A List of Best UFO Sightings?

While we’ve ragged on Paul Kimball for his filmed list of the best UFO sightings ever, we came across a list by former flying saucer “expert” William Spaulding, who provided his take on some top UFO sightings and events for The People’s Almanac’s The Book of Lists #2 by author Irving Wallace and family [William Morrow and Company, NY, 1980, Page 417 ff.].

His first offering was the McMinnville/Trent photos which we deem as bogus.



His next sighting was the 1952 Nash-Fortenberry Pan-Am encounter, over Norfolk, Virginia.



The third listing was the 1952 Washington D.C. incidents.



The fourth episode was the Ralph Mayher [sic] film of 1952.



Fifth was (another) 1952 radar/visual sighting of a USAF B-29 training crew over the Gulf of Mexico



Six on Spaulding’s list was the Kimball/Sparks B-47 incident, so there is some consensus that the sighting was and is significant.



Seventh in Spaulding list of eight is a November 1957 on the outskirts of Levelland, Texas where witnesses had encounters with a large UFO.



And eighth on Spaulding’s list was the 1976 Iranian encounter.



We won’t elaborate on Spaulding’s list, as we see lists as entertainment rather than edifying information.

But we note that Kimball and Sparks are not the only UFO aficionados to see the RB-47 event as a significant UFO encounter.

Again, the RB-47 sighting is interesting, but so are dozens of other sightings, including the B-29 sighting (number five, above) which has as many or more technical accoutrements as the RB-47 incident.

UFO hobbyists, each, have their favorite UFO sightings or stories – mine include the 1966 Ann Arbor/Dexter/Hillsdale sightings; the infamous “swamp gas” sightings.

But have any of these classic sightings given us a clue to the UFO enigma? Nope. So listing them is a futile, silly endeavor, that passes for research for some “ufologists” but they are fun to read, right?

UFOs, String Theory, Quantum Gravity

Physics has become as discombobulated and goofy as “ufology.”

String Theory for Dummies by Andrew Zimmerman Jones and Daniel Robbins [Wiley Publishing, Indianapolis, 2010] presents a pithy overview of string theory and quantum physics; an overview that shows just how crazy the study of physics has become, and how physicists have resorted to mathematics as a kind of abracadabra to help them find an answer to the mysteries of the Universe that discombobulate them.



Ufology, that faux research sobriquet use by UFO hobbyists to provide cachet for their irrational attempts to uncover the nature of UFOs, is loopier than string theory, but is also encumbered by overt pathological participants whereas physicists keep their pathology suppressed, masking it with calculus and other mathematical formulae.

Physicists are trying to discover the reality of the Universe.



Ufologists once tried to uncover the mystery of flying saucers and then generic UFOs, but have since devolved into a babbling clique of pseudo-researchers who are so flummoxed by the enigma they once hoped to explain that they are now babblers of nonsense that borders on total insanity.

The UFO phenomenon is not amenable to mathematics, it seems – but who has tried to use math to provide a theoretical paradigm?



Moreover, UFOs have attracted crazies of all types, while physics (quantum, string, and classical) attracts brilliant loonies who see beyond the prosaic and mundane to theoretical models of the Universe that may provide profound truths of our existence.

The study of UFOs takes us nowhere and thus far has only provided babbling of a pathological kind. (See Alfred Lehmberg’s ditherings for example.)

One holds out hope for a rational denouement in the realm of physics (string theory notwithstanding).

But in the realm of UFOs? One should keep their distance, remaining aloof and disconnected, if only to remain compos mentis.

The Best UFO Case, Ever???

Our friend, film-maker Paul Kimball, along with once prominent UFO researcher Brad Sparks consider a UFO incident from 1957 to be the very best incident to offer proof of UFOs.

It is the so-called RB47 bomber confrontation, as it were, with a UFO in July 1957.

Here’s Mr. Kimball’s essay on the incident, from his film, Best Evidence:



While Mr. Kimball is seemingly obsessed with this UFO sighting, we find it evidentiarily boring.

