UFO UpDates have
mustered for many years.

To bring in those people, represented by the likes of America's
Funniest Home Videos, would becloud an already confusing
phenomenon. And to try and set up a clarification of the UFO
mystery for the masses seems, to me, to be counter-productive.

As a neo-elitist, I'm thinking that the study of UFO should not
be left to the government (which is suppose to be us but isn't)
or so-called scientists but rather to people who have integrity,
open-minds, and a common bond of seeking the truth about our
existentiality.

And those people are all over the UFO UpDates landscape.

Nonetheless, your sociological parameters are grist for those
who differ with me, and see the public as one way to get those
in power to give up the hidden information they hold or, at
least, allow an unencumbered look at UFOs without besmirching
those who've encountered one, or wish to understand the things.


Rich Reynolds
FW MediaWatch







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              Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan

From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 14:45:01 -0000
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:28:30 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan


>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:09:50 -0800
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:29:20 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>>From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:46:31 -0400
>>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>The 'scientific community' (I actually wrote 'scientific
>>establishment') in the case of UFO acceptance is mainly
>>astronomers & biologists. I am assuming here that UFOs
>>eventually turn out to be alien spacecraft.

>First the fact that "some UFOs" are "ET craft," and the eventual
>"acceptance" of that fact will "ripple" through "all the
>sciences," and change "everything" as we now know it. (and in my
>view, that's why Ufology is in the state it's in-suppression).

>>It may well be that there is substantial argument & debate if &
>>when hardware is finally produced. Therefore UFO reality (as ET
>>craft) will likely not be accepted at once even if such hardware
>>turns up.

>History has shown us that most "major discoveries, theories and
>advancements" in science, as well as the people who proposed
>them "went against the status quo" and were not initially widely
>"accepted" (putting it mildly) by "mainstream science," e.g.,
>Copernicus, Galileo, Bruno etc.; of course this is the case with
>ETH, and will be no matter what degree of evidence is put on the
>table;, however, as with previous "mind-changing events" Science
>(itself) has, and will be, the factor to "advance the status
>quo."

>>But such hardware is a necessary start. As for "maintaining the
>>status quo" I am positive that when the physical evidence comes,
>>and in sufficient quantity, all those scientists who previously
>>derided the subject will be so 'over the moon' that they will
>>rapidly forget whatever they said in the past.

>A "necessary start" for theorem or fact that changes how science
>looks at things i.e., "status quo," is the observation of a
>phenomena, i.e., UFO sightings, followed by a recording of the
>event; hardware, i.e., "physical evidence" is not "necessary."
>Today, it is widely "accepted" that there are "133 extra-solar
>planets" - "There is no 'physical evidence' to support this
>theorem!" I might add "there is" indeed "physical evidence" in
>regard to Ufology. (And I don't mean what is in possession of
>the military).

>>Another thing: No government on earth will be able to suppress
>>this fact, if & when it happens.

>"Propaganda" and it's brother "censorship" are as much part of
>government (particularly ours) as are "humps to a camel!" To
>think that "a government" in this case ours, can't suppress a
>major event, or keep a secret is the ultimate in naivety.

You cannot expect 'physical evidence' in the case of extra-solar
planets! You are surely not suggesting that we have to
physically handle one of these in order to verify their
existence?

There are some discoveries in science for which physical
evidence, i.e. hardware, is impossible to produce. (Has anyone
ever handled a single electron or an electromagnetic wave).

If ETs are visiting this earth in nuts & bolts spacecraft, we
would expect, sooner or later, to be able to lay our hands on
one of them. If this has been going on for thousands of years
they may be so perfect in their travels that they never leave
any trace of their existence. In this case we on earth will
never know they came here; and we can only conjecture.

If, on the other hand, they are fallible and on occasion leave
hardware behind we ought to discover it. Maybe we have
overlooked it in the distant past, but we certainly ought not to
have missed it were it happening today .

If and when we do really lay our hands on the hardware, it may
still be a matter for long and acrimonious debate in scientific
circles, but ultimately the truth will out. See my argument on
meteorites.

To suggest that the US government, or any other, could or would
suppress such valuable scientific knowledge for decade after
decade is absurd. UFOs are a worldwide phenomenon. It would be a
great prestige discovery for any country to be the first to
announce it.

The truth is that the hardware simply is not there. Despite
this, people continue to insist that it is there but that
certain authorities, for some nefarious reason, are withholding
it. That is not the scientific method.

Likewise the vital documents 'are there' (but withheld). The
alien corpses 'are there' (but also withheld), so we are told.

The awful truth is that we are nowhere near to proving ETH, and
until abundant hardware is produced, and verified by the
scientific establishment (e.g. National Academy Of Sciences in
the US or the Royal Society in the UK or a suitable academy in
another country) we never will be.


CDA








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                       Re: Alien Abductions - Reynolds

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 10:05:07 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:29:57 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Reynolds


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:49:03 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>Over my many years of studying UFO reports and trying to analyze
>their meaning, the idea has definitely occurred to me more than
>once that some of the `altered appearance of the environment'
>cases, and some aspects of abduction reports, are suggestive of
>altered consciousness as a (partially) explanatory hypothesis as
>opposed to other hypotheses.

>The thought has occurred to me that some exterior Intelligence
>has been playing games with our minds, causing us to think weird
>things are happening that, in an objectively observable sense,
>really are not happening. Talk about a non-falsifiable
>hypothesis! It's just a speculation really. Then along came
>Alexander D. Mebane. Lex, who died recently, was one of the most
>intelligent, gifted thinkers I have ever known. After many
>years of accepting the straight ET visitor interpretation, he
>came to believe that the entire UFO phenomenon, including
>abductions, was staged by "Daemons" who were playing mind games
>with us and deliberatle leading us to think (falsely) that an
>invasion was occurring.

>Though I do not accept his interpretation entirely, his
>arguments for this view are fascinating. I will be publishing
>some exceprts of his letters in the next Journal of UFO History
>in honor of Lex.

Richard...

Aren't the musings of Lex the very same that Jacques Vallee
presented in several enlightening books?


Rich Reynolds








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                      Re: UFO Spotted In China - Smith

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 10:11:16 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:30:57 -0500
Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China - Smith


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 19:06:14 +0000
>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:10:37 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>As to contamination of the UFO database, that has already been
>>accomplished with Venus, various stars, airplanes, balloons,
>>etc.

>Yes, those too. Why _must_ we call fireballs UFOs when they
>obviously are not, even provisionally? These things are very
>easy to screen out in any systematic investigation. We used to
>do so routinely at NICAP.

Well, the "we" you refer to is the media and it is in the
business to sell papers, thus any hype they can generate or spin
to make the story interesting or worthy of buying the paper is
likely to fall in favor of mystery, unknown or controversy.  So
you can't hope for the media to get it "right".

If the media contact UFO researchers, then the problem is
whether the researcher is wanting to make himself or his
position more important by classifying the phenomena as UFO, as
opposed to the more appropriate, scientific way you recommend.

Obviously, "we", the UFO researchers, have more sophisticated
filters and can with higher probability classify the probable
cause of a sighting.  This is a calibration that comes with
experience so is very different from person to person.  Since
there are so many UFO reports, this is a time saver, but we may
be losing some REAL UFO reports in the process.  That's too bad,
but since there are so many it makes little difference.

>If anything, the labeling should work the other way around:
>Highly probably a fireball on the basis of the reported
>phenomenology, and only a UFO if more data comes in that
>indicates otherwise.

Well, we have gone to the other extreme in the media where in
the old days they used to assume the prosaic explanation for
everything odd in the skies.








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                      Re: UFO Spotted In China - Smith

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 10:33:02 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:31:44 -0500
Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China - Smith


>From: Greg Booone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:47:27 EST
>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>If you notice there are a handful prior to 1900 AD and then they
>just pile in up to present day. Could be reporting is better or
>just more people or whatever. Yet let's hypothesize and say just
>10 UFOs crashed every 100 years since year 1 BC. That'd be about
>200 crashed objects spread throughout the world.

>That's a teasing amount of debris. Yet it still doesn't explain
>this so called massive coverup. Especially nowadays.

>Just one. I'ld like just one other government to come forward
>and speak it's piece. Just up and say it is under pressure not
>to talk about UFOs because the U.S. is some hovering bully
>afraid to let the secret out.

>Ain't gonna happen cause there ain't no wolf in grandma's bed.

Yes, it has always seemed unlikely to me that any technology
capable of travelling between stars would be so incompetent as
to crash. I imagine it probably happened once or twice (on SOME
planet) and then they said "ooops! we should have designed it to
not do that!" Consider an evolving technology where the
designers have had 1000s of years to perfect their "art". It
ain't going to crash (unless they are battling it out for some
reason with our military-yeah right- or some alien
military/etc).  Even in these cases, I would assume that it is a
fundamental design parameter to make sure the tech does not fall
into primitive hands, so would have some self-destruct feature
making it impossible to use or impossible to back engineer/make.

However, if there were crashed UFOs in the hands of a foreign
government, don't think they are going to blab about it. If they
have any idea that it IS a alien craft, then they will keep it
under their hats hoping to reap some benefit from it. Publicity
is likely not enough to justify blabbing. If they don't know
that its an alien craft, then it may just be buried somewhere or
put in a museum or in boxes in a warehouse.








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                     Re: UFO Spotted In China - Friedman

From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 11:37:17 -0400
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:35:06 -0500
Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China - Friedman


>From: Greg Booone <Evolbaby.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:47:27 EST
>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>From: Terry Groff <terry.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 05:24:31 -0600
>>Subject: UFO Spotted In China

>>Source: Mid Day News - Mumbai, India

>>http://ww1.mid-day.com/news/world/2004/december/99305.htm

>>12-13-04

>>UFO spotted in China: Report
>>By: AFP

>>Beijing: An unidentified flying object, or UFO, passed across
>>the large northwestern Chinese city of Lanzhou and apparently
>>exploded in the suburbs, state media said today.

>>The unusual sighting of two bright trails of light, reported by
>>several witnesses, took place Saturday shortly before midnight,
>>the China Times reported.

>>Police, working on the theory that it was a meteorite, went to
>>investigate the matter, but as of today they had found no
>>evidence of what caused the nightly phenomenon, an officer said.

>It's good that the folks in China are letting a story like this
>out without the usual sloppy reporting done in the west.

<snip>

>Just one. I'd like just one other government to come forward
>and speak it's piece. Just up and say it is under pressure not
>to talk about UFOs because the U.S. is some hovering bully
>afraid to let the secret out.

>Ain't gonna happen cause there ain't no wolf in grandma's bed.


Surely we all recognize that all governments have a vested
interest in not publicizing the reality of alien visitations?
People would think of themselves as earthlings instead of Brits,
Chinese, Peruvian and all the other nationalistic labels
currently in vogue. No country wants its citizens to owe their
allegiance to the planet instead of to that government.
Nationalism is the only game in town so far as I can see.

There is a ton of eyewitness testimony, radar info,
pictures,videos, physical trace cases... one might say all
circumstantial. So was the evidence against Scott Peterson
concerning his murder of his wife and unborn child. He just got
the death penalty.

Remember that during the cold war both the USSR and the US kept
quiet about all the airmen lost to intervention by the other.
The Soviets knew U-2 spy planes were flying over their country.
They said nothing publicly until Gary Powers' plane was shot
down.

All this talk about wanting scientists involved.. I would rather
have people accustomed to dealing with witness testimony,
physical traces etc, like cops, detectives, forensic
investigators.Is an astronomer or an artist better at describing
a bank robber? The problem with astronomers, physicists,
chemists etc. is that they are accustomed to being able to
control the variables or at least to be sure that an
intelligence isn't involved. How about the NTSB investigators
when it comes time to evaluating testimony and traces??


Stan Friedman








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             Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 09:39:05 -0800
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:37:09 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:51:07 -0600
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:09:50 -0800
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:29:20 -0000
>>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

<snip>

>>>Another thing: No government on earth will be able to suppress
>>>this fact, if & when it happens.

>>"Propaganda" and it's brother "censorship" are as much part of
>>government (particularly ours) as are "humps to a camel!" To
>>think that "a government" in this case ours, can't suppress a
>>major event, or keep a secret is the ultimate in naivety.

Good Day Kyle,

>I'm sure that Ray Stanford, Stan Friedman, Dick Hall, Brad
>Sparks and several others on this List would heartily agree.
>What cannot be hidden can be easily propagandized into fraud or
>kookiness.

Hmmm.... good company to be in IMHO. Sometimes things can be
hidden right out in the open as well.

>It is amazing what can be hidden when national security is at
>risk, and particularly today, when just about anything can be
>considered a risk to national security. If someone came up with
>a free energy device today, wouldn't that threaten our national
>interests, and thereby our security? Same as aliens and UFOs,
>and any faster-than- light stuff, too.

Most people when they hear or use the term of "National Security
and any "threat to it" they envision a military attack or
espionage etc.; however, the powers-that-be have "bound us to" a
finite crude (no pun intended) resource, i.e., oil. One can
argue that any effect on the "oil industry" would be a "threat
to our National Security." (Obviously the "powers-that-be think
so, since we have procured our very own oil producing country).

>It's a topsy turvy world, and the maintenance of the status quo
>is no longer adequate. No, the clock apparently needs to be
>wound backward at every turn, to not only protect our interests,
>but to bring our godforsaken culture back to the way things used
>to be, when things were... better? The whole exercise sickens
>me.

Pass the barf bag please . . .

>Things like life on Mars, UFOs from outer space, alien
>abductions, and free energy are concepts just too uncomfortable
>these days. Too threatening to the status quo, and not old-
>fashioned common sense. I am hopeful that this too shall pass.
>But not today.

"Between the people and the government today lies a double
standard of morality." -Frank Scully 1950

>We cannot afford the naivete to which you allude, Frank. We will
>be paying the price for it for some time, however.

So true!

Cheers,

Frank








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Adams

From: Brian Adams <ufosource.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 13:26:55 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:38:27 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Adams


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:25:08 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:12:49 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:40:12 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>I disagree with others on this List who keep suggesting that the
>>>ETH is not testable. It certainly is in principle, though the
>>>test will never happen as long as people assume that UFOs are
>>>all nonsense because it would cost a lot of money. If real,
>>>physical, ET beings are coming and going in real, physical
>>>craft, that would be detectable by satellite cameras, special
>>>detection equipment placed on the moon, etc. Some would argue
>>>that they have been so detected, but inevitably written off as
>>>errors in the equipment because they don't fit current belief.
>>>Of course, if UFOs are something else (like other dimensional
>>>visitors) all bets are off.

<snip>

What happened to the supposive evidence of a unusual looking
microscopic dust that was found in the bedrooms of abductees?
Didn't I read about this a few years ago where microscopic glass
beads were discovered by sampling dust accumulating in corners
and on doorway or window frames of abductees?

Maybe that's where the interdimensional doorway or
electromagnetic light beam reacted with regular room
dust/particulates or the paint/stain on surfaces. I wonder if
it's possible to tell difference from older lead-based
wall/window paint to a lead-free painted room?

A simple sticky tape sample of room corners and wall/frame
surfaces of the affected room and the next door rooms as control
then conduct microscopic analysis of the particulate matter.


Brian








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                    Re: Central Research Facility - White

From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 16:30:49 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:39:27 -0500
Subject: Re: Central Research Facility - White


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:01:36 -0600
>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

>>From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 16:30:56 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

<snip>

>We must not rely on the government-funded scientific mainstream
>for our methodology, since we'd be relying on our worst enemy.
>Can a level playing field even be possible under this scenario?

>We need a maverick with heretical new ideas more than ever.

My thought is: Bring the stiffest critics into the procedure
making.

Then: They can't really complain about their own procedures,
can they?

Kind of like in the military, the officer chosen to administer
the officers' mess is usually the one who complains loudest
about the food.


Eleanor White








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                      The Chinese Take UFOs Seriously!

From: Greg Boone Evolbaby.nul
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 16:37:40 EST
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:41:01 -0500
Subject: The Chinese Take UFOs Seriously!


http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc524.htm

This webpage is chock full of very solid UFO documents and news
stories that cannot be denied coming from China.

Even an account from a top Chinese official!

I guess the press over here and the 'mysterious men in black'
don't wander over to China and insult and threaten the good
folks over there because with over a billion cousins it would be
a task to tough for them.


Best,

Greg








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                    Re: Central Research Facility - Adams

From: Brian Adams <ufosource.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 15:55:53 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:42:41 -0500
Subject: Re: Central Research Facility - Adams


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:01:36 -0600
>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

>>From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 16:30:56 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

>>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:28:55 -0000
>>>Subject: Re: Central Research Facility

>><snip>

>>>As for anonymous scientists, if ufology is to have any
>>>credibility, that is the last thing we want.

>>Well, I've read many posts in which UFO researchers have
>>lamented the fact that mainstream scientists "won't touch" the
>>field of Ufology.

><snip>

>Mainstream science is almost an oxymoron. Since mainstream
>science does not have all the answers, obviously the answers lie
>outside the mainstream. Yet the funding for research is often
>withheld and deemed a waste if it is outside the mainstream. And
>funding for mainstream science moves ahead based on a presumed
>legitimacy proffered by... mainstream science. Tautological at
>best. Ludicrous at worst.

>We must not rely on the government-funded scientific mainstream
>for our methodology, since we'd be relying on our worst enemy.
>Can a level playing field even be possible under this scenario?

>We need a maverick with heretical new ideas more than ever.

We're an X-Science field of research. Like new home buyer
inspectors or environmental specialists doing a "phase I or II"
assessment except we're not bondable. Thus, we're still outside
any accepted business-like entity.

But like a CSI, we can perform some type of pseudo-scientific
activity that is treated as anecdotal research. Having access to
a NIST lab would be a big step forward.


Brian








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               Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Holman

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:20:55 +1100
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:21:20 -0500
Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin - Holman


>From: Diane Harrison <auforn.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 07:46:38 +1000
>Subject: Re: Flashing Lights Hover Over Darwin

>As I've said I'm not an astronomer but I do have an interest in
>it. I have noticed you're at one of Melbourne's university in
>the physics department. Is this correct? If so, what is your
>expertise in the area of physics? Just interested.

I have a master's degree in astrophysics, but I'm not an
astrophysicist! I currently work in IT (sometimes for the
astrophysics group here, which is why I still have the physics
email address) and am studying history (with a tangential
interest in phantom airships).

>Brett, Nigel has informed me:

>"We have looked on nights without cloud and have not seen the
>same image since."

Thanks for following this up. However, if what they saw was a
star distorted by atmospheric dispersion (which I now think is
unlikely), then on following nights they wouldn't necessarily
see the same image - as the dispersion would probably not be
present - but just a normal, bright star, in the same location
as the UFO had been.


Brett Holman







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                     Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers - Maccabee

From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 19:53:23 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:22:53 -0500
Subject: Re:  NORAD & Fastwalkers - Maccabee


>From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:44:23 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
>Subject: Re: NORAD & Fastwalkers

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:31:17 -0600
>>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>"Fastwalker" is a term NORAD (North American Air Defense
>>Command) invented to categorize objects that approach from
>>space, enter our atmosphere, maneuver strangely about, and then
>>leave the atmosphere again in a manner that is... not consistent
>>with the aforementioned boosters, birds, and bolides! It is a
>>word also used to describe trans-lunar phenomena (tlp's):
>>anomalous objects with the particularly peculiar flavor of

<snip>

>>and then leave again. This is not a fiction. It corroborates a
>>similar report from AeroJet General engineers Lee Graham and Ron
>>Regehr, who have revealed to the well respected UFO researcher
>>Don Ecker documents indicating that AeroJet's DSP satellite
>>system, alone, routinely detects UFOs flying into Earth's
>>atmosphere from deep space... up to two to three times per
>>month.

>The DSP satellite is what I think you mean to be the DMSP
>satellite. I will have to review their sensors, but it seems
>hard to imagine how their optical data can capture a fast moving
>bolide or UFO. Perhaps they have other sensors I am not aware
>of. I do know that I have seen NORAD bolide reports which are
>infrequent.

>Also, regarding the oddity of bolides(meteors) going back out
>into space, this is a frequent occurance simply based on the
>trajectory of the object. Bolides (meteors) have also been known
>to change course based on their odd shapes, composition,
>trajectory and atmospheric density. Corliss lists some good
>examples.

>Whatever NORAD data has, its not going to give it up unless it
>is in their interest.

True.

The DSP (Defense Satellite Program) I believe is for detecting
launches of missiles and has good resolution, fast sensors. It
primarily views the "limb" of the earth.

The DMSP (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) is for
determining weather. The DMSP program uses a "slow" method to
create pictures, as described at:

http://brumac.8k.com/DMSP/DMSP.html

where I have reported on the analysis of strange DMSP image that
looks like a jet powered car flying above the clouds.








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                     Re: Professional Amateurs - Holman

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:58:28 +1100
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:24:13 -0500
Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs - Holman


>From: Steven Kaeser <steve.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 12:11:52 -0500
>Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs

>In a practical sense, most Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are
>discovered by amatuer astronomers in their back yards, and not
>by professional astronomers at the major telescopes they have
>available to them.  The fact that the "tinkerers" have a voice
>is nothing new and that's where a lot of revolutionary
>technology started out.  The fact that there are so many amatuer
>astronomers helps to provide coverage of the immense sky to be
>examined, and their findings can be quickly verified, so they're
>in a unique situation to garner respect from professionals.

This used to be the case, but not any more. Professional surveys
now discover the majority of NEOs - amateurs just can't match
the computing and telescope power available to professional
astronomers, who can analyse, in near-real time, gigabytes of
data from automated telescopes.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/

http://www.bitnik.com/mp/alpo/program_introduction.html

The LINEAR project has seems to be the front runner at the
moment, with 1622 confirmed NEO discoveries so far, over half
the known total.

http://www.ll.mit.edu/LINEAR/index.html

But amateurs still have important roles to play in following up
these discoveries, and as you say, their sheer numbers
(relatively speaking) makes them an invaluable resource for
astronomers interested in minor planets, supernovae and variable
stars. Astronomy has long been unusual in that regard - there
are few sciences where amateurs can still make a real
contribution. So it's be a bit misleading to hail an amateur
astronomer's discovery of a new nebula (as the article does) as
evidence of a "pro-am" revolution - it's nothing new in
astronomy.

Having said that, a new nebula is pretty rare in and of itself,
and how cool it must have been for Jay McNeil to discover it!
There's some background on it here:

http://spacsun.rice.edu/~has/jay_mcneil.htm

>But in a very real sense, the days of garage development of new
>technologies is becoming more distant with the high cost of the
>development process. Unless one is dealing with a completely new
>technology that is easily manufactured with common materials,
>it's almost impossible to build it in the garage anymore.
>That's not to say that ideas won't be developed everywhere from
>the garage to the boardroom, but the ability to actually test
>them and put them into practical use will likely take financing
>and involves investors and bureaucracy.

NEO astronomy is a good example of this! A shame for the
amateurs; though science benefits, obviously.


Brett Holman







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                     Re: Professional Amateurs - Holman

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:23:35 +1100
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:24:58 -0500
Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs - Holman


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:00:27 -0600
>Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs

>There's a lot that can be done outside the mainstream. Sometimes
>the best ideas come from the most unexpected places, and the
>least likely persons. Remember that relativity was thought up by
>a crummy student who worked as a civil servant, not a physicist
>with several degrees and tenure... and not an American.

That's a common misconception. Einstein certainly didn't have
tenure, but he *was* a physicist with several degrees: a
teaching diploma awarded in 1900 and, more importantly, his
doctorate in physics from the University of Zurich, awarded in
1905, during his annus mirabilis. Well, technically he didn't
yet have his doctorate when he came up with special relativity -
 but he had already submitted his thesis ("A New Determination
of Molecular Dimensions", revolutionary in its own right), and
it was passed before his special relativity paper was published.
Einstein was certainly something of an outsider, but not quite
as much as he is sometimes made out to be.

http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/chron-1905.htm


Brett Holman








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                    Re: Good News For Causality? - Sawers

From: William Sawers <ufsyntax.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 14:23:02 +1000
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:26:58 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Sawers


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 08:33:27 -0600
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>>From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 22:52:12 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>>>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 12:02:01 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>>>>From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>>
>>>>To: Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>>Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 18:13:39 -0800
>>>>Subject: Good News For Causality

>>>>Physicists in Switzerland have confirmed that information
>>>>cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light.

><snip>

>>Actually, the bottom line is, that we don't really have a clue
>>as to what is _really_ going on!

>My point exactly. When everything you 'know' is likely wrong,
>maybe we could be a little more 'inclusive' regarding
>extrapolation into an unknown with a known almost as unknown as
>the unknown we'd pretend to attempt to identify.

If I may add a little more confusion to this discussion and it
may not be exactly relative, but I remember reading about a
unifying theory of interconnectivity which, in its own right
gives us the very real possibility of "parallel universes"

Called the "String Theory"(?). It looks at small strings, some
with ends others joined but all vibrating, making the universe
interconnected with the vibrations like a gigantic orchestra.
These "strings" are what are between the molecules of all atoms.

Please excuse my ignorance on this matter but it did sound as if
it was worthy of this thread.


Regards,

William








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               Strange Microwave & Radio Signals In Himalayas

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:35:38 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:35:38 -0500
Subject: Strange Microwave & Radio Signals In Himalayas




Source: India Daily

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/12-14b-04.asp

12-14-04


Strange Microwave And Radio Signals Around The Glacier At
Kailash In India-China Himalayas - Extra Terrestrial Signals?

Lara Mohani
Special Correspondent

People in deep Himalayas in Chinese territory have recently
reported strange microwave and radio signals. The signals are
most prominent around a region called Kailash regarded by Hindus
for thousands of years as the door to heaven and home of God
Shiva. According to tourists and pilgrims the signals are real
and no one knows where they are coming from. The region is
beautiful and is a difficult place to go. China provides special
permission to Indian Hindu pilgrims or the Western tourists.

There is no reason for satellite monitoring in the area. This
area is not known as Chinese depository of intercontinental
missiles or nuclear arsenals. Some say the strange signals have
recently been more prominent due to availability of advanced
receivers.

Some say these signals come from below the lake at Kailash. Some
say they come from above in the heaven. The natural beauty is so
prominent rarely any one wants to come back inspite of lack of
oxygen and chilling cold. Other that Antarctic and Artic
regions, this is probably the coldest area of the world. In the
middle of that stands a crystal clear lake frozen most of the
year.

Around this time there is not much out there. The severe cold
makes it impossible for tourists or pilgrims go to Kailash. But
some scientists did visit the area earlier in December and
reported the strange signals.

It is possible the strange signals are from some kind of hidden
Chinese military or space installations. According to local
people, Chinese military is silently very active there.

Are these signals from the extra terrestrials. Is there
something paranormal going on there? Only more studies and
Chinese cooperation can tell us that. But when we talk to Hindu
sages and rishis, they smile and say all the unknown to human
beings are out there - this is place of spirituality. Kailash,
Kedarnath, Badrinath are all Hindu pilgrimages like Mecca for
the Muslims.


[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]







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                        Only White People See Aliens

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:41:16 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:41:16 -0500
Subject: Only White People See Aliens




Source: The Sun-Sentinel -  Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

http://www.southflorida.com/news/sfl-eslozg3dec15,0,5004712.story?coll=sfe-guide
-headlines

12-15-04


Xzibit: Only White People See Ghosts, Aliens

Hip-hop star Xzibit has a unique theory on the existence of
ghosts or aliens - "only white people" encounter such
supernatural beings.

The rapper and Pimp My Ride host claims blacks are too busy with
other issues to make wild claims about UFOs or spooks.

"Black people don't really see ghosts or aliens. People who see
aliens ... they never see them in urban settings. Aliens don't
[expletive] with the hood, you never see some brother saying,
'Oh man, and then there were some lights, and it just came
down.'"

"[Blacks] don't see aliens, [blacks] don't never see ghosts,
either. Black people are dealing with too much.

"I lived in South Central (Los Angeles) and none of them
[expletive] dare come this way."


[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]






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              Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Groff

From: Terry Groff <terry.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:35:19 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:42:54 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Groff


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 14:45:01 -0000
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

<snip>

>You cannot expect 'physical evidence' in the case of extra-solar
>planets! You are surely not suggesting that we have to
>physically handle one of these in order to verify their
>existence?

<snip>

Within the context of comparing Astronomical and Ufological
methodologies, yes.

Physical evidence is what mainstream Astronomy is demanding from
Ufology yet they do not demand it of themselves.

What's good for the goose.....


Terry








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                 Re: Only White People See Aliens - Cammack

From: Diana Cammack <cammack.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 16:47:57 +0200
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 10:04:04 -0500
Subject: Re: Only White People See Aliens - Cammack



>Source: The Sun-Sentinel -  Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

>http://www.southflorida.com/news/sfl-eslozg3dec15,0,5004712.story?coll=sfe-guid
e-headlines

>12-15-04

>Xzibit: Only White People See Ghosts, Aliens

>Hip-hop star Xzibit has a unique theory on the existence of
>ghosts or aliens - "only white people" encounter such
>supernatural beings.

>The rapper and Pimp My Ride host claims blacks are too busy with
>other issues to make wild claims about UFOs or spooks.

<snip>

List,

Someone ought to send him copies of Cynthia Hind's books. And
John Mack looked at one of her cases - school kids in rural
Zimbabwe. Maybe Africans don't count as 'black' in his scheme of
things?


Diana
Cape Town








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             Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Miller

From: Stuart Miller <stuart.miller4.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 15:20:25 +0000 (GMT)
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:31:45 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Miller


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 14:45:01 -0000
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:09:50 -0800
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

<snip>

>To suggest that the US government, or any other, could or
>would suppress such valuable scientific knowledge for decade
>after decade is absurd. UFOs are a worldwide phenomenon. It
>would be a great prestige discovery for any country to be the
>first to announce it.

>The truth is that the hardware simply is not there. Despite
>this, people continue to insist that it is there but that
>certain authorities, for some nefarious reason, are
>withholding it. That is not the scientific method.

One of the novelties and down right amusing side issues of this
subject is the abject naivite of many on the scientific side.
Never more succinctly does a message to this List underline the
complete lack of any awareness of the actual day to day reality
of the Human condition.

It's absurd that the US government would withold such valuable
scientific knowledge? You're English are you not CDA so you'll
understand sarcasm then.

"OK, lets tell everybody about it and bugger the consequences.
Possible economic collapse? Rocketing suicide rate? Massive
increases in mental dysfunction as faith in religion crumbles?
Deep deperession within the scientific community as it realsies
it knows nothing and now won't be able to discover anything new
by itself? Terror at the prospect of an invasion? Terror at the
prospect of malevolent bacterial invasion? The trauma that many
will feel at the realization that far from being at the top of
the tree that they're the gallactic equivalent of an ant? Who
cares!! At least we've got the prestige of announcing all this
to the world. Wow. Folk will be real grateful."

Forget the test tubes CDA and get in touch with what you are. A
human being.


Stuart Miller







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               Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Reynolds

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 10:27:15 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:33:18 -0500
Subject: Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light? - Reynolds


>From: Bill Hamilton <skyman22.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:24:10 -0800
>Subject: Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

>>From: Martin Shough <mshough.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:54:27 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

>>>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:13:26 -0500
>>>Subject: Faster Than The Speed Of Light?

>>>Going through by Quality Paperback Book Club Review for
>>>December, I see a book entitled "Faster than the Speed of Light?
>>>The Story of a Scientific Speculation" by Joao Magueijo (called
>>>a brilliant young maverick with an heretical new theory). 288
>>>pages.

>>It's an interesting and entertaining read, partly because of
>>Maguijo's acerbic attitude to many of his elders in the physics
>>community, whom he seems to regard as basically a bunch of
>>reactionary old farts defending outmoded institutions. However,
>>the variable-speed-of-light or VSL cosmology that he advocates
>>(the basic idea is not new and there is a spectrum of related
>>theories) does not have anything directly to do with quantum
>>entanglement. Information is a VSL universe still propagates at
>>the speed of light, but the speed of light in vacuo is allowed
>>to change over cosmic time.

>I have Joao's book in my home library. If you want to read a paper
>he wrote on VSL in PDF format, then use this link...

>http://www.cvil.wustl.edu/~dawei/life/astronomy/vsl/9811018.pdf

Bill:

Thanks very much for the PDF of Albrect's and Majueijo's
"varying light speed" article.

(I love this stuff.)

Rich Reynolds








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   Dec > Dec 16

                  Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson

From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 15:44:39 +0000
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:08:39 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson


>From: William Sawers <ufsyntax.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 14:23:02 +1000
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>If I may add a little more confusion to this discussion and it
>may not be exactly relative, but I remember reading about a
>unifying theory of interconnectivity which, in its own right
>gives us the very real possibility of "parallel universes"

>Called the "String Theory"(?)...

>Please excuse my ignorance on this matter but it did sound as
>if it was worthy of this thread.

Hi William,

Glad you brought that up. In a way it illustrates how little we
_actually_ know for sure.

Half-ashamed to say I'd carelessly put 'String Theory' in bag of
"math theories which can't be real" along with Singularity
("black hole") Theories.

But some good minds are still working on it last time I heard,
among them Lee Smolin who struck me as having a sharply truthful
view of the Universe's workings.

In almost total ignorance of the details, so waiting for their
results - but hopefully in only one of the suggested sixteen or
so dimensions.


Cheers

Ray D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Perceptions" http://www.perceptions.couk.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~








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   Dec > Dec 16

             Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:56:28 -0800
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:11:28 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 14:45:01 -0000
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:09:50 -0800
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

<snip>

Good Day Christopher,

>You cannot expect 'physical evidence' in the case of extra-solar
>planets! You are surely not suggesting that we have to
>physically handle one of these in order to verify their
>existence?

Bingo! Not at all; in fact we don't even have to "see one" for
Astronomers to "say" they exist. Likewise the same rules apply,
or at least "should" for "any phenomena" including ET craft.

>There are some discoveries in science for which physical
>evidence, i.e. hardware, is impossible to produce. (Has anyone
>ever handled a single electron or an electromagnetic wave).

Exactly my point!

>If ETs are visiting this earth in nuts & bolts spacecraft, we
>would expect, sooner or later, to be able to lay our hands on
>one of them.

Although there is ample "evidence we have," the question still
remains "Why?" How can we deduce "anything alien" using "human
logic?"

>If this has been going on for thousands of years
>they may be so perfect in their travels that they never leave
>any trace of their existence. In this case we on earth will
>never know they came here; and we can only conjecture.

Any trace!? Christopher, where have you been?

>If, on the other hand, they are fallible and on occasion leave
>hardware behind we ought to discover it. Maybe we have
>overlooked it in the distant past, but we certainly ought not to
>have missed it were it happening today .

Again, although there is "ample evidence" to suggest that we are
in possession of "ET crafts" my point is we "don't need
'hardware,'i.e., 'physical evidence'" to prove it; just as we
don't need it to "prove the existence of extra-solar planets";
however, fortunately, opposed to "extra-solar planets" we do
infact "have physical evidence" in regards to UFOs. (Again I
don't mean what the military has recovered either).

>If and when we do really lay our hands on the hardware, it may
>still be a matter for long and acrimonious debate in scientific
>circles, but ultimately the truth will out. See my argument on
>meteorites.

That argument has been made now for almost 60 years.

>To suggest that the US government, or any other, could or would
>suppress such valuable scientific knowledge for decade after
>decade is absurd. UFOs are a worldwide phenomenon. It would be a
>great prestige discovery for any country to be the first to
>announce it.

Aye yi yi. Yes, and there was no holocaust, we never left POWs
behind, Oswald shot Kennedy, we faked the moon landing, we never
used our own soldiers as test dummies with nuclear
experiments/explosions, we never tested chemical weapons on our
own people, the CIA has never plotted against other governments,
Nixon was true blue, Hoover liked women, we're sending our
children to Iraq in the name of democracy, and Clinton didn't
get a blow job in the White House.

I don't mean to be rude Christopher, but I'm beginning to wonder
if you've just come out of a coma, were/are living on some
deserted desert island, or all of the above.

>The truth is that the hardware simply is not there. Despite
>this, people continue to insist that it is there but that
>certain authorities, for some nefarious reason, are withholding
>it. That is not the scientific method.

Hmmm... I don't think one can "state what the truth is" unless
that person has looked at the evidence in support of the fact
that the "powers-that-be" have "covered-up" information
pertaining to UFOs--it would seem that you haven' done that yet.
Separately, as with extra-solar planets or other phenomenon, one
doesn't have to have it in one's hands for it's validity.

>Likewise the vital documents 'are there' (but withheld). The
>alien corpses 'are there' (but also withheld), so we are told.

I would suggest you read the "Security Act of 1947" but, oh
that's right the bulk of it is classified, so you can't read it.
Although what has been released via FOIA requests is mind
boggling, what hasn't is even more so; e.g., CAUS's lawsuits,
and the end result was "heavily redacted documents" and the
"powers-that-be" initially said they had no information
pertaining to UFOs- an obvious lie; then after the fact they
still said, with a "straight face" that there is is no cover-up.
Oy!

>The awful truth is that we are nowhere near to proving ETH, and
>until abundant hardware is produced, and verified by the
>scientific establishment (e.g. National Academy Of Sciences in
>the US or the Royal Society in the UK or a suitable academy in
>another country) we never will be.

>CDA

Hardware need not be produced to prove an ETH. An investigation
by any respected scientific establishment would prove that,
using the same criterion they would use for any other
reoccurring "transient phenomena." The only requirement is
"action!"


Respectfully,

Frank Warren








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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 16

                         Re: Alien Abductions - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 16:11:51 +0000
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:13:09 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Hall


>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 10:05:07 -0500
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:49:03 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>Over my many years of studying UFO reports and trying to analyze
>>their meaning, the idea has definitely occurred to me more than
>>once that some of the `altered appearance of the environment'
>>cases, and some aspects of abduction reports, are suggestive of
>>altered consciousness as a (partially) explanatory hypothesis as
>>opposed to other hypotheses.

>>The thought has occurred to me that some exterior Intelligence
>>has been playing games with our minds, causing us to think weird
>>things are happening that, in an objectively observable sense,
>>really are not happening. Talk about a non-falsifiable
>>hypothesis! It's just a speculation really. Then along came
>>Alexander D. Mebane. Lex, who died recently, was one of the most
>>intelligent, gifted thinkers I have ever known. After many
>>years of accepting the straight ET visitor interpretation, he
>>came to believe that the entire UFO phenomenon, including
>>abductions, was staged by "Daemons" who were playing mind games
>>with us and deliberatle leading us to think (falsely) that an
>>invasion was occurring.

>>Though I do not accept his interpretation entirely, his
>>arguments for this view are fascinating. I will be publishing
>>some exceprts of his letters in the next Journal of UFO History
>>in honor of Lex.

>Aren't the musings of Lex the very same that Jacques Vallee
>presented in several enlightening books?

Rich,

I don't think so; at least I never got that impression from his
writings. But then, I found his writings rather murky and
hyperbolic in latter years. For one thing (out of many), I
recall that Vallee was strong on the belief that contactee
groups were being manipulated by sinister forces that were never
really defined. His views seemed to be very conspiratorial in
the Earth-based sense.

There may be some overlap, but I don't think it would be to a
very large degree.  Lex's speculations were, I think, far more
fundamental. Anyway, I hope to publish some of his letters and
writings some day. Then people can make up their own minds.

 - Dick








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                       Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 10:27:17 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:16:45 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 00:56:22 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:20:46 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 18:39:38 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>>Who is being "denounced" as a hybrid? Names, please. I mean,
>>>>besides George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

>>>Two that come to mind: the young student identified as "Raechel"
>>>in the case reported in recent issues of MUFON UFO Journal, and
>>>the family friend, Mr Paige, described in Bud Hopkins "Sight
>>>Unseen" - possibly borderline autistic or suffering from
>>>Asperger's Syndrome, but seen by Hopkins as a sinister hybrid.

>>Budd, not Bud, Hopkins. (Not a typo, as John will claim; this is
>>in fact a fairly common error in Magonian discourse.) Why are
>>Magonians so resistant to the correct spelling of names?
>>Christopher Allan is "Christopher Allen," and I've long been
>>"Jerry Clarke," while David Clarke is, ironically and amusingly,
>>"David Clark." To cite just four instances that come immediately
>>to mind.

>It is of course part of a sinister Magonia conspiracy to confuse
>and confound our opponents by inducing an identity crisis in, as
>Jerry so nicely puts it, "the point on the top of their heads."

You're the one to say so, Sir, notwithstanding the difficulty
one experiences in searching for a way with which to disagree.

>>In any event:

>>"Raechel" and "Mr. Paige" are about as nebulous as "Ashtar" and
>>"Orthon," in other words not much different from the names one
>>conjures up in dreams, and neither to the point nor to the
>>question. Since here you're being a literalist and assuming (as
>>I, being more skeptical than you, am not) that these individuals
>>actually exist in event-level reality, let's have some specific
>>human beings with real names and addresses - you know, living,
>>breathing fellow homo sapiens whose suffering can be documented
>>and thus shown not to be endured only in the always fervent,
>>self-righteous imaginings of Magonians. Then we can settle the
>>issue and not have to rely merely on Rimmer's sinister
>>inferences. If we can find a "Raechel" with an actual last name
>>like a normal human being, we can look her up, and those who
>>have exploited her can be dealt with as sternly as they deserve.
>>Likewise with "Mr. Paige."

>So having, as you requested, identified two people named in
>published reports as being "hybrids", Jerry moves the goalposts
>and asks for their real names, addresses and, probably, social
>security numbers.

In the manner of an increasingly 'falstaffian' swordsman, there
are the usual fatuously clever 'Stramazones' and defeated 'Punta
Riversas', finished up with a distracting and feeble
'Imbrocatta' of disingenuous sarcasm as pointless as the
preceding irrelevant feints and blunted parries. Your power to
carry on in the swordplay _despite_ the copious bleeding from
thousands of wounds is inspiring, Sir.

>Jerry, if you want to find out "Raechel's" real name I suggest
>you ask Joan Bilodeaux who wrote her story in MUFON UFO Journal;
>and if you want to find out who "Mr Paige" really was, I'm sure
>your friend Budd Hopkins will be happy to give you full details.

A not unclever 'Botta Dritta', Sir, despite its lack of even a
paper-edged relevancy. Your preceding languishes into an over-
extending 'Botta Lunga' you thought was for effect (and might
pay for), then followed by the ineffectual 'Botta Segrete' of
sarcastic irrelevancy. Falstaff should stay away from swordplay
with Flynn, despite the fact that the best Falstaff can hope for
is amusing side-kick. Better grasp that brass ring if it comes
around, Sir.

>Of course another way of reading your paragraph above, is that
>the two people named do not actually exist - oh, sorry, "exist
>in event-level reality" - and that someone has imagined them.
>This may well be the case, but spreading the idea that some,
>perhaps socially marginalised, individuals may be alien-human
>hybrids has considerable dangers.

The point was is that you won't be the one pronouncing on it,
anyway, 'your hack-man-ship'. Seriously, you make it pretty
clear how unaware you are of "more to heaven and Earth than is
dreampt of in your philosophy" to paraphrase our bard, and more
to the point, try to encourage others to your shallow-end-of-
the-experiential pool ridiculing those not so larded with
outmoded tradition and outdated conventional wisdom that they
are comfortable treading in the deeper water.

