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UFOs In the News
Several readers have let us know about a report on MSNBC that France's space agency has announced plans to publish its archive of UFO sightings in a month or so. The archive includes some 6,000 reports relating to around 1,600 incidents over 30 years. In a separate development, many readers have sent in word of the reported UFO that at least six United Airlines workers saw over Chicago's O'Hare International Airport last November. National Public Radio picked up the story with an interview with the Chicago Trib reporter who wrote about it yesterday. United is, strangely, denying that any such incident was ever brought up. The FAA admits there was an incident but is not investigating it.
It is busy enough up there already isn't it, without aliens hogging the airways?
Not Free SF Reader
[Cue theme music.]
Well I, for one, was going to welcome our new alien overlords, but apparently they've already been here 6,000 times.
At least one O'Hare controller, union official Craig Burzych, was amused by it all.
"To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," he said.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
But you will never have trouble finding a host of gullibles and nutcases that will claim otherwise ....
A while back I was reading some book of short stories by Arthur C. Clarke, and in an essay between stories, he described the time he saw a U.F.O. I was taken aback. Here's an author who practically invented "hard sci-fi," talking about seeing a U.F.O. By the end of the essay he mentioned what it turned out to be (I forget what, exactly, but it was something mundane and Earth-based). But at the time, "UFO" was the appropriate term, not because he thought it was a spacecraft, but because he couldn't figure out what it was.
That left an impression on me. People tend to use "UFO" as a shorthand for alien spacecraft... but when you get down to it, "Unidentified Flying Object" refers to anything unidentified that you see in the sky. A segment of a sun halo, a satellite, an odd cloud, a distant airplane with the sun glinting off of it... The same would apply to the "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" term used in the O'Hare article.
Conversely, if alien spacecraft are ever verified, they wouldn't really be UFOs, would they?
Welcome to O'Hare Intergalactic Airport.
No offense to those who believe in UFOs but come on, what's this nonsense about employees complaining that it's not being investigated more. Obviously it wasn't spotted on RADAR, and the description sounds like something I saw a while ago...a cloud. Why should United take this seriously? 10 people say they saw a UFO, people do that all the time. The Tribune makes it sound like the government and United are ignoring a huge threat. Frankly, even if it was a UFO, the government shouldn't waste it's time investigating it. The moment the government starts investigating every UFO sighting out there, even just ever group sighting, a ton of money is going to be spent on a something futile...oh wait...it already...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
confirmed: http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,21000 221-5005940,00.html
"Unidentified" means just that. Until it's been identified as an alien spaceship, it could just as well be the spaghetti monster. I don't know why everyone assumes just because humans can't identify something in the sky it MUST be aliens. Humans have terrible long range vision and generally very poor video recording devices. Most people probably can't identify something 1 mile in front of them on the ground.
The FAA admits there was an incident but is not investigating it.
But do people really want the Unidentified to be Identified? Honestly, if the FAA went around Identifying these Flying Objects, nobody would have any cool UFO stories. They'd just have cool Weather Balloon stories.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Unless France reveals the existence of Alien contact, this is just a bunch of reports they may or may not be easily explainable.
like build a wall around the earth
you, know, after watching quite a few UFO documentaries on supposed reputable stations the only thing I can say is screw em. Until Aliens have the decency to walk up in broad daylight and say hello obviously they dont want to be seen. So leave them be, if they wanted to be discovered I dont' think it woudl be very difficult. So lets assume they don't want to, and up until they send there arrival notice press lets ignore them and go back to our lives.
If this was a case in the supreme court it would be thrown out on the basis of circumstantial evidence.
Shiny headgear keeps the mind probes at bay.
Many people saw something and United is unable to give a reasonable explanation for what it was. This might not be a huge threat, it surely is a potential and perceived threat. That nothing showed up on radar is surely more of a worry. It means that the radar is not able to see everything there and surely leaves passenger and flight staff safety in question.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I wonder if the release will refer to or confirm any of the details contained within the Serpo releases, which happen to be a great read no matter how far fetched they may seem.
