Confining our blogs....

Today, Wednesday, May 25th, 2011, comments to this blog were not automatically sent to us for moderation. I had to go into our e-mail service and retrieve them, which allowed me to scrutinize responses more judiciously than usual, and without them being sampled by other here.

I continue to be distressed by the slovenly thought-processes that are exampled by what purports to be critical thinking about our postings.

In dialogue with other bloggers and friends, I’ve decided that we shall confine comments here to those that reflect intellectual, open-minded rumination, and not knee-jerk response to things written by us and others, which torment an ingrained belief-system or narrow-minded, non-objective cogitation.

There are several (many, actually) commenters we look forward to hearing from but a few that irk us with their bigoted, snotty, unthinking commentary.

From this point on, more so than our usual fascistic deletion of comments that we don’t like, we’ll not be approving comments from some who visit here.

We have a respect for some of you -- your intellectual proclivities, your open-minded objectivity, even-handed skepticism, and your genteel approach to our oblique and beleaguered postings, some of which I agree are over the top.

Your comments will continue to be registered here.

But if you send us a comment that doesn’t appear, and it’s not the fault of our blogging service, you know where you stand with us.

So don’t go away angry…just go away…..



RR

The Robert Taylor 1979 UFO Encounter

On November 9th, 1979, Robert Taylor, a forester in Scotland, had a weird encounter with a strange “craft” in Dechmont Woods near Livingston, Scotland.

The incident is often referred to as the Livingston Incident or the Dechmont Woods Encounter and can be read about at UFO Casebook:

UFO Casebook

Or at Wikipedia:

Wikipedia

And here is a link to a YouTube video about the incident:

YouTube

What interests us, besides the nature of the alleged encounter, is that the described “craft” is highly reminiscent of a Hughes prototype for a lunar or Mars capsule to house astronauts:



And here is a graphic of another UFO sighting in Scotland:



And a representation of a Scotland event in 1964 (around the time of the Lonnie Zamora/Socorro sighting, which we think was a sighting of a Hughes lunar-landing prototype):



A CIA operative, Bosco Nedlelcovic, who communicated with us in the 1970s, told us that the CIA was engaged in staged flying saucer events – The Villas Boas case (as outlined in Nick Redfern’s book, Contactees, Chapter 20) and the infamous Scoriton incident in England (covered here in an earlier blog post).

We conjecture that the Robert Taylor episode was a CIA-staged event, using the Hughes prototypical craft, which was ensconced and tested in the British Isles in the 1960s/1970s time-frame.

Fate magazine’s account in 1980 outlines the event in a way that corroborates, we think, our Hughes/CIA view:

An intriguing, subliminal UFO incident (from 1968)

A 1968 NASA sponsored flight to the Artic to film and study the Aurora Borealis ended up providing an obscure, on-the-ground UFO sighting.

A reporter, Sally Remaley, with the expedition spotted what seemed to be a line of flying saucers on the ground.



Here is an excerpt of her account, taken from the FATE magazine piece, as provided by UFO BC, a superb site for obscure UFO sightings, past and present:

“But when I glanced out of the window I quickly forgot about being cold. Far below on the icy surface were three round glowing lights arranged in a straight line. Each light was huge; all were the same size and perfectly round, they were luminous, glowing with an inner white light completely different from any other thing we had seen in the Arctic.

These lights were so different, in fact, that at first I just stared, fascinated, trying to memorize everything about them before they disappeared behind us.

They were not at all like lights of any settlement or village I've seen from the air and I have flown a lot. Settlement and village lights are bright like stars; these were softly luminous and glowing. They were not like lights on a boat, ship or any familiar flying craft. They looked like flying saucers landed on the ice. And if that's what they were they were huge ones.”

Here is her drawing of what she saw:



The ground saucers seemed to form an arrow, pointing to what?

Click here for the full account by Ms. Remaley

For us, it’s this kind of low-profile UFO sighting, unsmudged by UFO mavens, that might provide clues to what the phenomenon is.

The Need for Metaphysics and Common Sense (in ufology)

In the preliminary stages of change in the study of UFOs, sparked by Paul Kimball, Nick Redfern, and us (among a few others: Moody, CDA, Gilles Fernandez, et al.) there has to be some quiding principles of and for thought.

Mr. Kimball, at his blog -- The Other Side of Truth -- is addressing some of the issues for the new ufology.

And, for our part, we keep the ball rolling with a paper by James Williams that provides an exegesis of Alfred North Whitehead's thoughts on common sense in Process and Realty.

The paper, for those with intellectual stamina, outlines how metaphysics and life can be enhanced by proper thinking and observation.

Click here for Willams' paper (a PDF)

Ufology, a term we hate and hope to see discarded in future, and the study of UFOs need a cataclysmic paradigm shift.