>>Speaking generally from my point of view: The hybrid claims I've
>>seen, while certainly curious, do not persuade me. In other
>>words, I am skeptical in the way that any sensible person who
>>has not been persuaded would be. At the same time, like anybody
>>else, I don't know much of anything with certainty, given claims
>>that so far apparently resist convincingly demonstrated
>>(ostensibly) orthodox and heterodox explanations, and about
>>which persons who prefer to confine their pronouncements to what
>>they can reasonably document tend not to make sweeping
>>statements. Like the overwhelmingly majority of my fellow
>>Americans and earthlings, I live my life on the implicit
>>assumption that alien hybrids do not walk among us and that,
>>while I occasionally encounter strange individuals, they are
>>probably not entities in whom unearthly blood courses.

>You might make that assumption Jerry, but I do not think you can
>speak for others.

That's what "Speaking generally from my point of view..." _means_, Mr.
Rimmer! There is no reason to suspect Mr. Clark of what you would suggest
or accuse here. That you do suggest it is a transparent device to put a
wedge where there is no justification for a wedge, at all. I know for a
fact that Mr. Clark knows credible persons (at least one person) who
evaporates your duplicitous intimations and baseless implications with
intelligence and alacrity, Sir.

>>>>>The idea of mysterious
>>>>>foreigners possessed of supernatural powers trying to infiltrate
>>>>>society is an ancient motif, and one very much encountered in
>>>>>anti-semitic fantasies. But I think you know that already.

>>>>Your point being that abductees, besides being racists, are
>>>>anti-Semites, too?

>>>The point is that all these "antis" are aspects of a generalised
>>>fear of "the Other" which is common to human societies,
>>>worldwide. They are not exclusively American, as Jerry seems to
>>>be implying.

>>If John read his own magazine, which I gather he doesn't, he
>>would know that Magonians are talking specifically about
>>Americans, with whom Magonians are obsessed and whose heterodox
>>views of abductions, UFOs, and anomalies in general occasion
>>much huffing, puffing, and outraged bloviating. Even Peter
>>Rogerson had the good grace and intellectual honesty not to
>>pretend otherwise in our recent exchange.

>The abduction narrative is one that is dominant in today's
>ufology, and it is largely - though of course by no means
>exclusively - an American phenomenon.

I think Dr. Mack, Mr. Hopkins, and Dr. Jacobs (et sig al) are
_quite_ clear and in _ready_ agreement that _that_ is, just, not
so, Mr. Rimmer, even if it _is_ Americans who are
overrepresented in print. What ever would compel you to _say_
such a thing?

>Naturally most discussion
>of it in Magonia (and I think there is rather less about it in
>our pages than you might be leading List readers to believe)

>has concentrated on American cases.

Ha! Mr. Clark points up a single grain of sand on a narrow strip
of polluted beach, Sir! Moreover, Mr. Clark is
characteristically and of needs more understated than he needs
to be, with you, whatever the points of his considered
implications. As to myself, I'm not restricted to the same kind
of genteel collegiality. [g].

>However we have also discussed
>other related instances of phenomena involving deviant social
>attitudes to outsiders. I would refer you, for instance, to the
>articles we published some time ago about the "Satanic Abuse"
>panics. Although many of these cases were reported from America,
>most of the discussion in Magonia concerned cases in Britain,
>and the social, political and psychological context in which
>they occured in this country.

Even the devil takes a day off from his devilments, Sir.

>>In any event:

>>John's point being that abductees, besides being racists, are
>>anti-Semites, too?

>>>After a previous discussion on UpDates (vide Archives) a number
>>>of Americans wrote to me agreeing with me that this is a live
>>>issue.

>>Always better, of course, to cite (alleged) anonymous sources
>>than have to produce actual evidence of widespread panic and
>>attendant extraordinary hallucinations about interracial
>>children disguised as ETs.

>Jerry, if you think I'm lying about this, please just say so.

Just a little more of that collegiate understated-ness, Mr. Rimmer, no
worries. Besides, even the devil tells the truth when it suits him, it's
just "easier to quote anonymous sources" as Mr. Clark very plainly wrote.

...You're likely not a bad man, Mr. Rimmer. You just do bad things. [g].

>As no-one is talking about widespread panic about interracial
>children disguised at ETs, and your attempt to pretend otherwise
>smacks of desperation.

The desperation is only in the immediately preceding, Sir. As a
ready user of sarcasm yourself it is remarkable that you would
refuse to see its use by another who might even use it a little
better than you do.

>I am well aware of the racial and ethnic tensions within British
>society, and I come into contact with some of them during the
>course of my work. These tensions do have effects in broader
>society, and do give rise to a variety of irrational beliefs. I
>refuse to believe that this does not happen in America as well.

I don't see that _that_ is readily implicated in your
opposition's discourse in the first place, Mr. Rimmer, and
suspect that Mr. Clark feels that aspects of the British social
experience are _superior_ to an equivalent American one, in the
second.

>>I take it that John is denying the growing occurrence of
>>interracial/interethnic/interreligious marriage in America, the
>>facts notwithstanding (and facts should never, of course, get in
>>the way of a good Magonian "theory"), and the diminishing
>>instance of public and private racism in American life (not, as
>>he preposterously would have it, its total extinction; racism,
>>sad to say, will be, like any number of other social ills, a
>>long time getting to that happy place) - also evident to anyone
>>who cares to educate himself.

>I am not denying the growing occurence of interracial,
>interethnic, and interreligious marriage in America. In fact I
>think statistically Britain has one of the highest rates of such
>marriages in Europe. However it is naive in the extreme to
>assume that this is by itself a significant indicator of a
>reduction in racial tensions within a society.

So _you_ say. A dilettante social scientist in my own right, my
experience is that it is, indeed, a significant indicator. Your
glib assessment to the contrary seems ludicrous.

>Indeed, in some
>cases, it may be the cause of a growth in racial hostility -
>this is certainly the case in some Asian communities in
>Britain.

...Gotta look for ways to make love, not war, Mr. Rimmer, which
is what most persons will do given the opportunity... for all
your accusations that they might cause the conflict they
actually _erode_ with their increasing numbers, and decidedly
_not_ exacerbate, Sir.

>However, as Magonia has never claimed that racial tensions
>"cause" abductions or that millions of Americas are suffering
>from "horrifying science fictional hallucinations" as a result,
>any further discussion on this topic would probably be better
>conducted on a political or sociological discussion group than a
>ufological one.

Ha! It was likely only a matter of time! LOL! Besides, relevancy
is relevant _wherever_ it occurs.

Returning to our lighthearted metaphor of duels and
swordsmanship, Sir, you debate with an ornamental foil carrying
an overlarge tip-button. Mr. Clark, on the other hand is
proficient with a saber, a weapon with a few more moves, layered
metals, more weight, and (decidedly!) a decisive edge. In other
words, you're bringing a hat pin to a gun fight, Mr. Rimmer.
That would be the difference between an authority and an
authority 'figure', Sir. I'll leave it to you which is which.

Swallow what remains of your honor, and step off the field.

"Ineffable" enough for you?

alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net









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   Dec > Dec 16

                   Re: Only White People See Aliens - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 16:33:19 +0000
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:23:04 -0500
Subject: Re: Only White People See Aliens - Hall


>From: Diana Cammack <cammack.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 16:47:57 +0200
>Subject: Re: Only White People See Aliens

>>Source: The Sun-Sentinel -  Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

>>http://www.southflorida.com/news/sfl-eslozg3dec15,0,5004712.story?coll=sfe-gui
de-headlines

>>12-15-04

>>Xzibit: Only White People See Ghosts, Aliens

>>Hip-hop star Xzibit has a unique theory on the existence of
>>ghosts or aliens - "only white people" encounter such
>>supernatural beings.

>>The rapper and Pimp My Ride host claims blacks are too busy with
>>other issues to make wild claims about UFOs or spooks.

>List,

>Someone ought to send him copies of Cynthia Hind's books. And
>John Mack looked at one of her cases - school kids in rural
>Zimbabwe. Maybe Africans don't count as 'black' in his scheme of
>things?


Yes, Mr. Rapper should stick to rapping, or get out in the 'hood
more often.

I can recall at least four Black abductees that I interviewed in
past years. (By the way, this came up before and the Archives no
doubt contain past messages about it.) First off, I don't have
any special access to Black populations; they sought me out. One
was a college-educated and very articulate athlete at the
University of Maryland; one I think was a nurse or nurse's aide;
one was a poor, terrified inner city girl.

Then, of course, there was Barney Hill.


 - Dick








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   Dec > Dec 16

                      Re: UFO Spotted In China - Booone

From: Greg Booone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:51:03 EST
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:25:02 -0500
Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China - Booone


>From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 11:37:17 -0400
>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>From: Greg Booone <Evolbaby.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:47:27 EST
>>Subject: Re: UFO Spotted In China

>>>From: Terry Groff <terry.nul>
>>>To: UFO UpDates <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 05:24:31 -0600
>>>Subject: UFO Spotted In China

>>>Source: Mid Day News - Mumbai, India

>>>http://ww1.mid-day.com/news/world/2004/december/99305.htm

>>>12-13-04

>>>UFO spotted in China: Report
>>>By: AFP

>>>Beijing: An unidentified flying object, or UFO, passed across
>>>the large northwestern Chinese city of Lanzhou and apparently
>>>exploded in the suburbs, state media said today.

>>>The unusual sighting of two bright trails of light, reported by
>>>several witnesses, took place Saturday shortly before midnight,
>>>the China Times reported.

>>>Police, working on the theory that it was a meteorite, went to
>>>investigate the matter, but as of today they had found no
>>>evidence of what caused the nightly phenomenon, an officer said.

>>It's good that the folks in China are letting a story like this
>>out without the usual sloppy reporting done in the west.

><snip>

>>Just one. I'd like just one other government to come forward
>>and speak it's piece. Just up and say it is under pressure not
>>to talk about UFOs because the U.S. is some hovering bully
>>afraid to let the secret out.

>>Ain't gonna happen cause there ain't no wolf in grandma's bed.


>Surely we all recognize that all governments have a vested
>interest in not publicizing the reality of alien visitations?
>People would think of themselves as earthlings instead of Brits,
>Chinese, Peruvian and all the other nationalistic labels
>currently in vogue. No country wants its citizens to owe their
>allegiance to the planet instead of to that government.
>Nationalism is the only game in town so far as I can see.

I dunno about that. That's painting every world leader and
government with a broad brush and categorizing them in a role of
flunky or henchmen to the U.S. That's a bit degrading to them
I'm sure and I for one wouldn't say that to them in a crowded
bar. To assume such a disclosure would unite humanity is, just
that. Unless there's something you know you've yet to disclose
to us :)  It's been tens of thousands of years and to this day
no one wants to be friends with one another. I don't think we'd
have a knee-jerk reaction to suddenly start making with the Coka
Cola "I'ld like to teach the world to sing..." holding hands and
singing commercial thing. People don't like each other. Plain
and simple. None of the governments today agree on anything
without a fight or lengthy debate. If some brave soul did come
forward and admitted the coverup, I'm sure the various factions
of the world would claim ownership to the aliens and use that as
a motivator to hate some more. I can see it now, the
Palestinians say the aliens are their ancestors. The Israelis
counter claiming descendency. Then comes in the religions as if
things weren't bad enough. Next sports teams will claim alien
divinity. Probably end up with a donnybrook to really validate
Darwin.

>There is a ton of eyewitness testimony, radar info,
>pictures,videos, physical trace cases... one might say all
>circumstantial. So was the evidence against Scott Peterson
>concerning his murder of his wife and unborn child. He just got
>the death penalty.

Sure there's a ton of evidence. More than a ton I'd say. I
wouldn't say circumstantion to all, I'm willing to give the
benefit of the doubt to ever changing technologies of
investigation and validation.  As for that nonsensical Scott
Peterson trial, it's typical of the California legal system. A
review of ethics and standards are long overdue. Hint :)

>Remember that during the cold war both the USSR and the US kept
>quiet about all the airmen lost to intervention by the other.
>The Soviets knew U-2 spy planes were flying over their country.
>They said nothing publicly until Gary Powers' plane was shot
>down.

Yes, many secrets were kept but not 'all' secrets were kept.
something as supposedly widespread and long term as the UFO
issue is either the worst kept secret of all time yet as
unvalidated by official sources or it's the best case of mental
illness since people reported seeing pink elephants. There's no
way in heck every government, news agency, police agency,
military, doctors, lawyers, ex-wives, hookers, jilted beaus, our
grandmas could all shut up equally globally! There's no way you
nor anyone can convince me of this most efficient duplicity for
50 years? That's gotta be the best kept secret since the recipe
for Col. Sanders' extra crispy chicken! And he wasn't even a
real colonel! I'd shudder to think a fast food franchise has
better security than our own military. Keeping some secrets are
a given. Keeping all secrets is just not realistic. Keeping this
so-called UFO thing a super tight secret for 50 years is the
most absurd thing I've been asked to engage in.

>All this talk about wanting scientists involved.. I would rather
>have people accustomed to dealing with witness testimony,
>physical traces etc, like cops, detectives, forensic
>investigators.Is an astronomer or an artist better at describing
>a bank robber? The problem with astronomers, physicists,
>chemists etc. is that they are accustomed to being able to
>control the variables or at least to be sure that an
>intelligence isn't involved. How about the NTSB investigators
>when it comes time to evaluating testimony and traces??

I'm all for that! Getting real people involved and
professionals. Reminds me of the science programs of the 60's
and early 70s when scientist's got in there with us kids and
adults and we had a ball having fun with science. Law
enforcement is spread thin. Their priorities right now are
keeping us away from each other's throats. Since far too many
UFO stories involve the alleged misuse of technologies,
airspace, seaspace and homespace invasion the cops had better be
hatted and equipped. Yet I know far too many a cop who has to
pay for his or her own gear! Can you imagine that? We can arm
millions of foreign troops but our own flesh and blood and
neighbor who decides to serve their community has to buy their
own gear?

We've got to look at what stages we're at with this UFO stuff.

There are levels of progression, gradients that must be achieved
so that there's some solid ground to stand on til the next step.

Is there something being reported? Yes.

Is it continuing to be reported despite investigation? Yes.

Are the demographics of the reporting widespread? Yes.

Is there resistance by those appointed or elected to investigate
and represent the people? Yes.

What level of resistance is this? Does it manifest itself in
threats, violence, murder? Yes.

How widespread is this resistance?

In all fairness I'ld say we're near the top of this pyramid but
we still lack physical evidence of magnitude. So in all fairness
we can't espouse resistance of magnitude.

Sure, there's something going on, people get threatened, but to
say it's a global cabal of the highest efficiency is nonsense
squared.

We're too ready to accept if a government or official were to
blab out that aliens exist etc. but when they counter 'nothing
unusual, probably some U.S. secret project' we won't believe
them no matter how extensive and professional their
investigation.

There are far too many people and means of communication today
than ever before. Somebody somewhere is going to spill the
beans.

Either in favor of or in contrary to.


Best,

Greg








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   Dec > Dec 16

                  Re: Only White People See Aliens - Booone

From: Greg Booone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:56:14 EST
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:26:07 -0500
Subject: Re: Only White People See Aliens - Booone


>Source: The Sun-Sentinel -  Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

>http://www.southflorida.com/news/sfl-eslozg3dec15,0,5004712.story?coll=sfe->gui
de-headlines

>12-15-04


>Xzibit: Only White People See Ghosts, Aliens

>Hip-hop star Xzibit has a unique theory on the existence of
>ghosts or aliens - "only white people" encounter such
>supernatural beings.

<snip>

Oh so I guess this guy never heard of 'Barney Hill'.

I guess all those people from Africa who starred in all those
biblical texts were just having flashbacks from reading too many
comic books.


Best,

Greg








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Sandow

From: "Greg Sandow" <greg.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:38:44 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 15:16:55 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Sandow


>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 00:56:22 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:20:46 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

<snip>

>I am well aware of the racial and ethnic tensions within British
>society, and I come into contact with some of them during the course of
>my work. These tensions do have effects in broader society, and do give
>rise to a variety of irrational beliefs. I refuse to believe that this
>does not happen in America as well.

<snip>

>However, as Magonia has never claimed that racial tensions "cause"
>abductions or that millions of Americas are suffering from "horrifying
>science fictional hallucinations" as a result, any further discussion
>on this topic would probably be better conducted on a political or
>sociological discussion group than a ufological one.

But skeptics have often used social problems to "explain"
widespread UFO and abduction reports.

If you ask me, the whole thing is - to use hiphop talk, in honor
of our rapper ufologist - wack. Sure, there are racial tensions
in America (and elsewhere). Sure, these are involved with fear
of the "other." Sure, this all plays into anti-semitism, and
other uglinesses. Sure, it also may affect attitudes to aliens,
real or imaginary.

But at the same time, there can be real threats from outside.
Americans may - and in fact do - have irrational fears of dark-
skinned outsiders. But some outsiders really did attack us on
9/11. This doesn't validate the irrational fears. But it does
show that irrational fears, and the social trends wrapped up in
the them, are one thing, and that real events are nonetheless
real. We might have all kinds of irrational fears and fantasies
involving aliens - and in spite of that, real aliens might very
well be here.


Happy holidays, everyone.

Greg Sandow








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Allan

From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 19:51:24 -0000
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 15:20:52 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Allan


>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:40:54 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Rimmer <jrimmer.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 13:20:42 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>Still -- Is there quality information with regard to UFOs that
>is 'hidden' from the rank and file individual? Almost certainly!
>The huge volume of _extant_ evidence is of a quality that cannot
>be forever ignored... even by Mr. Rimmer and his coterie of
>constipated 'klasskurtzian' crones.

>Yes, the quality anecdotal evidence, compounded with the vetted
>photographic evidence, and then added to the documented
>historical evidence, gives -every- indication that a ufological
>contention regarding that phenomena _must_ be more real than
>not... Moreover, when the preceding is framed by the serious
>artistic evidence, qualified by the available physical evidence,
>and then compellingly buttressed by the conclusively personal
>evidence, I can only be annoyingly astonished by the continued
>reluctance of _some_, like Mr. Rimmer, to face the highly
>strange music that just cannot be _forever_ ignored and
>marginalized... Does the information available justify attention
>by the mainstream to perform a more 'in depth' investigation of
>UFOs and an abduction phenomena? Absolutely!

So we have the following quoted evidence:

1. Quality anecdotal evidence
2. Vetted photographic evidence
3. Documented historical evidence
4. Serious artistic evidence
5. Available physical evidence
6. Conclusively personal evidence (compellingly buttressing 1 to 5)

This would indeed constitute unassailable proof of UFO reality,
if they all existed. I don't dispute any of items 1, 3, 4, 6,
apart from the word "compellingly".

But I am particularly interested in item 5.

Please quote which UFO case provides "available physical
evidence". I presume you mean actual hardware, available for
scientists to study. (Physical evidence allegedly held in
custody, e.g. under wraps, does not constitute "available"
evidence).

Also examples of item 2 would be useful. Which ones did you have
in mind? And who did the vetting? Please, no Mexican camcorder
stuff!

"Klasskurtzian"?  Isn't this (almost) the name of a Russian
composer?


CDA








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   Dec > Dec 16

                           Part 2 Of Are We Alone?

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 14:38:36 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 15:22:43 -0500
Subject: Part 2 Of Are We Alone?

Our guy Shane has put Part 2 of the BBC show "Are We Alone?"
online for UFO UpDaters (with broadband, preferably) - saying
that his server-site has gotten and is still getting lots of
hits (viewers) of Part 1, which was provided earlier...

Here's the link for Part 2:

http://www.reasonablehosting.com/rrrgroup/wwsdk02.html


Rich Reynolds







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                          Secrecy News -- 12/16/04

From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 15:51:49 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 08:50:00 -0500
Subject: Secrecy News -- 12/16/04


SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2004, Issue No. 112
December 16, 2004


**      CIA REMOVES RECORDS FROM NATIONAL ARCHIVES
**      COURT: HABEAS CORPUS EXTENDS TO U.S. DETAINEES ABROAD
**      JUSTICE DEPT INSPECTOR GENERAL ON POLYGRAPH USE
**      PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM AWARDED
**      SENSITIVE SECURITY INFORMATION FROM THE COAST GUARD


CIA REMOVES RECORDS FROM NATIONAL ARCHIVES

The Central Intelligence Agency has been unilaterally removing
records from public collections in the National Archives,
according to the minutes of a September 2004 meeting of the
State Department Historical Advisory Committee that were
approved for release this week.

The Advisory Committee oversees the production of the official
State Department publication Foreign Relations of the United
States (FRUS).

A State Department official noted that "the practice of
submitting an entire FRUS manuscript to the CIA [for review] had
resulted in the reclassification of documents located at the
National Archives...."

"CIA reviewers... claimed the right to remove documents from the
open files that, in their view, had never been 'properly
declassified'."

The meeting minutes include a number of other notable historical
nuggets, such as: "The CIA History staff will soon publish [sic]
a classified study on DCI John McCone."

A copy of the minutes of the September 2004 meeting of the State
Department Historical Advisory Committee is here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/state/hac0904.html


COURT: HABEAS CORPUS EXTENDS TO U.S. DETAINEES ABROAD

A federal court today delivered a firm rebuff to the Bush
Administration, rejecting its claim that a U.S. citizen detained
abroad but under some measure of U.S. control cannot invoke
habeas corpus to challenge the legality of his detention.

"The position advanced by the [Bush Administration] is
sweeping," the court declared.

"The authority sought would permit the executive, at his
discretion, to deliver a United States citizen to a foreign
country to avoid constitutional scrutiny, or, as is alleged and
to some degree substantiated here, work through the intermediary
of a foreign country to detain a United States citizen abroad."

"The Court concludes that a citizen cannot be so easily
separated from his constitutional rights," wrote Judge John D.
Bates in the case Omar Abu Ali v. John Ashcroft. Abu Ali is an
American citizen held in Saudi Arabia on suspicion of terrorist
ties.

The December 16 ruling by Judge Bates is posted here:

http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/04-1258.pdf


JUSTICE DEPT INSPECTOR GENERAL ON POLYGRAPH USE

The Justice Department Office of Inspector General elaborated a
bit on its review of polygraph testing in the Department, which
has led to an ongoing "extensive evaluation" of the practice.

See "Department's Use of Polygraph Examinations" in the latest
Semi-Annual Report to Congress on this page:

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/semiannual/0411/multi.htm

Elsewhere in the new Report, the IG referred to a Secret 100-
page report on allegations by FBI contract linguist Sibel
Edmonds and said: "We are currently working with the Department
in an attempt to produce an unclassified version of the report
that can be publicly released."

See "Allegations Raised by Contract Linguist" on this page:

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/semiannual/0411/fbi.htm


PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM AWARDED

Pope John XXIII. Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King, Jr. Certainly.
But George Tenet? Tommy Franks? Paul Bremer?

All of them are recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
the highest civilian award the nation has to offer.

The last three were selected by President Bush, who honored them
this week in what appears to be a preemptive political strike in
defense of the war in Iraq.

All that remains to be said is that if the three new awardees
deserve the highest possible praise for implementing the
President's war in Iraq, then the President himself must be
beyond all praise.

http://www.medaloffreedom.com/


SENSITIVE SECURITY INFORMATION FROM THE COAST GUARD

It may be that there is a practical limit to the amount of
information that the government can effectively control -- a
sort of law of conservation of secrecy -- and that beyond that
limit the would-be secret information simply dribbles out.

That possibility is suggested by a Coast Guard document on
maritime security regulations which may be protected by law but
that is also available to anyone on the world wide web.

Each page of the document is marked "Sensitive Security
Information" (SSI) and states that it is "controlled under 49
CFR parts 15 and 1520."

In fact, the document is not sensitive, and several specific
items of SSI have been removed from the online version.

But arguably the remainder may still constitute SSI -- who is to
say it doesn't? -- and the warning on each page insists: "No
part of this record may be disclosed to persons without a 'need
to know'."

Furthermore, "Unauthorized release may result in civil penalty
or other action."

Read it here (thanks to RT):

http://www.uscg.mil/d7/units/mso-jax/AMS/4000.pdf

or here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/marsec.pdf



_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to
secrecy_news-request.nul
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.

OR email your request to saftergood.nul

Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html

Secrecy News has an RSS feed at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.rss

_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web:  www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood.nul
voice: (202) 454-4691







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   Dec > Dec 17

                       Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 16:00:38 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 08:53:42 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Lehmberg


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 19:51:24 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:40:54 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>Still -- Is there quality information with regard to UFOs that
>>is 'hidden' from the rank and file individual? Almost certainly!
>>The huge volume of _extant_ evidence is of a quality that cannot
>>be forever ignored... even by Mr. Rimmer and his coterie of
>>constipated 'klasskurtzian' crones.

>>Yes, the quality anecdotal evidence, compounded with the vetted
>>photographic evidence, and then added to the documented
>>historical evidence, gives -every- indication that a ufological
>>contention regarding that phenomena _must_ be more real than
>>not... Moreover, when the preceding is framed by the serious
>>artistic evidence, qualified by the available physical evidence,
>>and then compellingly buttressed by the conclusively personal
>>evidence, I can only be annoyingly astonished by the continued
>>reluctance of _some_, like Mr. Rimmer, to face the highly
>>strange music that just cannot be _forever_ ignored and
>>marginalized... Does the information available justify attention
>>by the mainstream to perform a more 'in depth' investigation of
>>UFOs and an abduction phenomena? Absolutely!

>So we have the following quoted evidence:

>1. Quality anecdotal evidence
>2. Vetted photographic evidence
>3. Documented historical evidence
>4. Serious artistic evidence
>5. Available physical evidence
>6. Conclusively personal evidence (compellingly buttressing 1 to 5)

>This would indeed constitute unassailable proof of UFO reality,
>if they all existed. I don't dispute any of items 1, 3, 4, 6,
>apart from the word "compellingly".

Somehow, Sir, I don't suspect you'd be significantly compelled
by a UFO blowing its honey-sump into the boot of your weekend
runabout.

>But I am particularly interested in item 5.

Particularly?

>Please quote which UFO case provides "available physical
>evidence". I presume you mean actual hardware, available for
>scientists to study. (Physical evidence allegedly held in
>custody, e.g. under wraps, does not constitute "available"
>evidence).

Your definition of 'physical' is decidedly narrow Mr. Allan,
perhaps even conveniently so. Thin as tissue paper pressed in a
buxom hooker's cleavage, Sir. I don't think you have a proper
grasp on what physical evidence is at all.

But, as there seems a deepening dearth of available beamships,
hyperdrives, and atomic disruptor pistols ongoing at present, I
can only suggest you contact the "A" list researchers you likely
already know about, and read up more on the subject yourself.
That ground has been, abundantly, well trod by:

Ted Phillips
Stanton Friedman
Richard Hall

This short list of persons can take you well down the road to
more intelligent questions, Sir. Others may chime in to answer
your _exceptionally_ sincere concerns. There seems to be
abundant trace evidence, Mr. Allan. Thousands of cases. I
promise not to get excited if you don't get excited.

>Also examples of item 2 would be useful. Which ones did you have
>in mind? And who did the vetting? Please, no Mexican camcorder
>stuff!

[slapping knee] Ah mirth, eh? Besides, [s] I know just how
'undependable' those Mexicans can be [/s].

>"Klasskurtzian"? Isn't this (almost) the name of a Russian
>composer?

Yes. [slapping knee again]

That dry British humor... subtle as a hot kiss at the end of a
dusty fist, or a fresh peach in a bucket of dehydrated meat. Dry
as droll troll droppings. There are, almost, tears in my eyes.
They must have already evaporated in the dessicant of your
old-world wit.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net








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              Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan

From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:05:30 -0000
Fwd Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 08:57:03 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Allan


>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:56:28 -0800
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 14:45:01 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>To suggest that the US government, or any other, could or would
>>suppress such valuable scientific knowledge for decade after
>>decade is absurd. UFOs are a worldwide phenomenon. It would be a
>>great prestige discovery for any country to be the first to
>>announce it.

>Aye yi yi. Yes, and there was no holocaust, we never left POWs
>behind, Oswald shot Kennedy, we faked the moon landing, we never
>used our own soldiers as test dummies with nuclear
>experiments/explosions, we never tested chemical weapons on our
>own people, the CIA has never plotted against other governments,
>Nixon was true blue, Hoover liked women, we're sending our
>children to Iraq in the name of democracy, and Clinton didn't
>get a blow job in the White House.

Diversionary arguments. The US government has never said there
was no holocaust, nor that it faked the moon landings. The US
may tell a few lies; therefore, using ufological logic, it tells
lies about UFO hardware and risks some other country getting in
first with the great news. A likely scenario! Even Bush &
Rumsfeld are not that stupid.

By the way, which "children" were sent to Iraq?

Clinton's fellatio? Perhaps it was actually done by an ET and he
cannot reveal this. Monica was a phony.

>I don't mean to be rude Christopher, but I'm beginning to wonder
>if you've just come out of a coma, were/are living on some
>deserted desert island, or all of the above.

No. I just do not accept the conspiracy thesis. There is no UFO
hardware in the hands of the US government or any other
government. I have read an awful lot, too much, on this dotty
idea. But it is always a good cop-out, by those who cannot lay
their hands on the real evidence (and probably never will), to
claim the authorities have it, isn't it?

>>The truth is that the hardware simply is not there. Despite
>>this, people continue to insist that it is there but that
>>certain authorities, for some nefarious reason, are withholding
>>it. That is not the scientific method.

>Hmmm... I don't think one can "state what the truth is" unless
>that person has looked at the evidence in support of the fact
>that the "powers-that-be" have "covered-up" information
>pertaining to UFOs--it would seem that you haven' done that yet.
>Separately, as with extra-solar planets or other phenomenon, one
>doesn't have to have it in one's hands for it's validity.

See above. I have looked at this evidence ad nauseam.

>>Likewise the vital documents 'are there' (but withheld). The
>>alien corpses 'are there' (but also withheld), so we are told.

>I would suggest you read the "Security Act of 1947" but, oh
>that's right the bulk of it is classified, so you can't read it.
>Although what has been released via FOIA requests is mind
>boggling, what hasn't is even more so; e.g., CAUS's lawsuits,
>and the end result was "heavily redacted documents" and the
>"powers-that-be" initially said they had no information
>pertaining to UFOs- an obvious lie; then after the fact they
>still said, with a "straight face" that there is is no cover-up.
>Oy!

Whose mind is it boggling? Certainly not mine.

>>The awful truth is that we are nowhere near to proving ETH, and
>>until abundant hardware is produced, and verified by the
>>scientific establishment (e.g. National Academy Of Sciences in
>>the US or the Royal Society in the UK or a suitable academy in
>>another country) we never will be.

>Hardware need not be produced to prove an ETH. An investigation
>by any respected scientific establishment would prove that,
>using the same criterion they would use for any other
>reoccurring "transient phenomena." The only requirement is
>"action!"

Yes, hardware will have to be produced if ETH is to be finally
proven. The UFO evidence so far has not convinced science of ETH
in the slightest. You ought to realise that by now. Therefore,
as with meteorites, the hardware is absolutely necessary. Then,
and only then, will the said "action" occur.

I am bowing out of this debate. But my mind is far from boggled.
You may well have the last word.


Happy seasonal greetings anyway,

CDA








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                         Re: Alien Abductions - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:32:52 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 08:58:57 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - King


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 19:51:24 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:40:54 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

<snip>

>"Klasskurtzian"?  Isn't this (almost) the name of a Russian
>composer?


Hi Christopher,

I know this was in jest, but... <g>

Actually, I would categorize a Klasskurtzian as more of a
'Rushin' (de)composer', as in one who hastily breaks down a
posited UFO experience into tedious arguments with feigned
authority, in the hope of finding some point... any point... by
which to mount a contrary argument. This is done as a public
service... to allow the cattle to sleep easier.

I have never been very impressed with Mr. Klass' brand of
investigation, but I am impressed by his adherence to it in
light of the weakness of many of his assertions.

He is far more famous than he is authoritative.


Best Regards,

Kyle








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   Dec > Dec 17

                      Re: Professional Amateurs - King

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:42:09 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:05:21 -0500
Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs - King


>From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
>To: UFO Updates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:23:35 +1100
>Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs

>>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:00:27 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Professional Amateurs

>>There's a lot that can be done outside the mainstream. Sometimes
>>the best ideas come from the most unexpected places, and the
>>least likely persons. Remember that relativity was thought up by
>>a crummy student who worked as a civil servant, not a physicist
>>with several degrees and tenure... and not an American.

>That's a common misconception. Einstein certainly didn't have
>tenure, but he *was* a physicist with several degrees: a
>teaching diploma awarded in 1900 and, more importantly, his
>doctorate in physics from the University of Zurich, awarded in
>1905, during his annus mirabilis. Well, technically he didn't
>yet have his doctorate when he came up with special relativity -
> but he had already submitted his thesis ("A New Determination
>of Molecular Dimensions", revolutionary in its own right), and
>it was passed before his special relativity paper was published.
>Einstein was certainly something of an outsider, but not quite
>as much as he is sometimes made out to be.

>http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/chron-1905.htm


Hi Brett,

Thanks for the primer. As I am a product of the public school
system, I should have known that what I was taught about
Einstein was mostly bunk.

Thanks also for the admission which formed my point, which was
that he was not a member of 'mainstream science'... not yet
anyway. This evidenced by the fact that he had such trouble
finding employment as a physicist that he not only took a job at
the patent office, but questioned his own desire to be a
physicist.

His suspicions and laments about public schooling are notable,
because our own system of public education is based on the same
system he decried.

I appreciate the link as well... very informative.

Best Regards,


Kyle








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   Dec > Dec 17

                   Re: Part 2 Of Are We Alone? - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 18:29:58 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:25:18 -0500
Subject: Re: Part 2 Of Are We Alone? - Lehmberg


>From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 14:38:36 -0500
>Subject: Part 2 of Are We Alone?

>Our guy Shane has put Part 2 of the BBC show "Are We Alone?"
>online for UFO UpDaters (with broadband, preferably) - saying
>that his server-site has gotten and is still getting lots of
>hits (viewers) of Part 1, which was provided earlier...

>Here's the link for Part 2:

>http://www.reasonablehosting.com/rrrgroup/wwsdk02.html


What a _great_ show, despite going a little overboard on
portraying ourselves as the crown of complicated creation... the
stars were nicely typified and illustrated... wonderful and
compelling production values... you really felt the stars and
their dark matter cousins.

The stars reminded me about this property I've noticed about
them regarding their roll in the production of matter.

Submitted for your consideration, then:

~~~~~~

God is Iron

I have to talk about some stuff that you can hold in your hand.
It's an element of metal near as common as mere sand. It's as
well known as it's common - it's thought vulgar, even crude. Oh
sure, it changed your history, caused some pain, and grew your
food.

It's been simmered into plowshares. It's been pounded into
swords. It's used for span in bridges over valley, bay, and
gorge. It's  cannon, gun, and printing press; it's built our
structures high - so high they sway in winds they make while
scratching at the sky.

It made its mark in history. It's even named an age; it's called
the "Age of Iron" as it's written on your page.

For all its notoriety it is humble now these days, not respected
and forgotten, but it's wrought in charming ways. Forgotten is
the 'magic' of the way that it is made; this element of IRON
earns respect it's not been paid.

And yes it is, pure, magic. It's a miracle that's made where
there's something GOT for nothing. Yes! _Nothing's_ what's been
paid!

The eggheads walk around it, gloss it over, and pretend that the
physics are beyond us, just at present, they'd contend. Do they
miss the bigger picture in this rage of their denial? Does one
plus one make three with iron? Is shock that harsh and final?
One and one makes three (!) with iron? It's heresy I speak! A
free lunch that's immoral and offensive (?) - it can't BE!

Conversely, it's this miracle that's the provenance of all, from
ships to shoes to sealing wax to cabbages ...and balls. You owe
it your existence; it produces _all_ you are. You owe it your
reality; it's the stuff you keep in jars. You owe it your
survival; it's the draftsman of your dreams. It's iron that's
the cause of every _thing_ that cools or steams. It's the reason
that there's cobalt, or there's nickel, copper - zinc. It's the
reason for selenium, or a silver kitchen sink. A creator of ALL
after it, this womb of stellar fusion, it's here is where the
magic's made. I assure it's _no_ illusion.

Iron's cooked up in a star. It's the 'last' thing made by
fusion. It's here the magic shall occur, the result of a
contusion. It takes a star of monstrous size and burning very
brightly to degenerate the nuclides that combine for iron,
nicely. Stuff is fused together for a particle of iron. One plus
one makes two you'd think (?) - but watch the magic happen. The
iron is more special than the stuff that made it up! One plus
one is *more* than two; it's fact, you look it up! What is
changed (?) in property (?) exceeding sums of parts? What cosmic
free lunch 'happening' makes the life-force gets its start?

How does iron _cool_ the star, and suck up all its fire? The
star begins to fall into itself, and 'gods' conspire! The star
shrinks in contraction towards the center of a point!  The
acceleration's hellish and real time slows out of joint. A point
is reached where it gets hot - many billions of degrees, protons
and electrons fuse neutrinos - cosmic sleet! This rain of fierce
neutrinos bastes the iron fusion made, and _all_ remaining
elements are produced as iron's braised!

...And then comes the explosion that the physics must demand.
The star blows up and scatters all its contents - understand?
And from the gas and chunks of rock, and iron bits galore, _new_
suns are born to light the sky -  around them planets form.

On these planets carbon stews, and seeded from the sky, the life
that's all around us starts to live, evolve, and try.

It's happened out of nowhere, a result of iron's creed, and so
explains these words you saw - a gift to 'you', from 'me'.
What's this to do with UFO's? Well, iron's made them, too.
They're closer to the answer, to that 'free lunch' I construe.
They've likely watched it happen, put the process to their use -
 understand its implication, and so play it... fast and loose.

Something comes from nothing, and the proof's in singing stars.
Iron's in the magic that is made to color Mars. The redness of
the dirt is such to teach us, as it must, that it _may_ be we
spin our wheels to work for dross and dust. If iron is the way
it's done in every place but here, then it may be... we work to
hard to stay this course we steer.

~~~~~~

Iron is still a pretty light element lowly positioned in a
periodic table we humans use, perhaps, to help reinforce our
infuriatingly pathetic, but arrogant, and obstinately maintained
ignorance. Beyond the frontiers of the beginnings of that
ignorance silicon fuses with other elements to produce the noble
iron in stars bigger than human imagination. Forgetting its
awesome potential in a, still, magic magnetism, iron has an
elusive quality of seminal foundationalism that may not be
appreciated.

As iron is produced in these numbingly monstrous stars, its
ability to suck up ambient heat goes up exponentially, causing
an implosion, and _then_ a titanic explosion transcending time,
space, and imagination. It is in this explosion that all the
rest is brought into being - all that is known and unknown, all
that was, is, and will be.


alienview.nul  -:|:-
   www.AlienView.net







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   Dec > Dec 17

                      More On Our UFO Clippings Booklet

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:19:04 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:28:16 -0500
Subject: More On Our UFO Clippings Booklet


We have mailed our UFO clipping booklet to Richard W.B. and Paul
M.B Friday, 12/17.

And we have about 50 left.

Some UFO UpDaters tell us they really enjoy the clippings, even
without dates.


Rich Reynolds








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   Dec > Dec 18

                       Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson

From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 16:46:11 +0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:07:43 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Rogerson


>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 12:42:18 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:03:51 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

<snip>

>>>Some have already been carried out and I'm sure we are all
>>eagerly awaiting the results of the experiments briefly
>>mentioned by Dick Hall.

>Indeed. But one can hardly fail to note the results aren't even
>in yet and already we've seen an outbreak of defensiveness from
>the usual suspects. Mr Rogerson even went so far as to impose an
>addtional condition in advance, that the results should be
>replicated by "non-Ufologists". Presumably he believes that
>Ufologists are more likely to produce positive results, from
>which it presumably follows that Non-Ufologists are more likely
>to produce negative results. Apart from the implications of
>having researchers vetted for "ideological soundness", this has
>the interesting effect that if his own premise is actually
>correct, he's hedged himself into a position which is completely
>unfalsifiable.

>In any case, I will use my uncanny paranormal powers to predict
>the following - whatever the outcome of the study, it will lead
>to an almighty argument over methodology, after which everyone
>will go back to believing what they believed already.

<snip>

Why are you defensive about independent replication by
disinterested parties? You are of course right that I would no
more take on trust the results of an abduction study by
ufologists than I would take on trust a report on global warming
by Halliburton or a study of a new alleged wonder drug
undertaken soley by people employed by the manufacturers


Peter Rogerson








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                  Re: Only White People See Aliens - Rudiak

From: David Rudiak <drudiak.nul>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:11:25 -0800
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:10:08 -0500
Subject: Re: Only White People See Aliens - Rudiak


>Xzibit: Only White People See Ghosts, Aliens

>Hip-hop star Xzibit has a unique theory on the existence of
>ghosts or aliens - "only white people" encounter such
>supernatural beings.

>The rapper and Pimp My Ride host claims blacks are too busy with
>other issues to make wild claims about UFOs or spooks.


Yeah, and even after seeing "UFOs or spooks," white guys still
can't jump.

Next racial stereotype please.


David Rudiak








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               HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings - 12-17-04

From: Brian Vike - HBCC UFO Research <hbccufo.nul>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:12:49 -0800
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:14:33 -0500
Subject: HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings - 12-17-04


HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings

Release Date: December 17, 2004

Important notice from HBCC UFO Research. I am on a new host for
the website at a brand new website address.

Please bookmark:

 http://www.hbccufo.org/index.php

There will be a re-direct from my old website address very soon.
But as it stands now HBCC UFO Research is now relocated to .org



Aroostook, New Brunswick A Orange-Reddish Circular Object

Date: July 1997
Time: 10:30 p.m.

My friend and I were out on her porch on a Saturday night in
July. We were stoned on pot, and outside having a cigarette and
talking. A large, orange-reddish circular object, the size and
brilliance of the moon, had been just above the tree-line behind
her house and in plain view for most of the time we were
talking. What's amazing, is neither of us thought it was out of
the ordinary that it be there hanging and "observing" us, until
moments later, right before it sunk below the tree line, we both
looked at each other like "hey....that's not supposed to be
there!"....why it never occurred to us before, and why it
suddenly occurred to us at the same time that it was not natural
or normal, I have no idea. No sound, shaped like the full Moon,
about the same size as the full Moon. Its worth mentioning that
it appeared to be very close and not too far up in the sky.

Thank you to the witness for this report.

--------------------------

Aroostook, New Brunswick A Reddish-Orangish Circle

Date: Halloween Eve of 1998
Time: 10:30 p.m.

I was at a small bar out in the woods for a costume party. A
group of four of us were out on the porch smoking, two men and
two women. The two women (myself and the other woman) I guess
were compelled to look up to the sky while the men continued
talking. We both saw a reddish-orangish circle, the size of the
full Moon or maybe slightly bigger, it was stationary in the
sky, and eventually blinked out. No falling like a meteorite or
anything like that. No sound either. It appeared to be very
close and not way up in the sky. I should also add that this
sighting took place extremely close to the other one from 1997,
about 1/4 mile distance if that. Both were over and near the
same river and the same hydro-electric dam. I don't know why but
I've always connected both of the sightings to that river and
that dam which are part of the Tobique First Nations Indian
Reserve.