While I doubt what they saw is locally-made, I used to live in that area and have seen some crazy stuff at some nearby forest preserves. Many of the forest preserves near O'Hare have radio controlled aircraft landing strips and are heavily used by local hobbyists. Last year I personally saw a home-built craft performing some absolutely incredible tricks and maneuvers with a small radio controlled helicopter-like machine.
UFOS ARE REAL. The truth is out there. Additional generic x-files quote.
-Corey
http://www.myopiniononeverything.com/
So what if there are space aliens cruising around? I'm an atheist so I find this to not implausable. The only thing I would get out of confirmation that aliens exist is proof that we have a lot more to learn about physics. If they want to talk with us they will. If they don't want to they won't. We probably have nothing to offer them anyway. Humans think they are so important.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-06122 90280dec29,1,3035061.story?coll=chi-newslocal-hed
True, the government should not spend a lot of time and effort investigating unusual phenomena that may or may not have happened. But the government can just spend a little bit of money. Perhaps ten or twenty people in a government agency, say the FBI, were to be assigned to strange and unusual cases such as this. They could be called unknown-variable-files, or unusual-files, or, say, x-files. Well, actually 10 people would be too many. It would be better to try, say, 5, or perhaps even just 2. Yeah, a 2 man team, investigating cases that no one else can solve, working for the FBI. Or even better yet, make it one man and one woman for more sexual tension!
I think this idea could work, folks!
The fact observers said it made a hole in the cloud deck for minutes, to me, rules out any purely optical effect. It must have been some physical device, whatever that may be. Further, professional airline pilots saw it and stated it was not familiar to them as a known aircraft. My take is a new stealth military craft - hence all the coverup by the FAA.
All those people saw it and no one took a moment to use a cell phone camera to take a pic? Sure a cell phone camera doesn't prove or disprove anything, but at least we could take more guesses as to what was actually seen. I keep waiting for photos of this to appear, but none have surfaced AFAIK.
You forgot your html tag. Try to keep with the times!
won't they lose business when the hyperspatial express route is built?
invading mob of muslim youths waging war on their infrastructure
OH NOES! TEH SWARHTY BROWN HORDEZES!
Sorry, but the riots were about institutionalized racism in France, they were not some kind of a covert religious war. Most of the youths you identify as "muslim youths" consider themselves as not very religious. What they do have is a lot of free-floating anger at a society that invited their parents in to clean swimming pools and tend gardens, only to discover that there are French citizens, and then there are "French citizens."
With little opportunities for honest work, constant belittlement by societal elites, and repressive police tactics that give cops a pass on bad things happening to brown people, you tend to get street gangs and race riots. In France, they tend to be reasonably polite race riots, where damage is almost entirely to property rather than people. Weird, but whatever.
But you go on and worry about the Coming Islamic Invasion. Somebody needs to buy the Free Republic Secret Decoder Rings.
In 1999 the French government and military released the COMETA report, which essentially stated that UFOs represented some kind of physical phenomena that was unknown and deserved further study. It did not rule out the Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis, which is most amazing given that this report was published and authored by well known French scientists and military commanders. A translation of that report is available (in pdf form) here:
http://www.cufos.org/cometa.pdf
(Note that I don't promote cufos.org, nor know anything about the site.)
If you want proper funding for UFO research have them declared terrorists threatening our borders and Homeland Security will give you all the money you want. If you filed the right paperwork you could probably get a couple of mill in research grants to calculate the amount of explosive one flying saucer could carry. Just imagine the destruction a UFO crammed full of explosives could cause if it crashed into Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland. Seeing pictures of Mickey Mouse and Goofy splattered across the sidewalk could bring this country to it's knees. The invading UFOs must be stopped!
Sure, a UFO is a bone fide sighting. It means exactly what it stands for: Unidentified Flying Object. Only an idiot would jump to some kind of a conclusion that it's the master alien race visiting Earth under the command of god-king Marduk without concrete evidence.