A plane was followed by a UFO, which was seen by some members of the crew, spotted on radar, and apparently interacted with the plane’s radar.

The Air Force, as is its wont, said the crew was tailed by and taken in by another aircraft in the area, as noted in Mr. Kimball’s film.

The Air Force was obviously maliciously stupid as usual, but the sighting is hardly the theochristic UFO event that Messieurs Kimball and Sparks think it is.

It doesn’t come near to explaining what a UFO is, nor does it provide overt clues that lead to a possible explanation. It is merely a well-witnessed sighting of a strange thing in the sky.

We would hope that Mr. Kimball gets over his obsession with this beleaguered sighting, and apply his noteworthy UFO acumen to sightings and incidents that resonate in more meaningful ways.

RB47 is just another sighting of an anomaly that requires more scrutiny than that provided by the details inherent in this admittedly intriguing, but ultimately soporific case.

The Mystery of Aliens [Part 2]

Our earlier assessments about the gods and heroes of old differing from the extraterrestrial aliens of the flying saucer/UFO (modern) era needs to be supplemented apparently, as it has flummoxed some visitors to our blog(s).

Our premise, if there is one, is that the gods/heroes of ancient times were barely different from the humans who observed and recorded their visitations; whereas the alien beings of flying saucer lore (mostly from the 1950s and 1960s, aside from the alleged Space Brothers of the “contactee” tales) were either dwarfish or grotesque.





Moreover, we accept some ancient texts as (almost) literal…



And we find some accounts, as in The Old Testament of the Holy Bible [Confraternity-Douay Version] to be very intriguing (and human-like); e.g., Exodus 4:24

The Mayan Popul Vuh [Translated by Dennis Tedlock, Touchstone Books, NY, 1985/1996] is a source for extant renderings of the original Popul Vuh which dates, reliably from about 1550 A.D., but represents ancient oral and written texts of the early Mayans going back at least 1000 years.



The text contains creation stories similar to that found in The Hebrew/Christian Bible in Genesis.

And the gods, described therein, while adorned with animal parts and recounted as having grotesque accoutrements, were essentially human-like in appearance. [Page 145
ff.]



The Egyptian Book of the Dead contains descriptive similar to that in the Popul Vuh and precedes the Mayan book by several thousand years.



Most readers here are familiar with (or should be) the Egyptian iconography and the association with the ancient alien theory of Erich von Daniken at al.

Again, the gods of Egypt, while often adorned with animal parts, remain human-like in action and appearance, especially after the theological thrust of Akhenaton [circa 1354 B.C.]



From the text:

Åmen-Ra…president [sic] of all the gods, beautiful god, beloved one….the gods adore him…The gods love the smell of Him…the gods cast themselves down at his feet…the gods acclaim him, and he stretcheth out his hand to him that loveth him. [Page 108, The Book of the Dead, University Books, Secaucus, NJ, 1960].

Nothing pungent, odorous, or ugly there.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead can be traced back to the 12th Century with antecedents attributable to the 8th Century [after Christ].



The gods of Tibetan lore were described therein thusly:

Blessed Vajrasattva-Aksobhya will appear before you….His body is blue in colour, he holds a five-pointed vajra in his hand and sits on an elephant throne, embracing his consort Buddha-Locana, He is accompanied by the two male bodhisattvas…the two female bodhisattvas…[Page 43, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Francesca Fremantle and Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala Books, Berkeley, 1975].



Nothing grotesque or dwarfish there.

Then there is lacunae where the gods (and their minions) disappear, until the Christ incarnation and the appearance of Mohammed’s Allah [6th Century A.D.] and perhaps the appearance of Jesus to Jeanne d’Arc in the 1400s [A.D.] and possibly the visitation of god’s mother Mary at Lourdes [1858] and Fatima [1917].

Finally we have the visitation of weird, little beings outside or near flying saucers, a few years before the ubiquitous arrival of little gray beings of an almost benign nature.