The 1998 sighting was later confirmed by my aunt, a local high
school teacher, whose dog was outside tied up and barking, She
went out to see her dog and caught a look at the red thing in
the sky, she was a kilometer or so away from where I was but
viewed it at the same time, 10:30 pm and described it the same.

Thank you to the witness for this report.

-----------------------

Amarillo, Texas 100 Miles East A Bright Glow

Date: January 16, 2004
Time: 9:00 p.m.

Location of Sighting: About 100 miles west of Amarillo, TX. Just North of=
 I-40
Number of witnesses: 2
Number of objects: 2
Shape of objects: Orb

Full Description of event/sighting: My wife and I were returning
from Arkansas to Arizona via I-40. About 100 miles or so east of
Amarillo, TX we started seeing a bright glow that was emanating
towards the sky. It kind of reminded us of the glow you would
see from a city like Las Vegas from miles away as you approach
it. For 30 or 40 miles we studied the area where the glow came
from. We also noticed that it changed colors a few times. We
never actually saw it directly, because it came from behind a
hill. We really did not think that was a big deal until we
became parallel to it on the freeway.

My wife did not believe in UFO's until that evening. All of a
sudden she looked over at me. I was driving. She said, "What is
that?". About the time she said that I saw a big glowing light
with my peripheral vision to my left. I felt like it was no more
than 10 feet away. It was a little foggy and the light really
glowed in the fog. This all happened within about 10 seconds.
The orbed started appearing and re-appearing at about 3 or 4
different locations. It reappeared at about 210 degrees to us
behind the fence about 80 feet away. It then reappeared directly
behind us. These were all instant movements. We couldn't see it
in motion.

After thinking about it for quite awhile, I told my wife that I
believe the glowing lights behind the hill was a craft that had
landed and the glowing orbs were some kind of probe.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

--------------------

North Bay, Ontario Boomerang Craft

Date: November 29th, 2004
Time: 3:45 a.m.

My husband and I woke up around 3:30 a.m. in the morning. All
was pitch dark and quiet outside, as the city is a bit of a
bible belt and the shuts down on Sundays pretty much.

We both lay beside each other in darkness, quiet, not speaking
to each other just relaxing. A minute or so had passed, and I
began to hear giggling/singing coming from outside our window,
sounded like little children right outside our front door. I
didn't say anything. It lasted about 6 seconds, but I'm laying
there wondering "What are little children doing up in the
streets at this hour in the morning?" not possible, I thought.
But before I could sort out my thoughts, I heard my husband
quietly call my name. He summoned me to peak out of a small
opening in our bedroom window, which was covered in blinds
except for small area in which you could see a very limited and
small portion of the night sky.

It was a green glowing light, and behind the light you could see
a distinct shape, it was grey in color, maybe just a few shades
lighter than the night sky but you could definitely see it. It
was triangular, but more like a boomerang, and the edges were
curvy and round and not straight edge. It was slowly moving back
and forth, left to right, but not automatic like a pendulum but
every now and then sporadically. There was no sound that we
could hear from indoors with the window cracked slightly open.
We are unsure how far up in the sky it was. Judging by my past
sightings in 1997 and 1998, I think it was further up in the sky
than both of those as they seemed very close. However it was
hard to get a vantage point though from indoors.

Before I took my first look at it, my husband said the light was
blueish and not green, so it seems to have changed colour from
blue into green. I should also add that while the other two
sightings were like the Moon, a dull brilliance, this green one
was more bright and there were weird morphing colour trails that
looked a bit like rippling water colour that are hard for me to
describe but they followed it when it moved. (note: I still
don't know if that is describing it properly or not but its the
best I can do)

I can't explain this next part other than to say I felt
psychically that whatever it was in the sky, was not aware that
my husband was observing it, but once both my husband and I were
fixing our attention on it, it seemed to become aware that it
was being observed, and became more still. I noted the time,
3:55 am. I observed it for at least 5 minutes, my husband maybe
10. After five minutes I went to look for binoculars. It was
more important for me I guess to get a better look at it than it
was for me to snap a picture of it. Besides that I had no film
to take a picture with.

My husband was the one to last see it, he said it went behind a
cloud and disappeared. We watched and waited, it never returned.

It wasn't till after the "UFO" had left that I mentioned to my
husband the "children singing" I had heard right before it
happened. He confirmed immediately that he had heard it too and
wondered what it was. We have no idea why, but neither of us
mentioned it to each other while it was happening or straight
after it happened. Later we both went around the house to check
to see if radios had been on and they were not.

I don't know why but I feel these children singing and the thing
we saw in the sky were connected.

The language sounded almost like English but not enough to be
able to tell what they were saying. For example it didn't sound
so different than English as Chinese would, it sounded close to
English. It may have even been English, I couldn't say for sure.

Additional Information:

Brian, this is an afterthought on the 2004 sighting if you want
to add this or not whatever is fine. Its hard because there were
two weird things in the same sighting, I don't know if the green
light was in front of the grey boomerang looking thing or if it
was attached to it, but they moved together in synch and both
were weird and not normal.

Thank you to the witness for this report.

-----------------

Lynn Valley, North Vancouver B.C. Flashing Light

Date: From - December 3, 2004
Time: 4:40 a.m.

Here is the latest picture of, an object I have been able to
capture digitally on a pair of Meade 8x42 binoculars/digital
camera. I have seen this object at least six times since
December 3, 2004. Typically it appears in an easterly direction
as you look from Lynn Valley, North Vancouver British Columbia.
However, this image was captured looking due south. It was
midway between the horizon and the zenith. I took the avi video
clip at 4:40 am. Normally I'm asleep at that time but today I
was on my way to pick up my daughter and take her to the
airport. The brightness of the object as well as it's twinkling
caught my eye as I was leaving my driveway. As I was pressed for
time I quickly pulled over took 15 seconds of video. Although it
looks like the object is moving it's stationary. However,
because it was at a high altitude and there is no motion control
it appears to be moving. I should have emailed you the picture
first and added the notes but I will send you the video
separately.

Thank you to the witness for the report, pictures and video
footage. Video clip and pictures are =A92004 K2K.

Video clip Lynn Valley, North Vancouver B.C. Flashing Light -
 Footage 336 kb.

Clip can be viewed at:

http://www.hbccufo.org/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=3D2144

---------------------------

Kaufman County, Texas Triangle ?

Date: December 09, 2004
Time: Approx: 7:30 p.m.

Hi Brian,

I told you earlier if I got a triangle, you'd be the first to
know. On December 09, 2004 at approximately 7:30 p.m., I saw
this light really moving fast, looked like it came from the
north and was heading southwest. It was several thousand feet up
and you can see it is zipping past the stars at one point. I was
thinking it was a jet because of the blinking lights, but it was
going at least three times faster than the jets I've been
observing. I zoomed in on it at first and it was blurry, so I
backed off and tried it again and it came into view. It was
about 11 o'clock high and nearly due north when I first saw it
and it traveled all the way across the sky to the southwest in
about forty seconds. I'm sending you the complete clip. Happy
Holidays and take care.

Thank you to the witness for the report, pictures and video
footage.

Video clip Kaufman County, Texas Triangle? - Footage 505 kb.
http://www.hbccufo.org/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=3D2143

------------------------

West Monroe, Los Angeles Dish Shaped Craft

Date: December 12, 2004
Time: 9:30 p.m.

Number of witnesses: 10
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Disk

Full Description of event/sighting: swirling disk shaped object
spinning low in the sky ( like a low star) at first I thought it
was a planet but it was blinking blue and green lights. I
noticed it wasn't moving so I ran in to get my binoculars. What
I saw looked like an upside down silver bread basket (weird I
know) but it had spokes which were swirling colors out of a hub
and the colors were blending with each other leaving little
trails of colored light. I called my friend in town, thirty
miles away. She and her husband and son saw it in the sky also.

I find it odd because I saw two jets criss cross in front of it.
It never moved except to dip side to side and the lights changed
from colored ones to white and red only. My friend reported the
jets also.

We live about 80 miles from Barksdale AFB in Shreveport, La. so
I have seen small fast jets before.

I called and reported it to the state police as my brother is
one but I haven't heard anything. This object was beautiful but
frightening.

I have never thought about UFOs until tonight. I will never
forget what I saw. Thank-you.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

---------------------

New Song

"CIRCLES" written by Race Bannon & Mike Westehube, and performed
by Race Bannon.

Race & Mike are from Southern California USA, Long Beach and
Fountain Valley respectively. Both have been in a number of
bands and played all over Southern California. The two have co-
written a number of songs together. "CIRCLES" is a one piece of
that collaborative effort. Hope you enjoy listening to it as
much as they enjoyed writing it. For close encounters of the
first kind, please direct emails to: racebannon.nul

To listen to the tune, please visit:

http://www.hbccufo.org/index.php

----------------------

St. Joseph, Missouri Round White Dot

Date: December 13, 2004
Time: 6:15 a.m.

Number of witnesses: 2
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Round white dot.

Full Description of event/sighting:

I'm a corrections officer at a prison here in town who works the
night shift and happened to have patrol car duty on the morning
of 12-13-2004. My job that morning was to drive around the
prison and do security checks of the fence and grounds around
it. At about 6:00 a.m. I was starting to feel a little tired so
I radioed control center to send out a relief for me so I could
have a break and get something caffeinated to drink. After
getting my drink I came back outside and was waiting for my
relief to bring the vehicle around when I noticed a shooting
star off to the East low on the horizon. So naturally I started
to scan the sky, which was very, very clear, and I noticed
another shooting star. This one, however, did not fade out and
it also did not leave a trail behind it. It was about half as
big as Venus and was coming from the SW heading NE, no flashing
lights just white light. I have no idea how high up it was.

As I was watching it a maintenance worker was walking up to the
building and I asked him what he thought the object in the sky
was. "A plane probably," he said with a glance up. I asked,
"Don't you think a plane would have flashing lights on it?" and
he just shrugged. Maybe it was just a plane, but I can tell you
this - it traversed the entire night sky in less than 1 minute
and didn't make a sound. I'm certainly no mathematician, but for
a plane to travel all the way across the sky in less than a
minute and to be so high up that one can not hear its engines
would mean that it was going pretty damned fast.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

---------------------

Heading North From Brampton, Ontario Zig Zagging Light

Date: December 14, 2004
Time: 2:00 a.m.

Hi Brian,

My friend called me this morning very excited, she worked till
2:00 a.m. and when she was heading home (north on highway 10)
from Brampton. She said there were all kinds of falling stars in
the sky, but there was one directly to the north and she said by
the time she got home it was still in the sky but it had moved
more towards our direction, which is north west #10

She said it was so awesome, at first she said it looked like it
could have been a plane, but as she stood and watched it got
much brighter and it was zig zagging all over. I asked her in
what direction did it appear to be going and she said, over
towards my house. She wanted to call me but was worried about
the time. Heck I told her to call anytime she sees something
like that. I just wish I had a camera again. Anyway I thought it
was special that she called be she is someone that I had star
watching with me this past summer and she indeed believes. As I
said before if you can get people to stay long enough to witness
it once, you pretty much have a new believer.

Thank you to the person for sharing this report.

-----------------------

Bendigo, Victoria Australia Triangle UFO Uncloak

Date: December 15, 2004
Time: 3:00 a.m.

Number of witnesses: 1
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Triangle

Full Description of event/sighting:

I was stargazing and watched this Triangle UFO uncloak in front
of me and little bit to the right, it caught my eye. It was
about the size of half a matchbox at arms length. The lights on
each point of the Triangle were about the size of a regular
star, white. It silently glided overhead, changing course here
and there a bit. I stood up and watched it till was out of
sight, amazed. I hear of these things in the states a lot, but,
over this little country town? It was awesome.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

-----------------------

Edmonton, Alberta Unknown Flashing Light

Date: December 15, 2004
Time of Sighting: 4:50 p.m. +/- 10 min.

Number of witnesses: 1
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Unknown, flashing light only.

Full Description of event/sighting:

Hi, Brian. I thought I'd report this, even though I'm pretty
sure there could be a "reasonable" explanation for it. I'm
always sure to check the skies at red lights, in slow traffic,
etc, to see if anything interesting is going on. Well, on my
drive home (traveling south on Terwillager Drive, in south
Edmonton), I noticed a plane traveling what seemed to be NWW.
It looked like a pretty standard passenger jet, but I couldn't
make out any details, save for it's lights. However, as it was
passing in front of a fairly large cloud (there were few clouds
in the sky at this time), a seemingly stationary light,
approximately 3-5 plane-lengths above the plane, and much
smaller than the visible lights of the plane, flashed 5 or 6
times. The light was very bright, and noticeable, but small
(like it was smaller, but had more output). I could not see
anything in its place when it flashed "off," and could see
nothing after the plane had moved further on its course. Is it
standard procedure for aircraft to "flash" each other like this
when they're flying in each others' airspace? Perhaps you've
determined the cause of similar events. If you have, please let
me know. Thanks



Thank you to the witness for the report.

Brian Vike, Director HBCC UFO Research
Home - Phone 250 845 2189
email: hbccufo.nul
Website: http://www.hbccufo.org
HBCC UFO RESEARCH Newsletter:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HBCC_UFO_Newsletter/

HBCC UFO Research, Box 1091 Houston, British Columbia, Canada - VOJ 1ZO
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   Dec > Dec 18

                              The Quantum Film?

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 12:55:42 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:15:42 -0500
Subject: The Quantum Film?

Here's the link to the movie trailer(s) for "What the [bleep] Do We
Know?"

http://www.whatthebleep.com/trailer/

Roger Ebert gives it a few stars plus... and UFO UpDaters who
love the quantum world may find it interesting:


Rich Reynolds








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              Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - White

From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 16:18:49 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:16:53 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - White


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:05:30 -0000
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:56:28 -0800
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

<snip>

>The UFO evidence so far has not convinced science of ETH
>in the slightest.

That's not the puzzling part. What blows my mind is why the
_massive_ indirect evidence hasn't convinced mainstream science
of the _worthiness_of_studying_ the issue.

The night sky is full of stars, and has _long_ been considered
worthy of study even if we can't reach out and grab some stars
to look at in the lab, right?


Eleanor White





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             Intelligent Design Merits Equal Time With Evolution

From: Eustaquio Andrea Patounas <socex.nul>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 19:38:50 -0200
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:22:09 -0500
Subject: Intelligent Design Merits Equal Time With Evolution


Source: Roanoke Times - Roanoke, Virginia

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary%5C15530.html

Friday, December 17, 2004

Linda Whitlock


Whitlock, of Salem, is a literacy instructor for TAP and an
adjunct English instructor at Virginia Western Community
College.

So a "rural Pennsylvania school district has become the first in
the nation to require that 'intelligent design' be taught
alongside evolution to explain the origins of life" ("Testing
the God 'theory,'" Nov. 13 Roanoke Times editorial). Well, good
for the Dover Area School Board.

The district's students will be better off for hearing the
scientific evidence that, according to a recent Associated Press
report, has convinced even the noted atheist Anatony Flew that
"[a] super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the
origin of life and the complexity of nature."

The case against teaching intelligent design, as laid out by The
Roanoke Times, rests on two assumptions: first, that the
scientific inquiry process mandates the exclusion of a
supernatural creator and, second, that evolution is a
satisfactory explanation for the diversity of living things.
Neither assumption is warranted.

Although the scientific community now insists that legitimate
scientific inquiry must begin with the premise that the natural
world is all that exists, thus ruling out a priori the
possibility of a supernatural creator, the founders of modern
science would have been astounded at that notion. Modern science
got its start only because men such as Copernicus, Galileo and
Newton believed a rational (supernatural) creator had created a
rational world that, as a result, could be observed, studied and
understood.

As far as evolution's being a satisfactory explanation for the
diversity of living things, micro evolution - or variation within
species - is accepted by design theorists and evolutionists
alike.

Macro evolutionary theory, on the other hand, postulates that the
same mechanism that accounts for limited variation within
species can also account for all the differences between
species.

Far from being a "principle supported by the known evidence,"
however, macro evolution is, as biochemist Michael Denton put it,
a theory in crisis. The evidence Charles Darwin assumed would
appear to support his theory hasn't turned up, and, whether
willing to admit it publicly or not, many scientists have come
to doubt that Darwin's theory is sufficient to account for the
diversity of life forms.

Even such committed evolutionists as the late Stephen J. Gould
and Francis Crick have recognized problems with Darwin's
modification with descent and natural selection mechanism, which
purports to explain how organisms developed into different
species.

A paleontologist, Gould was troubled by the paucity of fossil
evidence for evolutionary change and so came to support a theory
called "punctuated equilibrium," which hypothesizes that after
long periods of stasis, new species suddenly came into
existence. No one has yet proposed a mechanism that can
adequately account for how that might have occurred.

Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, went even further
and surmised that life on Earth had been "seeded" by
extraterrestrials. And Gould and Crick are far from the only
scientists who recognize problems with evolution, but who, for
ideological reasons, refuse to entertain other possibilities.

As Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin put it, to admit the
possibility of nonmaterial causes would be "to let a divine foot
in the door."

Although design theory leaves room for that "divine foot,"
William Dembski, a leader in the intelligent design movement,
writes that "[p]roponents of intelligent design regard it as a
scientific research program that investigates the effects of
intelligent causes ... and not intelligent causes per se."

According to Dembski, "intelligent design holds that a designing
intelligence is required to account for the complex,
information-rich structures in living systems. At the same time,
it refuses to speculate about the nature of that designing
intelligence."

Clearly, while intelligent design opens the door to the
possibility of a supernatural creator, design theorists don't
necessarily assume that door leads to the God of the Bible. They
do believe, however, that when "complicated things ... give the
appearance of having been designed for a purpose," as Richard
Dawkins wrote, scientists would do well not to dismiss the
possibility of design out of hand.

The Roanoke Times editorial concludes that "[a]s scientific
theory, thus far, [intelligent design] does not deserve equal
weight. As deeply held belief, it does not need it - but public
schools should not teach it."

Even if we grant the contention that intelligent design requires
a belief in God, the assumption that, in the well-known words of
the late Carl Sagan, "the universe is all there is or ever was
or ever will be," differs little from the Bible's assertion that
"[i]n the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God." Each is a statement of faith that can't be
scientifically proved.

Sagan's faith statement directs scientific research in one
direction, the Bible's in another. At one time, the Bible's
faith statement ruled public education, and evolutionary
teaching was shut out. Today, Sagan's faith statement is in
control, and it's the evolutionists who refuse to allow any
challenge to their orthodoxy.

Regardless of which faith statement scientists start from,
however, they should, as Antony Flew has done, "[f]ollow the
evidence, wherever it leads."

Since Flew can't be accused of starting from the "God" premise,
as intelligent design theorists frequently are, his "conversion"
provides strong support for making intelligent design theory a
part of a comprehensive biology course.









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   Dec > Dec 18

                        Re: Alien Abductions - Harney

From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 21:46:20 -0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:24:15 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Harney


>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 12:42:18 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:03:51 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>"Anomalies of consciousness" was Jerry Clark's phrase. I suppose
>>one could say abnormal mental states, but I'm sure you will know
>>the appropriate terminology.

>I realize from previous experience that it takes a hammer and
>chisel to get through to you, John, but you might have discerned
>that I'm not much interested in the terminology. I'm interested
>in the concepts which underly the terminology and whether those
>concepts have been rigorously thought out or whether the
>terminology is simply an excuse for lazy thinking.

If you're not not much interested in the terminology, then why
quibble about it?

>"Abnormal mental states" may be a slight improvement over
>"anomalies of consciousness", but not by much. If a person is
>abducted into a flying saucer by aliens and whisked off to Outer
>Andromeda or somewhere, then they're by definition in an
>abnormal mental state because they're experiencing something
>which our society does not consider normal. If a person
>experiences abduction imagery as a result of organized seizures
>in the temporal lobe then they're also by definition in an
>abnormal mental state, for the same reason. Both abnormal mental
>states have a physical cause - aliens on the one hand,
>"abnormal" firing in the temporal lobe in the latter. In which
>case the explanation for the abnormality has to be found at the
>physical level.

>However, if someone experiences PTSD as a result of war, rape,
>disaster or abuse, then arguably it makes no sense to regard the
>causal mechanism of that person's mental state as physical, even
>though the proximate cause undoubtedly is physical. In this case
>we are more likely to look for direct causes at the
>psychological level. If you want to get involved in this area
>then the first thing you have to do is start examining your own
>Cartesian preconceptions. The real problem with your choice of
>terms is that it obscures the level you actually want to look
>at.

>Then you need to define the mechanism of your explanation. You
>need to specify what the mechanism does, how it operates, and
>why it exists. You need to show that your mechanism is
>functionally plausible and that it isn't blatantly ad hoc (this
>last criterion, by the way, is one where purely psychological
>explanations have a tendency to fall down badly). And then you
>need to derive testable predictions from your model which
>clearly discriminate it from other possible models.

I don't have to do any such things; I am not a psychologist. I
leave it to the experts to devise the experiments. I was merely
arguing that ufologists should stick to the examination of
verifiable facts and the results of experiments rather than
indulging in vague speculations about nysterious "forces".

>Not that this is what necessarily happens - in fact in the
>social sciences it hardly ever happens like this - but if
>"carefully planned and executed experiments" means anything at
>all, then this is surely it.

>>And it was obviously not intended as an explanation, but as a
>>description

>Albeit a description which presupposed an explanation, a point
>you appear to have overlooked.

What explanation?

>>Some have already been carried out and I'm sure we are all
>>eagerly awaiting the results of the experiments briefly
>>mentioned by Dick Hall.

>Indeed. But one can hardly fail to note the results aren't even
>in yet and already we've seen an outbreak of defensiveness from
>the usual suspects. Mr Rogerson even went so far as to impose an
>addtional condition in advance, that the results should be
>replicated by "non-Ufologists". Presumably he believes that
>Ufologists are more likely to produce positive results, from
>which it presumably follows that Non-Ufologists are more likely
>to produce negative results. Apart from the implications of
>having researchers vetted for "ideological soundness", this has
>the interesting effect that if his own premise is actually
>correct, he's hedged himself into a position which is completely
>unfalsifiable.

I would interpret his remarks as meaning that experiments should
produce similar results regardless of the beliefs or theories
held by the experimenters.

>In any case, I will use my uncanny paranormal powers to predict
>the following - whatever the outcome of the study, it will lead
>to an almighty argument over methodology, after which everyone
>will go back to believing what they believed already.

That is quite true. There is an excellent example in an article
published in the New York Times last year - "A Bad Trip Down
Memory Lane" by Bruce Grierson. You have presumably read it, as
your name is mentioned in it. I won't waste space summarising it
as it is available at

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2003/jul/m26-015.shtml


John Harney







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   Dec > Dec 18

                         Re: Alien Abductions - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 21:50:49 +0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:25:52 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Hall


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:32:52 -0600
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 19:51:24 -0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>>From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:40:54 -0600
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>"Klasskurtzian"?  Isn't this (almost) the name of a Russian
>>composer?

>I know this was in jest, but... <g>

>Actually, I would categorize a Klasskurtzian as more of a
>'Rushin' (de)composer', as in one who hastily breaks down a
>posited UFO experience into tedious arguments with feigned
>authority, in the hope of finding some point... any point... by
>which to mount a contrary argument. This is done as a public
>service... to allow the cattle to sleep easier.

>I have never been very impressed with Mr. Klass' brand of
>investigation, but I am impressed by his adherence to it in
>light of the weakness of many of his assertions.

>He is far more famous than he is authoritative.

Kyle, et al. (for you Latin fans out there),

Some day I may publish my correspondence exchanges with Phil
"The Sophist" Klass, which you (and everyone) would find very
revealing about how shallow and ungrounded his arguments really
are.

I have a letter somewhere from Jim McDonald, whom Klass maligned
and slandered unmericifully, in which Jim characterized him as
having the argumentative style of a small-town prosecuting
attorney. Dead on!


 - Dick








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             Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 07:43:38 -0800
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:28:07 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:05:30 -0000
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:56:28 -0800
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 14:45:01 -0000
>>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>>To suggest that the US government, or any other, could or would
>>>suppress such valuable scientific knowledge for decade after
>>>decade is absurd. UFOs are a worldwide phenomenon. It would be a
>>>great prestige discovery for any country to be the first to
>>>announce it.

>>Aye yi yi. Yes, and there was no holocaust, we never left POWs
>>behind, Oswald shot Kennedy, we faked the moon landing, we never
>>used our own soldiers as test dummies with nuclear
>>experiments/explosions, we never tested chemical weapons on our
>>own people, the CIA has never plotted against other governments,
>>Nixon was true blue, Hoover liked women, we're sending our
>>children to Iraq in the name of democracy, and Clinton didn't
>>get a blow job in the White House.

Christopher,

>Diversionary arguments. The US government has never said there
>was no holocaust, nor that it faked the moon landings. The US
>may tell a few lies; therefore, using ufological logic, it tells
>lies about UFO hardware and risks some other country getting in
>first with the great news. A likely scenario! Even Bush &
>Rumsfeld are not that stupid.

My inference was not a point of "government claims," it was in
reference to your naivety. The government doesn't have to tell
lies about "advanced technology"; they just don't have to tell.
I might add that when Orson Welles did his radio broadcast of
"War of The Worlds" and the public thought "ET was here," it
wasn't great news! Moreover, that event "shaped
goverment/military policy" towards UFOs early on, and there has
been nothing to surface that would suggest any change in that
mindset. Finally, when one gets a firm idea about the
intelligence levels of Bush and Rumsfeld, they seem to perform
another act that repudiates that notion.

>By the way, which "children" were sent to Iraq?

The ones that are dying every week with no end in sight.

>Clinton's fellatio? Perhaps it was actually done by an ET and he
>cannot reveal this. Monica was a phony.

>>I don't mean to be rude Christopher, but I'm beginning to wonder
>>if you've just come out of a coma, were/are living on some
>>deserted desert island, or all of the above.

>No. I just do not accept the conspiracy thesis. There is no UFO
>hardware in the hands of the US government or any other
>government. I have read an awful lot, too much, on this dotty
>idea. But it is always a good cop-out, by those who cannot lay
>their hands on the real evidence (and probably never will), to
>claim the authorities have it, isn't it?

Two points to make here; one, it is not necessary to have an ET
craft in one's possession to prove their are ET craft flying
around in our airspace; two, spearately, there is ample evidence
verifying the fact that "the powers-that-be have in fact
"recovered an ET craft."

>>>The truth is that the hardware simply is not there. Despite
>>>this, people continue to insist that it is there but that
>>>certain authorities, for some nefarious reason, are withholding
>>>it. That is not the scientific method.

>>Hmmm... I don't think one can "state what the truth is" unless
>>that person has looked at the evidence in support of the fact
>>that the "powers-that-be" have "covered-up" information
>>pertaining to UFOs--it would seem that you haven' done that yet.
>>Separately, as with extra-solar planets or other phenomenon, one
>>doesn't have to have it in one's hands for it's validity.

>See above. I have looked at this evidence ad nauseam.

>>>Likewise the vital documents 'are there' (but withheld). The
>>>alien corpses 'are there' (but also withheld), so we are told.

>>I would suggest you read the "Security Act of 1947" but, oh
>>that's right the bulk of it is classified, so you can't read it.
>>Although what has been released via FOIA requests is mind
>>boggling, what hasn't is even more so; e.g., CAUS's lawsuits,
>>and the end result was "heavily redacted documents" and the
>>"powers-that-be" initially said they had no information
>>pertaining to UFOs- an obvious lie; then after the fact they
>>still said, with a "straight face" that there is is no cover-up.
>>Oy!

>Whose mind is it boggling? Certainly not mine.

>>>The awful truth is that we are nowhere near to proving ETH, and
>>>until abundant hardware is produced, and verified by the
>>>scientific establishment (e.g. National Academy Of Sciences in
>>>the US or the Royal Society in the UK or a suitable academy in
>>>another country) we never will be.

>>Hardware need not be produced to prove an ETH. An investigation
>>by any respected scientific establishment would prove that,
>>using the same criterion they would use for any other
>>reoccurring "transient phenomena." The only requirement is
>>"action!"

>Yes, hardware will have to be produced if ETH is to be finally
>proven. The UFO evidence so far has not convinced science of ETH
>in the slightest. You ought to realise that by now. Therefore,
>as with meteorites, the hardware is absolutely necessary. Then,
>and only then, will the said "action" occur.

>I am bowing out of this debate. But my mind is far from boggled.
>You may well have the last word.

>Happy seasonal greetings anyway,


The problem Chrisopher, is that "Science" for the most part
hasn't taken the time to investigate the UFO enigma. The
"molding" of the public's perception of the UFO phenomenon
hasn't stopped with the layman; it crosses all lines and gives
even the most intelligent a "preconception" of what's going on;
the irony of course is that it is hypocrisy to the highest
degree as that notion goes against "scientific methodology at
it's core.

Methinks that for some, yourself being a good example, the
degree and or quality of the evidence in favor of ETH will
always be irrevalant; seeing venus through swamp gas in the
company of anthropomorphic dummies, while feeding white pelicans
will, it seems, be a more "acceptable explanation" for the
skeptical clique.

Thank you for the last word.....


Respectfully,

Frank Warren








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                    Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 02:42:17 +1100
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:34:44 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman


>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:53:36 +0000
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>Let's get a couple of things straight - for us laity (I don't
>like use of loaded words like "lay" - reeks of exclusivity,
>false pride and even hubris).

Ah, I see now why you excised "for nonscientists" from the
Smolin quote. Too much hubris.

>1) Quotes -
>If one quotes <<in most courses ... It's not true>> the three
>dots indicate words in between that _don't_ change the literal
>or factual or statistical sense. Which is exactly true of that
>quote.

I'm well aware of the rules regarding quotations; as I already
said, by omitting "for nonscientists" you changed the sense of
Smolin's words, particularly given the context in which you
quoted them:

>Bruce,

>I know how you must feel.

>Maybe I should've put a health-warning on that message, for
>anyone who's been taught formal physics in last half-century.
>Why? - Because I say, along with Lee Smolin, that "there is at
>least one good reason not to believe the physics that is taught
>in most courses... It's not true."

>Present day physics is in a mess. Like you said "we don't really
>have a clue as to what is _really_ going on".

>In the last twenty years or so all the confident ideas of
>"Standard Models" (including your electromagnetic cause of
>matter), of "Gas Laws", of "Black Hole Theory" (actually
>Singularity Theories), of "Quantum Theory" and "Relativity
>Theories", have _all_ been discovered to be "flawed" or
>"incomplete" (see "Blind Science").

>That is, they're _not_ true.

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/dec/m09-008.shtml

Given that the partial Smolin quote is prefaced by a statement
encompassing "anyone who's been taught formal physics in last
half-century" (made, incidentally, to a PhD physicist) and
followed by blanket statements about physics being in a mess and
a paraphrase of Smolin's last sentence, but referring not to
"the physics that is taught in most courses for nonscientists"
but to a series of broad areas of physics, I submit that any
reasonable reader would assume that you were quoting Smolin to
buttress your statements about physics as a whole. There's no
way anyone could guess he was only talking physics education for
nonscientists from your discussion.

>However you shouted "quoting ... outrageously partial".
>That's specious my friend, next thing to deceit.

You're bold, I'll grant you that.

>2) Momentum -

>Brett, I hesitate to tell you, but everything we know is moving
>- we don't know of anything that's really "at rest". But for
>Newtonian convenience we pretend some things are not moving and
>just have inertia (of mass); we say other things are moving
>(it's all relative) and so have momentum, i.e.  mass x velocity
>(relative to us).

Again, no, this is wrong. Inertia is not only a property of
objects at rest; it's a property of objects in motion also. To
you I'm just being pedantic; to me, this (and other errors)
shows you don't have a firm grasp of basic physics (basic, as in
Newton's First Law). Why do you expect anyone to take your
criticisms of advanced physics seriously when you can't get the
basics right?

>In reality we know that everything in the universe is moving and
>really has full momentum - hence inertia = momentum. The use of
>two different words is partly historical and partly avoidance of
>inconvenient questions from the class smart-alec.

Quite right - physicists often define technical terms in order
to shut the class smart-alec up. I mean, it couldn't be because
precise terminology is useful in any way, could it? The very
idea!

>[Actually, when I was teaching the obligatory math/physics to
>some - highly qualified - military/other folk, I always found
>the argumentative ones a real boon, moving things along in a
>lively way. Conversely I  knew we'd have to start further back
>with those addicted to jargon & buzz-words - no grasp of basic
>principles. All physics is expressible in short words - else
>it's waffle.]

Now that _is_ convenient. When you are wrong, it doesn't matter,
it's just jargon and buzz-words - that way, you can just
redefine any term to suit your needs.

>Please, no more talk of science "high priests" alone fit for
>"inner secrets" kept from "lay" folk.

Please, no more putting words into _my_ mouth. I never said
there were inner secrets kept from laypeople (actually, that
sounds more like your brand of conspiratorial thinking). I'm all
for more science education at all levels. What I said was that
understanding physics is hard work. I'll go further and say you
need a grasp of advanced math if you want to go very far into
it. That's not to say that the results and principles of physics
can't be communicated in a qualitative way, more or less, but
then that's physics for nonscientists - not physics itself. You
can't _do_ physics in such a way, nor can you overturn it. Can
you see the difference?

>If physics is true then everyone can and should understand it
>and be taught it.

It's a nice ideal, but it's not true merely because you want it
to be so. Some things are just complex. I'm sorry if that
offends your sensibilities but it's just the way it is.

>For background to this exchange (shall we call it "Unknown Force
>in the Universe" - or "Failure of Physics"?) you can try -
>http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/dec/m07-009.shtml
>http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/dec/m09-008.shtml
>http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/dec/m10-015.shtml

Er, thanks, but as I've been subscribed to UFO UpDates for more
than a week, I've already read them - in fact, I've already
responded to two of them!

>There's clearly some way to go.

We agree on something, at least.


Brett Holman








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                 Phil Klass [was: Alien Abductions] - Sandow

From: Greg Sandow <greg.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:45:10 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 12:03:10 -0500
Subject: Phil Klass [was: Alien Abductions] - Sandow


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 21:50:49 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>Some day I may publish my correspondence exchanges with Phil
>"The Sophist" Klass, which you (and everyone) would find very
>revealing about how shallow and ungrounded his arguments really are.

I've had correspondence with poor Phil, too. I wish I'd saved
it, because it was truly astounding.

I published an article some years ago, in which, among other
things, I described an interview I did with him. He wrote to me,
asserting that the interview had never taken place. I proved to
him that it had, by showing him how he'd signed my copy of one
of his books (with the date), and also by describing his study,
where we'd met.

He wrote back admitting he was wrong, and praising my powers of
observation. Then - unaware that he was flagrantly contradicting
himself - he said my memory of our conversation couldn't be
trusted. This, he said, was because I made my opinion as a music
critic, and therefore was used only to writing my opinions in
published articles, not objective facts. (Remember that he'd
just praised my detailed memory of how his study looks!)

I wrote back, enclosing some of my music writing, and pointing
out that there was a lot of factual reporting in it. Phil, of
course, had no idea what music critics really do.

In one of the pieces I sent, I'd criticized the first violin
section of the New York Philharmonic, which wasn't (as everyone
in the classical music business knew) as strong as it should be,
in an orchestra that famous. Phil then wrote back with his
trademark sarcasm, asking me why, if the violins were so bad,
the music director didn't fire all of them. His tone suggested
that he'd now demolished me once and for all.

This was just hilarious. Phil, of course, knew nothing about the
contract the Philharmonic had with its musicians, what the
procedures for firing them might be (it's not easy), or, for
that matter, about the very strong actions the music director
was in fact taking, to force some of the violinists to leave on
their own. Phil knew nothing about classical music or the
classical music business. But that didn't stop him from claiming
that everything I wrote had to be nonsense.

That revealed a lot about his UFO methodolgy. Although at one
time (to be fair) he did do a lot of research, in the end he
didn't care what the facts really were. He just slashed out,
saying things that made no sense at all.

Best holiday wishes to everybody!


Greg Sandow









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              Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Salla

From: Michael Salla <exopolitics.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 07:52:59 -1000
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:15:44 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Salla


>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 14:45:01 -0000
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies


Aloha All,

I'm amused at the parsimonious methodoligical approach that is
accepted by those pushing naturual science methodologies onto
the UFO community as though this is the only rigorous scientific
method in town. Here's what I consider to be a pretty naive
approach to this methodoological issue as described in this
thread:

>To suggest that the US government, or any other, could or would
>suppress such valuable scientific knowledge for decade after
>decade is absurd. UFOs are a worldwide phenomenon. It would be a
>great prestige discovery for any country to be the first to
>announce it.

This is a rather innocent in that it assumes suppression of
"valuable scientific knowledge" is contentious, and we need to
blithely assume that such suppression doesn't exist since their
appears to be geneuine competition amongst researchers world
wide to be the first with the latest scientific breakthrough in
the various fields of knowledge. Those practicing rigorous
scientific methodologies proceed with the assumption that they
have the latest scientific information when designing and
constructing automobiles for example. In designing and
constructing automobiles one uses the latest data in order to
maximize performance and safety, and weeding out potential
flaws, etc. This approach is commendable and appropriate since
when I get into the car each morning for a drive to the local
supermarket, the car works every time, and won't fall apart due
to the rigorous scientific methodologies of the engineers,
designers, and manufacturers. So we can safely assume that no
such suppression of scientific information or data occurs when
it comes to the design of cars, construction of aircraft, etc.
The simplest reason for this is that the information on car
design, construction, etc., isn't a political issue but is
purely a technical/scientific issue. However, we can't assume
that liberty in disseminating the latest scienitific information
holds when it comes to areas such as the UFO phenomenon which
has a political/national security dimension rather than a solely
scientific dimension. If we apply a purely natural sciences
approach to the UFO phenomenon, then we have a distortion of the
data collection process since we are not factoring in the
political/national security factor. Let me give an example.

Let us look at alleged human rights violations in third world
countries and an investigation into the authenticity of such
allegations. Now if we take the natural science approach we
would bravely go into that country armed with our rigorous
methodologies, trained assistants and laboratory equipment. We'd
subject the alleged victim to a lie detector test to prove that
he was actually beaten by government thugs and didn't just fall
over the stairs. We'd then request physical proof that
substantiates evidence of the alleged beatings in terms of
photos, films that show the government thugs doing this. We'd
then demand to interview independent witnesses who saw the
beatings and are willing themselves to undergo lie detector
tests. We'd then interview other alleged victims that supposedly
corroborate the testimony of the victim. Those conducting the
investigation would say that there's no problem with the local
government providing us 'assistance' in our investigation since
we are applying rigorous natural science methodologies that is
free of any possible government bias, and will prove once and
for all if such alleged human rights violations are true.

Well such an approach wouldn't get very far at all. You'd find
insufficient evidence to substantiate human rights abuses since
victims are scared of further beatings to them or their
families, independent witnesses are intimidated, evidence is
confiscated all the time, doctors who treat the patient are too
frightened to testify, etc. In fact you'd probably find your
team of investigators to be very popular with the local
government authorities that would support your rigorous natural
science methodology that finds insufficient evidence to support
the allegations of human rights abuses. In fact, they might
recommend you send your final report to those biased human
rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch that write up those nasty annual reports about
alleged human rights violations by the government in question.

Thankfully, those doing human rights research develop social
scientific methodologies for ascertaining the proof of such
allegations. This often involves flexible methods such as going
incognito into such countries as tourists, and conducting field
work that is specially tailored to the political conditions on
the ground. This is something I have done myself in East Timor,
Kosovo and Sri Lanka and let me say that in all these cases
there was a major difference between what victims were alleging
was occurring and what governments were claiming about human
rights allegations.

Now a social scientific methodology is appropriate to the UFO
phenomenon and the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) because as
I said in a message I distributed earlier on this forum
concerning Exopolitics and Methodology - see:

http://exopolitics.org/Exo-Comment-24.htm

 - the UFO/ETH is not purely a technical problem, but it's also
a political problem. As Stephen Basset concisely said of
exopolitics, "It's not about lights in the sky, it's about lies
on the ground." We need to think about the non-disclosure of
data concerning UFOs and the ETH as a human rights violation of
fundamental proportions. We therefore need to tailor our
investigative methods for the UFO phenonemon as a
political/national security problem, rather than a purely
technical problem.

So I think it naive to assume that the political/national
security dimension on the UFO phenomenon doesn't have an impact
on developing an appropriate methodology when it comes to
properly understanding the available data on UFOs. Also, what
constitutes data is also subject to this parsiminous approach by
many Ufologists who use a natural science methodology, but
that's another issue.


In peace,

Michael Salla







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                           Re: Phil Klass - Clark

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 12:02:57 -0600
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:20:04 -0500
Subject: Re: Phil Klass - Clark


>From: Greg Sandow <greg.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:45:10 -0500
>Subject: Phil Klass [was: Alien Abductions]

>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 21:50:49 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions


Hi, Greg and Dick,

>>Some day I may publish my correspondence exchanges with Phil
>>"The Sophist" Klass, which you (and everyone) would find very
>>revealing about how shallow and ungrounded his arguments really
>>are.

>I've had correspondence with poor Phil, too. I wish I'd saved
>it, because it was truly astounding.

I spent maybe a decade and a half corresponding with Phil (who
finally got so mad at me that he terminated the exchange), and
it was an amazing, never-to-be-forgotten experience indeed. That
he was (and is) a patron saint of the "skeptics" movement says,
as far as I'm concerned, just about all one has to know about
that movement.

The illogic, ad hominems, hypocrisy, and fanaticism (not to
mention italics, exclamation points, bold type, capital letters,
and sometimes combinations of some or all of the above) in those
communications were a wonder to behold. Still, I enjoyed the
experience, in the sort of twisted way that people in the middle
ages used to entertain themselves by poking sticks at crazy
people. If Klass had been a UFO proponent, he would have been
universally judged a crank. In this peculiar world, however, one
doesn't have to be rational to pass oneself off as a
rationalist.

Still, even if in spite of himself, Phil did ufology a favor by
focusing on weaknesses in investigations. His unrelenting
criticism forced ufologists - at least the most responsible of
them - to tighten up their work and make sure they had all
angles covered. When they did that, Phil's criticisms did not
cease, of course; they just got weirder.

Nonetheless, in his own highly strange way, Klass ended up being
something of a positive force in the UFO controversy.


Jerry Clark








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                       Re: The Naked Scientists - Pope

From: Nick Pope <nick.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 18:09:34 -0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:21:03 -0500
Subject: Re: The Naked Scientists - Pope


List,

On Sunday December 19 I'll be doing an interview with The Naked
Scientists, a science-based internet radio show with close links
to the University of Cambridge:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/

Here are details of the show:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/html/next_week.htm

Here are details of how to listen to the show on the radio or
over the internet:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/faq/index.htm

Sunday night's radio interview is followed by a lecture on
Monday evening:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/cambridgecafe/index.htm

I'm increasingly trying to engage with scientists and build some
bridges between science and ufology. In the last year I've
debated the subject at the Science Museum's new Dana Centre
venue and lectured at the Cheltenham Festival of Science. Next
year I'll be speaking at the Newcastle Science Festival. Though
science and ufology are uneasy bedfellows, I believe the
relationship is worth cultivating and am making every effort in
this area.