So people at an airport saw something in the sky they could not identify. Does that mean that the most probably explanation is that it is an alien aircraft and the incident is being covered up by the government? Or could it be that there was an aircraft or cloud that was lit up unusually? Must be the aliens...
Learn to love Alaska
look at http://www.forteantimes.com/review/HOAX.shtml
This is just the French's way of getting some publicity. They'll probably come out with 6,000 drawings on napkins and cardboard cutouts of alien ships ... as the French say "Un Anglais mort est toujours meilleur que livre de beurre, excepté sur des baguettes".
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
WAS a UFO...
So where are the photos? It sounds like there were enough witnesses and viewing time that there should be some photos taken of this UAP.
The FAA is probably sitting on them.
EP
Why worry about relevant issues to their national security like an invading mob of Muslim youths waging war on their infrastructure (and winning) when they can declassify documents about unsubstantiated crap and temporarily distract their citizens and the world from their rapidly approaching destruction?
Most of what goes by the name of "national security" is also distracting crap; "invading mobs of Muslim youths" and airplanes crashing into skyscrapers simply are not high on the list of things likely to kill you. The things people ought to worry about and that kill them and others, they like to forget about and are all too happy to be distracted from: nutrition, traffic accidents, poverty, civilian killings during war, global warming, etc.
It was waxing gibbous last night, and it's full tomorrow.
Add in some water vapor (oh yeah, it did rain in Chicago yesterday), and I'm surprised there wasn't a remedial weather/astronomy check.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The link I gave is a summary of the report, which I didn't realize because I googled it looking for the best copy. Well, I was wrong. Here is the full report (and apologies), both pdfs:
a rt1.pdfa rt2.pdf
COMETA Part 1: http://www.ufoevidence.org/newsite/files/COMETA_p
COMETA Part 2: http://www.ufoevidence.org/newsite/files/COMETA_p
(Please note that I am not connected with ufoevidence.org and know nothing about the site).
"Alien" means just that. Until it's been identified as a alien spaceship, it could just as well be the alien spaghetti monster. I don't know why everyone assumes just because humans can't identify something in the sky it MUST be little green men from space. Humans have terrible long range vision and generally very poor video recording devices. Most people probably can't identify something 1 mile in front of them on the ground.
Since most cameras are digital, what is the FAA sitting on?
Great observation, except for the fact that the sighting took place in November.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I came across this link recently and was pretty amazed at some of the cloud formations.
Check it out: http://pic1.funtigo.com/valuca/?g=25544746&cr=1
Humans have the same potential for exponential growth as bacteria have! This is unacceptable to space alien regulatory bodies.
The only species officially allowed to travel in space are those that have been modified so that their growth rate is artificially controlled. This is why some UFO renegades have exhibited an obsessive interest in human reproduction. They are seeking to restore their own reproductive potential. They hope to create alien-human hybrids with natural growth rates, bypassing alien modifications that prevent unauthorized reproduction. This is the ultimate form of hacking!
Planets that are classified as hostile or threatening are subject to sanctions from alien regulatory bodies. However under the regulatory scheme, it is impossible to classify a planet hostile unless the dominant form of life knows of intelligent life on other planets. The bureaucratic mentality is the one constant in the universe! In order to avoid this classification, leading earth governments have secretly agreed to consistently deny UFOs and extraterestial intelligent life and all evidence for the same.
This is a brillant survival plan! Survival by manipulation of alien bureaucratic classification methods! The ultimate loophole. I guess lawyers are good for something after all!
Unfortunately, this plan requires that the UFO coverup be extended indefinitely! Oh well, a small price to pay for the survival of the human race.
"I believe that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational efforts of terrestrial intelligence rather than the unknown irrational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence"
Pretty much sums up my attitude to the whole thing as well
Look up the table at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html to see that the moon was full on Nov 5, two days before the sightings, and that the weather was variable with ground temps that could indicate thermals-- just before sunset was when the observations came in.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
From the article: "...estimated by different accounts to be 6 feet to 24 feet in diameter..." That's, uh, quite a variance.