Again, we pose the query, why such a dichotomy in nature, physically mostly and somewhat in behavior?

The early descriptions allow for a divine patina to the ancient “visitors” while the modern visitors hardly come of as divine in any way – pasty, wan, and frail or so grotesque that they invite revulsion rather than the glorification like that by those who provided ancient accounts.

Why?

Quantum and String Theories for Dummies?

Wiley Publishing Company has two books, in its Dummies series, about quantum mechanics and/or string theory:

Quantum Physics for Dummies by Steven Holzner [2009, 321 pages, $19.99, Wiley Publishing, NJ]



String Theory for Dummies by Andrew Zimmerman Jones with Daniel Robbins [2010, 366 pages, $19.99, Wiley Publishing, NJ]



Holzner’s book is, as far as we can determine, geared to college students or advanced high schoolers who are adept at mathematics of an advanced kind (Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus particularly).

Jones and Robbins provide an overview of quantum physics and string theory without a total immersion (as Holzner insists) in mathematics.

If you’re looking for a cogent assessment of string theory, which is in a category rightfully called a quantum field theory, get the Jones/Robbins book.

If you are a math genius – and we accent “genius” – Holzner’s book will satisfy. It won’t enlighten you about quantum mechanics in a philosophical way but it can lead you through the abstruse mathematics of quantum theorizing.

Holzner’s book, in our estimation, is not a Dummies book, per se. It’s a tome on rarified mathematics, which science and physicists use to remain arcane and aloof.

Jones with Robbins, on the other hand, empathize with readers who want to know more about quantum and string theory and provide a door to understanding both.

We’ll be presenting material from the Jones book upcoming.

As for the Holzner book, we’ll leave that for those who think science is furthered by use of mathematics rather than clear statements of logic and hypothesizing, in plain English.

The Mystery of Aliens

Ancient Astronaut theorists posit the idea that the messengers and gods of old were extraterrestrial visitors, which is not necessarily a faulty supposition, considering the circumstantial “evidence” presented to bolster the hypothesis.



The visitors were not gray with large, almond-shaped eyes as they are rendered today by descriptives.



In mythology and religious-oriented works, the visitors of old were manifested by an aura that bespoke something otherworldly but not grotesque.



Those visitors often mated with human beings, as recounted in the Genesis account of the Hebrew Bible [6:1]:

...The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were good, and they took themselves wives from whomever they chose. God said, ’My spirit will not continue to judge man forever, since he is nothing but flesh. His days shall be 120 years’. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also later. The sons of God had come to the daughters of man and had fathered them. They were the mightiest ones who ever existed, men of renown.



And they also appear in the Greek myths, as Gods, whose dalliances produced such Greek Heroes as Achilles and Heracles.



And Merlin, the great wizard of the Arthurian legends, was said to have been fathered by an Incubus. [Bulfinch]



In the 1950s, flying saucer “occupants’ – as reported by observers – were usually grotesque or small, bizarre creatures, akin to the little people folklore of the British Isles.



In the 1960s, those visitors morphed into the so-called “grays” which evolved out of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction saga.



There is a dispute, extant, about what Betty Hill really described, at first, about her “abductors” – mostly having to do with their noses. But the “creatures” she allegedly encountered eventually came into being as the ubiquitous UFO people pictured when UFO occupants are discussed:



The question posed is this…

What happened between 5,000 years ago when the Sumerians pictured their “gods” and the modern era when UFO beings are described? [Intelligent Life in the Universe, Shklovskii/Sagan, Delta, 1966]



That is, why has the intruders’ physiognomy changed?

Yes, we accept the reality behind the myths and Biblical renditions of gods (or messengers from above).

We also think that some relatively recent observations of creatures nearby, what some call, UFOs or, better, flying saucers, are true also, whether created as an illusion or actually as perceived.



(The alien abduction phenomenon, which remains controversial and not proven, has been, in one form or another, around since the beginning of oral and written history, as anyone familiar with mythology and religious texts knows.)