Best wishes,

Nick Pope









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                          Re: Phil Klass - Lehmberg

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 12:51:14 -0600
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:33:21 -0500
Subject: Re: Phil Klass - Lehmberg


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 12:02:57 -0600
>Subject: Re: Phil Klass

>>From: Greg Sandow <greg.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:45:10 -0500
>>Subject: Phil Klass [was: Alien Abductions]

>>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 21:50:49 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>Hi, Greg and Dick,

<snip>

>Nonetheless, in his own highly strange way, Klass ended up being
>something of a positive force in the UFO controversy.

What an astonishingly _unpleasant_ irony, and a hearty last
laugh on him at the same time. Thank _you_ Mr. Klass.

I remember Greg Sandow relating a story years ago regarding the
acute discomfort Herr Klass arbitrarily provoked during one of
their meetings while Greg was in the company of a female
companion. It regarded some inappropriate blue humor and
unwelcome sexual innuendo. Philip Klass... living proof the good
die young or that the world is improved with most funerals?

How dare I? <LOL>Don't bother writing... I'll roll it up in
a tube and stick it in _your_ eye.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Reason

From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 18:51:32 -0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:34:48 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Reason


>From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 21:46:20 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>If you're not not much interested in the terminology, then why
>quibble about it?

Because the terminology should actually mean something.

>I don't have to do any such things; I am not a psychologist. I
>leave it to the experts to devise the experiments. I was merely
>arguing that ufologists should stick to the examination of
>verifiable facts and the results of experiments rather than
>indulging in vague speculations about nysterious "forces".

And vague speculations about "abnormal mental states" differ
from vague speculations about mysterious "forces" in what way,
exactly?

John, you may not be a psychologist and you may not have the
responsibility of designing detailed experiments. But you do
have the responsibility to know what you're talking about.

And if you believe that people "should stick to the examination
of verifiable facts" then you should at least know what is and
is not a verifiable fact.

>>Albeit a description which presupposed an explanation, a point
>>you appear to have overlooked.

>What explanation?

You tell me. But if your description doesn't presuppose some
sort of explanatory concept, then it's semantically empty, and
hence meaningless.

>I would interpret his remarks as meaning that experiments should
>produce similar results regardless of the beliefs or theories
>held by the experimenters.

Maybe they should, John, but they don't. Not in the social
sciences anyway - and I think Ufology is pretty much equivalent
to the social sciences, in both methodological and theoretical
senses.

>>In any case, I will use my uncanny paranormal powers to predict
>>the following - whatever the outcome of the study, it will lead
>>to an almighty argument over methodology, after which everyone
>>will go back to believing what they believed already.

>That is quite true. There is an excellent example in an article
>published in the New York Times last year - "A Bad Trip Down
>Memory Lane" by Bruce Grierson. You have presumably read it, as
>your name is mentioned in it. I won't waste space summarising it
>as it is available at:

>http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2003/jul/m26-015.shtml

But that presents us with rather a problem, doesn't it? If there
is no consensus on what constitutes sound methodology, then how
are we to decide what constitutes a "carefully planned and
executed experiment"?


Cathy








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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Reason

From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 18:55:50 -0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:35:50 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Reason


>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 16:46:11 +0000
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions


>Why are you defensive about independent replication by
>disinterested parties?

And how are we to determine who is genuinely a "disinterested
party"? Even if we assume, indeed, that such persons actually
exist.


Cathy








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                  Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson

From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 19:31:57 +0000
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:37:05 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Dickenson


>From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
>To: UFO Updates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 02:42:17 +1100
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

<snip>

Brett,

Despite your (tiresome) subclauses, we're in danger of agreeing
on _one_ matter of substance.

[Most arguments merely concern acceptance in humans' social,
financial or academic esteem. In my opinion they aren't worth a
tinker's cuss.]

Matters of substance are realities - particularly those of the
external universe - and how they affect life, including us. It's
clear to me that mainstream science is not yet qualified to
speak of those matters.

But that inconvenience won't stop the spoutings of the pompous
and the fraudulent "in the name of science" - will it?

Check "blind science" (Google) again.

cheers
Ray D

[Nearly forgot: apply the above to any "points of disagreement".
I like to answer stuff immediately, not after a brooding
session, and don't have time right now - it's Saturday.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Perceptions" http://www.perceptions.couk.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~








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                  Re: Good News For Causality? - Scheldroup

From: John Scheldroup <cty90143.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:37:14 -0600
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:38:34 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Scheldroup


>From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
>To: UFO Updates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 02:42:17 +1100
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 07:53:36 +0000
>>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>Again, no, this is wrong. Inertia is not only a property of
>objects at rest; it's a property of objects in motion also. To
>you I'm just being pedantic; to me, this (and other errors)
>shows you don't have a firm grasp of basic physics (basic, as in
>Newton's First Law). Why do you expect anyone to take your
>criticisms of advanced physics seriously when you can't get the
>basics right?

1.3 Inertia and Relativity.....14
1.4 The Dilemma of Light...20
http://www.mathpages.com/rr/rrtoc.htm

Einstein:

"The laws by which the states of physical systems undergo
changes are not affected, whether these changes of state be
referred to the one or the other of two systems of [inertial]
coordinates in uniform translatory motion. "


Author:

"(It's unfortunate that Einstein omitted the crucial word
"inertial" in this statement, but the meaning is clear from the
context, since he refers to systems of coordinates in terms of
which Newton's laws hold good - to the first approximation.)
However, the principle of relativity does not tell us how the
descriptions with respect to one such system of reference relate
to the descriptions with respect to another. It merely tells us
that the same "laws" will be satisfied in both systems."


Do you suppose that there was a reason that he left it out <BG>?

"Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood
backward."


Soren Kierkegaard
   --The Journals of Kierkegaard


John








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                          Re: Phil Klass - Friedman

From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:09:08 -0400
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:40:28 -0500
Subject: Re: Phil Klass - Friedman


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 12:02:57 -0600
>Subject: Re: Phil Klass

>>From: Greg Sandow <greg.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:45:10 -0500
>>Subject: Phil Klass [was: Alien Abductions]

>>>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>>>To: ufoupdates.nul
>>>Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 21:50:49 +0000
>>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions


<snip>

I, too, had  a long correspondence with Klass. A small portion
was published in my 1990 "Final Report on Operation Majestic 12"
including his challenge to me about the Pica Type used in the
Cutler Twining memo and a copy of his check to me for 1000$ for
providing more than 10 examples of Pica type on NSC documents.

There are many instances on record wherein he made claims about
documents, people, books etc when he hadn't even read the book
or done any homework at all. I have piles of paper if anybody is
serious about doing  an "Anatomy of an Irrational Skeptic". He
surely was a good and fast typist though. A perfect illustration
of "Don't bother me with the, facts my mind is made up". I wish
I had a video of our debate at Trinity College in Texas many
years ago.


Stan Friedman








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                      'Nevada US-Alien Facility' Brief?

From: Barb Campbell <nwsurc.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:49:33 -0500 (EST)
Fwd Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 10:00:45 -0500
Subject: 'Nevada US-Alien Facility' Brief?


I came across this 87 page PDF document on the Internet, and
then copied and included it to NWSURC's site under Information.

I wondered if anyone had any comments on it? Mr. Friedman, I
would especially be interested in hearing yours on this document.

It can be found at:

http://www.nwsurc.com/NEVADA%20US-ALIEN%20FACILITY%20BRIEF.pdf


Have a safe and enjoyable Christmas everyone!


-Barb







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                 Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics

From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 23:04:16 +0000
Fwd Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 10:15:05 -0500
Subject: Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics


Hurriedly recommend a second hard look at "blind science" if
still clinging to faith in human science or mathematics.

It makes clear that -

a) astrophysics has been wrong on almost every call made till
now.

The names of astronomical phenomena are all wrong because the
scientists thought they were something other.

Check the new solar systems being found; Newtonian physics said
'impossble' but the universe disagrees.

b) mathematics is merely a human invention which may or may not
apply to the universe. Einstein said ""When mathematics tries to
talk about reality - it's inaccurate, when mathematics is
accurate - it's not talking about reality".

While common sense gives respect for arithmetic, because
integers - whole numbers - can represent real things, "advanced"
mathematics is conceptual, having no automatic correlation with
physical existence.

Profs Stewart & Cohen (and Lee Smolin) agree on that - take
Smolin's quote "I have never heard a good a priori argument that
the world must be organized according to mathematical
principles."

[Other real experts' quotes are in text or links - in full.]

Haven't time to consider equally tiresome quibbles - it's
Saturday.

cheers
Ray D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Perceptions" http://www.perceptions.couk.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~







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                          Re: Phil Klass - Maccabee

From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 23:33:56 -0500
Fwd Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:48:50 -0500
Subject: Re: Phil Klass - Maccabee


>From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:09:08 -0400
>Subject: Re: Phil Klass

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 12:02:57 -0600
>>Subject: Re: Phil Klass

>>>From: Greg Sandow <greg.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 11:45:10 -0500
>>>Subject: Phil Klass [was: Alien Abductions]

>I, too, had  a long correspondence with Klass. A small portion
>was published in my 1990 "Final Report on Operation Majestic 12"
>including his challenge to me about the Pica Type used in the
>Cutler Twining memo and a copy of his check to me for 1000$ for
>providing more than 10 examples of Pica type on NSC documents.


Between New Zealand and McMinnville I may have about 2000 pages
of correspondence with PJK in the time frame 1974 - 1984.







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                 Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies -

From: Josh Goldstein <lovolution.nul>
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 2:46:29 -1000
Fwd Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:52:31 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies -


>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 07:43:38 -0800
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

<snip>

>Two points to make here; one, it is not necessary to have an ET
>craft in one's possession to prove their are ET craft flying
>around in our airspace; two, spearately, there is ample evidence
>verifying the fact that "the powers-that-be have in fact
>"recovered an ET craft."
<snip>

Frank,

Frank, can you clearly outline "ample evidence verifying the
fact that the powers-that-be have recovered an ET craft"?


Thank you,

Josh







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                    Re: Good News For Causality? - Shough

From: Martin Shough <mshough.nul>
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 13:44:05 -0000
Fwd Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:54:45 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Shough


>From: John Scheldroup <cty90143.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:37:14 -0600
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

<snip>

>Author:

>"(It's unfortunate that Einstein omitted the crucial word
>"inertial" in this statement, but the meaning is clear from the
>context, since he refers to systems of coordinates in terms of
>which Newton's laws hold good - to the first approximation.)
>However, the principle of relativity does not tell us how the
>descriptions with respect to one such system of reference relate
>to the descriptions with respect to another. It merely tells us
>that the same "laws" will be satisfied in both systems."

>Do you suppose that there was a reason that he left it out <BG>?

Yes. The principle of relativity stated with respect to
coordinate systems in uniform translatory motion, as you cite it
here, is Special Relativity. These coordinate frames are
inertial frames by definition. You are right that the question
of what, physically speaking, distinguishes inertial frames as
special is outside the purview of SR. In particular although SR
is perfectly capable of describing accelerated frames it doesn't
generalise to a theory of how frames relate when accelerated in
gravity. But Einstein was obviously well aware of this, which is
why he tackled the deeper structure of spacetime by subsuming SR
as a limit case applicable strictly only over infinitesimal
domains inside a larger theory called General Relativity. It is
quite true that GR does not explain _how_ spacetime geometry is
coupled to mass, and inertia is still mysterious within the
theory, but you appear (if I understand you right) to be
implying that Einstein was trying to fudge SR by pretending that
inertia didn't matter and hoped that no one would notice. This
is absurd.


Martin Shough







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              Re: 'Nevada US-Alien Facility' Brief? - Hamilton

From: Bill Hamilton <skyman22.nul>
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 07:36:06 -0800
Fwd Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:56:14 -0500
Subject: Re: 'Nevada US-Alien Facility' Brief? - Hamilton


>From: Barb Campbell <nwsurc.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:49:33 -0500 (EST)
>Subject: 'Nevada US-Alien Facility' Brief?

>I came across this 87 page PDF document on the Internet, and
>then copied and included it to NWSURC's site under Information.

>I wondered if anyone had any comments on it? Mr. Friedman, I
>would especially be interested in hearing yours on this document.

>It can be found at:

>http://www.nwsurc.com/NEVADA%20US-ALIEN%20FACILITY%20BRIEF.pdf


Barb,

I do not mean to reply in Mr. Friedman's stead, but I have made
quite a study of Area 51/S4 lore and have previously seen the
document you reference which is a hodge podge of stuff that has
been on the web for sometime and has little value in my opinion.


Bill







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              Re: Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics -

From: Alfred Lehmberg <alienview.nul>
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 10:46:18 -0600
Fwd Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:59:34 -0500
Subject: Re: Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics -


>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 23:04:16 +0000
>Subject: Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics

>Hurriedly recommend a second hard look at "blind science" if
>still clinging to faith in human science or mathematics.

>It makes clear that -

>a) astrophysics has been wrong on almost every call made till
>now.

>The names of astronomical phenomena are all wrong because the
>scientists thought they were something other.

>Check the new solar systems being found; Newtonian physics said
>'impossble' but the universe disagrees.

>b) mathematics is merely a human invention which may or may not
>apply to the universe. Einstein said ""When mathematics tries to
>talk about reality - it's inaccurate, when mathematics is
>accurate - it's not talking about reality".

>While common sense gives respect for arithmetic, because
>integers - whole numbers - can represent real things, "advanced"
>mathematics is conceptual, having no automatic correlation with
>physical existence.

>Profs Stewart & Cohen (and Lee Smolin) agree on that - take
>Smolin's quote "I have never heard a good a priori argument that
>the world must be organized according to mathematical
>principles."

>[Other real experts' quotes are in text or links - in full.]


I'm astonished that smart people can so insistently delude
themselves that they have the remotest grasp on what really
happens in the cosmos around us. Five very narrow banded senses
only get about 2% at best.

Sure, be proud of an academic persistence and a willingness to
pay more tuition so you can lord it over the less blessed, but
don't think for a moment that your beliefs, scientific or
otherwise, are any more or less accurate than another's, even if
they might appear in the short-run to approximate the precepts
of those, actually pretty convenient, precepts... To operate any
other way is to have the corrosive mainstream relevancy of Dr.
Laura, Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Fallwell, or Philip Klass.

We were making some pretty bad assumptions as late as 50 years
ago. Things change or die.

Stuart Miller recently wrote:

"OK, lets tell everybody about it and bugger the consequences.
Possible economic collapse? Rocketing suicide rate? Massive
increases in mental dysfunction as faith in religion crumbles?
Deep depression within the scientific community as it realizes
it knows nothing and now won't be able to discover anything new
by itself? Terror at the prospect of an invasion? Terror at the
prospect of malevolent bacterial invasion? The trauma that many
will feel at the realization that far from being at the top of
the tree that they're the galactic equivalent of an ant? Who
cares!! At least we've got the prestige of announcing all this
to the world. Wow. Folks will be real grateful."

I remember back to a period of 60 years ago when I think it's
pretty obvious, even being conservative, that the ET hypothesis
was the obvious hypothesis...

We had an opportunity, during a time of chaotic turmoil
_anyway_, to grasp this conundrum by the shirt-tails, then! It
was an opportunity missed.  60 years later we still suffer the
smirks, slings, and sneers of brain-dead klasskurtzians who crow
that they own the high ground with regard to science and
rationality when nothing could be further from the truth.
Increasingly they are the tedious partisan-hack-ideologues of
outmoded conventional wisdoms devoid of imagination rationality,
humility,validity, courage, and intelligence, only - caricatures
of a pompous and outdated status-quo. Consider that one of their
revered patron saints is Philip Klass to begin to appreciate the
depth of their intellectual failure and the breadth of their
self-imposed ignorance - their lack of verity.

I know where Stuart Miller was coming from, and this is not
criticism of him, but Economic collapse looks like it might be
happening anyway. Suicides might only be doing themselves and us
a favor, actually, forgetting they were likely to be few in the
first place, and too close to the edge anyway, in the second.
Mental dysfunction is on an upward trend regardless, and might
even be _caused_ by the duplicity and cruelty our aggregate
culture visits on us! Scientific Depression would likely only be
experienced by those who were 'too' comfortable in a 'position'
and were loath to redo work. Real scientists would rejoice that
another layer of fallacy has come off the truth and a _real_
game is afoot! We're already terrorized by invasion, anyway!
We're already terrorized by infestation, anyway. Our inflated
hubris, lowest-common-denominator spirituality, and pompous
homocentricity was RIPE for a righteous bubble busting!

Besides, as individuals there is no need to feel in any way
diminished. Individually, one can be made more than one was with
the loss of the terrible ignorance imposed from above.

Seriously, if we'd come clean 60 years ago we'd already have an
old population who never knew the duplicity, the soulless
corporate horror, the dumbing down, and ignorance by decree. I
think we'd be inhabiting a living ring we'd built in the belt
between Mars and Jupiter. Where would we be 60 years hence?

Bad news won't improve with age. And you know? I'm betting the
news ain't that bad. Disclosure now.


alienview.nul -:|:-
  www.AlienView.net







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                         Re: Alien Abductions - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 16:49:42 +0000
Fwd Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 13:03:00 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Hall


>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 18:55:50 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>From: Peter Rogerson <progerson.nul>
>>Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 16:46:11 +0000
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

>>Why are you defensive about independent replication by
>>disinterested parties?

>And how are we to determine who is genuinely a "disinterested
>party"? Even if we assume, indeed, that such persons actually
>exist.


This raises a very interesting point. At the outset of the
University of Colorado UFO Project (Air-Force sponsored) in
1966, it was decided that any scientist who had a publicly
expressed interest in UFOs should be excluded from participating
in the study. This automatically excluded such interested
parties as James E. McDonald, J. Allen Hynek, and Donald H.
Menzel, and automatically left the field to those scientists
most (literally) ignorant and uniterested.

The purpose of this methodological decision clearly was
political and for appearances sake, not based on scientific
merit.  It had the effect of eliminating those scientists most
knowledgable about the subject matter and with the most
passionate interest in pursuing it, whose participation under
normal circumstances would be highly desirable.  It also was a
bit of a fiction, because scientists who made the cut had
varying degrees of `interest' and `disinterest'  (meaning belief
and disbelief, and/or open-mindedness and closed-mindedness).

The  examples given earlier on this thread about circumstances
in which scientists perhaps should be disaqualified, such as
drug tests being performed by scientists associated with
pharmaceutical companies, have a point. But that sort of thing
goes on all the time in science, and normally is controlled for
routinely by something called _peer review_. Also having
abstracted many an article from scientific journals, the authors
are required to report any potential conflicts of interest along
with their findings. A failure to do so can cause a loud hue and
cry by other watchdogs.

If bad or self-serving science is done, when science is
operating properly (not that it always does operate properly)
the peers will be all over details of inappropriate methodology
or erroneous data. And in extreme cases, the passionate
`advocates' and passionate `debunkers' will keep an eye on each
other, much as happens on this list! Good peer review is the
bottom line. There is absolutely nothing wrong per se about
scientists (people) holding opnions or having a strong interest
in a subject. In fact, it is much to be desired. Otherwise
science would end up being timid, homogenized mush. - Dick

P.S. I feel very strongly about this.

Full disclosure: I was a consultant to the Colorado UFO Project
and met officially and socially with the participants, shared
many an after-hours bull session, drinks at the motel, beer
busts in back yards, dinners at their homes, and private
exchanges of correspondence. There and at the American
Psychologicsal Association where I was employed for some 8 years
I have seen science in operation, warts and all. Very
stimulating. I like it. It's the best thing going.







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   Dec > Dec 20

                    Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:31:17 +1100
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:05:43 -0500
Subject: Re: Good News For Causality? - Holman


>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 19:31:57 +0000
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>Despite your (tiresome) subclauses, we're in danger of agreeing
>on _one_ matter of substance.

Tiresome! I'm flattered.

>[Most arguments merely concern acceptance in humans' social,
>financial or academic esteem. In my opinion they aren't worth a
>tinker's cuss.]

Well, physicists argue all the time. Perhaps that's one reason
for their success thus far.

>Matters of substance are realities - particularly those of the
>external universe - and how they affect life, including us. It's
>clear to me that mainstream science is not yet qualified to
>speak of those matters.

>But that inconvenience won't stop the spoutings of the pompous
>and the fraudulent "in the name of science" - will it?

It's not clear to me why you think we might agree on this. Or
even what you are talking about.

>Check "blind science" (Google) again.

>[Nearly forgot: apply the above to any "points of disagreement".

How can cut-and-pasting the above be considered an adequate
response to any of my specific questions or criticisms? Try this
next time: you claim such-and-such to be true, I query your
claim, you either back up your claim or discard (or modify) it.
It's not hard.


Brett







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              Re: Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics -

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:41:13 +1100
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:21:31 -0500
Subject: Re: Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics -


>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 23:04:16 +0000
>Subject: Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics

>Hurriedly recommend a second hard look at "blind science" if
>still clinging to faith in human science or mathematics.

>It makes clear that -

>a) astrophysics has been wrong on almost every call made till
>now.

Sorry, it didn't make it clear to me - probably too much
astrophysics in my formal education. Perhaps you could
elucidate.

>The names of astronomical phenomena are all wrong because the
>scientists thought they were something other.

Are they? _All_ of them? Do tell. (Whatever could be wrong with,
say, "binary star"?) And why should anyone care if the names are
"wrong", as long as they are precisely defined and consistently
applied?

If your point is that astronomers initially got it wrong - well,
no, really? I still don't know why this is something to be
ashamed of.

>Check the new solar systems being found; Newtonian physics said
>'impossble' but the universe disagrees.

Please tell me where or how "Newtonian physics" said these new
solar systems were "impossible". (Unlikely, sure - not
impossible.) No, a popular science book does not count. Nor does
a press release or newspaper article, for that matter.

>b) mathematics is merely a human invention which may or may not
>apply to the universe. Einstein said ""When mathematics tries to
>talk about reality - it's inaccurate, when mathematics is
>accurate - it's not talking about reality".

Einstein apparently also said:

"[I]t is my conviction that pure mathematical construction
enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting
them, which give us the key to the understanding of the
phenomena of nature."

Doesn't sound like the same guy, does it? Taking quotes out of
context can be very misleading, which is why I keep trying to
put your favourite ones back into context.

Anyway, sorry for the tiresome quibble, but the actual quote you
want is:

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are
not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer
to reality."

http://www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/Geometry.html

(Although, to be fair, perhaps your version is also a valid
translation of the original German.)

Einstein's certainly not arguing that mathematics does not apply
to the Universe; he would have been the very last person to say
that. (You can see that when further on in the same lecture, he
suggests that it might be possible to calculate the size of the
Universe by calculating the difference between predicted and
actual motions of stars - hardly the statement one would expect
of somebody trying to minimise the importance of mathematics in
understanding the real world.) His point is this: despite
originating in very practical activities (such as building
things), geometry is divorced from all that, instead concerning
itself with abstract concepts such as "point" and "line", which
is ultimately how it made progress. But there's nothing in
formal Euclidean geometry which relates these concepts to the
real world. Einstein suggests that all we need do is add a
proposition asserting that real-world objects follow Euclidean
geometry to make geometry practical in this sense. Of course,
his larger purpose is to show that this proposition is not
_necessarily_ true, and that in fact the geometry of space-time
might _not_ be Euclidean, contrary to our intuition and habitual
assumptions.

>While common sense gives respect for arithmetic, because
>integers - whole numbers - can represent real things, "advanced"
>mathematics is conceptual, having no automatic correlation with
>physical existence.

>Profs Stewart & Cohen (and Lee Smolin) agree on that - take
>Smolin's quote "I have never heard a good a priori argument that
>the world must be organized according to mathematical
>principles."

I agree that there appears to be no reason why the Universe
_should_ be comprehensible mathematically. The fact remains that
to a large degree, it IS. And despite being one of the few
physicists to have earned your admiration, once again poor Lee
Smolin gets only a partial quote from you. He _actually_ said
(this is a paraphrase since the only copy around here is in
Borders): "In spite of _the obvious effectiveness of mathematics
in physics_, I have never heard a good a priori argument that
the world must be organized according to mathematical
principles." (Emphasis added.) He isn't claiming that
mathematics is not a powerful way to understand the Universe,
and the surrounding text makes that even clearer.

>[Other real experts' quotes are in text or links - in full.]

I presume a "real expert" is someone who you think agrees with
you? Unfortunately, as far as I can tell most of the quotes you
like to throw around don't mean what you seem to think they
mean.....


Brett Holman








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              More Evidence Of ET Contac With Indian Government

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:36:52 -0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:36:52 -0500
Subject: More Evidence Of ET Contac With Indian Government




Source: India Daily

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/12-19c-04.asp


12-19-04


More Evidence Of Extra Terrestrial Contacts With Indian
Government And Military

Juhi Singhal - Special Correspondent

According to Subhra Jain, a freelance reporter in New Delhi, she
bumped into a very senior Indian Military official in a
nightclub in New Delhi. While talking what she came to know will
make the rest of the world sit up all night. According to her,
Extra Terrestrials have been visiting India and the rest of the
world for thousands of years. In recent days most of the super
powers have been formally contacted. India is no exception in
recent days.

"They always contact through the ground radar stations of the
military", she says. Indian Himalayas and Ladakh (China-India)
border is where they first made their recent contact. They want
to let India know the laws and regulation of the
multidimensional Universe.

India is planning an un-manned moon and later an unmanned Mars
expedition. India=92s premier Space Research Organization (ISRO)
has been told "do's and don=92ts".

Almost in the same week, a Flight Commodore who just retired
from Indian Air Force, was requested in Bangalore, India, to
provide a little talk on any topic to his youngest son=92s class
mates in the school environment. Guess what he picked as the
topic =96 yes you got it right =96 it was the underground landing
base for UFO crafts in Ladakh. He first started by saying new
technology is evolving and new achievements are being made in
Aerospace. The students stared questioning him on different
aspects of this new technologies and where this technology came
from! Then the students started challenging him if he was really
joking =96 at that moment he started providing vivid descriptions
of the landing base.

Ladakh is a land like no other. Bounded by two of the world's
mightiest mountain ranges, the Great Himalaya and the Karakoram,
it lies athwart two other, the Ladakh range and the Zanskar
range. Ladakh lies at altitudes ranging from about 9,000 feet
(2750m) at Kargil to 25,170 feet (7,672m) at Saser Kangri in the
Karakoram. Thus summer temperatures rarely exceed about 27
degree Celsius in the shade, while in winter they may plummet to
minus 20 degree Celsius even in Leh. Surprisingly, though, the
thin air makes the heat of the sun even more intense than at
lower altitudes; it is said that only in Ladakh can a man
sitting in the sun with his feet in the shade suffer from
sunstroke and frostbite at the same time!

In Leh, Ladakh, according to Tsering Spalzang, a senior
official, any paranormal activities are happening with the
knowledge of the Indian Army. There are zones that Indian Army
and Air Force block for security reasons. The Ladakh valley is
heavily secured by the Indian Government. It is a sensitive area
and no one is lowed in these sensitive areas =96 neither from
Indian side nor from Chinese side. The terrain is such that it
is impossible to find hidden underground structures under
massive mountains =96 you are looking at core Himalayas.

The Petroleum Ministry when asked about recent high oil price,
said that India is developing alternative energy sources with
advanced technologies. When asked about, what kind of
alternative technologies, the spokesperson hurried brought the
press conference to a quick end by saying those are really
classified information.

Indian Government has decided to spend enormous amount of money
to develop the Kashmir and Ladakh road infrastructure. Even they
plan to use the Foreign Exchange Reserves for this.

According to rumors in New Delhi, UFOs made formal contact with
Indian Government. The Government was initially baffled without
knowing how to react. Later things became quiet and it seems all
understand that these Extra Terrestrials are friendly.

Kargil and Ladakh are hotspots in Kashmir India, which will
probably see first Nuke exchange if that ever happens. Three
countries face each other there with Nuke capabilities - India,
China and Pakistan.

In 1999, Pakistan and India almost went head to head exchanging
Nukes for a war on Kargil. Indian Army fought will full vigor
against an enemy holding higher grounds. Pakistan planned to go
all out on Kargil. India at that moment has no choice but to
apply the nuclear arsenal.

At the insistence of US President Bill Clinton, Pakistan at the
last moment backed out and the Nuke war was avoided.

=46rom that time onwards, according local residents and Indian
Army personnel, that area has seen the maximum numbers of UFOs
and Extra Terrestrial presence.


[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]








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                     Rash Of UFOs In Eastern Hemisphere

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:42:27 -0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:42:27 -0500
Subject: Rash Of UFOs In Eastern Hemisphere




Source: World Net Daily =96 Grants Pass, Oregon

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=3D42008

12-20-04


Rash Of UFOs In Eastern Hemisphere

Witnesses see action in skies of Indonesia, China, Australia

It's been a busy December for skywatchers in the Eastern
Hemisphere, as citizens of Indonesia, China and Australia have
all reported seeing unidentified flying objects.

In Indonesia, witnesses told a radio station they saw an object
flying across the sky near Jakarta yesterday morning.

Dozens of witnesses claim they heard loud explosions after
seeing the object leave a tail of fire.

"It's suspected that a fireball originating from a big meteor
entered the Earth's atmosphere. ... This created the explosion,"
Thomas Djamaluddin, an official with the Indonesian space
center, LAPAN, told the Antara news agency.

Published reports say Indonesia has been on high alert for fear
of attacks by Islamic terrorists during the holiday period.

On Saturday, Dec. 12, hundreds of people in northwest China's
Gansu province witnessed "a strange shining object" sweeping
through the sky at 11:36 p.m. local time.

The Gansu daily says it was followed by "earthshaking sounds
like bombing." Residents also reported an ensuing tremble felt
within 100 kilometers of Lanzhou, the capital of the province.

One man who was driving at the time said he saw "a shining ball
with a three-meter-long trail flying from west to east," and
that he heard two thunder-like sounds immediately afterward.

More than 700 reports were filed with authorities on the case,
with some residents reporting an earthquake, and others claiming
a meteor event.

Police, working on the theory it was a meteorite, have been
investigating the matter, but haven't found any evidence of what
caused the phenomenon.

As WorldNetDaily reported two weeks ago, Australians were
baffled by mysterious, multi-colored lights which appeared to
hover in the sky.

Laboratory technician Julie Lynn, a self-described skeptic of
unidentified flying objects, said, "It hovered in the one place
for at least two hours but had moved significantly when we
checked on it again before we went to bed. I can't believe there
are UFOs or little green men out there =96 there must be an
obvious explanation. And we weren't drinking so it wasn't
something we imagined."


[UFO UpDates thanks Stuart Miller for the lead]








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              Mexican AF UFO "A Squadron Of New Stealth Strike

From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 06:49:43 -0700
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 10:15:52 -0500
Subject: Mexican AF UFO "A Squadron Of New Stealth Strike


From: "James Easton" <voyager.nul>
Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 02:22:16 +0100
Subject: skunk-works "a squadron of new stealth strike craft..."

I wondered if anyone could please help with brief queries re the
following article, which is presently receiving some media
attention (alas, the 'UFO' element therein is inherent):

'UFOs Gone Wild, Men From Mars Visit Mexico'
by Charles R. Smith
Thursday, May 13, 2004

"The unidentified aircraft that shadowed the Mexican
surveillance plane are reportedly part of a squadron of new
stealth strike craft operating from the U.S.".

Any known evidence for this alleged "squadron of new stealth
strike craft"?

"The aircraft are equipped with special infrared light panels
that are only visible to special cameras or night vision gear.
The panels are used in formation flying outside of hostile
airspace to prevent the aircraft from colliding with each other
or with support aircraft such as refueling planes. The panels
are especially handy during aerial refueling with U.S.A.F.
tankers, allowing the tanker operators to visually monitor the
stealth planes in total darkness".

"However, F-117A Stealth fighters normally operate inside the
U.S. with special radar reflective panels attached to their
planes in order to be tracked in commercial airspace and not
attract attention".

Are these assertions factual?

"The new stealth aircraft is said to embody the latest
technology, including special light panels designed to
hide the plane in broad daylight".

Any evidence that such technology has actually been deployed?

"In addition, the recent UFO sighting in Mexico came
within days of a report of a classified aircraft powered
by an impulse type engine flying over Utah. The aircraft
left a distinctive 'donuts-on-a-rope' contrail in a
flight over the Utah Wasatch Mountains".

"More than a decade ago, a similar classified aircraft was
spotted and photographed by observers throughout the U.S. The
aircraft left a telltale trail of puffs along a long contrail in
the sky. However, sightings of the pulser engine aircraft
dropped off during the late 1990s."

...'donuts-on-a-rope' contrails - were they not concluded to
have a mundane explanation?

For the full publication, see:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/5/13/91044.shtml

Smith's article contains some significant claims, with Smith
purportedly being an 'informed source', yet it's strikingly
devoid of any references.

There's an author bio at:

http://www.newsmax.com/pundits/bios/Smith-bio.shtml

A knowledgeable appraisal on the above points would be much
appreciated - please reply directly, if preferable to keep
responses off-list because of the media's 'UFO' connotation
concerning this story.


James Easton.
E-mail: voyager.nul

------

Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 20:29:40 -0700
From: "Mr. K. Rudolph" <krudolph.nul-technologies.com>
Subject: skunk-works Ramblings...

I can't speak for stealth aircraft, but it seems reasonable. In
1991 we used IR panels during night operations in the mountains
to keep track of vehicles in convoys. A relative tells me of
similar applications on tanks in the early 80's.

As for special panels and special cameras... Not really, fourty
year old technology that can be seen by darn near any solid
state camera, high end professional or kids toy and night vision
equipment used for the past sixty or so years, nothing special,
nothing new, different application... Well sort of I guess, RC
airplane hobbyists have been doing similar things with surplus
night vision goggles and IR LEDs on their planes for fifteen
years or so.

Something old is new again!

Kurt


------

Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 23:18:07 -0500 (CDT)
From: gregd.nul
Subject: Re: skunk-works "a squadron of new stealth strike craft..."

IR formation lights are standard equipment on most US front line
aircraft, and have been for some time.

IR LEDs on the left formation light of a Block 52 F-16C:

http://www.habu2.net/aeropix/scott2003/images/s523.jpg

IR LEDs on the trailing formation light on the same F-16C:

http://www.habu2.net/aeropix/scott2003/images/s509.jpg

These lights have been openly acknowledged in many public
sources, the following is an excerpt from Lockheed's Code One
magazine, January 1998: (article is online at:

http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archives/1998/articles/jan_98/jan2a_98.html )

"Aviano F-16 pilots are equally pleased with the exterior
lighting portion of the NVIS modification as well. "The exterior
lighting is spectacular," Nichols says. "In covert mode, the
airplane is completely dark to the naked eye. And the variable
covert strobe allows us to discern different airplanes by the
rate at which the strobe flashes. We can look around in a four-
ship and know where everybody is."

Nichols says the variable strobe is especially helpful in the
forward air controller or FAC mission. "NVGs make it difficult
to perceive range," he explains. "A bright object ten miles away
may appear closer than a nearby dim object. Depth perception
works differently at low light levels. A unique strobe rate
makes it real simple to distinguish a wingman from other light
sources."

The NVG-friendly lighting also improves the air-to-air
capabilities of F-16s at night. "We can easily distinguish our
aircraft from aircraft with normal lighting," Nichols explains.
"When we fly against an airplane without NVG-compatible
lighting, we can sort other aircraft visually from a long way
out, sometimes before we can sort them on the radar."

Greg Fieser

------

Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 21:27:54 -0700
From: "Mr. K. Rudolph" <krudolph.nul-technologies.com>
Subject: skunk-works interesting recollection...

I re-call about eight years ago seeing some interesting IR
devices for sale at a swapmeet. They were little square rubber
blocks with 9 volt battery snaps on the under side and an IR LED
on top. I asked about them and the fellow told me a story of how
he used them in Viet Nahm to indicate a cleared area for
helicopters to land.

Kurt


-----


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
fortean1.nul








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              Large PDFs Of Report On Death Of James Forrestal

From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:52:35 -0700
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 10:18:18 -0500
Subject: Large PDFs Of Report On Death Of James Forrestal


A conspiracy classic, assuming you can D/L such huge files.


http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/finding_aids/forrestal/
willcutts/index.html

Admiral M.D. Willcutts Report
on the Death of James V. Forrestal
1949

This page links to two text files in Adobe PDF format containing
the 1949 report by Admiral M.D. Willcutts, the Navy Department's
chief investigator into the death of James V. Forrestal. The
documents were procured by David Martin of Virginia via a
Freedom of Information Act request in April 2004. Martin scanned
the report and gave the PDF files to the Seeley G. Mudd
Manuscript Library in August 2004. This is the first time this
report has been made available to the public. Also included are
scans of five photographs obtained and scanned by Martin.







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              Re: 'Nevada US-Alien Facility' Brief? - Friedman

From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 11:05:09 -0400
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 10:23:02 -0500
Subject: Re: 'Nevada US-Alien Facility' Brief? - Friedman


>From: Barb Campbell <nwsurc.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:49:33 -0500 (EST)
>Subject: 'Nevada US-Alien Facility' Brief?

>I came across this 87 page PDF document on the Internet, and
>then copied and included it to NWSURC's site under Information.

>I wondered if anyone had any comments on it? Mr. Friedman, I
>would especially be interested in hearing yours on this document.

>It can be found at:

>http://www.nwsurc.com/NEVADA%20US-ALIEN%20FACILITY%20BRIEF.pdf


I agree with Bill Hamilton.

For some reason I couldn't download it yesterday, but did this
morning. It is all Pre 1990.

I certainly don't consider John Lear, Bill Cooper, John Keel,
Vril as high quality sources. There is some truth mixed with a
lot of fiction.

A few factual errors include:

Calling James V. Forrestal "General" - he was not military.

Saying Hillenkoetter set up the Robertson Panel... it was his
successor Walter B. Smith.

Jerome Hunsaker outlived Gordon Gray by 22 months and died just
2 weeks before Box 189 of Entry 267 of Record Group 341 was
first handled -  He had the Cutler Twining Memo -  and less than
three months before receipt of the EBE and TF by Jaime Shandera.

All kinds of fictional material. Not reliable.


Stan Friedman







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                 Re: Large PDFs Of Report On Death Of James

From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 10:25:42 EST
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 10:34:25 -0500
Subject: Re: Large PDFs Of Report On Death Of James


>From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 07:52:35 -0700
>Subject: Large PDFs Of Report On Death Of James Forrestal

>A conspiracy classic, assuming you can D/L such huge files.

>http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/finding_aids/forrestal
/willcutts/index.html

>Admiral M.D. Willcutts Report
>on the Death of James V. Forrestal
>1949

<snip>

Yes, someone sent me these files a while ago. They are amazing
at how obviously incompetent these so-called 'experts' were. If
you just read the first five pages all you see is how everyone
is avoiding responsibility across the board.

The extra surprise I got was when I showed the files and a UFO
documentary to a friend of mine who worked 20 years for a major
corporation. When he saw the names of the skepti-bunkers and the
names of the doctors he told me how these were the same people
his corporation had discovered had attacked his corporation.

I can't disclose more but let's just say a day of great justice
is about to come forth and it's going to blow you folks out of
your socks regarding who has been and is still behind this
skepti-bunker nonsense, who and how they're funded and then
watch how they get stomped by a massing army of top attorneys
who didn't know what was going on until we brought this info to
their attention.

That old saying about they can run but can't hide is gonna
change to:

They ain't even got a place to run to anymore.


Best,

Greg







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                 Re: More Evidence Of ET Contac With Indian

From: Greg Boone Evolbaby.nul
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 10:33:06 EST
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 10:58:33 -0500
Subject: Re: More Evidence Of ET Contac With Indian


>Source: India Daily

>http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/12-19c-04.asp

>12-19-04

>More Evidence Of Extra Terrestrial Contacts With Indian
>Government And Military

>Juhi Singhal - Special Correspondent

This is neat that there're stories coming out of India but
they're the same stuff that comes out of the west.

Perhaps what some of you top Ufologists could do is just
petition the various governments to disclose their views on the
UFO situation. Don't presume they'll be part of this nonsensical
global conspiracy thing, perhaps they've viewpoints that they've
yet to express because no one has asked them politely.

All you need is just one official to say those magic words.

If you get two, then the pressure is on.


Best,

Greg







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                Re: Mexican AF UFO "A Squadron Of New Stealth

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 11:15:50 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:42:37 -0500
Subject: Re: Mexican AF UFO "A Squadron Of New Stealth


>From: Terry W. Colvin <fortean1.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 06:49:43 -0700
>Subject: Mexican AF UFO "A Squadron Of New Stealth Strike Craft"?

>From: "James Easton" <voyager.nul>
>Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 02:22:16 +0100
>Subject: skunk-works "a squadron of new stealth strike craft..."

>I wondered if anyone could please help with brief queries re the
>following article, which is presently receiving some media
>attention (alas, the 'UFO' element therein is inherent):

>'UFOs Gone Wild, Men From Mars Visit Mexico'
>by Charles R. Smith
>Thursday, May 13, 2004

This is an old story and it has been fairly well resolved to be
oil rig burn-off flares. Case closed. No need for weak IR
sources as the article describes in hope of explaining the
video.






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             Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 11:17:43 -0800
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:47:53 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies - Warren


>From: Josh Goldstein <lovolution.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 2:46:29 -1000
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 07:43:38 -0800
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

><snip>

>>Two points to make here; one, it is not necessary to have an ET
>>craft in one's possession to prove their are ET craft flying
>>around in our airspace; two, spearately, there is ample evidence
>>verifying the fact that "the powers-that-be have in fact
>>"recovered an ET craft."

><snip>

Happy Holidays Josh!

>Frank, can you clearly outline "ample evidence verifying the
>fact that the powers-that-be have recovered an ET craft"?

Yes I can Josh, but so can you... if it weren't "you" asking the
question, "I" would ask the opinion of the questioner about
UFOs; are he or she of the mind-set that indeed some UFOs are ET
craft?


Separately Josh, I'd like to extend a "virtual handshake" to you
and any veteran reading this; during this holiday season my
thoughts go out to the soldiers and their families of those who
are in, and or involved in the Iraq conflict. I am one who has
not become "calloused" to the terrible news that comes out of
Iraq on a weekly, and almost daily basis.

Obviously there are no words that can begin to quantify the
sacrifices being made today from those that wear the uniform,
and from those that have donned it in the past.

Respectfully,

Frank Warren

P.S. How's the Brookdale Lodge these days?








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                       Causality & Blind Science News

From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:24:29 +0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 22:03:22 -0500
Subject: Causality & Blind Science News


>From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
>To: UFO Updates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:31:17 +1100
>Subject: Re: Good News For Causality?

>From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
>To: UFO Updates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:41:13 +1100
>Subject: Re: Blind Faith In Human Science & Mathematics

Brett,

Attacking the messenger does _not_ disprove a message. So far
you've only produced hair-splitting quibbles and silly slurs.

Here's the message again - Technology works by 'suck it and see'
and is reality-based. "Science Theory" is concept-based (& ego-
based) and has always been wrong in the past and is wrong now.

Quote - "Whatever economic and human resources were made
available to Pythagoras for the purpose of investigating the
natural world... he would not have known what questions to ask,
nor could he have known. There is no reason to doubt that the
present state of affairs is any different." - that was John D.
Barrows in 'Impossibility - the Limits of Science and the
Science of Limits' (ISBN 0-09-977211-6). You might also check
Nigel Calder in "badsci.txt".