Also, a dozen people sounds great, but... O'Hare is the busiest airport in the US now, I believe - and no one else noticed this thing? Also, the 12 people worked for the same airline, so it's possible they would all be relatively close to each other while working. What about people in other parts of the airport?
Airline pilots and air traffic controllers tend to be observant and cautious for obvious reasons... and none of them noticed anything?
I like the lights-on-clouds explanation - it would explain why 12 people near each other might see something very odd, but no one else would - it's some sort of reflection from a light source in or near the airport. Then whatever it was that was generating the light for the reflection moves, and *poof* the UFO disappears up into the clouds at a dizzying speed.
I suggest you read up on the situation in France, the "invading mobs of Muslim youths" the parent speaks of has everything to do with poverty there.
Air Traffic Controller: TWA 517, do you want to report a UFO? Over.
(no answer)
Air Traffic Controller: TWA 517, do you want to report a UFO? Over.
Pilot: Negative. We don't want to report.
Air Traffic Controller: Aireast 31, do you wish to report a UFO? Over.
Pilot: Negative. We don't want to report one of those either.
Air Traffic Controller: Aireast 31, do you wish to file a report of any kind to us?
Pilot: I wouldn't know what kind of report to file, Center.
-Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Yes, and the obvious response, as illustrated by the geek community is to say without a doubt that God doesn't exist, and that everyone should devote all their spare cycles to searching for extraterrestrials. Thankfully, only a small contingent of geeks seem to be interested in developing technological solutions to find ghosts.
It's amazing to me that the same people who say without a doubt in their mind that there is no and can be no god, will still believe in extra terrestrials and ghosts. Heck, some people even believe in angels, but not in god.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
From the article: "One United employee appeared emotionally shaken by the sighting and "experienced some religious issues" over it, one co-worker said."
Thank Jesus!
Send... more... UFO's!
well, that's not entirely true. Although I do believe that an airplane diving, or rising, nose first through a cloud wouldn't leave much of a hole, I have witnessed on several occasions clouds that got ripped apart by an airplane traversing through them. The only reason I saw this, though, is because the clouds were pretty thin. This picture might show something like it, though in my case it was a lot more subtle.. it was also a lot higher up: http://www.capetownskies.com/dane/apr75_24cirrus_b andb.jpg
d ownplane.gif
h +cloud
It is also quite possible with thicker clouds, but it's usually not visible from the ground: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/Images/
However.. veritable holes in clouds, I have only ever seen in the form of 'hole punch clouds': http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=hole+punc
This is why air traffic controlers must take drug tests.
I thought the FAA already took care of the whole pilots and alcohol consumption problem. I'm certainly not going to be flying for a while.
Drop the plans to build a fence to keep the aliens coming from the south, build one that keeps out the aliens coming from above! Giant Thunderdome style ;-)
My dad used to work at a radio station and one night someone came and cut a biiiig like 20 foot balloon thingy with their logo on it that they got for a special event. It was really thick like a blimp so it was definitely floating for a while. And a couple days later it was spotted many hundreds of miles away and filmed and was being shown on the news as "the best footage of a UFO recorded recently" Of course, the tiny, blurry red in one frame made it pretty obvious that it was our logo on our balloon, especially consider how it was downwind of us and would have traveled about that far in about that time. They even had experts come on and say what they thought. What a joke! It just makes a good story and they can bring in whoever they want and call it whatever they want but this is a great example of why not to listen to it.
P.S. we never called the news people and told them because we knew they'd refuse to look stupid by retracting all the UFO stuff they said about it
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Unfortunately it sheds no light on the mystery of why public officials are not required to take tests for avarice or love of power.
You left out another leading cause of death, and the real number one threat to freedom: excess state power.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Whatever it was, it is very unlikely that it was man-made. It could have been an electrostatic phenomenon that consolidated the low hanging clouds into a dense oblate spheroid and then funneled it straight up through the clouds. The circularity of the region is consistent with rotation and the upward movement with funneling. Not all tornados touch down on the ground for instance. Anyway, there are plausible scientific explanations.