Kimball, Redfern, and the skeptics, Moody, Christopher Allen, Fernandez, along with our small part are at the forefront, we hope, of a major change in how UFOs are discussed, studied, commented on, and viewed by media, academe, science, and the public.

This posting is a small step in that direction.

The Socorro craft (and other UFOs) "explained"

Click here for a (technical) paper that references the Socorro craft and other UFOs, with an explanation of their propulsion et cetera.

This is a pro-UFO paper for those who desire something scientific and/or technical to bolster their views, about UFOs, including the "mysterious" Socorro craft reportedly seen by Officer Lonnie Zamora in 1964.

Nick Redfern reviews an old, eye-opening book

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in things at the fringe of reality, writes Nick Redfern.

Click here for Nick's "review" (if you want to find insights that you missed and need).

The Men In Black!

Nick Redfern's book about those mysterious men in black is about to appear (in June).

Click here for some pre-arrival information

The Morpheus/Socorro Lander

This insignia is an evolved symbol, just as the Morpheus Lander is an evolved Lunar Lander, derived from the initial Hughes Aircraft designed lander that accounts for, in our estimation, the Zamora sighting in Socorro in 1964.

Morpehus is on Facebook -- click here


The "official web-site may be found by clicking here

We'll have much more about this upcoming....

The Socorro Lander/UFO?

Jeff Ritzmann of Paratopia found this image at boingboing.net.

It reminded him, and now me, of Zamora's UFO.

Note the insignia on the left, back side....

Einstein proven right, again!

Click here for NPR story

UFOs without culture? Why?

Anthony Lane‘s review of Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” [New Yorker, May 2nd, 2011, Page 88 ff.] abutted, for this writer, a paper, discovered among others, entitled Speculations on the First Contact: Encyclopedia Galactica or the Music of the Spheres? by Guillermo A. Lemarchand of the Instituto Angentino de Radioastronomia [CONICET], Buenos Aires.



The movie review (by Lane) deals with how director Herzog presents his vision of the cave drawings on a wall in the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, in the Ardèche reagion of France.







The Chauvet-Pont wall of drawings, from about thirty-five to thirty-eight thousand years ago, is more “cinematic” (says Herzog) than those at Lascaux, and should be compared with the shapes found at Swabia, four hundred miles away.









Lemarchand’s account of a Seminar on the Cultural Impact of Extraterrestrial Contact (sponsored by the Foundation for the Future) addressed the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial civilization worthy of contact would be much in advance of Earth, technologically, but that wouldn’t be the best premise for contact.

Lemarchand writes that mankind here has provided an advanced form of culture as represented by the art found in caves, such as Lascaux or Chauvet-Pont, and an alien civilization would have a similar esthetic culture, which any civilization of long-standing would have since they didn’t wipe themselves out with wars or cataclysmic accidents.

Lemarchand also thinks an alien culture/civilization would have a moral or ethical stance, not unlike that of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (but that’s not my point here).



Lemarchand’s paper dismisses the idea that the best way to contact alien civilizations is not by mathematics or technical formulae. Such abstract devices would not be as developed as would art (or music), which would, if the alien culture is extant, have evolved much in the way that Earth’s art (and music) has evolved, from the art of the cave(s) to what it is today. (Although I think that art has devolved from that of the caves, but that’s a matter for another time and discussion.)

Earthlings, writes Lemarchand (from ideas of Carl Sagan), are members of a Technologically Adolescent Society. Thus, communicating with a more advanced alien society would then be problematical, as we’d have a difficult time understanding advanced technological information, whereas understanding an artistic image of an alien culture would not be difficult.

Lemarchand points out that there are several patterns in art and nature that can be considered as universal as mathematics in interstellar communication attempts” (von Hoerner, 1974; Lemarchand and Lomberg, 1996).

And using artistic symbols would be a better mechanism for an interstellar communication than SETI’s mathematical approach, which is what Sagan was striving for with his golden disk attached to the Voyager spacecraft(s).



Lemarchand’s paper is rife with intellectual insights about alien communication, humanity, the arts, and science. (I can’t provide a link as the paper was found among others here, and has no provenance, although I imagine it was printed out from our Sage Publications account a few years ago. Interested parties might seek it out via Google.)

Now let me get to the point from which I have egregiously digressed….

And this point has been made before, earlier at this blog and elsewhere in our internet outings.

Nowhere has art or music been noted on (or from) UFOs.

Yes, there have been symbols or insigniae, as mentioned in the post preceding this one, but those have not been artistic or esthetic, as the drawings on the wall caves, or other human pictorials are.



No UFO or flying saucer reports have identified music as endemic to the sightings. And no art, aside from those militaristic or corporate-like insignia/symbols, has been registered – none like that which Lemarchand thinks would be intrinsic to an advanced extraterrestrial race.