Science's record of wrong theories, both large (astrophysics)
and small (particle physics) is complete, spanning Ptolemaic
epicycles and Aristotle's four elements, all the way to today's
'impossible' solar systems (now being found) and the non-working
'standard model' (dependent on non-existent gluons and non-
discoverable 'Higg's bosons').

Please, no more kicking and screaming Brett. If you can't face
the music, quit the dance-hall.

Chorus - "Science has no grounds on which to affirm or deny
unknown phenomena, while it is so obviously befuddled by known
phenomena."

More evidence at:

http://www.perceptions.couk.com/blinded.html#furth

Cheers

Ray D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Perceptions" http://www.perceptions.couk.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~







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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Reason

From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:54:45 -0000
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 22:14:45 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Reason


>From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 16:49:42 +0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

<snip>

>The examples given earlier on this thread about circumstances
>in which scientists perhaps should be disaqualified, such as
>drug tests being performed by scientists associated with
>pharmaceutical companies, have a point. But that sort of thing
>goes on all the time in science, and normally is controlled for
>routinely by something called _peer review_. Also having
>abstracted many an article from scientific journals, the authors
>are required to report any potential conflicts of interest along
>with their findings. A failure to do so can cause a loud hue and
>cry by other watchdogs.

>If bad or self-serving science is done, when science is
>operating properly (not that it always does operate properly)
>the peers will be all over details of inappropriate methodology
>or erroneous data. And in extreme cases, the passionate
>`advocates' and passionate `debunkers' will keep an eye on each
>other, much as happens on this list! Good peer review is the
>bottom line. There is absolutely nothing wrong per se about
>scientists (people) holding opnions or having a strong interest
>in a subject. In fact, it is much to be desired. Otherwise
>science would end up being timid, homogenized mush.

I hate to sound a note of pessimism (again) but I think this
rather overstates the significance of peer review. I can't say
how it works in the physical sciences, but in the social
sciences, peer review is very much a hit-and-miss affair. It's
undoubtedly helpful in ensuring that methodology is tightened up
somewhat prior to publication, but it certainly doesn't
guarantee that rubbish won't find its way into print. Ask any
group of psychologists and they'll probably agree that roughly
50-75% of published psychological research is not worth the
paper it's printed on -- what they won't agree on, of course, is
which 50-75% that is.

In a sense, the real "peer review" comes after publication, in
which other researchers attempt to replicate the research or
offer critiques of its methodology. Out of this process, one
hopes, real understanding will emerge.

The problem with this is that, although many people don't like
to admit it, the process works much better in some disciplines
than others. It seems to work very well in the physical
sciences, but in the social sciences, the process never quite
seems to come together. There is probably not a single research
finding in the whole history of psychology, for example, which
can genuinely be called uncontroversial. I've suggested
elsewhere, that this can be regarded as a failure of "theoretical
convergence" - psychological theories are rarely if ever defined
with sufficient rigor to make clear and unambiguous predictions,
and the resulting elasticity (to use Peter Rogerson's phrase)
means the empirical data never get to exert any meaningful
selective pressure on them. The "theories" (if they can even be
called that) are always capable of mutating to accommodate any
additional data. It's also regrettably true that what is
presented as data in social science papers is almost always
subjected to varying degrees of arbitrary and subjective
interpretation.

The question is, does ufology resemble the physical sciences or
the social sciences? I'm afraid in my view, ufology is clearly
much more like psychology than it is like physics. Like the
social sciences, a lot of good work is being done at the level
of pure data-collection - also like the social sciences, it's
often very difficult to distinguish the good work from the bad,
because the reliability of any given piece of empirical work is
often impossible for the outsider to ascertain. And once again
like the social sciences, the various theoretical explanations
offered in ufology tend to be so diffuse that they don't make
any clear predictions. I'm afraid I really don't buy your test
of the ETH, for example - I don't doubt that if I browsed
through a half-dozen sci-fi stories I could find some reference
to an imaginary (and unfalsifiable) technology which would be
invisible to your array of detectors. What if alien spaceships
only ever come out of hyperspace to engage their wombat
synthesizer or whatever?

As a general rule, one should always try to specify any
hypothesis in the most general form allowed by the evidence
available - this is why I've always maintained that the ETH
should not incorporate any ad hoc assumptions about the
capabilities or otherwise of alien intelligence. Indefinite
elasticity tends to arise when it's unclear at what level of
generality a hypothesis is being specified.

Since I'm on the subject of methodology, one of the problems I
have with ufology as a relative outsider (I've never actually
investigated a UFO report and have little knowledge of any but a
handful of cases) is the apparent difficulty in obtaining
reliable, detailed raw data about any given case. I'm sure that
in a situation where most of the investigators know each other
it's relatively easy for them to ascertain what is and is not
reliable, but a scientific discipline should not really be
dependent on these sorts of personal relationships. Ideally one
would like as an outsider to have access to the greatest amount
of raw data obtained by means of some protocol whereby its
reliability can be ascertained. I emphasize that I'm talking
about _raw_ data, not interpreted or selected data. I'm sure
many people here will say that this actually happens, but I have
to say that from an outsider's point of view I don't think it
does.

Looking at this from the point of view of someone who used to be
a theoretician, I think that ufology - like the social sciences -
is not yet in a position where it can even construct useful
theories, let alone test them. I would want to see a much
greater emphasis on gathering the maximum amount of raw data, and
rather less on theorizing and evangelism.  I also have a
question for those who believe all the UFO problem needs for its
solution is more research funding. Can anyone say what, in terms
of detailed research design, they would spend this money on?
There must be quite a few people here who could write a grant
application for such funding, if it were ever actually become
available - it might be interesting, if only as an intellectual
exercise, to see what those grant applications might look like.

At this point, I'm afraid I may already have offended quite a
few people, so I'll stop. I'm going away on Wednesday, so my
contribution to this discussion is over until after the holidays
- Happy Holidays everyone.


Cathy








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   Dec > Dec 20

                   Indonesian Blasts Likely Meteor Shower

From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 16:30:31 -0800
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 22:25:34 -0500
Subject: Indonesian Blasts Likely Meteor Shower


Source: The Daily Times - Lahore, Pakistan

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_20-12-2004_pg4_5

12-21-04

Indonesian Blasts Likely Meteor Shower

JAKARTA: Several loud blasts believed to be caused by a meteor
shower echoed across the Indonesian capital Jakarta and nearby
towns early on Sunday, startling residents who reported seeing
flying objects in the sky.

Police said they had found no evidence that the blasts were
caused by bomb attacks. An official from the Indonesian space
centre LAPAN told the official Antara news agency the explosions
were likely to have been caused by a meteor shower. �It�s
suspected that a fireball originating from a big meteor entered
the earth�s atmosphere ... This created the explosion,� said
LAPAN space expert Thomas Djamaluddin. Policehad said they were
investigating the blasts. reuters







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               HBCCUFO Recently Reported Sightings - 12-20-04

From: Brian Vike - HBCC UFO Research <hbccufo.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 14:27:08 -0800
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 22:43:12 -0500
Subject: HBCCUFO Recently Reported Sightings - 12-20-04


HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings

Release Date: December 20 , 2004

Important notice from HBCC UFO Research. I am on a new host for
the website at a new web address.

Please bookmark:

http://www.hbccufo.org

There will be a re-direct from my old website address very soon.
But as it stands now HBCC UFO Research is now relocated to .org


Peterborough, Ontario Two - Four Oval Objects

Date:  Summer 1974
Time:  10:00 - 11:00 p.m.

Number of witnesses: 2
Number of objects: 2-4
Shape of objects: Oval-round.

Full Description of event/sighting: My cousin and I were walking
home from a friend's, when we reached the Stewart St. and
Townsend St area by the railroad tracks in what is roughly south
central Peterborough. My cousin (name removed) looked up and
said "Oh look".  When I looked up I saw 2 oval shaped bluish
objects traveling North in a zig zag pattern which I have never
seen before or since. When I looked up it was straight up, and I
followed these things to about a 50-60 degree angle into some
trees. It was less than 10 seconds from the time I saw them to
the time they disappeared.

They were incredibly fast. I saw jets in the same area years
later when my uncle lived in the same area that took at least
twice as much time to cover the same area. The most distinctive
thing about them was the zig zag motion of traveling. They
traveled in a "W" pattern, just left, right, left etc, amazing,
I new immediately that they were not anything I had heard about
and even at 13 I was well informed. When I asked my cousin what
she had saw she told me "I saw 4 UFO's that split up, 2 went
north 2 went east." (Name removed) would have been about 16-17
at the time. I've seen meteors and comets over the years but
nothing like this experience.

Additional Information:

Weather conditions were clear no clouds. No moon that I
remember. Not overcast or raining.

I spotted the UFO's, moving side by side, at approx a 50-65
degree angle, moving south to north. My cousin saw 4 all
together, they split and 2 went east and 2 went north. No sound.
 It was a quiet night and I have excellent hearing. No trail.

Best I can say is that they moved in a left to right fashion
very unusual, they moved in unison in the WWWWWW just back and
forth. They did not leave the straight line moving north but
they did move back and fourth.

Shape was oval/round, the oval was not elongated not perfectly
round either. Bluish in colour, texture unknown. Moving faster
than anything I have ever seen.

Distance would be difficult to guess.  They were high enough to
look smaller than a dime. That's 1 UFO smaller than a dime.
Not both UFO's smaller than a dime.

Again the most notable thing about them was the left to right
movement. I have seen other things in the sky, I have been
interested in astronomy for sometime and have seen many things
but nothing like this.

My cousin was the one that spotted them and I don't know which
way they came from when she picked them up but they moved from
South to North when I saw them.

There were no lights, portholes or anything I could see above
the disc, all I could see was from the bottom. But there was a
bluish light coming off of the bottom of the discs.

The area has no airport, it is outside of town on the South side
about 2-3 km. No military base. No research facilities that I
know of. The only notable feature would be the General Electric
Factory 1 block away. I worked at this factory for 2 years and I
don't know of any research being done there. The most notable
thing they do there is make nuclear reactor fuel pellets for the
Candu reactors and large engines for airplanes like the Dash 7
and 8's. They also make large generators for large electrical
plants around the world. And I'm pretty sure they weren't making
UFO's in the basement at least they never let me ride in one.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

------------------

UFO Outside Of Smithers, B.C. On The Babine Lake Road

Date:  Late Fall 2003
Time:  Evening

A witness was telling be that his friend had been out Bow
hunting for Moose along the Babine Lake Road. His friend did
shoot at a Moose and the fellow thought he had hit it. The
witnesses friend came back home and got his friend and both
jumped into the truck and headed back out on the Babine Lake
Road to where the Moose would have been.

Now seeing it was after dark when driving back out the witness I
talked with said he noticed a couple of bright stars off to his
right hand side (east) and another, much brighter and larger
which appeared to be alot lower down in the sky. They were
thinking that the lower star may just have been a planet at that
time. So they continued driving along, of course his friend is
excited and talking about possibly getting his Moose, at the
same time the his friend is watching this bright object which he
thought to be a planet.

He started thinking about the brightness and size believing what
he was observing was a little weird. At the time this bright
object sat motionless and was a long ways away from the two men
in the truck and he figures he had been watching it for
approximately 3 minutes now. All of a sudden this bright/large
light in the sky from a dead stop just streaked across the night
sky in a split second and they both lost sight of it due to the
mountain blocking their view.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

-----------------

Kaufman County, Texas Rod ?

Date:  November 7, 2004
Time:  3:00 p.m.

Hi Brian,

I read an article on the Ufocasebook site about the Albany
Airport Unknown Object,dated 10-20-2002. I don't know if you're
familiar with that or not. The picture the news reporter took
shows a straight rod with two offset vertical rods or prongs on
either end. On 11-04-2004 and approximately 3:00 p.m., I was
taping a jet when an object zoomed across the viewfinder. I
thought at the time it was probably a bird or a bug. When I
later downloaded it, I saw what I assumed was a "rod" that a lot
of other people have captured on film. As long as I have been
skywatching and taping things, this was my very first one, so I
decided to keep it. As soon as I saw the Albany Object, I knew I
had a object similar that I had caught. The only difference I
see in the Albany Object and mine is the Albany Object picture
shows both offset prongs on either ends and mine shows only one
set on either end at a time, like they are 45 degrees off from
each other, it has to be spinning if this is true. To my
surprise today, I was on Rense and browsing the Filer's Files
and George Ritter has a similar one he had caught. I thought I'd
better get this one to you before it got to be old news, lol.
I'm sending you grabs and clip.

Thank you to the witness for the report, pictures and video
footage.

Video clip Kaufman County, Texas Rod ? - Footage  33.4 kb. Video
clip can be found at:

http://www.hbccufo.org/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=3D2147

---------------------

New Jersey Black Triangle Close Up Sighting

Date:  November 26, 2004
Time:  Approx: 2:15 a.m.

I took a telephone call from two witnesses who described seeing
a black triangular craft In New Jersey.

The two witness had left the movies and were driving towards
home when they spotted a black triangular craft in the distance.
What actually brought their attention to the object was seeing a
bright elongated light coming towards them in the distance. They
thought it looked a little out of place due to the low altitude
of the craft, which they thought was an airplane. The object was
traveling from north to south on a slight angle dropping
downward. One of the witnesses said it looked like a comet or
missile dropping out of the sky. There was no trail or tail
noticed following the object. Just a very bright elongated
light. Due to the whole event looking out of the norm the driver
of the car pulled off of the road and into a parking lot so they
could sit and watch this event unfold.

With their car is stopped and everyone observing the object, it
was at this point, which was close to them the craft came to a
stop and hovered over some power-lines. One of the ladies got
very frightened as this object was rather close and just sitting
in the sky over the power-lines moving slightly from side to
side. There were lights on each of the points of the triangle
which pulsated rather quickly. They were also able to see the
silhouette of the craft against the clear night's sky. It also
was reported that the object was just above the trees and power-
line, which would have been unusually low for a normal aircraft.
Seeing this was becoming nerve rattling the passenger told the
driver to get the car going as the passenger was terrified at
what they were watching and of course didn't know if something
bad might come out of this experience. While they were in the
parking lot the craft was only a short distance away from them,
as the left the lot and back onto the road they said the object
had now moved to the opposite side it was on and the ladies
guessed it was approximately 500 feet away from them at this
point and heading towards where the ladies had just come from.
The object was estimated to be the size of a normal sized car.

The entire sighting lasted for approximately 4 minutes before
they finally lost sight of it. There was not a sound coming from
it.

The night was reported to be cool and the skies clear.

Thank you to the witnesses for the report.

------------------

Telkwa, British Columbia Elongated Bright Craft

Date:  December 11, 2004 Time:  8:45 a.m.

I returned the witnesses call the following day that he had the
sighting and he went on to explain what is was he witnessed
early that morning on December 11, 2004.

The fellow said he had just woken up and looked out his bedroom
window which faces Tyhee Lake and could see the sun had already
been up for a short time. The clouds that were in the sky were
lit up the different colors of orange and pinks which gave a
spectacular view for him. He then noticed underneath the clouds
an extremely bright light which looked out of the norm, so he
watched. Seeing it was strange looking, he called to his wife
who was still in bed to come and look at this weird sight.

As he observed the object he started thinking it was maybe a jet
aircraft and the sun was shinning on it which made it appear
alot brighter than it should have been. The witness thought
quickly and went and grabbed his binoculars which would enable
him to get a much better view of this craft.

Now looking through the binoculars he determined it certainly
wasn't a jet, although he did say it was hard to see what it was
as he still wasn't able to define any features to it other than
this elongated bright light.

The man was able to watch and film the object for approximately
5 minutes before it dropped out of sight due to one of the local
mountains blocking his view of it. He described the object as
being elongated as for it's shape, or like a long cigar. Plus it
was much brighter than the clouds which had the sun shinning on
them. The witness said you can clearly see that the object is
much lower and underneath the clouds that were present that day.

I will be going out to visit the gentleman to have a look at the
video footage.

Thank you to the witness for this report.

-----------------------

Mille Lacs County,  Minnesota Objects Hovering Over Field

Date:  December 15, 2004
Time:  7:00 p.m.

HBCC UFO Research Note: The names in this report have been
changed to protect the witnesses privacy. Also HBCC UFO Research
is looking for anyone else who may have witnessed this event on
the evening stated in the date above. Or any other time around
this time frame.

Message: I have a sketch to go along with this report - I can
email it later I guess!  This is a report of my 19 year old son,
Carl.

It was on December 15, 2004 at 7:00 p.m., Carl and a friend Bill
were at Barry's house on county road 101 between County roads 23
to the south and 11 to the West. (Mille Lacs County,  Minnesota)

They saw a lot of lights in a field- thought at first it's just
tractors harvesting. Then they looked more- saying- tractors
don't have that many lights... it looks like.. fire trucks? But
what are fire trucks doing in a field? They drove over to look,
on county Road 101...

Carl said they were "freaking out" and looked at each other.. "
Are We Nuts ? Holy Crap that's .. what is that ?" They saw two
crafts, one higher than another, hovering at about tree top
level. They said they were listening out open windows and didn't
hear anything either.

They described the crafts from the side they saw as four-sided,
about 30 feet long. Two blue lights on top, going on and off
slowly. Green lights along the sides, flashing fast. Two bright,
bright lights at the ends on the bottom and a soft "reddish"
"sort of glow" coming from the center bottom. Oh and the craft
itself was "dark grey".

Carl and Barry said they were approximately 100 feet away, they
didn't know what to think. Carl turned the truck so the head
lights would try to shine on the crafts.... and that is when
they took off fast,  without turning one way or the other- just
took off right above tree-top level heading north.  Carl and
Barry said they drove 90 mph down 101 but the things were "long
gone".

Carl raced home to tell me since I have talked about UFOs before
and he never ever thought there was such things.

Diagram posted to site:

http://www.hbccufo.org/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=3D2148

Thank you to the witness for the report and diagram.

---------------------------

Bloomington Indiana Unknown Object

Date:  December 16, 2004
Time:  Daytime ?

Hello Brian..

I got a new digital camera 2 days ago and was playing around
taking shots while driving to town, well I uploaded the pictures
onto the pc this morning.. and was going delete this but a small
speck caught my eye, so I enlarged and enhanced the image and
what you see attached is what I caught, which isn't a plane I
can tell you that, and it isn't a bird.

Have a good holiday and enjoy. Do with it as you like, anything
I send is yours to do with whatever. Post it, keep it, throw
them out as I'm open in all this and with winter coming UFO
activity really picks up around here so I'll be sending a lot!

Thank you to the witness for the report and photo.

Photo can be viewed at:

http://www.hbccufo.org/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=3D2149

--------------------------

Telkwa, British Columbia Dark Object With Bright Trail Following

Date:  December 16, 2004
Time:  11:00 p.m.

I returned a telephone call to a gentleman by the name of Gordon
as he wanted to report what he witnessed on December 16, 2004 at
11:00 p.m. out of Telkwa, B.C. Actually Gordon was one of many
witnesses who reported an amazing object that flew low through
the Bulkley Valley back on July 29, 2003. That case turned out
to be a major story both for myself and the newspaper out of
Smithers, B.C.

Anyway, on December 16, 2004 Gordon was outside at his home
looking up when he spotted what appeared to be a long narrow
tail of light which had some color to it coming from the north.
At the front of the tail he was able to see a large dark object
with this tail following behind heading towards the south. He
reason why he was able to see the dark object was due to the
brightness of the starlit night and the dark object passing in
front of the heavens.

As he watched the object, which moved extremely fast he was able
to observe it disappear or burn out somewhere roughly over the
Houston area he figures. The total amount of time for this
sighting was approximately 2 to 3 seconds at tops.

Gordon took a "guess" as to the altitude of the object, he felt
it was rather high up, maybe some where's in the neighborhood of
where the commercial airlines would fly. He also mentioned that
the object traveled horizontally.

Thank you to Gordon for this report.

------------------

Montreal, North Quebec 3 Colored Beams Flashing

Date:  December 17, 2004
Time:  5:00 a.m.

Hi...my name is (name removed) from Montreal, North Quebec, I am
presently seeing 3 colored beams flashing towards the sky from
my apartment window...they must be no further than 5 km away, I
cannot see from where the beams start as there houses that are
in the way, but I a can notice that the base of the beam is
pretty intense. The brightest beam is yellow and flashes pretty
strait up in sky. There are about 3 other colored beams on the
right and left of the bright yellow beam, but they are less
brighter. There is a blue and green and maybe a faded red. I
have never seen anything like this before especially that
bright, and straight up motionless..and have never seen anything
in that direction like that either. This is the first time. I
doubt it would be some kind of publicity or attraction light
because earlier in the evening there was no lights there and its
5:00 a.m. No use to publicize anything in sky at this
time.....anyways....just felt I needed to report this unusual
sighting.....very strange....please keep me posted if you might
have any clue or need any additional help from me.

Thank you to the witness for the report.

Brian Vike, Director HBCC UFO Research Home - Phone 250 845 2189
email: hbccufo.nul Website: http://www.hbccufo.org  HBCC
UFO RESEARCH Newsletter At:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HBCC_UFO_Newsletter/

HBCC UFO Research, Box 1091 Houston, British Columbia, Canada -
 VOJ 1ZO

--------------------

Interesting Books

The Best of Sasquatch/Bigfoot

PR Highlights: Combined Works of John Green

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surrounding the recent controversies of the claims of fraud by
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John Green is the pre-eminent authority on the fascinating
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Having been a newspaperman of more than 45 years experience, he
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Language: English

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-----------------------------

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PR Highlights: Trade Edition

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Description: Meet the Sasquatch is a milestone in the
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While the last chapter on sasquatch has yet to be written, here
is the full story of what we know about the creature to date.
The level and quality of research and photographic coverage will
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Purchase Details: Meet the Sasquatch:
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--------------------
UFO Defense Tactics: Weather Shield to Chemtrails - By: Johnstone, A. K

Dr. Johnstone's book was selected by The Anomalous Book List, as
one of the ten best UFO books of 2002.

Description: The existence of UFOs is a phenomenon that
intrigues and captivates, yet it generates more skepticism than
acceptance. Witnesses of unconventional craft are often
disbelieved and even ridiculed. Belief in the existence of UFOs
is obviously not yet mainstream, but that may one day change.
Over the past few decades, reports of UFO sightings have
dramatically increased in North America. Further, these
sightings have been observed to be more blatant and even
menacing. Some reports even imply that these craft are
monitoring our planet.

Interestingly, many of these sightings have taken place over
military bases. In UFO Weather Shield, A.K. Johnstone, PhD.,
explores the details of numerous sightings from a scientific
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atmosphere? Take a look at the evidence.

To purchase the book, please visit:
http://www.hbccufo.org/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=3D1934






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   Dec > Dec 20

               LWB's First Amendment Violation By Marine Corps

From: Larry W. Bryant <overtci.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:37:37 -0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 22:55:53 -0500
Subject: LWB's First Amendment Violation By Marine Corps


Note: The text of the Inspector General's Office U. S. Marine
Corps reply to my complaint of Nov. 14, 2004, below, may indeed
spell "case closed" for USMC I.G. purposes, but it also opens
wide the litigation gates for my next round with Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld. At least the USMC hierarchy -  unlike, say,
the maternalistic ones at certain Army/USAF installations - has
been man enough to cite chapter- and-verse of the governing
regulation that (allegedly) supports this unwise and
unconstitutional decision. Stay tuned for yet another chapter in
"Bryant's 'Bleak House'".

---

From: Col. M. W. McErlean
      Director, Assistance and Investigations Division
      U. S. Marine Corps Headquarters' Inspector General's Office
      Washington, DC 20380-0001

To:   Larry W. Bryant

Date: December 8, 2004


Dear Mr. Bryant:

This letter responds to your correspondence with the office of
the Inspector General for Marine Corps Matters. You alleged
that the Public Affairs Office at Marine Corps Base Quantico
improperly refused your request to publish a classified ad
titled "Blow the Whistle in [sic] Iraqnam's Battle-of-Baghdad
Cover-up!"

Investigators affiliated with this office reviewed your
complaint as well as the applicable directives. Pursuant to
advice by legal counsel, the office of the Inspector General for
Marine Corps Matters regrets to inform you that it supports the
decision to deny your ad to the "Sentry" newspaper for the
following reasons:

a) DoD Instruction 5129 [the correct number is 5120.4  -  LWB]
dated June 16, 1997, paragraph 4.2 states that "news coverage
and other editorial content in the DoD publications shall be
factual and objective. News and headlines shall be selected
using the dictates of good taste. Morbid, sensational, or
alarming details not essential to factual reporting shall be
avoided."

b) Paragraph 4.11 states that "DoD publication[s] shall not
contain campaign news, partisan discussions, cartoons,
editorials, or commentaries dealing with political campaigns,
candidates, issues, or commentaries dealing with political
campaigns, candidates, issues [sic], or which advocate lobbying
elected officials on specific issues."

Thank you very much for bringing this matter to our attention.
Unfortunately, after a careful review of the instructions
designed to maintain the integrity of all armed forces
publications we find no wrongdoing by the Public Affairs Office,
Marine Corps Base Quantico.

Finally, this letter is to advise you that the Office of the
Inspector General for Marine Corps Matters considers this case
closed.









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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 20

                           The Strangest UFO File?

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 23:10:13 -0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 23:10:13 -0500
Subject: The Strangest UFO File?





Source: Phenomena Magazine

http://www.phenomenamagazine.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0&this_cat=Area+51&actio
n=page&obj_id=2142

12-20-04


The Strangest UFO File?

UFOs in the Archives
Military Documents On Amazing UFO Encounter

By: Nick Redfern
Phenomena US Editor in Chief

[More at link above]







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   Dec > Dec 21

                NWSURC Recently Reported Sightings - 12-20-04

From: Barb Campbell <nwsurc.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 22:31:42 -0500 (EST)
Fwd Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 06:24:28 -0500
Subject: NWSURC Recently Reported Sightings - 12-20-04


Northwest Saskatchewan UFO Research Center (NWSURC)

Strange Speck In Saskatoon Sky May Have Military Connection

Date: December 13, 2004
Time: day time
Location: Saskatoon, SK
Objects: 1
Witnesses: 1

Report received via email:

I have attached three JPEG photos to this message. I hate the
way people send in ultra-compressed images. The resulting losses
make the image useless for viewing, much less analysis. The
attached images are uncompressed. The files are a little larger,
but the images are much clearer. I hope you don't mind.

Earlier this year, I acquired a 4.5 x 6 cm medium format camera
which I have been experimenting with. The quality of the images
is astounding. I use Kodak Professional film with extremely fine
grain. It'll be years before digital can catch up to the
resolution that's possible with medium format films. I'm very
fussy when it comes to my photos and especially the care of my
negatives and transparencies. I HATE it when something spoils an
image, such as a scratch or dust. When scanning, I carefully
blow the dust off with compressed air, augmented with a blower
brush if needed. I scan on a CanoScan 9900F. The scanner is
capable of "removing" dust and scratches. I believe I read
somewhere that it does this by making one pass over the image
with visible light then a second pass using infrared light. This
is a much more accurate and effective method than software-only
dust-and-scratch filters applied to photos after scanning.

So, here's what's kept me up for the past four hours: a tiny
little "speck" that I couldn't get off one frame out of a series
shot on December 13. On closer examination, I think it's
something I photographed, but I can't figure out what it might
be. You might find it interesting.

Basic technical data: Images were shot on Kodak E100S
Professional film. Exposure was calculated by incident light
meter. Some shots were bracketed one stop. Developing at a
professional photo lab was completed the day after the photos
were taken. Each 4.5 x 6 frame was scanned at 1500 dpi, 16 bits
per channel, with "normal" dust and scratch removal and grain
correction, and with no "unsharp mask" (most digital cameras and
scanners use unsharp mask by default to sharpen images, but this
process can add artifacts to the image). Raw scans were imported
into Photoshop 6.0 where image levels were set to match the
original transparency. In general, this meant setting the black
point to the level of the unexposed film outside the image area.
In some images, but not the ones attached, the white point was
set by adjusting the sliders in the image histogram. Images were
saved as TIFF, 16-bit/channel, 1500 dpi. For the purposes of
sending the images to you, the TIFF images were downsampled to 8
bits per channel, exported to PNG, then opened in Fireworks 3.0.
The notes were added, then the images were exported to JPEG,
maximum quality (no compression). There would be some losses in
the JPEG as compared to the TIFF images, but the smaller JPEG
images were easier to send to you and the differences are hardly
noticeable compared to the original. Additional technical data
specific to each image attached is provided in the following
paragraphs.

I tried everything to get rid of that speck. I blew compressed
air at it. I used the brush. I examined it carefully with a
lupe, then looked again with horizontal lighting. The dust
particles stood out in sharp relief from the film, but it has
become apparent that the "speck" is part of the image. It's too
big to be film grain. It appears to be a three-dimensional
object.

The first image, 2004-12-13-0041x1500.jpg, is the image that
contains the annoying "speck". I circled it near the top. The
image was reduced to 25% of its original size to create a
manageable file size for transmitting.

The second image, 2004-12-13-0041x3000.jpg, is a scan of the
portion of the frame containing the "speck". You can see the top
and left side of the frame in the image. The scan is 3000 dpi,
close to the maximum scan that can be done with the dust and
scratch correction. I wanted to keep the dust and scratch
correction in place so that I could look more closely at the
speck. If it were something on the surface of the film, the
scanner should have removed it.

The third image, 2004-12-13-0041x9600.jpg, is a scan of the
smallest area possible at the highest resolution possible for
this scanner (9600 dpi). For reference, the top of the frame is
visible in the image. At this resolution, there is no dust and
scratch correction and no grain correction. Small dust particles
are clearly visible throughout the image. Here is where it gets
interesting. Note that the shape and dimensions of the "speck".
They are the same as in the previous scans. If it were dust, the
scanning software should have made some attempt to "see" through
it in previous scans and the difference would have been apparent
in this scan. Note carefully the colour of the dust and lint on
the image, then look at the "speck". The "speck" has an
observable magenta cast to it, whereas the dust particles do not
(this is even more noticeable in the TIFF images). A slight
magenta colour cast is typical of Kodak E series films. Also,
each dust particle appears to have a slight halo around it (this
is also more noticeable in the TIFF images), the result of light
scatter from the scanner's lamp. This indicates that the "speck"
is something that was photographed when the picture was taken.
The "speck" appears to be three-dimensional, possibly smooth and
rounded. The dust particles can be seen to be irregularly
shaped.

I have no idea what this is, but it's not a plane or a bird. It
may possibly be an artifact of the film. I just looked at some
of the other scans from that roll of film. I made a total of
seven shots from this location, then moved on to another
location. Not all seven images are identical. There are four
separate compositions among the seven images. I then moved to
another location and about five to ten minutes later took some
shot facing the same direction. Image #0041 is the first in the
series, which is the image I've sent you. I also scanned #0044
and #0045, but did not scan #0042 through #0043. The "speck", or
one like it, appears in all three of the scanned images. In each
subsequent image, it appears to be lower and to the right of its
position in the preceding image. I will have to try scanning
them at higher resolutions, but I'm too tired to do that now.

All this trouble for a little speck. Sheesh!

Thank you to the witness.

Barb's note: I sent the above three images to Linda Moore of
Rogue Sighting to have them analyzed. And as the witness
suspects, the speck in question is a three dimensional object.
The final result found below is a possible explanation of what
the speck could be.

View all three images, results and possible explanation at:

http://www.nwsurc.com/ssr-04-20.htm

---

Formation of Objects Captured on Photo in Hazelton

Date: Summer 2000
Time: day time
Location: Hazelton BC
Objects: 4 in formation

Report from Barb Campbell:

I believe the following photograph was taken in the summer of
2000. My husband and I were staying in the local RV park in
Hazelton BC. We had rented a motorhome from a local resident in
Houston, where we lived.

I hadn't noticed until tonight. There is something in the sky on
the left of the photo near the tip of the fluffiest cloud. Click
on the image to view large version.

The original photo the object appears much clearer than on this
scanned image. I will circle the area. Unfortunately the scanned
image is not as clear as the original photo that I have in my
hand.

Out of curiosity, I emailed a copy to Linda Moore of Rogue
Sighting. The following is the results of what she found:

View result and photograph in question at:

http://www.nwsurc.com/Hazelton2000.htm

The object is actually a formation or cluster of four rounded or
sphere shaped objects.

Now I know there weren't any helicopters flying around or planes
as we would have heard them. The reason I took that photo was
because I wanted to capture the image of the mountains.

The photo below is the rented motorhome in the RV park in
Hazelton. I actually stood in front of it to take that picture
of the mountains. The camaro is ours. My husband is sitting at
the table and that was our little dog named Angel, before she
passed away of old age.

Copy of report forwarded to Brian Vike of HBCC UFO Research

---

Between Smithers & Hazelton
Night Turns To Day

Some time between 1992 and 1993, my former husband and I were
getting ready to climb into bed. It must have been pretty close to
midnight. I can't remember who turned the light out, but one of us
did. We were just about to get into bed when suddenly the night
turned to daylight through our window. We must of looked like a
couple of deer starring into headlights. After 30 seconds or so, it
turned off and all was dark again. It was incredible! I can't
remember who he phoned but they told him that it was probably a
meteor as there was a meteor shower going on. Yeah right. Way out in
the bush and level to our window and as bright as it was.

Above report was forwarded to Brian Vike of HBCC UFO Research

---

New to NWSURC

The Chamber

Review of UFO information currently found on the
Internet. Information found to be highly misleading and false
will be tossed in the trash. Information found to be reliable
will be added to the recommended list and will be given a rating
out of five stars. Five stars gives the information the highest
recommendation.

(Ratings will only take place once material has been found to be
reliable)

With all the information floating around out there, the Chamber
can serve to provide individuals seeking UFO information, a
reliable list decided by some of the top minds in the UFO field
today. Credit is given to individuals who particpate, so people
will know if the source of the decision is credible or not.

This all started with the recent question I asked in UFO Updates
about the Nevada US-Alien Facility Brief, in which Mr Bill
Hamilton and Mr Stanton Friedman kindly replied to.

The information currently in review is still the same brief.
Anyone wishing to make a comment should visit the link below. I
will include the next piece of material up for review in the
next NWSURC report.

The Chamber counts on your participation for its success. I hope
The Chamber will be useful for someone down the road and I thank
you in advance!

http://www.nwsurc.com/the-chamber.htm

---

Barb Campbell, NWSURC
Box 263
Maidstone SK S0M 1M0
Ph:(306)893-4009
Northwest Saskatchewan UFO Research Center (NWSURC)
E-mail: contactus.nul
E-mail: sighting.nul
Web: http://www.nwsurc.com
Member of UFORA Research Alliance



Member of UFORA Research Alliance








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   Dec > Dec 21

              Re: The Night Aliens Called On Lennon - Guenther

From: Daniel Guenther <daniel_g.nul-online.de>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 02:49:52 +0100
Fwd Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 06:28:02 -0500
Subject: Re: The Night Aliens Called On Lennon - Guenther


>Source: The Telegraph - London

>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/12/08/ftgeller08.xml

>12-07-04

>The Night Aliens Called On Lennon

Strange Egg... Indeed


Daniel G.

--
JTC - UFO sightings database
http://www.ufodb.net
JTC - UFO sightings database Forums
http://www.ufodb.net/forums








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                         The 'Flying Saucer' Dilemma

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 23:09:10 -0500
Fwd Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 06:30:59 -0500
Subject: The 'Flying Saucer' Dilemma


While in high school, many moons ago, a hypnotist was engaged
for an assembly.

He did the usual entertaining things with volunteer students -
making them cluck like a chicken or raise their arms but not
able to lower them. And at one point he told a batch of kids on
the stage that they were seeing a flying saucer. (This was 1955-
56.)

Pandemonium took hold of the stage and each of the 10 (or so)
hypnotized kids became hysterically distraught: some screamed,
some ran about the stage in fits of paroxysm, and one young
woman in the bleachers had an epileptic fit because of the hub-
bub.

It took the hypnotist several minutes to regain order, and the
assembly was cancelled forthwith so I didn't get to see what the
ultimate outcome was.

My point? That there was (and is?) an ingrained fear of that
which UFOs represent. Thus, it seems that the study of the
phenomenon - phenomena is better perhaps - would include the
nuts and bolts approach, the psychological approach, the
mythological approach, the amorphous (or quantum) approach - the
things acting like quantum artifacts, as they are imagined by
quantum theorists, and a few other approaches.

Ufology (a term that rankles) needs various disciplines, just as
science and other enterprises need segmented disciplines, else
the studies get bogged down by all the ramifications and
permutations of a generalized approach.

And the great discoveries, talked about by many here at UFO
UpDates, have often come about by some kind of epiphany, not a
grunt process of trial and error experimentation.....the great
discoveries mind you.

We as UFO fanatics get sidetracked by argumentation which is
often self-aggrandizing....who knows more than whom, or who is
the better debater, and so on..

The old UFO stories have been mined for gold to the point that
little or nothing in them has value. A new paradigmatic is
needed...a new epiphany as it were.

Is that possible?


Rich Reynolds








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                               Merry Christmas

From: Philip Mantle <philip.nul>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:50:40 -0000
Fwd Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 06:33:56 -0500
Subject: Merry Christmas



Here's wishing you all the very best for the festive seasoon and
hoping that 2005 brings good health, peace and prosperity to
all.

Regards,

Philip Mantle

---

The X-Mas Files
by Frank Cammuso and Hart Seely

57 Elm Street
Bethlehem, Pa.
11:51 P.M., December 24Th

We're too late! It's already been here. Mulder, I hope you know
what you're doing.

Look, Scully, just like the other homes: Douglas fir, truncated,
mounted, transformed into a shrine; halls decked with boughs of
holly; stockings hung by the chimney, with care.

You really think someone's been here?

Someone, or something.

Mulder, over here -- it's a fruitcake.

Don't touch it! Those things can be lethal.

It's O.K. There's a note attached: "Gonna find out who's naughty
and nice."

It's judging them, Scully. It's making a list.

Who? What are you talking about?

Ancient mythology tells of an obese humanoid entity who could
travel at great speed in a craft powered by antlered servants.
Once each year, near the winter solstice, this creature is said
to descend from the heavens to reward its followers and punish
disbelievers with jagged chunks of anthracite.

But that's legend, Mulder -- a story told by parents to frighten
children. Surely you don't believe it?

Something was here tonight, Scully. Check out the bite marks on
this gingerbread man. Whatever tore through this plate of
cookies was massive -- and in a hurry.

It left crumbs everywhere. And look, Mulder, this milk glass has
been completely drained.

It gorged itself, Scully. It fed without remorse.

But why would they leave it milk and cookies?

Appeasement. Tonight is the Eve, and nothing can stop its
wielding.

But if this thing does exist, how did it get in? The doors and
windows were locked. There's no sign of forced entry.

Unless I miss my guess, it came through the fireplace.

Wait a minute, Mulder. If you're saying some huge creature
landed on the roof and came down this chimney! You're crazy. The
flue is barely six inches wide. Nothing could get down there.

But what if it could alter its shape, move in all directions at
once?

You mean, like a bowl full of jelly?

Exactly. Scully, I've never told anyone this, but when I was a
child my home was visited. I saw the creature. It had long white
shanks of fur surrounding its ruddy, misshapen head. Its bloated
torso was red and white. I'll never forget the horror. I turned
away, and when I looked back it had somehow taken on the facial
features of my father.

Impossible.

I know what I saw. And that night it read my mind. It brought me
a Mr. Potato Head, Scully. It knew that I wanted a Mr. Potato
Head!

I'm sorry, Mulder, but you're asking me to disregard the laws of
physics. You want me to believe in some supernatural being who
soars across the skies and brings gifts to good little girls and
boys. Listen to what you're saying. Do you understand the
repercussions? If this gets out, they'll close the X-Files.

Scully, listen to me: It knows when you're sleeping. It knows
when you're awake.

But we have no proof.

Last year, on this exact date, SETI radio telescopes detected
bogeys in the airspace over twenty-seven states. The White House
ordered a Condition Red.

But that was a meteor shower.

Officially. Two days ago, eight prized Scandinavian reindeer
vanished from the National Zoo, in Washington, D.C. Nobody --
 not even the zoo keeper -- was told about it. The government
doesn't want people to know about Project Kringle. They fear
that if this thing is proved to exist the public will stop
spending half its annual income in a holiday shopping frenzy.
Retail markets will collapse. Scully, they cannot let the world
believe this creature lives. There's too much at stake. They'll
do whatever it takes to insure another silent night.

Mulder, I...

Sh-h-h. Do you hear what I hear?
On the roof. It sounds like a clatter.

The truth is up there. Let's see what's the matter.

Tune in next year to see what they found!








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                            New UFO Search Engine

From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 03:32:30 -0800
Fwd Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 06:36:54 -0500
Subject: New UFO Search Engine


Hello all:

Something new: The innovative upstart search engine Gigablast
has rolled out what they call a "roll-your-own search engine"!

I jumped right on that, and put up a page that calls up a UFO
Specific search. Here is my first stab at it:

http://www.larryhatch.net/GIGAUFO.html

Please try it out.

What I do is select a list of websites, starting with my own of
course, and including the UFO UpDates List Archive.

If there are archives online for Projects 1947 and 1954, please
advise URLs, and I will immediately put those in too.

Since list archives contain input of all types, it will include
things I might not care for, but that's life.

I also put in my favorite and most recommended websites, but I'm
only allowed a limited number of those .. mostly resources I
link to already.

One advantage is that you no longer need to type in "UFO
Catalog" to get a catalog of UFOs, just type Catalog. Bingo! Try
it.

Another advantage is the exclusion of literally millions of
really crappy UFO sites. You should see relatively few grey
aliens, and less creepy music etc.

Put in your favorite terms, and let me know what you think of
the results returned. I'm still tinkering with it.


Best wishes

- Larry Hatch









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                     Re: The Strangest UFO File? - Hall

From: Richard Hall <hallrichard99.nul>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 14:42:30 +0000
Fwd Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:02:37 -0500
Subject: Re: The Strangest UFO File? - Hall


>From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>To: <- UFO UpDates Subscribers ->
>Subject: UFO UpDate: The Strangest UFO File?
>Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 23:08:10 -0500

>Source: Phenomena Magazine

>http://www.phenomenamagazine.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=3D0&this_cat=3DArea=
+51&action=3Dpage&obj_id=3D2142

>12-20-04

>The Strangest UFO File?

>UFOs in the Archives
>Military Documents On Amazing UFO Encounter

>By: Nick Redfern
>Phenomena US Editor in Chief

<snip>

>Without doubt the most unusual report (in my opinion, at least)
>I ever came across at the National Archive (formerly the Public
>Record Office) at Kew, England, surfaced in 1999. It concerns an
>incident that dated from 1966 and that originated with the
>British Royal Air Force's Provost and Security Services -- an
>elite arm of the RAF that until 1998 had its headquarters at a
>British RAF base named Rudloe Manor, and that has for many years
>been the alleged central hub for classified, official UFO
>investigations.