There is a mystery in all this, one that is connected in all its aspects by the similarities in the visitations.

The difference lies in how the “visitors” appeared, not in how they acted, but what they looked like.



Are there, or were there, two different classes of beings – some actually gods (or imagined as such) and some actually extraterrestrials (or imagined as such)?

It’s a mystery, either way…..

(And yes, we’ve covered this before, in 2007)

The Earworm

Lauren Sheil, in Canada (where sane pepole reside), ruminates on life, religion, politics, et cetera.

He has an erudite blog, which can be found by clicking here.

The Grand Designer is God! – says (inadvertently) Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow

The 2010 Bantam Book The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow purports to show that physical laws account for life and reality, without the intervention of a prime mover, God.



But after one reads the book, with all the complex interlocking laws of quantum physics and the hypotheses of the so-called M-theory as presented by Mlodinow (mostly), one has to conclude that, indeed, a supreme mind, a thing we can call God, did indeed create the universe and life as we know it.

Physicists try to promote their god – mathematics – with abstruse theories and convoluted mathematical gyrations, but after all is said and written, the conclusion that only make rational sense is that reality is, indeed, a concoction of a sensate entity, no matter how that entity is defined.

Our belief, however, is that God existed – we think He/It died or has gone hidden, as expounded by such writers as Richard Elliott Friedman in The Hidden Face of God [Harper, 1995].



No amount of mathematical machination by physicists destroy the early thinking of philosophers such as Aristotle, or the great theologian Thomas Aquinas – that God is (or was) the designer of the Universe and life itself.

Chapter 7, The Apparent Miracle (Page 165 particularly), provides the unconscious belief in God by Mlodinow (and Hawking also?) exampled by the thoughts of Kepler, Newton, and Einstein, who themselves believed a mind (God) created the laws that govern the Universe and life.



The book can be skimmed in parts, as much of it presents the gyrations of physicists who are as flummoxed by existence as laymen are, but who pretend, like the alchemist of old, to have access to the secrets of life, presented by them as mathematical theories, obfuscated so as to feign hidden knowledge.

M-theory is a reworking of the philosophies of the early Greeks and the scientific investigations of such luminaries as Galileo, Maxwell, Newton (of course), and others. The Grand Design tries to make a case for M-theory, calling it “the unified theory that Einstein was hoping to find” (Page 181) and is, in fact, The Grand Design.

That’s an egregious stretch.

M-theory and string theories are all extrapolations of earlier thinking by Biblical writers and the Greek, Islamic, and Scholastic thinkers of the past.

The inherent quandary (about reality) of physicists is not masked by their obeisance to mathematics, which didn’t really arrive in science until Newton, and have been ballyhooed by physicists and science ever since, but not making any sense, as scientific use of math (or arithmetic) of any kind is merely an elitist ploy to make laypeople believe that science has an inside track to the truth of existence.

But as Richard Bucke shows in his masterwork, Cosmic Consciousness, reality is something so transcendental that human minds can only occasionally observe it but never truly understand it.



For Hawking and Mlodinow (and others, such as Dawkins, Smolin, et al.) to write that that they are near to resolving The Grand Design is beyond preposterous; it’s hubris of a massive kind.

Scientology, Ufology, and Psychology

The New Yorker issue for February 14/21, 2011 has a lengthy piece by Lawrence Wright [The Apostate, Page 84 ff.] about a Scientology defector.



The article presents an overview of Scientology and especially L. Ron Hubbard (its founder).



Those interested in the Navy’s connection to UFOs will find clues to that connection in the article, but they will find much more about the founder of Scientology, and it’s not a pretty picture.

Just as Christianity is marred by the machinations of its early followers and Constantine, and psychology is saddled by the permutations of Freud to make psychoanalysis viable to his colleagues [See Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s “The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory” – Ballantine Books, NY, 1984/2003], Scientology is riddled by the flaws of its founder L. Ron Hubbard.



And ufology? Where has that artful and contrived discipline gone wrong?