What does this tell us about UFOs? That whatever they are, or whomever “mans” them, are either not advanced in a way that would include moral imperatives (as Lemarchand articulates) nor are they as advanced in even a small way as that of the Neanderthals or early man was, as indicated by the art in the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet-Pont d’Arc.

This means, for us, that UFOs are either created by Earthlings or are artifacts without a cultural or living species origination – a physical manifestation of some kind -- or UFOs belong to a race or races that are without moral imperatives (ethics) and refinements which would ameliorate contact between us and them as (we hate to note) some abduction accounts seem to warn.

I’ve gone far afield here, and have departed from any cogent hypothesis. But I’m hopeful that some readers might comprehend that UFOs present alternatives to thought besides the usual cavil that permeates discussions here and all over the UFO community.

And that a civilized discourse might take us into new directions, away from the classic, banal UFO cases that usurp innovative energies and keep us mired in obsequious back-and-forths which lead nowhere and have for a long time now.

We can hope….

A Socorro Confusion (that flummoxes researchers)

This symbol is ostensibly the “insignia” that Lonnie Zamora saw and drew (for the public) which was on the UFO craft he reportedly observed in Socorro, New Mexico in 1964:



This is the “actual” symbol seen by Zamora, according to Allen Hynek, Ray Sanford, and Air Force files – it has been duplicated by an observer of a later UFO sighting, as outlined below the image (here):



We’ve added the horizontal lines, to approximate what officer Zamora saw and drew, but which was kept secret, supposedly to prevent hoaxers from using it for mischief.

The symbol/insignia that Zamora provided, and seen in 1973 by Gary Chopic on a triangular UFO, was an insignia used to identify a U.S. military prototype we believe, and confirms, for us, that Zamora’s UFO was a test vehicle of Earth manufacture in 1964.

Keeping Zamora’s original, true drawing sub rosa has prevented UFO researchers from reaching the same conclusion, and has allowed the false assumption by UFO mavens (Jerry Clark, for example) that Socorro is one of the best UFO sightings on record.

This subterfuge is part and parcel of the UFO story: persons and agencies holding back information and details that could clarify and even explain, perhaps, what UFO are.

Why does the government becloud UFO sightings and information? One can guess.

Why do UFO researchers becloud UFO material? To adopt a façade of illuminated secrecy and alchemical-like mystery. But that practice has only made the study of UFOs more daunting and difficult for those who would like to use scientific-like methodology and/or forensics to get at the UFO enigma.

For us this means that older, classic UFO sightings have to be re-examined or scrapped, and new sightings pursued without all the convoluted clutter and devious detritus that has accreted to UFO sightings of the past (by flawed “ufologists”).

We hope you agree….

Quantum Computing and UFOs

The New Yorker magazine has an article in its May 2nd, 2011 issue that may be applicable to the study of UFOs: Dream Machine by Rivka Galchen, Page 34 ff.



David Deutsch, who wrote The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity, may not be interested in UFOs per se, but he does provide insights about quantum mechanics, computing, physics and science, generally, which could be used by serious UFO researchers to address that ongoing enigma.



Deutsch is the major contributor to the idea of quantum computing, which he suggests can address the Multiple Worlds/Universes hypothesis, while providing clarification of quantum’s theories of superposition and entanglement, that provide a UFO connection perhaps.



If some of you are inclined to conjecture, intellectually, about the UFO mystery, you would do well to read the New Yorker piece. It will provide grist for imaginative ruminations.

Not the "God Particle" but maybe the Jesus Particle?

Fermilab finds intriguing "particle."

The Possibilian

The April 25th New Yorker has an article [Page 54 ff.] by Burkhard Bilger about David Eagleman, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houton.



Eagleman has founded a movement called Possibilianism, a denomination of his own invention based upon ruminations (by him).

Science taught him to be skeptical of cosmic certainties and as he wrote in a book of short stories [Sum], “Why not imagine ourselves as bit of networked hardware in a cosmic program, or as particles of some celestial organism [See Teilhard de Chardin for a similar hypothesis], or any of a thousand other possibilities, and then test those ideas against the available evidence?”

He is quoted thusly: “As Voltaire said, uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.”



He believes that “memories are often radically revised” and “how much of what we perceive exists outside of us and how much is a product of our minds?”

Francis Crick, the discoverer of the DNA sequence and a mentor to Eagleman, before he died in 2004, gave him (Eagleman) this advice, “Look, The Dangerous man is the one who only has one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it. The way real science goes is that you come up with lots of ideas, and most of them will be wrong.”



I’m recommending the New Yorker piece and Eagleman for his quasi-religious thrust [Possibilianism for Nick Redfern]; Eagleman’s views from Voltaire [for Paul Kimball], Eagleman’s intuition about memory [for CDA, Gilles Fernandez, and other Roswell witness-promoters] and the idea of various mental intersects [for Bruce Duensing].