>In a painstakingly-detailed report, one Corporal R.A. Rickwood
>of the P&SS Special Investigation Section, related to his
>superiors the facts:

>"On 10th November 1966 a telephone message was received from
>Flight Lieutenant Williams, RAF Shawbury, reporting that a Mrs.
>Foulkes of [Address of the witness] Shrewsbury, had complained
>that he daughter had been frightened by an object in the sky
>whilst she had been driving along the A5 road near Great Ness at
>2355 hours on 8th November 1966. This object had emitted
>brilliant lights and radiation beams. On arriving home her
>daughter had been in a distressed condition and she had
>discovered marks on the car, which she considered were burn
>marks.

>"On 14th November 1966, Miss Diane Foulkes, aged 22 years, a
>typist employed in Shrewsbury was seen at her home in the
>presence of her parents. She stated that she had received a
>letter dated 11th November 1966 from RAF Shawbury signed by a
>Flight Lieutenant Penny informing her that no service aircraft
>had been flying in that area at the time of the incident. She
>was now satisfied that the incident was in no way connected with
>the Royal Air Force or the Armed Forces. She then went on to
>relate her experiences connected with this enquiry. There had
>been two similar incidents. The first occurred two years ago in
>November 1964, when she had been driving from Shrewsbury to her
>home along the A5 road. This was at about 0200 hours as she
>neared the Montford Bridge over the River Severn. Approximately
>midway between Shrewsbury and Great Ness a brightly lit circular
>object appeared in the sky above her car. She had been
>frightened and had accelerated along the road. The object had
>kept pace with her remaining at the same height until she
>arrived home. She had told her mother and father who also
>watched the object. She described the object as an especially
>bright light in the sky which remained stationary due west from
>their home for about half an hour. It had then rapidly
>diminished in size and they assumed it had accelerated away from
>them. No sound was heard from the object. The light was yellow
>in colour and became red as it diminished.

>"The second incident occurred on the 8th November 1966 at 2355
>hours and again whilst she was returning from Shrewsbury on the
>same road. The object had again appeared at Montford Bridge but
>this time it was much lower in the sky and on the north side of
>the road. On this occasion she could see rays of light shooting
>from the object which had again appeared to keep station with
>her car until she arrived home. At one time during the journey
>the object travelled near her and the rays seemed to come
>towards the right hand side of her car. She felt a bump against
>that side as if they had struck it. At this moment she felt as
>if she had received an electric shock and had felt a severe pain
>in her neck. The left-hand side headlight of the car also went
>out. This made her extremely frightened. When she got home she
>felt very ill and had complained to her parents. The object
>again remained stationary in the sky north of her home and had
>not been seen by her parents. They had noticed it for a short
>time before going inside her home. There had been no sign of the
>object on the following morning.

>"Miss Foulkes' parents confirmed seeing an object in the sky on
>both occasions as described by their daughter and agreed with
>her descriptions of these.

>"Miss Foulkes further stated that she believed that the objects
>could be associated with a Mr Griffin who lived in the area and
>who is reputed to have made contact with these objects and
>actually entered one and met one of the occupants. He is also
>alleged to make his contacts with them at Montford Bridge.

>"The local civil police had no information or reports of
>sightings of objects in the sky. There is no evidence to
>associate the incidents complained of with the Royal Air Force
>and the complainant Miss Foulkes is now satisfied that the
>incidents are unexplainable and are in no way connected with the
>Armed Forces."

>In essence, that is the file. It is clear from examining its
>contents that the witness had reported some stunning
>experiences: "the rays of shooting light" that enveloped her
>car; the electric shock-like pain that surged through her neck
>as the vehicle was bathed in the beam of light; the loss of
>power from the car's headlights (something that is reported time
>and again in UFO encounters); and the potentially-worrying fact
>that the experience had left the witness "very ill."

<snip>

>REF: National Archive File Reference: AIR 2/17984.
>Crown copyright exists.

Nick,

A very interesting case indeed. As you know, I recently
completed an intensive study of the 1966-67 (or 68) UFO wave for
the Fund for UFO Research. This case happened about the time
that the first year of the wave was tapering off in the U.S.;
and the UK was going to get a larger share in 1967.

The features it contains were common throughout the entire wave:
luminosity, vehicle pacings and encounters, physical effects,
frightened witnesses, and proto-abduction experiences included.
Thanks for sharing this with us.


 - Dick







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                        Re: Alien Abductions - Smith

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 09:49:23 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:03:49 -0500
Subject: Re: Alien Abductions - Smith


>From: Cathy Reason <CathyM.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:54:45 -0000
>Subject: Re: Alien Abductions

What a delightful and well thought out exposition on peer review
and research!

>Looking at this from the point of view of someone who used to be
>a theoretician, I think that ufology - like the social sciences -
>is not yet in a position where it can even construct useful
>theories, let alone test them. I would want to see a much
>greater emphasis on gathering the maximum amount of raw data, and
>rather less on theorizing and evangelism.  I also have a
>question for those who believe all the UFO problem needs for its
>solution is more research funding. Can anyone say what, in terms
>of detailed research design, they would spend this money on?
>There must be quite a few people here who could write a grant
>application for such funding, if it were ever actually become
>available - it might be interesting, if only as an intellectual
>exercise, to see what those grant applications might look like.

I think research funding is required to gather more quality data
because what we have most of is personal anecdotes and what we
need is the kind of data that passive radar, multispectral
imaging, holographic imaging, laser rangefinding/mapping can
provide.  Ideally, we would want to capture the phenomena,
physically if possible.  Some UFOs may be more amenable to this
than others.








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                          Secrecy News -- 12/21/04

From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood.nul>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 14:16:42 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:06:07 -0500
Subject: Secrecy News -- 12/21/04


SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2004, Issue No. 113
December 21, 2004


**      CIA COMMENCES REVIEW OF OPERATIONAL FILES EXEMPTION
**      NARA PROBES CIA LOSS OF HISTORICAL BUDGET RECORDS
**      CORRECTION: CIA RECORDS NOT REMOVED FROM NATIONAL ARCHIVES
**      MORE BACKGROUND ON THE MYSTERY SPY SATELLITE PROGRAM
**      ISOO ELABORATES ON AUTOMATIC DECLASSIFICATION PLANS
**      NGA EXTENDS COMMENT PERIOD ON WITHDRAWAL OF RECORDS
**      NARA ANNOUNCES FURTHER DECLASSIFICATION OF JFK RECORDS
**      SOME NEW CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE PRODUCTS


CIA COMMENCES REVIEW OF OPERATIONAL FILES EXEMPTION

The Central Intelligence Agency announced today that it is
conducting its second decennial (once every ten years) review of
the scope of a Freedom of Information Act exemption that was
granted in 1984 for so-called operational files.

"The CIA Information Act of 1984, codified in section 431 of
title 50 of the United States Code, authorizes the DCI to exempt
operational files of the CIA from the publication, disclosure,
search, and review provisions of the Freedom of Information
Act," explains a CIA notice in the Federal Register.

The Act "requires that, not less than once every ten years, the
DCI shall review the exemptions in force to determine whether
such exemptions may be removed from any category of exempted
files or any portion thereof."

Public comments on the scope of the exemption are solicited as
part of the decennial review. See this December 21 Federal
Register notice:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/12/fr122104.html

The National Security Archive has posted supplementary
documentation on the history of the Act and its implementation
here:

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB138/index.htm

The CIA's operational files exemption is a matter of concern not
only to historians and Agency watchers. It is also implicated in
some of the most urgent and controversial matters of national
policy.

Thus, the CIA recently invoked the exemption in federal court to
argue that it should not be compelled to disclose records
relating to an investigation of allegations of torture committed
by U.S. personnel in Iraq.

See this December 8 memorandum filed by the CIA in a Freedom of
Information Act proceeding brought by the ACLU and other
organizations:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/cia120804.pdf

But yesterday, Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District
of New York rejected the CIA argument and ordered the Agency to
begin turning over records to the ACLU and its co-plaintiffs.


NARA PROBES CIA LOSS OF HISTORICAL BUDGET RECORDS

The National Archives and Records Administration is asking the
Central Intelligence Agency to explain its recent statement to a
federal judge that it cannot locate copies of the classified
annexes to the intelligence authorization acts for fiscal years
1947 through 1970, as noted earlier this month (SN, 12/10/04).

A newly obtained letter from NARA to the CIA states: "It is our
understanding that a record set of those annexes should be
preserved among the permanent appropriations and budget files of
the CIA," wrote Howard P. Lowell, director of modern records
programs at the National Archives.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/11/nara112304.pdf

"How can you lose those things?" asked historian Anna Nelson of
American University on National Public Radio Weekend Edition on
December 18. "You can't lose those things. So, you know, where
are they?"

A CIA response is due by the end of the month.


CORRECTION: CIA RECORDS NOT REMOVED FROM NATIONAL ARCHIVES

A story in the previous issue of Secrecy News was mistakenly
titled "CIA Removes Records From National Archives" (SN,
12/16/04).

In fact, however, no CIA records have been physically removed
from the National Archives.

While various records in open collections at the Archives have
been removed from public access by CIA reviewers, as reported,
those records remain in the custody of the National Archives.


MORE BACKGROUND ON THE MYSTERY SPY SATELLITE PROGRAM

The highly classified intelligence program that erupted into
public controversy earlier this month, which reportedly involves
a low observable stealth imaging satellite codenamed MISTY, has
been described in some detail in unclassified published sources.

Earlier this year, the Russian space magazine Novosti Kosmonavki
discussed the program in an article by Alexei Kucheiko. It was
cited by the Washington Post in a December 11 story by Dana
Priest.

"I've read it, and it's a good summary and extension of all the
MISTY-related lore that's come out over the past decade," said
former CIA analyst Allen Thomson.

A copy of the article, in Russian, is reposted here with
permission of Novosti Kosmonavki (www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/):

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/imint/nkmisty.html

The National Security Archives last week posted an excerpt from
Jeffrey Richelson's book The Wizards of Langley, which first
described the MISTY program, and has now added some remarkable
declassified documents obtained by Richelson which trace the
historical roots of the stealth satellite concept as far back as
1963. See:

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB143/index.htm


ISOO ELABORATES ON AUTOMATIC DECLASSIFICATION PLANS

Some further details on agency plans for responding to the
automatic declassification requirements of President Bush's
March 2003 executive order on classification policy were
provided by the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) in
private correspondence.

The Bush order called for automatic declassification of most 25
year old documents by December 2006. (Under a previous order
from President Clinton, automatic declassification was to take
effect in April 2003.)

Ten agencies have previously been granted exemptions from
automatic declassification for particular file series, wrote
ISOO director William Leonard, and an additional request is
currently pending.

"Several agencies have indicated their intent to delay for an
additional 5 years [until 2011] the automatic declassification
of information contained in special media such as microforms,
motion pictures, and audiotapes," he wrote.

In addition, extensions up to three years [until 2009] have been
granted in several cases for records involving multiple agency
"equities" or interests.

Mr. Leonard provided the information in response to a query from
researcher James David. See:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/12/isoo1204.pdf


NGA EXTENDS COMMENT PERIOD ON WITHDRAWAL OF RECORDS

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has extended
the public comment period on its proposal to withdraw various
aeronautical records from public access.

"The period of comment will be open from the date of this
Register until 30 June 2005. NGA will consider all comments when
making the final decision to go forward with this proposed
action, in part, in whole, or not at all," according to a
December 17 Federal Register notice:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/12/fr121704.html

For background on the controversy over the NGA proposal, see
"NGA Plans Limited Access to Aeronautical Data Beginning in FY
06" by Cynthia Di Pasquale, Inside the Air Force, December 3
(reposted with permission):

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/12/ita120304.html


NARA ANNOUNCES FURTHER DECLASSIFICATION OF JFK RECORDS

Over 4000 historical documents concerning the assassination of
President Kennedy that previously remained partially classified
are now released in full, according to a December 20
announcement from the National Archives.

An equal number of documents have been partially released but
with fewer redactions than in previous versions.

"Newly released information ranges from one word to a paragraph
or more per document," the Archives release said:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/12/nara122004.html


SOME NEW CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE PRODUCTS

"Nuclear Weapons: Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty," updated
December 17, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/IB92099.pdf

"Nuclear Testing and Comprehensive Test Ban: Chronology Starting
September 1992," updated November 9, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/97-1007.pdf

"Scientific Research and the Experimental Use Privilege in
Patent Law," October 28, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/RL32651.pdf

"Intelligence Issues for Congress," updated December 9, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/IB10012.pdf

"Terrorism: Background on Chemical, Biological, and Toxin
Weapons and Options for Lessening Their Impact," updated
December 1, 2004:

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL31669.pdf



_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to
secrecy_news-request.nul
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.

OR email your request to saftergood.nul

Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html

Secrecy News has an RSS feed at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.rss

_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web:  www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood.nul
voice: (202) 454-4691








   UFO UpDates
   A mailing list for the study of UFO-related phenomena
   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 21

                 Re: More Evidence Of ET Contact With Indian

From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 19:30:51 -0000
Fwd Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:08:05 -0500
Subject: Re: More Evidence Of ET Contact With Indian


>From: Greg Boone Evolbaby.nul
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 10:33:06 EST
>Subject: Re: More Evidence Of ET Contact With Indian Government

>>Source: India Daily

>>http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/12-19c-04.asp

>>12-19-04

>>More Evidence Of Extra Terrestrial Contacts With Indian
>>Government And Military

>>Juhi Singhal - Special Correspondent

>This is neat that there're stories coming out of India but
>they're the same stuff that comes out of the west.

>Perhaps what some of you top Ufologists could do is just
>petition the various governments to disclose their views on the
>UFO situation. Don't presume they'll be part of this nonsensical
>global conspiracy thing, perhaps they've viewpoints that they've
>yet to express because no one has asked them politely.

>All you need is just one official to say those magic words.

>If you get two, then the pressure is on.

What is the motive behind these stories emanating from India?
India & Pakistan have been left out of the UFO scene for over 50
years, so much so that the media now intend to get in on the
act.

Hence these dotty stories, supposedly from military sources,
(e.g. "a very senior Indian military official", anonymous but
"in a night club") which are merely repeats of Western UFO tales
that have been around for decades. Notice that the journalists
are always 'special correspondents' (perhaps all the same
person). 'Space' or 'political' or 'science' correspondents
wisely keep their distance.

UFOs have made formal contact with the Indian Government, and
the ETs are friendly, so we are told. Big deal.

How long before we get the Indian equivalent of Roswell, Dulce
and maybe even MJ-12?

CDA








   UFO UpDates
   A mailing list for the study of UFO-related phenomena
   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 22

                       UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 51

From: John Hayes <John.nul>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 21:57:59 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 08:11:01 -0500
Subject: UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 51


Posted on behalf of Joseph Trainor.

<Masinaigan.nul>
==========================

      UFO ROUNDUP
Volume 9, Number 51
December 22, 2004
Editor: Joseph Trainor

E-mail: Masinaigan.nul
Website: http://www.ufoinfo.com/roundup/


UFO AND SKY BOOMS
ROCK LANZHOU, CHINA

      On Saturday, December 11, 2004, "an unidentified
flying object, or UFO, passed across the large
northwestern city of Lanzhou," in China's Gansu province,
"and apparently exploded in the suburbs, (Chinese) state
radio said" on Monday, December 13, 2004.
      "The unusual sighting of two bright trails of light,
reported by several hundred witnesses, took place Saturday
shortly before midnight, the China Times reported."
      "Police, working on the theory that it was a
meteorite, went to investigate the matter.  But, as of"
Tuesday, December 14, 2004, "they had found no evidence of
what had caused the nighttime phenomenon, an officer
said."
      "One of the witnesses, a taxi driver named Zhang,
said he saw 'a shining ball with a 3-meter-long (10-foot-
long) tail flying from west to east' and heard 'two
thunders' right after, as he was driving from Lanzhou to
neighbouring Yongdeng county."
      "The local Public Security Department confirmed that
they had received as many as 700 telephone calls on the
case, some saying it was an earthquake and others saying
it was an aerolite falling."
      "Liu Yanan, astronomy professor at Northwest Normal
University, said that it might be a meteorite entering
Earth's atmosphere."
      Lanzhou is located about 800 kilometers (500 miles)
west-southwest of Beijing, China's capital.  (See the
Shanghai Star and Wuhan Daily for December 14, 2004,
"Hundreds report UFO in Lanzhou," and the Gansu Daily for
December 15, 2004, "Large UFO spotted in Gansu province."
Many thanks to Robert Fischer and Chen Jilin for these
newspaper articles.)


MORE ALIEN ACTIVITY SEEN
IN THE HIMALAYAS

      More alien activity has been reported in the
Himalayas, along the border shared by India and China,
Indian journalist Lara Mohani reported.
      People living in the mountains on the Chinese side of
the border say they have been picking up mysterious
microwave and radio signals on their portable TVs and
radios.
      "People in the Himalayas in Chinese territory have
recently reported strange microwave and radio signals,"
Lara Mohani reported.
      "The signals are persistent, and are strongest in a
region called Kailash, revered for thousands of years by
Hindus as the door to heaven and the home of their god
Shiva."
      "According to tourists and pilgrims" from India, "the
signals are real, and we now know where they are coming
from.  The (mountain) region is beautiful and difficult to
reach.  China provides special passports to Hindu pilgrims
from India or to Western tourists."
      "There is no reason for satellite monitorings in the
area," Lara added, "The area is not known as a repository
for nuclear-tipped missiles (ICBMs).  Some say the strange
signals have been more persistent recently due to the new
availability of more advanced radio receivers."
      "Some of these signals come from below the (glacial)
lake at Kailash," which raised speculation in India's UFO
community that there may be either a saucer parked on the
bottom of the lake or a large alien underground base
beneath the lake itself.
      "Some say the signals from from above--in the
heavens.  Other than the Antarctic and the Arctic, this
(Kailash) is probably the coldest area of the world.  In
the middle of the area lies a clear lake that is frozen
for most of the year."
      "The severe cold makes it impossible for (Hindu)
pilgrims to go to Kailash.  But some (Indian) scientists
did visit the area early in December (2004) and reported
the strange signals."
      "It is possible that the signals came from some kind
of hidden Chinese military or space installation," Lara
added, "According to the local people, the Chinese
military is intently very active there."
      "Are they signals from extraterrestrials?  Is there
something paranormal going on here?  Only more studies and
Chinese cooperation can tell us that."
      "But when we talk to Hindu sages and rishis, they
smile and say that all that is unknown to human beings is
out there."
      Remote Himalayan sites such as "Kailash, Kedernath
and Badrinath are all Hindu pilgrimage spots, like Mecca
is for the Muslims."  (See the newspaper India Daily for
December 14, 2004, "Strange microwave and radio signals
around the glacier Kailash in the Indian-Chinese
Himalayas--ET signals?"  Many thanks to Daniel Wilson for
this newspaper article.)


SIX UFOs SPOTTED OVER
NORTHERN IRELAND

      On Friday, December 17, 2004, at 9 p.m. Greenwich
time, Conor McManus was outdoors in Templepatrick, a small
town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, UK when he saw "a
flashing light going north in a burst of speed."
      "They were purple and bright," he reported, "Six
flashes at roughly three-second intervals.  I watched
these objects cross the sky for an estimated four miles.
I first saw them in the park at Templepatrick.  They were
over a neighbouring town, Parkate, four miles (7
kilometers) away.  The first burst of speed brought them
to the hill, then they kept on going until they passed
over me and towards the town of Antrim."
      "My sister in Antrim saw it also.  They covered the
land fast.  Bangs and other noises were heard.  Purple
light starting high in the sky" and descending "to the
ground.  Four miles in six seconds."  (Email Form Report)


UFO VIDEOTAPED NEAR
MEXICO CITY

      On Sunday, December 12, 2004, Mexican ufologist Ana
Luisa Cid Fernandes was on a skywatch near Mexico City.
She had her trusty SONY 340 camcorder handy in case she
spotted an unidentified flying object.
      Suddenly, Ana Luisa reported, "I noticed a strange
light moving in the sky from south to north," from the
state of Morelos into the Distrito Federal.  "Upon making
a closeup, I lowered the light intensity (exposure--J.T.)
in order to appreciate the details in greater clarity.  I
saw the object for five minutes and captured it on my SONY
340 camcorder."
      "On this date, Mexico celebrates the feast of Our
Lady of Guadalupe, so it is common to see balloons aloft
and pyrotechnics.  However, I do not believe the object I
videotaped corresponds to anything known."  (Muchas
gracias a Scott Corrales y Ana Luisa Cid Fernandes para
esta historia.)
(Editor's Note:  The hilltop in the Zacatenco district,
where Juan Diego saw the Virgin Mary, was originally the
site of a temple dedicated to the Aztec goddess
Chalchihuitlicue.  Three miles (5 kilometers) to the
north-northwest lies the pre-Columbian ruins at El
Arbolillo, where "a profusion of female figurines" dating
back to 1,500 B.C. was found by archaeologists.)


CIRCULAR UFO VIDEOTAPED
IN MEXICO'S YUCATAN

      "The latest and clearest UFO sighting took place last
Sunday," December 12, 2004, "with the filmed evidence of
the presence of a circular UFO with multicolored lights
captured near the city of Ticul," in Mexico's state of
Yucatan.
      Ticul "remains the focal point of such encounters
and, according to groups devoted to 'night watches,'"
there have been many close encounters in this section of
southern Yucatan state.
      "Silvestre Leal and Emilio Cetz Aguiar, in charge of
the Sociedad Internacional de Rastreo y Investigaciones
OVNI (Translated: International Society for UFO Research
and Investigations; Spanish acronym--SIRIO--J.T.), were
responsible for filming the craft."
      "The event occurred Sunday," December 12, 2004,
"during the celebration of the Feast of the Virgin of
Guadalupe, and the encounter had a duration of two minutes
approximately, although only 54 seconds of video footage
were obtained.  One hundred and fifty photographs were
obtained for a detailed study.  The pixels were analyzed
along with their clarity to confirm that they indeed
filmed a UFO."
      "The object in question was a circular structure that
was at a height of 40 to 50 meters (132 to 165 feet) above
the ground of the San Benito futbol (soccer) field,
explained Cetz Aguiar.  He described the 'craft' as
measuring 5 meters (16.5 feet) in diameter, with an orange
center surrounded by lights of various colors, of which
blue, green and red were the predominant hues.  It made no
sound whatsoever, he said."
      "He added that the purpose of their visit was to
research a video taken by Ivan Garma, a Ticul resident, in
recent days."
      "'After determining that Garma wasn't home, we toured
the city,'" Cetz Aguiar explained, "'And I suddenly
thought I saw the object, but there was no much light that
I lost it.  The time was around 9 p.m.'"
      "Subsequently, he continued, the object appeared at
another location and, when he took out his camcorder, it
lost itself amid the buildings of the community."
      "Both members of Grupo SIRIO decided to hold a 'night
watch' at the soccer field and were rewarded for their
efforts when the object appeared again, this time much
closer.  The sighting took place at 10:15 p.m."
      Leal and Cetz Aguiar believe that the UFO could be
the same one that was videotaped over Ticul on two
previous occasions, in August and October of 2004.  On
these occasions, the object was videotaped by the Mata
family.
      Ticul is 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Merida,
the state capital.  (Muchas gracias a Scott Corrales y
Guillermo Gimenez para estas noticias.)


UFO SEEN IN EASTERN
LOUISIANA

      On Monday, December 13, 2004, Chris K. and his
friends were outdoors in Woodland, Louisiana, 35 miles (58
kilometers) north of Baton Rouge, the state capital, when
they spotted an unusual object approaching from the west.
      "It was red, blue, yellow but pulsed to blue a lot,"
Chris reported, "You could see it above the treeline.  At
first we thought it was a star, but it moved sideways,
then up and down, then back and forth.  It stayed in the
same central spot."
      "It looked like it was observing or probing the area.
It was so bright you could see its reflection in the
water.  It was like a triangle or V-shaped object.  All we
had was binoculars.  But it had red and blue light
circles, and yellow and green.  It looked like it was
above the treeline on the (western) horizon.  We thought
it might have been a star at first, but it moved like no
aircraft could have."
      "We do have military bases around here.  We didn't
see it leave.  It just disappeared."  (Email Form Report)


UFO SIGHTED BY FAMILY
IN MILDURA, N.S.W.

      "Frank McCormack is adamant that the object he and
his family saw in the sky over Mildura," a city in western
New South Wales state in Australia, "did not come out of a
beer bottle."
      "'We were having a barbecue.  I was busy cooking the
barbecue,' he said."
      "'Yes, we were having refreshments, but it was far
too early to be seeing double, seeing things that were not
there.'"
      "It was 7 p.m., with a clear sky, and still daylight.
Frank's daughter-in-law spotted a strange object in the
sky.  The rest of the family sighted it, as well."
(Editor's Note:  Right now it's early summer in Australia,
New Zealand, Chile and the other countries of the southern
hemisphere.)
      "'We finally spotted the shining white object, coming
in from the east (over Australia's Mallee Cliffs National
Park--J.T.) to come across towards Mildura,' Frank says."
      "'We continued to look at it to see if we could
establish what it was, and then it became stationary.  It
stopped over Mildura.  So, while we were watching it, two
similar objects came in from the west.  They just
manoeuvered around like a rendezvous with the stationary
one; then they just departed and went back west.  Then the
other one that was stationary started to move towards the
east.'"
      "Nobody who saw them could work out what they were,
but Frank is certain of what they weren't."
      "'It wasn't an aircraft, it wasn't a balloon, it
wasn't a helicopter--there was quite a bit of glare from
the sun.  We actually looked at them through binoculars,
but we still couldn't figure out what they were.'"
      "'I think they were a long way up.  I think they were
too high for a helicopter.  If they'd continued in a
straight line across the sky, we'd have possibly thought
they were satellites.'"
      "Doug Moffert, from UFO Research-New South Wales,
says Frank's encounter in typical in some ways--especially
in the 'round table discussion' afterwards of 'could it be
this, could it be that.'"
      "While typical in that way, Frank is unusual in his
willingness to come forward and talk about what he saw."
      Mildura, N.S.W. is about 400 kilometers (250 miles)
west of Sydney, the largest city in Australia.  (See the
Australian Broadcasting Corp. news story for December 14,
2004, "UFO over Sunraysia?"  Many thanks to Robert Fischer
for forwarding the transcript of this news broadcast.)


CHUPACABRA GOES ON A
RAMPAGE IN CHILE

      "The affected parties cannot agree as to what caused
so much damage" in Pencahue, a town in central Chile, on
Thursday, December 9, 2004.  "They think the author of the
slayings could have been a dog, a cat, a small feline
known as a quique or even the mythical Chupacabras."
      "Eighty birds being raised on the property of Eliana
Nunez and Reinaldo Sepulveda on the Calle Alonso Rivera
(street) near the Plaza de Armas in Pencahue met a grisly
end."
      "It was Nunez who found out what happened, when she
stepped out into her vast yard at 9 a.m.  A large henhouse
stands amid fruit trees and dry pastures.  Terrified, she
found a multitude of lifeless chickens, hens and roosters
scattered across the property.  Their bodies were
complete, but they displayed small and deep bite marks."
      "'I was frightened to see my little chicks dead,'
Eliana told (the Chilean newspaper) El Centro.  She can't
imagine who or what could have comitted such an atrocity."
      "No sooner did she find her birds than she notified
her husband."
      "'The entire yard was filled with them,' recalled Don
Reinaldo, still surprised."
      "The couple gave notice immediately to the
Carabineros (Chilean national police--J.T.) headquarters
at Pencahue.  Officers reached the scene and began looking
for traces that might lead to the author of the slayings.
But they found nothing, not a track, not a trace of the
party responsible for the savage attack that occurred
while the owners slept."
      "Juan Orellana, who works for the Pencahue
environmental program, was also in attendance.  'We have
about 80 chickens scattered all around the henhouse, and
they showed no signs of having been chewed.  They were
scattered throughout almost the entire sector.  They are
complete, and some chickens have signs of bite marks.  We
cannot establish an effective working hypothesis.  The
case is strange, and it could have been dogs, cats--I
don't know if the quique was involved,' he theorized."
      "'The henhouse was closed under lock and key, and the
gate appeared to have been forced from the bottom, showing
that something had gotten in.  I locked it up last night
around 9 o'clock and heard no strange sounds,' said Don
Reinaldo, who believes that the one responsible for the
deaths arrived via the irrigation canal that runs near his
house."
      "The affected parties, the Carabineros and the
official for the environmental program counted 25
chickens, 28 hens and 2 roosters as deceased.  'Look,
there's another,' said a uniformed officer as he surveyed
the yard, which was covered with feathers."
      "The information was collected in a police report and
forwarded to the District Attorney's office in Talca," a
small city located 225 kilometers (135 miles) south of
Santiago de Chile, the national capital, "for the crimes
of 'damage to farm birds.'"
      "According to Juan Orellana, 'The (Chilean)
Agricultural and Livestock Service (Spanish acronym: SAG--
J.T.) asked me to bring in two birds for analysis.  We're
going to bury the rest, since they're a source of disease.
I have contacted environmental hygiene.'"
      "Once initial inquiries were done, the dead birds
were buried in the rear of the house in an eerie ceremony.
No one dared to establish in an authoritative manner what
exactly had attacked the property, located only a few
meters from Town Hall.  What they did say was that such
incidents had never occurred around the peaceful (farm)
commune of Pencahue."  (See the Chilean newspaper El
Centro for December 10, 2004, "Strange avian deaths near
town square."  Muchas gracias a Scott Corrales y Cristian
Quintero del grupo Planeta UFO para esto articulo de
diario.)


"ANOMALY" CAUSES U.S.
MISSILE TO GO HAYWIRE

      "An experimental interceptor missile failed to get
off the ground early Wednesday," December 15, 2004, "in a
test of the U.S. national missile-defense system, raising
new doubts about prospects for the imminent activation of
the system.  It was the first full test in nearly two
years."
      "A target missile, a simulated ICBM with a mock
warhead, was launched without problem from Kodiak, Alaska
at 12:45 a.m." Washington D.C. time, "a statement from the
Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency said."
      "However, 16 minutes later, an 'unknown anomaly' led
to an automatic shutdown of the interceptor missile
shortly before it was to launch from Kwajalein Atoll in
the central Pacific Ocean.  The target missile crashed
into the ocean.  The agency gave no other details."
      "Most missile-launching systems are designed to shut
down automatically as a safety feature.  The Missile
Defense Agency said program officials will review pre-
launch data to determine the cause for Wednesday's
shutdown."
      "The Missile Defense Agency has attempted the test
several times this month, but scrubbed each one for a
variety of reasons, including weather and a malfunction on
a recovery vessel not directly related to the equipment
being tested."
      "Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's former chief of testing
who has become a critic of the Bush administration's
missile defense plans, said the cause of the failure could
have been anything from a software glitch to a major
hardware malfunction.  He called the failure a 'serious
setback.'"
      "Coyle said, 'This latest failure to intercept a
target shows again that the system being deployed in
Alaska has no demonstrated capability to work' against a
real attack."
      "During the test, the interceptor's primary goal was
to collect data on the interceptor's performance.  The
test also was to have been the first in which the
interceptor used the same booster rocket that the
operational system would use."
      "Because it didn't fire, it is possible that the
interceptor could be used again in a future test.  The $85
million test was not immediately scheduled, nor was it
clear whether it would affect a test scheduled for the
spring (of 2005).  A primary goal of that test would be an
actual intercept."
      "Two previous tests scheduled for this year (2004)
were delayed due to technical problems.  In earlier
testing, the interceptors went 5-for-8 when launched with
the goal of hitting target missiles."
      "It was unclear how the failure would affect plans to
put the missile-defense system on alert sometime in the
next two weeks.  The Bush administration had made it a
goal to activate the system by the end of 2004.  It is
intended to protect against missiles launched from North
Korea or elsewhere in eastern Asia."
      "'Since we don't know the cause of the anomaly, we
won't speculate on potential impacts to either beginning
initial operations or conducting future tests,' said Rick
Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency."
      "The system will initially rely on interceptors based
at Fort Greely, Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base,
California, as well as radars in Alaska, California and in
orbit."  (See USA Today for December 16, 2004, "Missile-
defense test fails as 'anomaly' shuts down interceptor,"
page 13A.)


CASSINI PERFORMS FLYBYS
OF TITAN AND DIONE

      The robot spacecraft Cassini completed flybys at two
of Saturn's moons last week, one at Titan, the ringed
planet's largest moon, and the other at Dione.
      The spacecraft's flybys "revealed vast cliffs of ice
and hidden clouds" on both moons, according to NASA
scientists.
      Dione, a small icy moon, was visited by the
spacecraft Voyager 1 in 1980.  The Voyager mission led
scientists to believe that Dione was "coated with wisps of
ice.  But a closer passage" by Cassini "reveals those
wisps are actually tall ice cliffs fracturing the moon's
frozen crust, says mission imaging chief Carolyn Porco of
the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado."
      The latest Cassini photos of Dione also "show large
circular craters with central peaks, similar to the
Archimedes crater on Luna, Earth's moon," UFO Roundup
editor Joseph Trainor pointed out.
      On Monday, December 13, 2004, Cassini performed its
second close flyby of Titan, a Saturnian moon almost as
large as Earth.  "Titan is the second-largest moon in the
solar system and the only one with a dense atmosphere.
Frozen conditions on Titan, where surface temperatures
average minus 290 degrees" on the Fahrenheit scale "and
its complex atmospheric chemistry mimic those of the early
Earth."
      Cassini flew 746 miles (1,193 kilometers) above
Titan's frozen surface, covering the same side of the moon
that the first flyby in October 2004 covered.  The flyby
also included "a second look at the landing site of the
Huygens probe, which will parachute onto Titan on January
14, 2005."
      "'We're suddenly realizing ourselves the landing is
approaching,' says Huygens scientist John Zarnecki of the
United Kingdom's Open University.  'What really scares me
is (Huygens') entry into Titan's atmosphere.  That will be
a fiery and violent event.'"
      During the flyby, NASA scientists double-checked "the
density of Titan's atmosphere to ensure that the (Huygens)
probe pops its parachute at the best altitude.  Mission
scientists plan to perform this check by relying on the
light from two stars: Spica, in the constellation Virgo,
and Shaula, the stinger in the constellation Scorpius.
During the flyby, light from these stars will shine
through Titan's clouds and be detected by Cassini,
revealing atmospheric composition and density."
      Huygens is expected to separate from the Cassini
spacecraft on Friday, December 24, 2004--Christmas Eve.
      "Cassini plans more than 40 flybys of Titan.  The
next one, in February (2005), will be the closest yet, at
590 miles (744 kilometers)."  (See USA Today for December
13, 2004, "Cassini pays a second visit to Saturn's mystery
moon Titan," page 5D; and for December 20, 2004, "Cassini
finds icy cliffs on Saturn moons," page 6D.)


 From the UFO Files...

1955: ALIEN ENCOUNTERS IN
           SOUTHERN AUSTRALIA

      It was November 1955, and Australia was in the midst
of a year-long UFO flap. But Joyce Mirabella, age 7, and
her older sister, Mary, knew nothing about it as they went
outdoors to play at their home in Hastings, Victoria
state.
      After meeting up with their friends, Billy Allen and
Lois Wallace, the girls headed for the hospital in
Hastings.  As Joyce recalls, "This day we were going to
see what we could find at the old dam behind the hospital.
It had been filled in, and the hospital used it as a waste
depository.  We had found some syringes and were heading
home when something made the hair stand up on the back of
my neck."
      "My sister and I turned at the same time, just as a
silvery metallic object materialised.  It was dome-shaped,
probably 10 feet (3 meters) tall.  Its side opened into a
door.  It just materialised."
      "As we were watching the spectacle, an opening
appeared in the side, and a ramp came out.  Then a white-
haired woman came and stood in the opening.  She was
followed by around five small humanoid figures much
shorter than she.  Some were wearing green tight-fitting
suits, and others were wearing blue tight-fitting suits.
As a child, I always believed they were green and blue
people."
      "The small humanoids began to chase us, and we ran
for our lives."
      About a month later, in December 1955, Joyce and Mary
had another alien encounter.  This second incident
occurred at Devils Dam, an earthen dam on a small
reservoir behind the orchard on Hodgkins Road in Hastings.
      "We went into the orchard to pick the green plums,
which ripen in December," Joyce recalled, "There were a
few trees quite near the dam.  Billy Allen was with us.  I
was leaning over the dam, in the middle section, when I
was wrenched back from the edge by my sister (Mary), as I
saw a horrible brown frog-like creature lurch up at me.
It had a dark brown leathery-like skin, was about two feet
(0.6 meters) tall, and appeared to be wearing a breathing
apparatus.  I can remember the bronze straps located in
the middle of the chest and a funnily-shaped package on
its back, almost like a miniature Jules Verne breathing
apparatus.  It also had huge goggles covering its eyes.
It appeared to have no real neck, and its mouth seemed
over-large.  A very frightening creature."
      "We called it a 'frog-man.'  Sounds weird, doesn't
it?"
(Editor's Note: Not that weird.  A similar frog-like
entity was seen on March 3, 1972 by police officers on
patrol on Riverside Road near Loveland, Ohio.  See
Unexplained Mysteries of the Twentieth Century by Janet
and Colin Bord, Contemporary Books, Chicago, Illinois,
1989, page 246.)
      "Many times I have tried to document was has happened
to my and my family during our lifetime, only to put it
off as being too ridiculous for belief.  It still seems
that way when I read what I have written."
      "Interestingly, my son just a few years ago was
swimming with his friend in a reservoir at Linton in
Victoria when they came running home terrified.  They were
convinced that a UFO had tried to capture them."
      Hastings, Vic. is 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of
Melbourne, on Westernport Bay.  Linton is 32 kilometers
(20 miles) southwest of Ballarat, the second largest city
in Victoria.
      The 1954-1955 UFO flap in Australia was documented by
paranormal researcher Harold T. Wilkins in his book,
Flying Saucers Uncensored.  According to Wilkins, UFOs
were seen near Melbourne on December 25, 1954; Malvern on
February 9, 1955; and Moola Boola station, 240 miles (384
kilometers) east of Perth, W.A. on March 1, 1955.  (Many
thanks to Mrs. Joyce Sullivan for the series of email
interviews.)

      This coming Saturday is Christmas Day, and, as we do
every year, the editor and readers of UFO Roundup would
like to extend holiday greetings to the gallant men and
women serving on active duty in the armed forces of
Earth's many nations.
For you, Christmas might be just another day where dinner
consists of MREs heated on a Humvee's engine block or a
few quick mouthfuls between looking through your gunsight
or toting a hundred-pound ruck up some sandy hillside.  If
you find yourself on duty Christmas day, doing any of the
above, rest assured that the readers of UFO Roundup know
you're out there.  We appreciate the difficult job you're
doing, and we wish you a hearty "Merry Christmas!"
      And we'll be back next week, with more UFO, Fortean
and paranormal phenomena from around the planet Earth--and
occasionally, Saturn--all brought to you by "the paper
that goes home--UFO Roundup."  Have a safe and happy
holiday season!

UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 2004 by Masinaigan Productions, all
rights reserved.  Readers may post news items from UFO
Roundup on their Web sites or in news groups provided that
they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list
the date of issue in which the item first appeared.

E-Mail Reports to: Joseph Trainor <Masinaigan.nul>
or use the Sighting Report Form at:

http://www.ufoinfo.com/submit/sightings.shtml

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Website comments: John Hayes <webmaster.nul>

UFOINFO: http://www.ufoinfo.com

Official Archives for UFO Roundup, AUFORN Australian
UFO Reports and Experiences, UFO + PSI Magazine
plus archives of Humanoid Sighting Reports (Albert
Rosales), Filer's Files, Oz Files, UFO News UK.
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UFO Roundup is only sent to subscribers.
If you wish to unsubscribe or feel you have received
the bulletin in error, please write to:

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   Dec > Dec 22

                         Re: Merry Christmas - Koch

From: Joachim Koch <lists.nul>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 00:57:35 +0100
Fwd Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 08:13:29 -0500
Subject: Re: Merry Christmas - Koch


>From: Philip Mantle <philip.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:50:40 -0000
>Subject: Merry Christmas


>Here's wishing you all the very best for the festive seasoon and
>hoping that 2005 brings good health, peace and prosperity to all.

>Philip Mantle


Frohe Weihnachten! from Germany.

Joachim Koch








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   Dec > Dec 22

                          Alien Autopsy Film Review

From: Ed Gehrman <egehrman.nul>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 17:10:57 -0800
Fwd Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 08:21:41 -0500
Subject: Alien Autopsy Film Review


Rich, EBK, List,

"The old UFO stories have been mined for gold to the point that
little or nothing in them has value. A new paradigmatic is
needed... a new epiphany as it were." (Rich Reynolds)

Maybe so, but there is still high-grade in the Alien Autopsy
saga. That vein has hardly been touched. The alleged Cameraman's
crash site is a real place, verified by Wendy, and is a virgin
field, open to hardy prospectors with open minds, and serious
constitutions.

But before visiting the site, miners might view the alien
autopsy and the debris footage, and learn what others who have
studied the AA topography think.

http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/aafilm/aaindex.html

Were the creatures in this (the AA) dissection ET or could they
be evolved monotremes (echidna, platypus)? This line of mammal
diverged from marsupials about 186 million years ago. If so,
they seem somewhat more advanced than us, but not much. Their
crafts are vulnerable and their numbers may be limited. Perhaps
they're concerned with how we manage our space, and have been
our invisible residents, until now.

"Co-operation is our only safety net."

http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/reaction/anarchy.html


Season's greeting to all,

Ed









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   Dec > Dec 22

                 Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies -

From: Josh Goldstein <lovolution.nul>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:37:48 -0800
Fwd Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 08:24:10 -0500
Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies -


>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 11:17:43 -0800
>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>From: Josh Goldstein <lovolution.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 2:46:29 -1000
>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>>>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 07:43:38 -0800
>>>Subject: Re: Astronomy Evidence/Data Methodologies

>><snip>

>>>Two points to make here; one, it is not necessary to have an ET
>>>craft in one's possession to prove their are ET craft flying
>>>around in our airspace; two, spearately, there is ample evidence
>>>verifying the fact that "the powers-that-be have in fact
>>>"recovered an ET craft."

>><snip>

>Happy Holidays Josh!

>>Frank, can you clearly outline "ample evidence verifying the
>>fact that the powers-that-be have recovered an ET craft"?

>Yes I can Josh, but so can you... if it weren't "you" asking the
>question, "I" would ask the opinion of the questioner about
>UFOs; are he or she of the mind-set that indeed some UFOs are ET
>craft?

>Separately Josh, I'd like to extend a "virtual handshake" to you
>and any veteran reading this; during this holiday season my
>thoughts go out to the soldiers and their families of those who
>are in, and or involved in the Iraq conflict. I am one who has
>not become "calloused" to the terrible news that comes out of
>Iraq on a weekly, and almost daily basis.

>Obviously there are no words that can begin to quantify the
>sacrifices being made today from those that wear the uniform,
>and from those that have donned it in the past.

>Respectfully,

>Frank Warren

>P.S. How's the Brookdale Lodge these days?


Happy holidays Frank and all Listerions,

Thanks for your "virtual handshake for veterans". I am sure
there are also other veterans on this List who feel the same and
appreciate your sentiments.

I have not been to the Brookdale Lodge since some months ago
when I was at the "granny hippy" reunion with Country Joe and
the Fish. In September I moved from California to aloha Hawaii.