Ufology has no definitive founder, but the progenitors of the faux “science” were (and are) men flawed by a lack of scientific acumen and a lack of intellectual credentials.

Whereas Freud has great insights about the human mind and behavior, he muddled those profound insights by fudging truths and facts to make his (psychoanalytic) movement palatable to psychologists and the Victorian populace of his time.



L. Ron Hubbard had no profound insights, but his movement (Dianetics and then Scientology) has been promulgated by a patina of distortions and concocted legends of his acolytes, just as happened with Christianity. [See Bart D. Ehrman’s “Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible…” – Harper One, NY 2009]



In Ufology, one can’t point to a single person who led the study of UFOs astray but one can point fingers at persons such as Phil Klass (a perverse skeptic), Stanton Friedman (a biased researcher), and a host of other “ufologists” who had or have an agenda that has little or nothing to do with truth or science but is, rather, a ploy for self-aggrandizement.



The raft of persons who’ve led the study of UFOs/flying saucers astray is too vast to list here, and most readers know to whom we refer.

The point is that movements are always corrupted by followers or instigators who have self-promotion as their premise or ignorance at their foundation.

Psychiatry, Scientology says, is a crock. And Scientology may be right. Psychiatry moved away from a therapy based on the study of the mental afflictions of people to an overly of symptomatic suppression with drugs or various kinds, a move away from the methodology of Freud and his followers.

Freud may have compromised his movement by altering the truth of child seduction but his methodology for getting at unconscious truths was remarkable and unique, even helpful to those afflicted by neuroses of a sexual kind.

But the little insight by Scientology about psychiatry and drug-therapy doesn’t offset the flawed premises of L. Ron Hubbard, as you will see by the New Yorker article.



And since Jeffrey Masson exposed the flawed, dishonest Freudian account of child seduction – the root of neuroses according to psychoanalysis, and Bart Ehrman (among others) exposes the flawed, distorted beginnings of Christianity, why has no one exposed the flawed roots of ufology?

Yes, skeptics of UFOs abound, and some in the UFO community have assailed the fraudulent in the UFO/flying saucer era, but no one has made as thorough assessment of the UFO crockery as have Dr. Masson of Freud or Bart Ehrman of Christ’s early devotees.

L. Ron Hubbard has been skewered, and Freud too, along with Jesus’s early disciples. But nowhere has anyone taken on the personalities that have tried to make ufology a valid enterprise, using lies and distortions in the process.



Is that because ufology is seen, intrinsically, as the canard it basically is? Or is it because no one has the intellectual stamina to assail a thing as ridiculous as ufology?

We think it is both…

Poeta Doctus

Bryan Sentes is an instructor of things creative, poetry among them.

He also has an interest in flying saucers and the Air Ship mystery of the 1890s.

Here is his curriculum vita:

TESL teacher; creative writing instructor, Concordia University: now, literature and composition teacher, English dept., Dawson College, Montreal; chapbooks: Budapest Suites (1994), Gloze (1995), On the Phantom Air Ship Mystery (1995), Seventh Column (2001), X Ore Assays (2001), Luffere & Ōđere (2003), For a Few Golden Ears (2004), A Crow’n’ o’ Sough Noughts (2004), The Hunger of the Starlings (with artist Juan L. Gomez-Perales), Tanchaz (2005), Symposia Scholia (2006), Melathalassemia (2009), In Canis Major (2009); trade eds.: Grand Gnostic Central (DC: 1998) and Ladonian Magnitudes (DC: 2006). Readings at various venues, Spoken Word, Experimental, and Institutional, in Canada, Holland, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, & United States, performing with Piedro Pietri, Jerome Rothenberg, Raoul Schrott, and Yoko Tawada,among others; & reviewer, translator, scholar (sociology of religion, mythology, & popular culture), radio interviewer (e.g., William Gibson, Douglas Featherling, Martin Amis).

Click here for access to his brilliant, erudite blog, Poeta Doctus