The article may be read here (thanks to Frank Stalter):

David Eagleman: The Possibilian

Frankenstein's Monster and Roswell

Christopher Allen [CDA], a Roswell skeptic and the story’s most intellectual debunker, often points out that Roswell was dead almost immediately after it came to light in 1947.

And he’s right, of course.

The headline(s), touting a captured flying disk, moved from the front pages of newspapers to those newspapers’ morgues, within hours of the original outing.

Roswell’s flying saucer incident remained moribund for thirty years, until it was resurrected by a few opportunistic writers and UFO “researchers” – including Stanton Friedman, Charles Berlitz, William Moore, Kevin Randle, and a few others.

The story was dead until those mad men raised it from the grave in the late 1970s.

And ever since, the original story has been accreted or enhanced by a slew of UFO mavens, among them David Rudiak, a full-blown Roswell extraterrestrial supporter/believer.

Christopher Allen’s scenario of a dead story brought to life by men with an agenda to “prove” extraterrestrial visitors crashed near Roswell reminds this writer of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s gothic tale Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus.



In the Shelley story, as you know, a body is created by Dr. Frankenstein putting together a creature from dead body parts, some human, some not.

Frankenstein comes to loathe his creation, just as some UFO investigators [Kevin Randle?] have come to loathe their initial Roswell ET support.

But the creature – Roswell – lives on imbued with a life that isn’t easily snuffed out, no matter how hard intelligent people like CDA try to kill it.

The Roswell creature is composed of all kinds of mouldering additions, each with a history and one-time life, but none salient as a living, true experience, only alive now because of their creative addition to a form that was dead but is now alive by alchemical-like machinations.

Killing Roswell is as daunting as it is in the original story and every film or story that has followed Ms. Shelley’s 1818 tale.

Real Contactees?

A man, Wilbur J Wilkinson, provided this script, claiming it was from a race using the moon as a way-station for its people from the planet Maser.:



Here’s the almost unknown story as recounted by Jerome Clark in one of his books:

Hunrath and Wilkinson account

In the script above, nothing registers, except the word Enlil, which represents, in Sumerian “theology” the Lord of the Air and Lord of the Command (whose mother was Ki).

Yes, the story is goofy on the face of it, but the disappearance of the two men, like the mysterious disappearance of pilot Fredrick Valentich, is intriguing.

Valentich YouTube video

The contactee stories, while mostly fictional, should not be dismissed out of hand.

There may be a truth or a reality inside them, somewhere….

Crashed Roswell Flying Saucer(s)? Not so fast...

Paul Kimball has addressed the “crashed flying saucer” scenario of Roswell several times, most recently during a Kevin Smith radio show (Wednesday, 4/15/11) and at his blog, The Other Side of Truth.



Mr. Kimball’s thesis, if we understand him correctly, is that it seems unlikely that hypothetical extraterrestrial beings, able to traverse vast reaches of the Universe, time, or other dimensions would end up crashed on Earth (near Roswell) because of a mishap.

Kimball’s view makes sense, and counters the idea posed by Anthony Bragalia (here at this blog, just below) and ourselves (also here and elsewhere) that an unfortunate confluence of events brought down a flying disk that was recovered, perhaps, at or near Roswell.

Indeed, how could an interstellar ship escape all the dynamic vicissitudes of the Universe and then end up on the desert ground of New Mexico?



Mr. Bragalia presents a well-reasoned explanation in his blog posting (below), but his conjecture flies in the face of Mr. Kimball’s contrary assessment.

One can suggest that extraterrestrial beings may have come from a planet or world where such things as lightning, radar, or meteorological maelstroms do not exist and they encountered an environment that was totally foreign to them.

(This begs the question, of course, about their reconnoitering acumen or preliminary evaluation of Earth.)

Time travelers would know about Earth’s weather patterns or its radar facilities.



Inter-dimensional travelers, on the other hand, would not, and may come from a dimensional existence that has physics totally different from ours.



Visitors from galaxies far, far away would hardly make such frequent stops at Earth, letting all the other wonders of the Universe go unvisited, as we’ve argued elsewhere.

And if they should make Earth a continual stopping point, would they do so in craft so flimsy that crashes are an inevitability?



Mr. Kimball adopts the reasonable view, but does accept the possibility of a (Mac Tonnies) crypto-terrestrial crash.



We accept that something unusual happened near Roswell in 1947, something possibly extraterrestrial or, more reasonably (for us), something involving Earth’s military arm, such as a test flight gone wrong or a missile/balloon mishap that has become configured by a contrived extraterrestrial mythology, engineered by the likes of guys named Schmitt, Moore, Friedman, Randle, Berlitz, et al.



Either way, Paul Kimball’s assessment that a crash of an advanced extraterrestrial craft seems highly improbable, and unlikely goes to common sense which is in short supply amongst UFO aficionados