Frank, I have to look at UFO cases using the standards of
evidence of a detective or an attorney. Anecdotal stories,
claims, questionable documents, and opinions are interesting.
But it takes verififable facts to constitute real evidence. It
takes a quality of evidence to develop a case to constitute
proof, as I am sure you are aware of, within legal procedure.

I feel that some of the strongest UFO cases (military, pilot
reports, radar tracking) indicate capabilities beyond known
terrestrial craft but there is no proof that they are
extraterrestrial. There have been many claims (Roswell, Corso,
Lazar, etc.) that the government has recovered ET craft and
their occupants. However. I have not seen any evidence
"verifying the fact that the powers-that-be have in fact
recovered an extraterrestrial craft".


Josh








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   Dec > Dec 22

                             UFO Review Issue 7

From: Stuart Miller <stuart.miller4.nul>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 11:13:22 +0000 (GMT)
Fwd Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 08:26:53 -0500
Subject: UFO Review Issue 7


UFO Review issue 7 - Happy Christmas Reading

I am pleased to announce that the combined December/January
issue of UFO Review - issue 7 -  is now available at:

http://www.uforeview.net

Top left hand button marked "Current issue".

Although its a large issue, it has compressed down nicely to
under 3mbs so download time should not take long.

A bumper issue was promised and one is delivered. A substantial
part of this edition is given over to the recent 2nd Annual UFO
Crash Retrieval Conference in Las Vegas and we are very pleased
to announce that Ryan Wood has kindly given us permission to
reproduce two of the papers presented there, namely Nick
Redfern's paper on "Crashed UFOs - A Worldwide History" and
Grant Cameron's paper on "The Presidents and The Hard Evidence -
Parts one and two". There is also a preliminary interview with
Grant by way of introduction to his paper. Both papers and the
interview are fascinating and intriguing.

There is also an interview with Nick Pope who talks about his
life and interests as well as the coming UK FOIA. Apparently,
there are a few surprises waiting for us! Nick also answers his
critics, of whom there are a few in the UK and deals with some
direct and challenging questions.

Let us not forget Andrew Pike who writes about advances in
electronic eavesdropping and Kithra who tells us about faeries,
leprechauns, and other small folk as well as drawing a very
interesting interpretation of the Sutton Hoo helmet.

There is also the usual madness. Transparently trying to find
premature reasons for getting round the FOIA, the UK MOD came up
with the fabulous excuse that many files were covered in
asbestos dust. Some clown has written a piece claiming that the
MOD itself is covered in "a dust of lies." There is also UFO
Review's Ufologist Of The Year for 2004 award though inevitably
it is not as it seems. And also an exciting picture in the hunt
for more evidence of alien/human hybrids.

All in all, excellent value for the money (its free) and
something to while away the tedium over the Christmas break.

Enjoy and thank you all for your support this year.


Stuart Miller








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                               Merry Christmas

From: Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo <ufomiami.nul>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 09:26:12 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 09:29:07 -0500
Subject: Merry Christmas


Dear friends:

I really wish you Peaceful and Joyous Holidays in the company of
your loved ones.

May 2005 bring to us great ufo reports.


Best regards,

Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo
Miami UFO Center







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                          Filer's Files #53 - 2004

From: George A. Filer <Majorstar.nul
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 07:00:08 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 14:24:39 -0500
Subject: Filer's Files #53 - 2004

***

UFOs were seen over California, Kentucky, Illinois, Louisiana,
Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina,
Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Sightings were also reported in Canada
and the United Kingdom. Anomalies and water on Mars

Merry Christmas!

California - Huge Triangle With Red Lights

LOS ANGELES -- While walking in West Hollywood, the witness
noticed two red lights in the sky at 7:45 PM, on December 3,
2004. They were an arm's length away from each other. He noticed
a third light up ahead of the other two, forming a perfect
triangle. All moving in unison, heading north. The three lights
would pulse at the same moment. At that point, I realized there
was the vague outline of a mass connecting these three red
lights. Then, I watched as four or five other lights pulsed
along the outer edge of the triangle, with more lights being on
the western edge of the object. I could not detect any pattern
to the flashing of these other lights. A couple of times all
seven or eight were on at the same time. This thing was huge. If
it was just up a few thousand feet, you could fit dozens of
commercial jets within its base outline. If it was really high
up -- well, it would be beyond massive. One of those sweeping,
movie premiere spotlights swept under the object and didn't
touch it, so it was at least higher than those things can
project light. It seemed to glide across the sky without sound
and was near the 405 highway. Thanks to

SUNOL/PLEASANTON =96 Two friends were driving home from work
along the 680 Freeway, when the witness saw a strange craft at
6 PM, on December 3, 2004. It had seven lights big to small,
moving to the center of the triangle, appearing out of no where
as if going un cloaked. The witness stated, "Typically I see
these triangles over my home in Tracy as they are the ones
flying the lowest, quietest, and slowest over the town, usually
in groups of two to three, one after another, in the same path."
First, I saw up above, a standard plane, similar to a U2, with
no lights on." It had a red and green light, and no others.
About two minutes later, as I scanned ahead of us, all of a
sudden there it was. The Freeway was packed and as we passed to
the left of the craft, it was no more than 500 yards to my right
and 250 yards up. He says, "I saw a perfect triangle with three
big lights in each corner with a tiny light between each big
light and the center light was a medium light." This was by far
the best vision of this triangle I've ever seen. Often these
planes come in and appear to land or hover about the Sunol grade
area, just before the 84 exit. Thanks to Peter Davenport
Director www.UFOCenter.com

KENTUCKY - Twenty White Sphere Objects

LEXINGTON =96 There were about twenty white floating "orb-like"
objects in the sky over the University of Kentucky at 3 PM, on
December 3, 2004. Two friends exiting their classroom building
noticed the orbs moving around over head for two minutes. When
our view became obstructed by a tree, we ran to see them again -
- but they were gone. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director
www.UFOCenter.comILLINOIS -Bright Flashing Point of Light

ELMHURST =96 The observer went outside to have a cigarette and
noticed a bright stationary point of light fairly low in the
northeast but much brighter than any visible stars at 10:13 PM,
on December 4, 2004. At first glance, he thought it was an
airplane on a low approach to O'Hare Airport as the light was
flickering between blue and white with a very random red flash
mixed in. After a few minutes, I asked my parents to verify that
it was flashing and they both confirmed. After fifteen minutes,
we all agreed that it must have been a planet and went inside.
After research online, I could not find a reasonable planetary
explanation for the lights. A couple of hours later it was gone.
Thanks to Peter Davenport Director www.UFOCenter.com

TINLEY PARK -- Driving east on 191st near Harlem Avenue, the
witnesses saw a series of bright flashes in the northeast sky on
December, 12, 2004, at 7 PM;. The first two flashes were white
and the third time it was bright green with a much wider
distance and height, almost like an explosion in the sky. A
minute or two later, the flashing started again as it headed
south. There were about five smaller orange/red flashes that
lasted five minutes. During the summer, three of us saw a white
light in the same area, but it was like a streak in the sky--not
a plane. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director www.UFOCenter.com

LOUISIANA =96 Lights

ALEXANDRIA =96 The witness states, "My wife and I were traveling
over the Purple Heart Bridge commenting on the sliver of the
new moon at 6:28 PM, on December 13, 2004." About 20 degrees to
the left of the moon there appeared one light, then two, then
three; in horizontal configuration and equidistant apart from
one another. The width of the three lights when all of them were
illuminated was the distance of half of a full moon. They were
brilliant white and several times larger than Jupiter=92s
appearance. All three stayed on for four or five seconds and
then disappeared in unison. Five to seven seconds later and five
or so degrees left of the moon one appeared again, then two,
then three, in the same configuration and disappeared again. To
me, a plane or jet could not have traveled that distance in that
amount of time. Then four or five seconds later it happened
again, but this time they were back around the 15 or 20 degree
location to the left of the moon. Then, they disappeared all
together, again. No trailing like a flare or no colors of green
or red. Just 1, 2, 3 on; stayed on; then all off. I called
Rapides Parish Sheriff and was told that the military at Fort
Polk was conducting flare practice. These were not flares. I
have witnessed flares. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director
www.UFOCenter.comMaryland -- Big Green Ball of Light Falling

COLLEGE PARK -- Around 8 PM, on December, 11 2004, I was in the
shopping center down on Baltimore Avenue when I saw a falling
green ball of light. I didn't consider that it would be a UFO
until I typed 'green ball of light' into Google to see if anyone
else had seen it and all the 'green ball of light' results were
described as UFOs. It was falling in the same way that a falling
star would fall, but it was too big and too green to be a
falling star. I wondered for a second if it was a bomb but there
was no big explosion. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director
www.UFOCenter.com

Missouri -Convoy Crosses Sky.

KANSAS CITY -- I was standing in the parking lot on the west
side of the Arrowhead Stadium after the Big 12 Championship on
Saturday night at 11 PM, on December 4, 2004. Two lights
appeared behind the stadium on the south side and crossed the
sky from south to north. The objects appeared as rings of
fire/light separated by a constant distance and moving in the
same direction at jet-like speed. It seemed as though one craft
was "towing" another behind it. A few seconds after the two
lights disappeared in the north horizon, identical lights
appeared again behind the south side of the stadium and followed
the exact same trajectory. A few seconds later, a third set of
lights crossed the sky, following the same trajectory as the
others.

Thanks to Peter Davenport Director www.UFOCenter.comREED SPRING =96 At 5:30=
 PM, on December 3, 2004, two friends were
going to work and saw strange lights south and also another much
brighter light 15 degrees above horizon. Driving up the
mountain they noticed they didn't look like stars as they pulse
and change color. After getting to Branson my friend video
taped with his Sony mini DVD 560 camera at 5:45 AM for 29
minutes while the main light pulsed. The lower left light was
dimmer and the right hand light was very dim though discernible
to the camera. As dawn became brighter the two dimmer lights
disappeared, but the bright main light became very visible and
seemed to grow larger. By 7 PM, all activity ceased. The video
showed a triangle formation when enhanced and the two smaller
lights are very visible. We have not ruled out planets but so
far haven't been able to match a location of a star or planet to
this location. Thanks to Larry Cekander Museum of the
unexplained Reeds Spring, Missouri

Nevada - V Shaped Pattern Of Square Lights

WINNEMUCCA =96 The observers report, "We were sitting in my hot
tub at 8:30 PM, on December 3, 2004, and viewed a very large 'V'
moving overhead toward the southwest. I said, "What the heck is
that?" everyone looked up and briefly saw it. The formation was
too perfect for geese. We could see the stars behind the center
of the V. Each individual object was a small square and appeared
to be lit up. The color was soft orange like a harvest moon
color. The squares on one side of the V looked a little more
ragged than the other side. The whole grouping moved steady but
quickly across the sky. We may have had a view for 6-8 seconds
and it was gone out of sight behind trees. There was no sound at
all. All of us saw the object(s) the same as we discussed it
after it was gone, and all had a very strange feeling that it
was like nothing any of us had ever seen. Thanks to Peter
Davenport Director www.UFOCenter.com

New Hampshire =96 Spinning UFO

PLYMOUTH -- Paul Spera writes, "After getting a report of UFO
activity over I-93 the previous night, my girlfriend and I took
a ride up the highway early after dark on December 17, 2004. Not
far from Plymouth we noticed something hovering in the eastern
sky, so I pulled over. The object remained motionless at around
2000 feet until a plane at about 5000 feet started traveling
towards it. The object then began to slowly move away from us
heading east. High traffic on the highway allowed me to take
only short footage but when analyzing this clip frame by frame
it clearly shows the object changes color and strobes brightly.
It also shows that the object or its lights where spinning in
counterclockwise manner. This is the fourth time I have captured
this object on video. The first time I saw and filmed this
object was on June 21st at 9:07 p.m. Images from all 4 sightings
can be seen at my website. Thanks to Paul Spera
nhufohunter.nul New Hampshire UFO Hunter Website
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeomxpk/

New Jersey =96 Twelve Orbs and Triangle

MONMOUTH BEACH =96 The witness was traveling south on Route 36
from Sandy Hook, at 2:30 PM, on Saturday afternoon December 14,
2004, when she looked towards the Atlantic Ocean and saw twelve
bright orbs. The witness states, "The orbs were the brightest
silver lights I have ever seen with luminosity like that of
liquid mercury--only many times brighter--and pulsating!". These
bright lights appeared to surge out of the cloud cover and
pulsate in a formation of 3 stacked rows. The size of each orb
was larger than a marble but smaller than a golf ball--if held
at arm's length. Almost as quickly as the orbs appeared, they
disappeared. Thanks to Peter Davenport www.UFOCenter.com

TRIANGLE -- Brian Vike received a telephone call from two
witnesses who were driving towards home when they spotted a
black triangular craft on November 26, 2004, at 2:15 AM. They
saw a bright elongated light coming towards them at low altitude
heading south and descending. The driver pulled off the road
as the light flew close. One of the ladies got very frightened
as this object was rather close and just sitting in the sky over
the power-lines moving slightly from side to side. They could
see lights on each of the points of a triangle which pulsated
rather quickly. They were also able to see the silhouette of the
craft against the clear night's sky just above the trees.

The passenger told the driver to get the car going as the
passenger was terrified at what they were watching. The object
had now moved to the opposite side it was on and the ladies
guessed it was only 500 feet away from them at this point. The
object was estimated to be the size of a normal sized car. The
sighting lasted for four minutes. There was no sound. Thanks to
Brian Vike www.hbccufo.com North Carolina =96 Strange Lights

HIGH POINT - - Field Investigator Alan Caviness informed me that
he and other investigators have been taking a series of images
and video of UFOs in his general area. He has obtained an
astounding amount of data indicating heavy concentration of UFOs
in his area. He has provided me with numerous examples of these
objects. Many are cylinder or disk shape and fly above Davidson
County, and High Rock Lake, North Carolina. Thanks to Alan
Caviness Ohio =96 Police Take Photos of UFO

OLMSTED FALLS -- George Pindroh and Aaron Clark of The Cleveland
UFOlogy Project (CUP) report they have investigated a case where
police took photos of UFOs near Cleveland Hopkins Airport, on
September 26, 2004. At 9:44 PM, a resident reported an object
in the western sky that was scaring her and Olmsted Falls
Officers observed with binoculars an object in the northeast sky
at 10:30 PM. The officers observed a round circle with
oscillating red and green lights. Officers called the airport
who advised that they did see the object as well but it was not
on their radar. The object was also reported to return the next
evening. []

Photographs were taken of the object and later obtained by
George Pindroh and Aaron Clark. The investigation team believes
these are not a satellite, star or planet. The object is
multiple colors and is blurred as if it is moving quickly. There
is at least one star visible in these photographs as well and it
is in focus and not blurred at all. A credible source at
Cleveland Airport saw the object for an hour and a half and
claimed the object looked elliptical and had lights moving
around it. The airport information desk reportedly received at
least 100 calls from residents reporting the same object in the
sky. George Pindroh is writing up this report for the MUFON
database. Thanks to George Pindroh and Aaron Clark
info.nul Aaron Clark 10/15/04 to view photographs
www.clevelandufo.com click here

LAKEWOOD =96 The witness was a passenger on his way to work and
driving past houses he saw a UFO for a couple of seconds at
5:50 PM, on December 3, 2004. The object was cigar or cylinder
shaped and was going towards the northwest fairly high in the
sky. There were no contrails even though it was high enough.
Many military jets were observed flying around the area shortly
after. An hour before my sighting, the Mike Trivisanno Show on
WTAM 1100 AM, reported a caller had also seen a cigar shaped
UFO. During the show there was another caller that said he saw
some fighter jets coming towards Cleveland form Wright Patterson
Air Force Base. I would like to receive your weekly newsletter,
since I have been having lots of UFO sightings around Akron.
We have been to Fostoria Ohio to look, we believe there was a
crash there. Great site, I have taken some interesting photos
too, now I have somewhere to go to see the recent sightings, and
compare notes. Thanks to AmyPennsylvania - Fast Ball of Light

UPPER BLACK EDDY -- The observer was looking up at the stars of
Orion and saw an airplane next to it with its red, white and
blue blinking lights when she saw a bright white light fly
across the sky on December 13, 2004 and 9:07 PM. The lights then
disappeared, then reappeared moving in a curved motion. It then
reappeared and "danced" in the sky doing 2 or 3 complete circles
and disappeared again. It seemed as if it was much lower in the
sky than the airplane was and was moving extremely fast across
the whole visible night sky in ten seconds. Thanks to Peter
Davenport Director www.UFOCenter.com

Canada -Elongated Bright Craft

TELKWA, B C =96 At 8:45 AM, on December 11, 2004, the witness had
just awakened and looked out his bedroom window which faces
Tyhee Lake. The clouds lit up the different colors of orange
and pinks, which gave a spectacular view for him. He saw
underneath the clouds an extremely bright light which looked out
of the norm, so he called to his wife. The witness grabbed his
binoculars and saw an elongated bright light. He was able to
watch and film the object for five minutes before it dropped out
of sight behind the mountains. He described the object as like
a long cigar and much brighter than the clouds which had the sun
shinning on them. The witness said you can clearly see that the
object is much lower and underneath the clouds that were present
that day. Thanks to Brian Vike www.hbccufo.com UK/England

LEICESTER =96The witness had never seen a UFO until about 40
minutes ago. He states, "I was lying in bed looking out of the
window when all of a sudden a fiery looking light appeared in
the sky. It sort of faded in to view from being nothing, to a
dull light and then gradually getting brighter. The total fade
in took a second or less. At first I thought it might have been
a flare or fireworks. At midnight on December 4, 2004. I moved
the curtain back to get a better view and watched it for about
ten seconds as it moved in a downward diagonal movement and then
curved smoothly into a horizontal path. There was a small red
light to the side of it like the tail light of a helicopter and
the bright light was like a helicopters search light. It
lingered in the sky for a few more seconds and the intense
bright fiery light faded out as quickly as it had faded in.

Mars - Rover Opportunity Washed With Water?

New Scientist magazine reports that something, or someone is
regularly cleaning layers of dust from the solar panels of the
Mars Opportunity vehicle while it was closed down during the
Martian night. The Rover Opportunity is getting washed each
night and this has boosted its performance by cleaning its
panels' power output close to their maximum 900 watt-hours per
day. At one stage its power output dropped to 500 watt-hours
because of the heavy Martian dirt. Heavy dust has dropped the
Spirit Rover to 400 watt-hours a day on the other side of the
planet. Jim Erickson rover team leader says, "These exciting
and unexplained cleaning events have kept Opportunity in really
great shape!" The image below shows surface water near
Opportunity. Thanks to Harold Carver.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/jpl-
images/web/opportunity/pancam/2004-12-
19/1P155450047EFF38EVP2557L4M1.JPGMars Anomalies

Mars is an ideal viewing point to watch activities here on Earth
=96 and we now know there are many artificial features on its
surface such as possible writing, structures, pyramids, pictures
of humanoids, water and plant life, and even UFOs. Earth and
Mars both have inopportune artifacts that are surprising
similar. Here on Earth we all know that many thousands have
testified that "Somebody" is visiting us. Many artifacts from
our own human history were cause for speculation and scientific
conflicts, because they did not fit our world view of the origin
of civilization OR EVEN THE ORIGIN OF MAN. But - the artifacts
remain AND HUMANS SIMILAR TO MAN APPARENTLY ONCE EXISTED ON
MARS..

John E. Combest writes, "It took me several days, but I finally
worked my way through the photos at Malin Space Science Systems
to find the photo in which the damaged, large building appears.
Anyone who wishes to review that photo will find it as follows:
Internet Site: http://www.msss.com

Click on: Mars Images and MOC Gallery
Click on: MOC Images with Captions - 1997 through Present
Click on: 2002 - October
Click on: 07 October - MOC2-320

Enlarge the left image entitled, "Gullies in crater at 42.4 deg
S, 158.2 deg W

In the bottom center of the photo below the top of the hill
there appears to be a large rock sticking out of the sediment.
When you enlarge that part of the photo you will find the
remains of one large building along with primarily the slabs of
several outbuildings. Remember that you are looking almost
straight down on top of the remains of those structures. The
roof of the central largest building is missing, and you can see
down inside the remaining four walls of that building. Happy
Hunting, Thanks to: John E. Combest, Inspection Engineer[]

"Life on Mars"

Your chance to get your (fingers) on the throttle of significant
and up to-date UFO info as well as the real deal on the Mars
expedition. Get your official and private DVD copy now for $25.
Send your contact info to: jlpromo2001.nul or mail your
check to Fast Street Productions, 37 Surrey Lane, Willingboro,
NJ 08046 or pay: "ttps://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr for
majorstar.nul DONATE TO KEEP THESE FILES COMING

Dear Readers - Filer=92s Files has been brought to you free on a
weekly basis for seven years. As of January 2004, I have been
requesting a donation of $24 per year to continue with Filer=92s
Files. These files cannot exist without your help. Donations can
be sent to: "ttps://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr for
majorstar.nul You may use Paypal, Visa, American Express,
or Master Charge. You can also mail your check to George Filer,
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WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW WHEN BUY OR SELL REAL ESTATE!

Get your free report and learn how you can obtain the best real
estate agent to help your buy or sell a home. To get a free copy
of this report e-mail me at: Majorstar.nul MUFON UFO JOURNAL
-- For more detailed monthly investigative reports subscribe to
the MUFON JOURNAL. A MUFON membership includes the Journal and
costs only $45.00 per year. To join MUFON or to report a UFO go
to "ttp://www.mufon.com/. To ask questions contact
MUFONHQ.nul or HQ.nul

Filer's Files is copyrighted 2004 by George A. Filer, all rights
reserved. Readers may post the COMPLETE files on their Web Sites
if they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list
the date of issue. These reports and comments are not
necessarily the OFFICIAL MUFON viewpoint. Send your letters to
Majorstar.nul Sending mail automatically grants permission
for us to publish and use your name. Please state if you wish to
keep your name or e-mail confidential. CAUTION, MOST OF THESE
ARE INITIAL REPORTS AND REQUIRE FURTHER INVESTIGATION.

God Bless Our Troops

George A. Filer
www.GeorgeFiler.com








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   Dec > Dec 22

                 Re: Causality & Blind Science News - Holman

From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 01:52:19 +1100
Fwd Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 14:31:01 -0500
Subject: Re: Causality & Blind Science News - Holman


>From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:24:29 +0000
>Subject: Causality & Blind Science News

>Attacking the messenger does _not_ disprove a message.

Which is why I've put forward specific rebuttals and asked pointed
questions about your specific claims. But you have curiously refused
to respond to them.

>So far
>you've only produced hair-splitting quibbles and silly slurs.

Right, let me get this straight. So I've completed a
postgraduate research degree in astrophysics. I've read the
literature, created and run computer models, analysed images,
made and tested hypotheses, gone to conferences, written papers
and a thesis, used huge telescopes to probe the outer reaches of
the Universe. I've even spent hours in the cold and dark at the
prime focus of a 4-metre class telescope, drifting with the
stars, just to uncover and cover a photographic plate - just
like in the old days. I was by no means a great astrophysicist,
but I was competent, and I don't think it is hubristic to claim
that I know more about the field than do most non-
astrophysicists.

And now you come along and assert, contrary to all my knowledge
and experience, that "astrophysics has been wrong on almost every
call made till now" - and I am supposed to just take your word
for it?

Sorry, but I won't: I demand evidence. If that's a hair-splitting
quibble or a silly slur, then so be it.

>Here's the message again - Technology works by 'suck it and see'
>and is reality-based. "Science Theory" is concept-based (& ego-
>based) and has always been wrong in the past and is wrong now.

Rubbish. Only somebody wholly ignorant of the history of science
and technology could make a claim like that. Try reading up on
the invention of the laser, for example. Or, of course, nuclear
weapons. Amazing how they got the atomic bomb to work first time
by a "suck it and see" approach. All those calculations of
nuclear cross sections and scattering angles must have been
beside the point.

Please, please, please, _please_ study some actual science. Your
pride in your ignorance is just baffling.

>Quote - "Whatever economic and human resources were made
>available to Pythagoras for the purpose of investigating the
>natural world... he would not have known what questions to ask,
>nor could he have known. There is no reason to doubt that the
>present state of affairs is any different." - that was John D.
>Barrows in 'Impossibility - the Limits of Science and the
>Science of Limits' (ISBN 0-09-977211-6).

Again with the quotes! (It's Barrow, by the way, not Barrows,
and yes, that _is_ a quibble. It doesn't hurt to be accurate
though, does it?) What do you think you prove by this practice?
How about letting go of the authority figures and standing on
your own two feet? Or at least explaining why you think the
quotes are so significant? They do not speak for themselves,
as I have repeatedly shown.

And as I will show once more. Do you think Barrow (a
distinguished cosmologist) is saying that modern science is
rubbish - that it does not even know what questions to ask?
Having read the section the quote is taken from, I don't - in
the same paragraph, he even says "Looking back, one can even see
how progress was invariably being made despite missing a huge
number of things that we now know were accessible to
investigators of the time, if only they had known where to
look." (Emphasis added.) This comes after he considers different
types of limits to scientific knowledge; in this case, the
possibility that there are things that we will never be able to
discover. But he does not say that therefore science is bunk -
 he assumes that the things we know now are still true, just
that there may be an infinity of other, unknowable things that
we can never discover. (And he may well be right.) In his
concluding chapter, Barrow says that "If this book has taught
the reader anything, I hope it is that the notion of
impossibility is far subtler than naive assumptions about the
endless horizons of science, or pious hopes that boffins will
be baffled, would lead you to believe." (Emphasis added.) I
guess his hopes were forlorn, in your case.

Looks like a very interesting read, actually.

>You might also check
>Nigel Calder in "badsci.txt".

Do you actually ever read anything I write? I mean, I know my
subclauses are tiresome, but you could at least do me the
courtesy of reading what I take the trouble to write, as I do
you the courtesy of reading what you write. I have already given
my opinion of Calder's statements, here:

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2004/dec/m10-011.shtml

Briefly, he's lost it; his statements are illogical. (Perhaps
the journalist mangled them, though.) If you think what Calder
is saying is valid, or that my criticisms are not, then make a
case for it. Don't simply keep quoting him at me.

>Science's record of wrong theories, both large (astrophysics)
>and small (particle physics) is complete, spanning Ptolemaic
>epicycles and Aristotle's four elements,

Good grief! You're holding theories that were discarded
centuries ago against modern science? You do realise, don't you,
that it's precisely this history of discarded theories which
makes science great? If you have a new theory which better
matches observation, you discard the old one. Again, this is
_not_ shameful. Since you love quotes so much, here's one for
you: "When I'm wrong, I change my mind.  What do you do?"
(Keynes.) And that's not a rhetorical question.

>all the way to today's
>'impossible' solar systems (now being found)

Once more ... they are _not_ impossible. When they started
turning up, they were _very_ surprising, but that is not the
same thing as impossible. If you tell me why you believe science
said they were impossible, I will tell you why you are mistaken
in that belief. Why won't you? What are you afraid of?

>and the non-working
>'standard model' (dependent on non-existent gluons and non-
>discoverable 'Higg's bosons').

We don't yet know whether the Higgs boson is discoverable with
our technology or not. But it is predicted that the Large Hadron
Collider should be able to find it, and it opens for business in
2007. So why don't you wait and see before leaping to
conclusions?

Oh, and we do actually have evidence for the existence of
gluons, but I certainly wouldn't expect something as trivial as
experimental data to impinge upon your certainties.

>Please, no more kicking and screaming Brett. If you can't face
>the music, quit the dance-hall.

To continue your metaphor, I'm not the one refusing to dance here.

>Chorus - "Science has no grounds on which to affirm or deny
>unknown phenomena, while it is so obviously befuddled by known
>phenomena."

>More evidence at:

>http://www.perceptions.couk.com/blinded.html#furth

Please, enough. I've read your webpages and they are not in the
least persuasive. To use your own terms, they are "concept-based
(& ego-based)" rather than "reality-based".


Brett Holman









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   Dec > Dec 22

                           Are We Alone? Part III

From: Rich Reynolds <rrrgroup.nul>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 10:25:06 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 14:32:46 -0500
Subject: Are We Alone? Part III


Our guy Shane has made the third part of a BBC-TV program, Are We
Alone? (subtitled Are We Real?), available online for UFO
UpDaters (who seem to enjoy the programs according to the hits
on his server).

Here's the link:

http://www.reasonablehosting.com/rrrgroup/wwsdk03.html


Rich Reynolds








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   Dec > Dec 23

                              Invitation To ETI

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 08:22:34 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 08:22:34 -0500
Subject: Invitation To ETI




Thanks to Larry Bryant for the lead on the site below.
An interesting read as you drill down.....

ebk

-----

http://www.ieti.org/index.html

Invitation to ETI
(a message from Earth)

Welcome to Invitation to ETI, a Web-based scientific SETI
(Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) experiment. In these
pages, you will find an invitation, issued by an informal group
of 90 scientists, artists and futurists from around Planet
Earth, to any Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (ETI) having the
capability to read it. This invitation is issued in hopes of
establishing a constructive dialog between humanity and our
cosmic companions.

This website is divided into the following eight Sections (which
can be accessed by clicking on the graphical links at the top,
or the text links at the bottom, of every page on this website):


Home:        takes you back to this page, from anywhere in the
               Invitation to ETI website

Hello:       is the Invitation itself, which we hope ETI will
               some day read

About:       discusses the rationale behind SETI science, and
               this particular experiment

Who We Are:    tells about each of the individuals issuing this
               Invitation

News:          reports on what's new in the Invitation to ETI,
               and the world of SETI

Links:       is your portal to key SETI sites around the Web

Search:      brings up a key-word linked Search Engine for
               this website

Contact Us:    allows you (or ETI) to establish a dialog with
               those issuing this Invitation










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               Re: Causality & Blind Science News - Dickenson

From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson.nul>
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 13:13:06 +0000
Fwd Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 18:08:06 -0500
Subject: Re: Causality & Blind Science News - Dickenson


>From: Brett Holman <b.holman.nul>
>To: UFO Updates <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 01:52:19 +1100
>Subject: Re: Causality & Blind Science News

Can't spare your feelings any more Brett, (I'll pass over the
quibbles and slurs again). You obviously need a list of
mainstream science's present incompetence (and censorship).

Here's a sample:

Astro-phys - ongoing misidentification of galaxies, misreading
universe's structure (new galaxies forming), failure of "black-
hole" theory (now being quietly abandoned by the bandwagon
riders).

Black holes and Seyferts are dealt with (deservedly harshly) at:

http://www.perceptions.couk.com/uef/nblckhls.html#data

and all page.

Previously deemed 'impossible' planets and galaxies are at:

http://www.perceptions.couk.com/blinded.html item #1

Atomics/particle phys - those bandwagon riders are now afraid
to get off, see:

http://www.perceptions.couk.com/uef/parts.txt &
http://www.perceptions.couk.com/blinded.html

item #19

Evolution - dogmatic insistence on a theory that never worked.
Considered at:

http://www.perceptions.couk.com/equal2.txt (scroll down to Gould)
Some of the math is at:
http://www.perceptions.couk.com/magic2.html#3

New external comment at:

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary%5C15530.html

Your 'professionals' have been riding cash-driven bandwagons of
hype & waffle, accompanied by attempted censorship of us folk who
speak out.

And that censorship is now being applied _within_ the fraternity.
See:
http://www.archivefreedom.org/

and

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/archivefreedom/main.html

What's the science bandwagon (and its paymasters) afraid of?
Embarrassed by incompetence?

Maybe - but more likely the lid's being held down for other
reasons.

Cheers

Ray D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Perceptions" http://www.perceptions.couk.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~





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   Dec > Dec 27

                   The Exopolitics Of Santa Claus & NORAD

From: Gord Heath <gheath.nul>
Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 15:33:54 -0800
Fwd Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 08:11:15 -0500
Subject: The Exopolitics Of Santa Claus & NORAD


The Exopolitics of Santa Claus and NORAD

Gord Heath - UFOBC


Do You Believe in Santa Claus?

Many people know that NORAD has used its radar to track Santa
Claus for the past 50 years. What may be less known is that the
protocols for this tracking are used to ensure that NORAD does
not make the mistake of confusing Santa's sleigh powered by
eight magic reindeer for an "unfriendly bogie".

The formalized official tracking of Santa Claus was initiated by
Continental Air Defense Command in Colorado Springs in December
1954. That year, a Colorado Springs newspaper ran an
advertisement for a department store "Santa Hotline". By some
strange "coincidence", the telephone number was the hotline
phone at Continental Air Defense Command at Ent Air Base in
downtown Colorado Springs. When the base commander received a
phone call from a child who wanted to talk to Santa, the quick
thinking Col. Harry Shoup, told the child that he was
responsible for tracking his travels through US air space.

Col. Shoup no doubt had many incidents of radar observations of
Santa Claus and his elves in US air space in the 1950s. I think
it is quite possible it was the same Harry Shoup who was the Lt.
Col. in charge of the Air Defense Squadrons at Truax Air Field
in Madison, Wisconsin, when two Air Force officers from the base
encountered "Santa Claus" on an intercept mission over Lake
Superior on November 23rd, 1953. Air Force officers Lt. Moncla
and Lt. Wilson were flying a USAF F-89 when they were met by
Santa Claus who took them back to his underwater base beneath
the ice at the North Pole, to live with him and his elves. A
photograph was published the next day in a Madison newspaper
which shows Lt. Col. Harry Shoup using a pointer on a map to
show the location in the middle of Lake Superior where the Air
Force jet met Santa Claus.

It is well known by NORAD, that Santa Claus does not spend all
his time at the North Pole making toys, but performs many
reconnaissance missions at other times of the year so he knows
who is being naughty and nice. These days, it is reported that
Santa is met by fighter jets from Canadian and US Forces as he
enters and leaves the air space of the two northern countries.
Since Santa's sleigh is so much faster than our fastest jets,
Santa flies freely through the air space to perform his
reconnaissance and other missions.

Many famous people help out NORAD in their efforts to track
Santa. This year's honorary Santa Tracker was Ringo Starr, who
assures us that "Santa and I are personal friends" =96 perhaps
through his connections with the late John Lennon who was
reported to have seen Santa Claus from the roof of his New York
apartment on the night of August 23rd, 1974. Another well known
celebrity who helps out is Richard Dean Anderson, better known
as Col. Jack O'Neill of Stargate Command. He has no doubt had
many encounters with Santa Claus as he explores the many
fascinating worlds accessed from the top-secret Stargate at
NORAD's command centre at Cheyenne Mountain. (Gee. I wonder if
he has ever met Col. Harry Shoup who still lives in Colorado
Springs?)

It is certainly a relief to many of us, that NORAD is using its
latest technology to ensure that it does not make errors in
mistaking Santa Claus for incursions into our air space by armed
forces from the hostile nations of this world.








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   Dec > Dec 29

                         Re: Merry Christmas - Smith

From: James Smith <zeus001002.nul>
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 13:14:04 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Fwd Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 08:11:44 -0500
Subject: Re: Merry Christmas - Smith


>From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:18:39 -0600
>Subject: Merry Christmas


>I don't believe I could express more eloquently my wishes for
>each and all of us for the next 365 strange days than by quoting
>James Smith, who was probably quoting someone else, but perhaps
>not.

I am not aware that I am quoting but I read a lot, so who knows?

>In this forum, and in all aspects of our lives, may we

>"help each other as best we can, and do no harm."

Yup! Have a Happy New Year!









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   Dec > Dec 29

                       UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 52

From: John Hayes <John.nul>
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 19:05:44 +0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 08:16:38 -0500
Subject: UFO ROUNDUP, Volume 9 Number 52


Posted on behalf of Joseph Trainor.

<Masinaigan.nul>
==========================

  UFO ROUNDUP
Volume 9, Number 52
December 29, 2004

E-mail: Masinaigan.nul
Website: http://www.ufoinfo.com/roundup/


NEWS OF ALIEN PRESENCE STARTLES INDIA

  India was startled by four reports last week which
appeared to confirm the rumors of a large underground base
staffed by extraterrestrials in the Ladakh region of the
Himalayas.
  In New Delhi, India's capital, a senior officer of
the Indian Army told freelance journalist Subha Jain that
aliens were indeed in the Himalayas.
  In Bangalore, a recently-retired officer of the
Indian Air Force described the underground base to his
youngest son's elementary school class and said aliens had
met with high-ranking officials of India's government.
  In Leh, a city in the Ladakh region, a local official
confirmed that the Indian Army had moved armored brigades
into the area and was limiting access to civilian
residents and tourists.
  In Joshimath, another Ladakh town, workers at an auto
repair shop claim they witnessed a strange broadcast on
their Chinese-made miniature black-and-white television
set.
  "According to Subha Jain, a freelance reporter in New
Delhi, she bumped into a very senior military official in
a nightclub in New Delhi. According to him, the
extraterrestrials have been visiting India and the rest of
the world for thousands of years."
  "In recent years, most of the super-powers have been
visited. India is no exception."
  "'They always make contact through the ground radar
stations run by the military,' she says."
  "The Himalayas and Ladakh is where they have made
their most recent contact. They want to let Indians know
the rules and regulations of the multidimensional
universe."
  "India is planning an unmanned moon and later an
advanced unmanned Mars expedition. India's Space Research
Organisation (SRO) has been given the galactic do's and
don't's."
  "Last week, a flight commodore of the Indian Air
Force (IAF), who recently retired, was asked to provide a
little talk to his youngest son's class at a school in
Bangalore."
  "Guess what he picked as a topic? Yes, you got it
right. It was the advanced landing base for UFOs in
Ladakh."
  "He started by saying new technology is evolving, and
new advancements are being made in Aerospace. The
students started questioning him on different aspects of
these new technologies and where this technology came
from. At that moment, he began giving a vivid description
of the landing base."
  "Surrounded by two of the world's highest mountain
ranges, the Himalayas and the Karakorams, the region lies
athwart two others--the Ladakh range and the Lanskar
range. Residents live at altitudes ranging from 2,750
meters (9,000 feet) at Kargil to 7,672 meters (25,170
feet) at Saser Kangri in the Karakorams. In summer,
temperatures rarely exceed 27 degrees Celsius, while in
winter they plummet to minus 20 degrees Celsius, even in
Leh."
  "In Leh, Ladakh (region), according to Tsering
Spalzang, a senior official, paranormal activities are
happening with regard to the buildup of the Indian Army"
in the region.
  "These are zones that the Indian Army and Indian Air
Force block for security reasons. The Ladakh valley has
been heavily secured by the Indian government. It is a
'sensitive area' and no one is allowed to enter from
either the Indian side or the Chinese side."
  "According to some in New Delhi, UFOs have made
contact with high-ranking officials of the Indian
government. The government was initially baffled, not
knowing how to react. Later, things became quiet, and it
seems that everyone understands that the extraterrestrials
are friendly."
  Krishnari Bai Dharapurnanda, UFO Roundup
correspondent in India, reported, "I am trying to learn
more about a strange incident that occurred in Joshimath.
This is a town some 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of
Badrinath, a pilgrimage site sacred to Hindu rishis (holy
men--J.T.). A family was working on an automobile engine
at their repair shop. They had a small, battery-powered
Chinese B & W (black-and-white) television set. Reception
is very bad in this mountainous region. Even with a large
antenna, there is quite a lot of static. All at once, the
telly gave out a weird squealing noise. When they looked,
they saw onscreen a crystal clear picture--in color!"
  "The screen showed a young Chinese woman wearing a
white halter top. She had long, glossy black hair, parted
in the middle and with a shelf of bangs just touching her
eyebrows. She had almond eyes and prominent cheekbones.
She said something in a strange language. Then she paused
and spoke again in another language. Then she paused
again and spoke in yet another language. She did it one
more time, and this time one of the shop workers
recognized the fourth language as Uighur."
  "Next a Pathan (man from northern Pakistan--J.T.)
appeared. He had a rather fleshy face and a small
moustache. He was also dressed very strangely in a kind
of scale-mail armor and a spiked helmet covered with a
puggaree (turban). He, too, spoke in an unknown language.
Then he paused and spoke again in Urdu, which, of course,
everyone in the shop understood."
  "He said he and the Chinese woman were emissaries of
the extraterrestrials. He said the aliens mean no harm
and have placed the Ladakh valley under their protection.
He advised the people to go about with their lives and
rest assured that they would not be troubled in any way by
the UFOs. The color image then vanished, replaced by a
screen full of crackling static."
  "Our ufologists believe the woman addressed her
message to people living north of the Himalayas, in China,
while the Pathan was addressing the mountain people here
in India and in Pakistan. We have only heard of one such
incident, so we do not know if anyone else saw this
broadcast. It is all very troubling. Could this have
been a hoax? If the aliens building this base wanted to
communicate with the people of Ladakh, why didn't they
themselves appear on the telly? Why would they use two
humans as their emissaries?" (See the newspaper India
Daily for December 19, 2004, "ET contacts with India's
government and military." Many thanks to John Winston,
Robert Fischer and Krishnari Bai Dharapurnanda for these
reports.)


SKY BOOMS RATTLE THE CAPITAL OF INDONESIA

  "Several loud blasts believed to be caused by a
meteor shower echoed across the Indonesian capital of
Jakarta and nearby towns early on Sunday," December 19,
2004, "startling residents who reported seeing flying
objects in the sky."
  "Police said they found no evidence that the blasts
were caused by bomb attacks."
  "An official from the Indonesian space centre LAPAN
told the official Antara news agency that the explosions
were likely to have been caused by a meteor shower."
  "'It's probable that a fireball originating from a
big meteor entered the earth's atmosphere. This created
the explosion,' said LAPAN space expert Thomas
Djamaluddin."
  "Police had said they were investigating the blasts."
(See the Lahore Daily Times of Pakistan for December 21,
2004, "Indonesian blasts likely meteor shower." Many
thanks to Robert Fischer and Muhammad Ayub Khan for
forwarding this newspaper article.)


F/A-22 RAPTOR CRASHES NEAR AREA 51

  "In the first reported crash of the military's next
generation fighter jet, an F/A-22 Raptor slammed into the
ground and exploded during takeoff at Nellis Air Force
Base" in Nevada on Monday afternoon, December 20, 2004.
  "The pilot, whose name was not released, ejected
safely minutes before the crash."
  "He was taken to Mike O'Callaghan Federal Hospital
for evaluation. A Nellis spokesman said he was 'up and
walking around.'"
  "A fire engine based at Nellis flipped over as it
sped to the scene of the crash, but nobody was injured in
the crash, an Air Force official said."
  "The crash marked the first mishap involving a Raptor
since the (U.S.) Air Force began taking delivery of the
aircraft two years ago."
  "The unarmed F/A-22 destroyed Monday was assigned to
the 53rd Wing's 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron. It
was one of about 25 Raptors the Air Force has received so
far, and one of eight assigned to the testing program that
began at Nellis in January 2003."
  "Equipped with Stealth technology to help to evade
enemy aircraft, the twin-engine Raptor flies fast enough
to cover the 12,000-square-mile Nellis range (which
includes the facility at Groom Lake known as Area 51--
J.T.) in seven minutes."
  "But as the cost of the F/A-22s has swelled,
estimates range from $130 million to $250 million each,
the number of aircraft the Pentagon plans to buy has
shrunk from 750 to about 300, according to the Government
Accounting Office (GAO)."
  "Nellis Air Force Base expects to receive nine more
Raptors in the next five or six years. The aircraft is
scheduled to become combat ready in 2005."
  "'It is by far the most advanced aircraft, not only
in the U.S. but in the world,' said Major General Stephen
Goldfein, commander of the Nellis Air Warfare Center."
  "Gen. Goldfein said all aircraft at the base will be
grounded this morning until the crash site is inspected in
daylight. The seven remaining Raptors at Nellis will
undergo a thorough inspection before they are flown again,
he said."
  "The inspections could take hours and be done today,
or they could take several days, Gen. Goldfein said."
  "'The purpose, of course, is to prevent anything like
this from happening again,' he said, 'Obviously, we are
looking for the specific reason why the accident
occurred.'"
  "Goldfein said the plane wasn't high off the ground
when the pilot ejected from the aircraft."
  "'As soon as the pilot grabs the handle, within a
second the whole system works,' he said of the ejection
process."
  "Nellis closed its runways immediately following the
accident, which sent a large plume of black smoke
billowing into the sky of North Las Vegas, Nevada
(population 115,488)."
  This was the fourth crash of a military aircraft in
southern Nevada for the year 2004.
  "On November 9 (2004), a $40 million Navy F-18 Hornet
went down north of Las Vegas shortly after takeoff. Both
the pilot, who ejected safely, and his single-seat
aircraft were assigned to the Oceana Naval Air Station in
Virginia." (See UFO Roundup, volume 9, number 48 for
December 1, 2004, "Mysterious jet crash at Area 51 in
Nevada," page 3.)
  "In June (2004), an Air Force pilot safely ejected
from a military jet during a training mission about 70
miles (116 kilometers) northeast of Las Vegas."
  "Five people were killed in a March (2004) crash
involving an Air Force plane ferrying contractors to a
remote part of the Nellis Test Range about 135 miles (218
kilometers) northwest of the base." (See the Las Vegas,
Nev. Review-Journal for December 21, 2004, "Next
generation F/A-22 Raptor: Stealth fighter crashes." Many
thanks to Daniel Wilson for forwarding this newspaper
article.)


UFO PHOTOGRAPHED IN
PISCO ELQUI, CHILE

  On Saturday, November 6, 2004, a group of travel
agents drove from Santiago de Chile, the national capital,
up into the Andes to the mountain village of Pisco Elqui.
"At around 5 p.m., the travelers reached Pisco Elqui with
the intent of redoing a postcard (photograph) of the
region."
  "Tatiana Comejo, a representative of the Detour
Travel Agency, arranged to have a photograph taken of
herself in the Plaza de Armas," the village's main square,
"using the local church as a background."
  "Back in Santiago, Sra. Comejo noticed something.
The upper part of the photo showed a strange lenticular
object" that had not been there when the photographer
snapped the picture. In spite of her skepticism, she
submitted the photo to the Altovasol Space Centre to
decide the possibility of a UFO's presence."
  "Several expert analyses were made, and experts from
Omnivision Chile," a UFO study group, "validated that the
object appearing in the photo" was a genuine daylight
disc. The Comejo photo has now been made available for
study to UFO groups in Mexico, Spain, France and the USA.
(Muchas gracias a Scott Corrales y Liliana Nunez para
estas noticias.)


CALIFORNIA IS THE FOCUS OF HEAVY UFO ACTIVITY

  On Monday, December 13, 2004, eyewitness Cher R.
stated, "We had a big UFO sighting here in Porterville,"
California (population 39,615). "Many people here in my
neighborhood have seen it. It was a ball of light that
moved too fast to be anything normal. It moved around
over the neighborhood as everyone stood outside watching
it. It faded once out of sight before coming back for a
few minutes. Then it flew straight up into the sky."
  "We may have some photos" of the UFO "developed or
even a video made. If there are other pictures, like the
one you reported in Porterville" several weeks ago, "we
would like to compare them."
  Porterville, Cal. is on Highway 190 approximately 44
miles (70 kilometers) north of Bakersfield.
  On Sunday, December 19, 2004, at 5:15 p.m., in
Berkeley, Cal. (population 102,743), John Delmos was on
the university campus, standing "outside the Doe Library
for about 15 minutes," when he saw an unusual object in
the sky approaching from the east.
  "I watched two separate objects," John reported, "One
was like a small bright cloud. Looked larger than Venus.
It gave off a short contrail, then went back into a round
shape after 10 to 15 seconds. It went below the (western)
horizon. Then another object, also the same shape, went
in the sky over the (San Francisco) Bay. Same general
area, and also performed like a planet, but it was much
bigger and bright orange. I wish I had a videocamera.
The objects were thousands of feet high, speed enormous,
looked stable." (Email Form Reports)


LUMINOUS OVAL UFO SEEN IN TWEED, ONTARIO

  On Saturday, December 18, 2004, at 11:50 p.m., Wayne
P. reported, "I was returning home, travelling on
Bridgewater Road, which is a rural gravel road, west of
Tweed, Ontario" province, Canada.
  "I noticed what is best described as an oval light,
with a flat bottom, giving an appearance of a dome light.
Approximately one kilometer (0.6 miles) west of Highway
37. Normally, with something like this, you would expect
a meteor, as we see many in the mostly smog-free skies
here. Annually we look forward to the Perseid and Leonid
meteor showers. But in this case, the speed (it seemed to
me closer than meteors I've seen--W.P.), seemed different,
and there was no trail. At no time did I have an
impression it was a meteor."
  "The only other piece of information I can offer is
that it was travelling due north."
  Tweed, Ont. is on Highway 37 and Stoco Lake about 130
miles (210 kilometers) northeast of Toronto. (Many thanks
to John Hayes for forwarding this report.)


DID OPPORTUNITY VISIT
A MARTIAN CAR WASH?

  "An unexplained phenomenon akin to a space borne car
wash has boosted the performance of one of two U.S. rovers
probing the surface of Mars, New Scientist magazine said
on Tuesday," December 21, 2004.
  "It said something--or someone--had regularly cleaned
layers of dust from the solar panels of the Mars
Opportunity vehicle while it closed down during the
Martian night."
  "The cleaning had boosted the panels' power output
close to the maximum 900 watt-hours peak long after they
had dropped to 500 watt-hours because of the heavy Martian
dust."
  "By contrast, the power output of the solar panels of
the Mars Spirit (rover), at a different part of the Red
Planet, had dropped to just 400 watt-hours a day, clogged
by the heavy dust."
  "'These exciting and unexplained cleaning events have
kept Opportunity in really great shape,' the magazine
quoted NASA team leader Jim Erickson as saying." (See New
Scientist for Tuesday, December 21, 2004. Many thanks to
Jim Hickman, executive director of Skywatch International,
for this news story.)
(Editor's Comment: What do you think, readers? Are the
Jawas riding around on Mars in their giant sand crawlers,
doing maintenance work on Opportunity right after the sun
goes down? Oh, and here's the Jawas' holiday season
offer...four brand-new Michelin tires and a complete
engine tune-up with every abduction. What a deal!)



HUYGENS PROBE LEAVES
CASSINI SPACECRAFT

  "Scientists have long thought thick clouds over
Saturn's moon Titan rained methane through smoggy skies.
Some believed the liquid pooled on the surface, perhaps
forming lakes and seas reminiscent of Earth's."
  "Recent images of the moon (Titan)--about half the
size of Earth--show dark regions next to a light one.
Researchers, however, haven't been able to figure out
which is higher in elevation, let alone what they're made
of."
  "Space scientists hope to finally get some answers in
three weeks when they send a space probe spinning down
through the thick atmosphere of a world more distant than
any visited before."
  On Friday evening, December 24, 2004, "Cassini
researchers scattered around the world" watched in
excitement "as the landing probe Huygens seperates from
the spacecraft and heads toward the moon."
  "Huygens will spend three weeks sinking slowly toward
Titan. On January 14 (2005), it will float through the
atmosphere on parachutes, shooting pictures for two-and-a-
half hours before it hits the surface."
  "From what scientists can tell, the chemical
composition of Titan's atmosphere reflects what was on
Earth several billion years ago, when life was just
getting started, said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging
leader and a researcher with the Space Science Institute
in Boulder, Colorado."
  "Titan 'doesn't have liquid water, because it's too
cold...but chemical processes that are happening slowly
there might be similar to what happened on Earth,' Porco
said."
  "'This will be like a Jules Verne adventure,' she
said, 'Maybe we'll see cliffs and cracks, maybe we'll see
meandering streams and valleys. Or maybe we won't.'"
(See the Duluth, Minn. News-Tribune for December 24, 2004,
"Spacecraft to begin descent toward Saturn moon," page
8A.)



  Well, that's it for this week. Join us in seven days
for a new year of UFO, Fortean and paranormal news from
around the planet Earth--and occasionally, Mars and
Saturn--brought to you by "the newspaper that goes home--
UFO Roundup." See you next time!

UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 2004 by Masinaigan Productions, all
rights reserved. Readers may post news items from UFO
Roundup on their Web sites or in news groups provided that
they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list
the date of issue in which the item first appeared.

E-Mail Reports to: Joseph Trainor <Masinaigan.nul>
or use the Sighting Report Form at:

http://www.ufoinfo.com/submit/sightings.shtml

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Website comments: John Hayes <webmaster.nul>

UFOINFO: http://www.ufoinfo.com

Official Archives for UFO Roundup, AUFORN Australian
UFO Reports and Experiences, UFO + PSI Magazine
plus archives of Humanoid Sighting Reports (Albert
Rosales), Filer's Files, Oz Files, UFO News UK.
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   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 29

                     Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Shough

From: Martin Shough <mshough.nul>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 13:06:23 -0000
Fwd Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 08:24:46 -0500
Subject: Re: False(?) Radar Returns - Shough


>From: Don Ledger <dledger.nul>
>To:  ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 17:23:47 -0400
>Subject: Re: False(?) Radar Returns

>>From: Martin Shough <mshough.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 20:32:58 -0000
>>Subject: Re: False(?) Radar Returns

><snip>

>>The point is that the RI gradient is vertical and the balloon
>>sampling in the vertical dimension is sparse. The very sharp
>>layers that Atlas and others have investigated involve huge
>>gradients over centimetres of altitude. Radiosondes are unlikely
>>to pick these up. I don't think McDonald really believed in the
>>existence of these layers in the 1960s-70s. If he were still
>>alive he would have to.

>Hi Martin,

>What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. What
>McDonald didn't know about in the 50's and 60's goes as well for
>air traiffic controllers and radar operators.

Hi Don,

Nice to talk to you :-) Well, this is precisely the point. The
Washington National operators were puzzled by what they saw
because the targets did not look or behave like ground returns
due to AP such as they were familiar with. If you accept their
evidence you then have to come up with an explanation. The B & V
explanation was a *novel hypothesis that respected the radar
evidence as reported*. Isn't this what we're supposed to do?
They showed not just by argument and statistics but by direct
experiment with Washington radar on another date that groups of
moving point targets like those reported *did* occur, that the
onset of the echoes was correlated with the onset of inversion
conditions, and that echo speed and direction were correlated
with wind speed and direction at the inversion altitude. Their
model has basically survived 50 years of radar-meteorological
theory and experiment.

>Who says the objects were metallic for example?

Well I don't. Borden & Vickers didn't.

>How would your 1952 radar
>operator deal with a fiberglas airplane giving a soft return.
>Would that then be considered an echo. There's no hard evidence
>that what the operators called echos were indeed echos.

Well then I don't know what the debate is about, if there is no
evidence of anything.

>>If there were were "radar returns of definitive unknown objects"
>>this argument would have some force, even though the visuals are
>>by and large weak and the correlation with radar always
>>debateable. But given that the radar returns might well be
>>explainable the "reality" of the visual objects seems to me to
>>be in doubt.

>I don't think that given our own newer technology that that
>statement can be valid. Aren't we mixing apples and oranges
>here; that '50s radar technology and analysis of images verses
>the possibility of a technology were hundreds or thousands of
>years superior to that?

If you are arguing that the evidence is not unambiguous enough
to support the Borden & Vickers hypothesis, which is now a well
understood part of radar meteorology, then I don't see that it
is clear enough to support the Ledger hypothesis of
extraterrestrial stealth technology. If one accepts the
existence of such technology on other grounds then I agree it
becomes part of the equation; but I don't think that the
Washington National evidence is a strong case in itself for
introducing such an hypothesis. And this was the point of the
thread initially as I recall - strong cases, strong evidence to
present to mainstream scientists. I agree with Brad Sparks'
assessment that it is a conspicuously weak case for this
purpose.

>Is it not the case that it was stated that some of these
>returns were real solid?

An occasional return was said to be very solid, but the accounts
I have show that by and large it was stated that most were quite
weak. This is consistent with the B & V model.


Best,

Martin









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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 30

                 Re: HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings -

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 13:24:17 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 10:10:18 -0500
Subject: Re: HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings -


>From: Brian Vike - HBCC UFO Research <hbccufo.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 16:23:48 -0800
>Subject: HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings - 12-27-04

>HBCC UFO Recently Reported Sightings

<snip>

>Kaufman County, Texas A. Number Of Objects

>Date: December 18, 2004
>Time: Approx: 12:30 p.m.

>Hi Brian,

>I have one picture for you just in time for Christmas. I was
>sitting on my Trellis bench in my yard when I noticed this
>multi-colored cloud in the southwest sky. I had my camera with
>me and decided to take a few pictures of it. It was
>approximately 12:30 p.m. on 12-18-2004. The colors in the cloud
>is exactly what I saw with my eyes before I took the pictures,
>so the camera was doing it's job. When I downloaded them onto my
>computer later, I noticed several orbs around the cloud so I
>enlarged them and sending them to you also. I'm sending you a
>copy of the original picture too.

>Best Wishes to you and yours for the holidays.

>Thank you to the witness for the report and photo.

>Photos can be viewed at:

>http://www.hbccufo.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2161


<snip>

Hi Brian,

This report records a very pretty phenomenon, which is described
in a little detail at this site... scroll down the page for
description and photos of similar phenomena.

www.komotv.com/weather/faq/sun_rainbow.asp

A rainbow is a prismatic effect of light on water droplets. But
ice can produce the same effect, except that ice crystals
generally do not disperse like water vapor, and so the prismatic
effect is localized to a cloud, like these cirrus clouds. Sun
angle plays a part as well.

A beautiful thing to see, and about as close to an aurora as
Kaufman County Texas is likely to witness.

I can't really speak to the *orbs* in the image as they could be
any number of things in lieu of movement data or better detail.

An excellent photograph nonetheless, and a good example of how
something can exhibit 'high strangeness' to one person, and
something less to another.


Best Regards,

Kyle








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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 30

                A Possible Method For Visual Data Collection?

From: Kyle King <kyleking.nul>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 13:45:23 -0600
Fwd Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 11:47:12 -0500
Subject: A Possible Method For Visual Data Collection?


Hi List,

I saw this article...

http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/highspeedarray/

I was intrigued at the possibility of using such an inexpensive
array for sky surveying.

I'm not sure of the feasibility for UFO sky surveying purposes,
but it sure seems like an interesting possibility.

If several of these arrays were located in discrete locations
around an area, we might be able to record... webcam style...
aerial phenomena at very hi-speed, and might get some really
good images to work with.

I could even envision a portable multi-array setup, where
investigators could deploy several of these arrays in an area of
persistent UFO activity, and monitor over time for sightings.

This is another good example of how low-tech can be leveraged to
produce decidedly hi-tech results.


Best to all,

Kyle








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   Dec > Dec 30

                           Filer's Files #1 - 2005

From: George A. Filer <Majorstar.nul>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 09:00:26 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 11:58:43 -0500
Subject: Filer's Files #1 - 2005


Filer's Files #12005, Skywatch Investigations
George A. Filer, Director MUFON Eastern
Vice President of Skywatch International
December 29, 2004, Web: www.georgefiler.com


[All images mentioned below at:

 http://www.nationalufocenter.com/news/images.php?id=3D215 ]


Summary: California UFO Wave

The purpose of these files is to report the UFO eyewitness and
photo/video evidence that occurs on a daily basis around the
world and in space as reported each week. Many people claim it
is impossible for UFOs to visit Earth, I ask you only to keep an
open mind and watch the evidence we accumulate each week. These
Files make the assumption that extraterrestrial intelligent life
exists and my hypothesis is that of the over one hundred UFO
reports each week many represent factual UFO sightings in our
skies.

UFOs were seen over California, Colorado, Arkansas, Florida,
Indiana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Dakota Tennessee, and
Washington. Sightings were also reported in Canada, Mexico,
India, and the Netherlands. New Mexico - New Roswell Evidence

Now There Are Two Mars Statues.

Image 1 in views shows purple light over Modesto, CA taken by R.
David Anderson.

Image 2 and 3 in views shows similar UFOs near Fostoria, Ohio
taken by George Ritter.

Image 4 - Possible statue in sitting position taken by JPL in
the Tithonia Region of Mars and used by the Red StarProject.

Image 5 JPL image of standing statue found by Norman Bryden in
the Ares Valles region of Mars

Image 6 - Color enhancement of statue face by Don Burleson.



Full Story: California - UFO Wave of Sightings

SANTA ANA - The witness was outside on November 5, 2004, at
10:50 AM, on E. Dyer Road, when behind a building he saw 15
round objects high in the sky. They were too high to be birds
but they were flying slowly in unison. Some lined up three in a
row or four in a row showing different overall designs. They
stayed for over two minutes then flew higher so that I was
unable to see them again. They were reflecting off the sun off
and on. Thanks to Peter Daveport Director www.UFOCenter.com

LAGUNA BEACH-NEWPORT BEACH -- It was 10:45 PM on November 6,
2004, and the witness was driving north on PCH, coming home from
work when he saw a white bright light fly down from the sky at
an almost perpendicular+ drop. It stopped 150 meters above the
beach level. It was the whitest light like reflected snow. It
had a small diamond shape with a small tail. There was a sudden
disappearance of the object. It was moving at a speed that no
man made object could move being so close to the water. I had my
windows up and music lightly playing, but I heard no crash or
saw no impact into the ocean or beach. I advised someone ASAP to
search the water off-shore for anything unusual. As soon as the
object disappeared, the "check engine" light on my car came on,
but my engine did not stop. It was not an asteroid/meteor, no
fireworks, and not a plane or a helicopter. The sighting was
about 35 miles from Camp Pendleton. The witness states, "What I
saw was no hallucination!" Thanks to Peter Daveport Director
www.UFOCenter.com

MODESTO - R. David Anderson writes, "I took this picture when it
was slightly overcast and I noticed a light that was moving
rapidly to the south." It arched downwards before it disappeared
beyond the horizon. The thin cloud layer, or haze, scattered the
light and caused this purple hue. The ufo was moving real fast
at the time that I took this photo. See Views first image.
Thanks to R. David Anderson

PALMDALE -- While out photographing a meteor shower Mike" 22 and
"Lance" 22 sighted three triangles in a circle spinning at
fantastic speeds then stop and disappear on the evening of
August 16, 2004 at about 1:30 AM.. While they sighted this event
"Mike" called his girlfriend on his cell phone and while talking
the cell phone died. Then the camera they had which was fully
charged died and would not work. The camera noted "Battery
Dead". When both returned home the cell phone worked and the
camera as it was placed in its charger stated it had a full
charge. Their location was 47th and "S" streets. The craft were
flying at the height of high altitude jet flight patterns an
estimated 20,000 feet. At arm's length holding a quarter, the
craft were the size of a quarter. No noise was associated with
this event. The triangles had a half sphere shape to them. The
men saw high definition shapes in the crafts bodies. Thanks to
Cosmic Connection http://tvufo.tripod.com SAN DIEGO-- Melvin
Podell MUFON is investigating a case. The witness stated, "After
fifty years of looking at the sky in the hope of seeing a UFO, I
now have." On Saturday, October 30, 2004, at 9:44 PM, I was
standing near the corner of Poway Road and Gate Lane at the
eastern end of Poway, a northern suburb of San Diego. I was
looking almost exactly overhead in a cloudless sky, with a light
haze that was illuminated by the city lights and the almost full
moon about 15 degrees above the eastern horizon.

He states, "I was stunned to see a black triangle moving at
tremendous speed directly south toward the hills that are the
southern boundary of Poway Valley." The distance between my
location and the crest of the hills is 5.5 miles, and 5 miles NE
from MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station. The speed of the triangle
was not less than that of many meteors! The craft was in sight
for about 1.5 seconds. It was an entirely black equilateral (or
close to equilateral) triangle having seven bright yellowish-
white lights, rather like the color of incandescent lamps,
except much larger and brighter. There was one light at each
apex and two equally spaced between the leading apex and the
apex on each side. There were no lights on the trailing flat
edge. It was because of these lights and the reflection from the
ground light that I could see the object clearly.

It was completely silent, probably even in the ultrasonic range
as none of the many dogs in the area seemed disturbed. Although
it was below the line-of-sight radar at the MCAS as long as it
was in Poway Valley, it clearly would have entered its view as
soon as it rose above the southern hills, because the MCAS is
just a mile or two directly south of the hills. The triangle did
not maneuver, except for one slight dip of the right wing which
was quickly corrected. The angular width was that of my thumb at
arm's length. What impressed me was the incredible speed of the
object. Its speed was literally, not figuratively, meteoric. It
increased its altitude to clear the hills. Submitted by Mel
Podell, MUFON-San Diego mpodell.nul

New Mexico - New Roswell Evidence

Tom Carey writes, "The Roswell investigative team of Tom Carey
and Don Schmitt continues to move forward on the investigation
of the 1947 Roswell Incident. Even though the World War Two
generation - the generation to which most of the first-hand
witnesses belong - continues to pass on at an alarming rate, the
team continues to turn up new witnesses to the 1947 events.
Having just returned from another investigative trip to New
Mexico, the team can report that it has located and interviewed
the following witnesses:

1. A first-hand witness who accompanied the alien bodies from
the hangar [Bldg. #84 on the old Roswell Army Air field] to the
base hospital. They were in body bags, but he got a good look at
them when uncovered.

2. A first hand witness who drove trucks to and from the crash
site hauling wreckage. He saw several alien bodies at the site
and one alien that was alive.

3. A first hand witness who saw a live alien at [now] Wright
Patterson Air Force Base.

4. The wife of a sheriff's deputy [dec.] whose husband was sent
out to the crash site and found a large blackened, burnt spot
before darkness set in.

5. A Corona woman who heard the alien craft emitting a strange
sound as it passed over her ranch just before hearing it explode
in the distance during a thunder and lightning storm. She said
that she had never heard anything like it before or since.

5. A woman who saw the stricken craft fly over just before it
crashed.

The team was also able to pinpoint the exact date of the crash
and they are planning their next archaeological dig in
conjunction with the University of New Mexico at the Foster
Ranch site, the site that we dug two years ago with the Sci Fi
Channel. The new dig will take place in the spring of 2005.
Anyone interested in participating in the 2005 dig should go to
our website www.roswellinvestigator.com and fill out an
application. Thanks to Tom Carey

Colorado -- Disk

HIGHLANDS RANCH -- I was watching TV on November 5, 2004, when I
heard a bang outside at 9:15 AM. I thought it was a gun shot, so
I ran outside. The other neighbors were out there also. We both
exchanged that we thought we heard gunshots. And then we saw
something in the sky. It changed colors every 3 seconds and it
was in the shape of a saucer. It floated in about 5,000 feet
above us. It was exactly similar to how the saucers did in the
movie Signs. It also made eerie sounds. Like an hmmm sound.
Thanks to Peter Daveport Director www.UFOCenter.com

Arkansas - Cylinder

RUSSELLVILLE -- This cylinder shaped object was moving in a
straight line north to south on November 5, 2004, at 11:20 PM.
It had, two reddish lights, one toward the front, one near the
rear. No sound was heard and it looked rather low flying and
looked almost transparent. My wife and I spotted it directly
above the house and watched it move away until it got behind the
tree. Thanks to Peter Daveport Director www.UFOCenter.com

Florida - Gold Object and Light

LAKELAND -- My husband and I were driving on I-4 east, coming
from Tampa, on our way home to Orlando on November 6, 2004, at
12:40 AM. My husband grabbed my arm and pointed at something in
the sky. The object was round with a short trail that was gold
in color and bright. It seemed very far away. We thought it was
a comet or shooting star at first, but then the trail instantly
turned off. The round object kept moving for a few seconds, and
then also instantly disappeared. Thanks to Peter Davenport
Director www.UFOCenter.com

CEDAR KEY -- Eric reports, "I was locking my gate to my property
in Tiger Island on State Road 374 about 9 miles from Cedar Key
at 9 PM on November 22, 2004." I looked up just as a very bright
welders like light lit up the forest on a state preserve. It was
white hot light the size of a Volkswagen about 50 yards in off
the paved road. It had a smoke trail exiting out the bottom and
was about 40 feet off the ground just below the tree tops. It
illuminated the woods from left to right as far as I could see!
It went out in two seconds! Having two close encounters in 1995
in the same place I didn't even lock the gate and drove off at
100 mph. Thanks to Eric New Jersey - Lights

LAKE HIAWATHA -- Ray Gallup writes, "I saw something in the sky
southeast of here over Lake Hiawatha, on November 16, 2004, that
seems not to be a star or plane, but has been hovering in the
sky since 11PM, last night." Thanks to Ray Gallup

New York - Two UFOs

BREEZY POINT -- Joe age 37, and a friend saw two UFOs in clear
weather at 8:40 ET on September 12, 2004. The two dark objects
spun and rotated in flight as they passed overhead at about 1000
feet traveling towards the north-northeast. They were on an
obvious trajectory that both shared. They appeared to be about
ten feet long with round middle and thin ends. Thanks to
havercamps.nul

Indiana - Flying Triangle

BLOOMINGTON -- Lynn Taylor reports, "At 7:10 PM, the witness was
southbound on Walnut Street on November 13, 2004, approaching
the intersection of State Highway 45 when she observed a large
triangle shaped object. The object was traveling southeast,
toward the busy intersection ahead. As the object approached the
witness could see two red lights, one on the tip of each
trailing edge. She also described the center of the craft as
having an amber-colored light or lights that constantly changed
shape. As the object crossed the intersection, the witness
momentarily looked away to check the traffic conditions. When
she looked up again to observe the craft, only a single red
light was visible. She was insistent that the object was
triangle-shaped, and was not an advertising blimp. The witness
indicated her confidence in the object's shape because its
lighting partially illuminated the underside. She further
offered that the object was much too fast and low to be a blimp,
anyway. From her conversation and description of the sighting
and my familiarity with the area, I would estimate the object
was flying approximately 120 feet above the ground. Thanks to
Lynn Taylor Sentinel Files
http://sentinelfiles.tripod.com/sfiles.htm

Ohio - Disk and Object with Flashing Lights

PEEBLES - The witnesses saw flashing lights that looked like
strobe lights at 8:30 PM, engine sounds were heard and they
moved very quickly and seemed to be moving in a zigzag line. It
could have been any of the lights that were flashing.Thanks to
Peter Davenport www.UFOCenter.com

AKRON -- Looking outside of class at the University of Akron
around 6 PM, on November 6, 2004, the witness saw a round object
high in the sky. It was so weird it looked like a disk that was
floating. www.UFOCenter.com

CLEVELAND -- George P. Pindroh, MUFON State Sectional Director,
Cuyahoga and Lorain County, Ohio writes, "I am pleased to tell
you that our meeting of the Cleveland Ufology Project Saturday
night was a fantastic success! George Ritter traveled more than
100 miles to present a great program showing the many videos he
has taken of various unidentified objects flying at very fast
speeds past his camera setup in Fostoria, Ohio. Besides the
great videos George was very articulate telling of his
adventures in the US Army. With a full house attending, George
kept everyone captivated! I am planning to write up a story
about George Ritter very soon. Thanks to - George Pindroh, MUFON

FOSTORIA - Two images of similar craft taken from George
Ritter's recent video. George spends thousands of hours
examining each frame of his video. A two hour tape can take over
ten hours to examine frame by frame.

SOUTH DAKOTA - Light

REDFIELD - The witness reports seeing a craft or light traveling
from SW to NE at a slow speed at 6:17 PM, on November 13, 2004.
It was yellow orange in appearance and was flying rather low.
There were no blinking lights and no noise. He states, "The
yellow-orange light was moving away from me, so it was not
aircraft landing lights on a clear night" I had good sight of
it, and it suddenly blinked out and was gone." The wind was SSE
at 15 miles per hour and the temp is about 25F. At arm's length,
it was the size of a small pea. It was very bright in light.
Thanks to Jim Hickman, BMET, FSI Executive Director Skywatch
International Inc. http://www.skywatch-international.org

Tennessee - Loud Rumblings.

BRISTOL -- At approx. 18:10 hours, Nov 21, 2004, reports started
piling in to this station of a very loud rumbling noise above
the solid cloud cover, shaking doors and windows all over
Bristol, Elizabethton and Johnson City Tn. I also felt this
phenomenon and went outside to hear what sounded like
afterburners moving away at about 125 degrees and at an
indeterminate elevation. The rumble lasted for some 3-4 minutes
and actually shook the ground.

I got in touch with the FAA office at Tri Cities Airport. They
advised me that they had received many calls and that the radar
operator had no returns on the screen at any elevation, no radio
contact with any aircraft and in fact they were as clueless as
we were. The controller also advised me that "the government"
will be looking into the anomaly and had already been in touch
with him. Also, a check with USGS showed no seismic activity in
the area. This , I suppose is one for the unknown category.
Thanks to Kim Shaffer MUFON TN. SD

Washington - Flying Triangle

SEATTLE - The witness was watching the Northern Lights on
November 7, 2004, at 11:42 PM, when he noticed that something
had entered his field of vision from the Northwest. At first, he
thought it was a big falling star and in next five seconds it
crossed directly overhead and on to the Southeast. He states, "I
could see clearly that it was a triangular vehicle with round
glowing circles on the bottom and the edges glowed...the whole
thing glowed orange and not in a way I have seen in the sky
before." There was no sound at all. "I was mostly impressed by
the clarity of its shape and the straightness of its path." I am
completely overwhelmed. Thanks to Peter Davenport www.nuforc.org

Canada - Mighty close encounter?

Bob Holliday, Staff Reporter of the Winnipeg Sun writes, "Terry
McDonald thought his eyes were playing tricks last week when he
saw a bright light following his truck." "The light was behind
me. It was so bright, I thought my dome light was shorting out,"
said McDonald from his home in Crane River, about 320 km
northwest of Winnipeg. McDonald did start to worry when his
truck intermittently lost power over the course of about a
kilometer. McDonald's sighting wasn't a rare occurrence, said
Manitoba's leading UFO researcher, Chris Rutkowski. "It was
fairly quiet and now all of a sudden a whole bunch of things are
happening," said Rutkowski. "I've had a number of reports in the
past two weeks." Among the sightings was "a whole bunch of disc-
like lights hovering on top of a Greyhound bus traveling on
Highway 6 between Ericksdale and Ashern last Tuesday," said
Rutkowski. As well, he's received reports of lights west of
Kenora, Ontario. A Kenora resident, who wished to remain
anonymous, claimed he saw a saucer-like object on Monday. The
man said the object was hovering about 18 meters (60 feet) above
the ground about 10 km west of Keewatin. He observed the saucer
for nearly an hour before it moved fairly slowly across the tree
tops.

The most reported light show is the convergence of the planets
Jupiter and Venus, said Rutkowski. "They are very close together
and look like an airplane coming into land but not going
anywhere," he added. A landing plane wasn't what was witnessed
in Crane River, said McDonald's daughter, Tracey McDonald, who
saw something odd in the sky about 1:30 a.m. on Thursday. "It
was many green, red and white flashing lights that were really
low. Then, there was a big white flash, as big as a house," she
said. McDonald said neighbors have reported seeing small, disk-
like lights darting between trees in nearby forests. Reports of
UFOs in Canada have skyrocketed. "The fact we have 700 sightings
(in Canada) this year is interesting," Rutkowski said. "We
didn't even have 700 total last year." Thanks to:
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/WinnipegSun/News/2004/11/13/pf-
712255.htm l

TECUMSEH -- I am a licensed electrician working for one of the
big 3 automakers on vacation, not drinking alcohol or taking any
mind altering substance. On November 6, 2004, at 1:05PM, I was
talking with my father on a portable phone looking out the south
window at the sky. I noticed an object in the southeast sky that
was about as big as a pea at arm's length. It was bobbing up and
down and wobbling back and forth and side to side all the while
moving linearly from my right to left. It covered about 5 to 10
degrees of arc. The surface of the craft was like polished black
granite. The shape was circular about 30% high as wide and the
sides seemed to be made of flat triangular sections that
reflected the sun in a clear blue sky as it bobbed and wobbled.
After watching for 20 seconds I left to get my binoculars and
when I got back it was not visible. There was no audible sound
from inside the house during the siting. Thanks to Peter
Davenport www.nuforc.org

Mexico - Spheres Videotaped

TEPOZTLAN, MORELOS -- On Saturday, November 20, Mr. Salvador
Guerrero videotaped four translucent spheres in the town of
Tepoztl, state of Morelos. He was in the company of Amado
rquez and Eduardo Ortega engaged in routine skywatching. The
forementioned gentlemen are renowned UFO watchers and have
provided extraordinary evidence since 1991. At 4:45 p.m., the
team became aware of a strange sphere (the size of a ping pong
ball) almost at ground level, and they approached it to record
evidence, making three videotapes with different cameras.

Later, the object headed for a tree bough and remained
surprisingly motionless, then moving up and down with
intelligent movement, according to Salvador Guerrero. At one
point [the object] was very close to his own body, scant
centimeters away, and it was then that he reached out to touch
it. Upon contact with his skin, the sphere emitted a gelatinous
fluid that caused burning and discomfort to the witness, leaving
a red mark on his flesh. A total of four spheres were observed
at approximate intervals of 5 minutes between each sighting. The
translucent structure can be clearly seen in the video, as well
as how they reflected sunlight, their unusual movement and the
confusion of the witnesses, since a group of boy scouts,
children and schoolteachers at the Escuela Meztitla field had
joined the threesome. Prof. Ana Luisa Cid Fernandez has been in
contact with Salvador Guerrero, who still reports discomfort to
his hand. He has been advised to see a physician to ameliorate
the symptoms and obtain a diagnosis as to what happened to his
skin. Guerrero had recorded similar phenomena before, but had
never touched it. The video was presented today on the "Los
Vigilantes" program. It will also be shown next Thursday on The
Omar Chaparro Show and Sunday on "Los Grandes Misterios de
Tercer Milenio" (www.jaimemaussan.tv) Thanks to Planeta UFO and
Translation (c) 2004. Scott Corrales

Netherlands - Revolving Disk-like object.

DRENTHE -- My Mom, Dad, and brother on November 7, 2004, at 10
PM, saw a disk shaped object in the sky with three rotating
rings attached that was not entirely visible . All rings had
white dots (lights) attached at the top it as they stayed in the
air hovering for about one minute. My father stopped the car
along the road, and my Mom and brother stepped out. They watched
it for a while, then it disappeared into the clouds and out of
visibility. I am 100% certain that they saw -something-. I do
not believe in UFO's as in alien vehicles, but I can't think of
any reasonable explanation for this. I asked my dad if it looked
like it was a laser-show and he denied it for there were no
visible beams and it looked solid. My brother estimated the size
as about the size of three Ferris-wheels in diameter. My brother
drew me a picture, and it shows a number of dots around the
outer radius and in the center it also has one. Thanks to Peter
Davenport www.nuforc.org

India - Disc

YAMUNA NAGAR, HARYANA -- On July 31, 2004, five witnesses saw a
large UFO in the shape of a disc moving north to south in a fire
like color at 11:38 PM. The object was making a buzzing sound.
Other facts you may wish to include: I feel that the UFOs appear
in India in the months from July-September, because last year I
saw a unidentified object on July 26, 2003, the report of which
was submitted on your website. This time it was more clear and
prominent in the sky because it was close to me. It was a disc
shaped object emitting bright light and buzz sound on intervals.
First, it was stationary at one place and suddenly it flew off
at a high speed. I was standing at my fuel station along with my
five employees. I took the photograph with my NOKIA 6230 Color
screen digital mobile phone. www.ufoindia.org

Jupiter's - Radio Signals

There are extraterrestrial radio signals reaching Earth on a
regular basis. Thanks to a NASA project known as Radio JOVE, the
pleasure of listening to Jupiter's broadcast of exotic sounds is
no longer reserved for professional astronomers. When it comes
to sound effects, NASA says woodpeckers and ocean waves can't
hold a candle to Jupiter. There are two varieties of Jovian
radio bursts: Through the loudspeaker of a shortwave receiver,
the so-called "L-burst" sounds like ocean waves crashing on a
distant beach. The "L" stands for long. If a recording is slowed
down dramatically, the S-burst sound like eerie drifting
whistlers. The so-called "S- short burst" produces a staccato of
rapid popping sound with a beat that reminds some of
woodpeckers. To listen to the sounds of Jupiter, click these
spectrum images of 25 MHz radio bursts from Jupiter captured on
tape at the University of Florida Radio Observatory.

The Jovian decametric emission was discovered in 1955 by B.F.
Burke and K.L. Franklin at the frequency of 22.2 MHz. The
emission has an upper cutoff frequency of 39.5 MHz. It can be
detected from ground based stations from the upper cutoff
frequency of the emission down to the cutoff frequency of the
terrestrial ionosphere which is usually around 5 to 10 MHz. The
emission occur in episodes called "storms". A storm can last
from a few minutes to several hours. Two distinctive types of
bursts can be received during a storm. They arrive at a rate of
a few to several hundred bursts per second. In a 5 kHz bandwidth
receiver they last only a few milliseconds. Thanks to the
University of Florida http://www.astro.ufl.edu/jupdamdoc.html

Editor's Note: Once you get use to listening to Jupiter you
might turn your radio dial and listen to other unknown exotic
sounds from space. Radio astronomers regularly intercept strange
signals from space that could be evidence of intelligent life.
Former NASA JPL and Ames scientist Dr. Norman Bergrun claims, a
he has located a giant space ship in the rings of Saturn.
However, NASA says the shortwave radio signals from Jupiter are
not a sign of extraterrestrial intelligence, that ionized gas in
the upper atmosphere above Jupiter's magnetic poles behaves like
a powerful radio laser or maser. The radio laser gets its power
from Jupiter's volcanic moon Io. Tidal forces from Jupiter
superheat the interior of the moon Io and make it the most
volcanic body in the Solar System. Volcanic materials are thrown
far above Io's surface. Much of that enters orbit around
Jupiter, forming a huge gaseous donut around the giant planet.
With a diameter the size of Io's orbit, the electrically
conducting "Io torus," as it's known, spans 525,000 miles. As
Io's orbital motion carries it through this magnetized ring of
ionized gas, a huge electrical current of two trillion watts
flows between Io and Jupiter, creating the biggest DC electrical
circuit in the Solar System. Unlike the ordinary kind of DC
circuit we know using batteries and wires, plasma physicists
believe that current in the Io-Jupiter system is carried by a
type of magnetic plasma wave called Alfven waves.

Twenty Years of Looking for Life

When it comes tosearching for life beyond Earth, particularly of
the intelligent variety, few organizations can rival the SETI
Institute. This month, the Institute celebrates its twentieth
birthday. Begun with one small NASA project and a handful of
researchers, the SETI Institute is now engaged in building the
first massive radio telescope designed from the pedestal up to
sort out artificial signals from the cosmos. But in addition to
these searches for clever cosmic company, the Institute also has
a wide-ranging astrobiology research program: How did life
begin? How could we find it, even if it's not intelligent?

Editor's Note: I encourage SETI to home in on the UFOs that
frequently transit their location.

Mars - Two Statues on Mars Not Just One

Norman Bryden writes, "I have seen the project Redstar Statue
when the claim was made for a Humanoid Statue. The statement
made in your Filer's Files #48 by Frank is misleading. He
states, " My first encounter with this statue is my purchase, in
2002, of a video called the "Martian Genesis" from Project Red
Star stating that there is absolute proof of alien intelligence
on Mars." The image I submitted is from the Ares Valles region
and not from Tithonia. The Redstar claim and is shown below.

photo: See views

The structure Frank Burchardt is referring to is the white blob
just above the right tip of the black horizontal line in the
right hand Redstar image in the Tithonia region.

You can clearly see this is not the image I discovered. The
image I presented is clearer and far easier to tell as a
structure than the one he is referring to. The statue they refer
to is next to some other smaller structures. The statue I
submitted is not the same one. Many people have said there are
structures on Mars and I have been presenting them for more than
5 years now of my own work. The image I submitted is from the
Ares Valles region and is a standing structure rather than a
sitting one made in the Redstar claim. photos: See views
Norman's statue is in the upper left of the JPL image.

Don Burleson writes, I've tried to do some photo enhancement on
the "Mars statue" photo; I find the image quality of the thing
rather low, so it's difficult. The color image or the right
shows, would be the face if indeed this is a statue of something
with a humanlike shape. In this imaging it looks as if there are
large, dark eyes and a mouth; however, as I said, the original
image quality is lacking, and it's hard to say what's "real" and
what's just imaging artifacts. Thanks to Don Burleson and Norman
Bryden for great work in finding another statue and numerous
structures on Mars JPL images.

"Flying with UFO's on Mars"

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and up to-date UFO info as well as the real deal on the mars
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   UFO UpDates
   A mailing list for the study of UFO-related phenomena
   'Its All Here In Black & White'
   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 30

                Re: Chilean UFO University Opens Its Doors -

From: Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo <ufomiami.nul>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 15:08:24 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 12:02:53 -0500
Subject: Re: Chilean UFO University Opens Its Doors -


>From: A. J. Gevaerd - Revista UFO <gevaerd.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 10:35:48 -0200
>Subject: Re: Chilean UFO University Opens its Doors

>>From: Scott Corrales <lornis1.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 11:29:32 -0500
>>Subject: Chilean UFO University Opens Its Doors

>>INEXPLICATA
>>The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
>>December 28, 2004

>>Source: Planeta UFO
>>Date:   December 28, 2004

>>University of Chile (Usach) to offer certificate course

<snip>

>It doesn=B4t surprise me. Well, at least, not much... Chile is
>probably one of the most advanced countries on Earth when it
>comes to UFOs.

<snip>

>Congratulations to all Chilean UFO researchers, whose efforts
>resulted in this achievement, to General Bermudez and his staff,
>for doing a great job in Ufology, and to the country's
>population, who have very open and receptive minds toward UFOs.


I understand that General Bermudez and his group have two faces.
One, the way they approach the international ufologists, and the
other how they treat the local Chileans researchers.

Am I right or wrong?








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   Location: VirtuallyStrange.net > UFO > UpDates Mailing List > 2004 >
   Dec > Dec 30

                     Re: Earth Organisms On Mars - White

From: Eleanor White <eleanor.nul>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 15:47:15 -0500
Fwd Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 12:03:53 -0500
Subject: Re: Earth Organisms On Mars - White


>From: Nick Balaskas <nikolaos.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 11:16:52 -0500
>Subject: Re: Earth Organisms On Mars

<snip>

>and the hardy fungus(?) growing on the outside windows of
>the Russian MIR space station,

You mean the inside window surfaces, right Nick?


Eleanor White