Could be martians, too.
CowboyNeel in a hot air balloon?
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
Yep, cause people are dropping like flies from global warming. Fatalities in the millions.
According to MSNBC, someone (i.e. a pilot) did take a picture of the object (or cloud) with a cell phone camera but is afraid to release the photo to the public out of fear that he will lose his job. http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/01/02/ 25212.aspx
The US (and a few other countries') Military has been building and flying UFOs around the world for decades - problem is, it will take something like them landing at every international airport, stepping out and telling everyone about it at a press conference, for the public to start believing it.
Even then, there will be people who'll never believe it. The Alien-UFO cover story has been that effective.
Privacy begins with
I'm sorry, not sure if you're being sarcastic or offtopic, troll, redundant or what, but I gotsta bite....
Are you still a bit sore that France acted like a true friend to the United States and warned you about the blatant stupidity of the whole Iraq thing instead of being siccophantic like the UK, Australia, et al? Your comment is a bit like saying "Nice one USA, why worry about groups of neo-cons and fundamentalist christians destroying the fabric of your society and waging war on your constitution when you can genetically engineer prion free cows?"
Oh no, I see your point. Please continue...
I don't therefore I'm not.
If an albeit clever amateur can build his own radio controlled flying saucers, then I for one, believe they have been tested for a long time by the military. The flying saucers which are based upon the Coanda-effect could actually have been around since the 30's, with a fuel consumption which is 1/3 of a helicoptre's. Depending on the 'flatness' of the dish, you could create saucers which are more suitable for hovering, like the radio controlled GFSUAV or more suitable for high velocity travel, where the dish works more like a wing, like those who people from time to time tell they have been seeing flying extremely quickly over the sky.
What really freaked me out, was that the GFSUAV's odd shape, (which is not quite like the regular, frisbee shaped flying saucers), I have seen in a book about UFO's when I was a child. Some of the unclear (and many years ago not so convincing) photographs, clearly showed flying saucers with a structure on top of it, just like the GFSUAV, but that long ago, I just dismissed those saucers as being unclear shots of hub caps or something.
More people ought to be surprised when they discover the similarities between some of those odd UFO shapes on older pictures, and the GFSUAV with the 'hat' on the top of the dish.
Inside it you could have either a propeller or a jet engine, but what's most fascinating, is that the GFSUAV is electric, driven by state of the art lithium batteries!
"invading mobs of Muslim youths" and airplanes crashing into skyscrapers simply are not high on the list of things likely to kill you."
Oh what short memories we have. 9-11 comes, tanks the economy, raises unemployment rates, scares the shit out of the country, and today all people can remember is the number 3,000.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"the point m0re t4e BSD license, use the sling. TO GET SOME EYE standpoint, I don't"
Kang, you fool! Get your translator working!!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
But the alien ghost god I worship gave me his word, and that's good enough for me!
"A dead English is always better than delivers of butter, except on rods."
According to Google, anyway.
...but, although the Ko-Dan Armada was destroyed, Xur escaped and there is still danger.
The Vulcans were on a survey mission, they didn't detect a warp signature and therefore continued on their voyage home. Earth is still too primative.
Has anyone here ever seen Star Trek?!!! - Duh!
Until Zefram Cochrane develops his theories on warp propulsion and performs his maiden test flight, humanity is to continue on an isolated and arduous journey into the evolutionary unknown.
"It's amazing to me that the same people who say without a doubt in their mind that there is no and can be no god, will still believe in extra terrestrials and ghosts."
Don't go equating this with "the geek community". Any true geek will be familiar with the scientific method, and won't believe anything without solid evidence. If you trouble yourself to read most of the replies on Slashdot you'll find a lot of sane sceptical people and only a few nutjobs.
On the other hand, it's pretty clear that aliens are much cooler than christianity and thus get more geek mindshare. Aliens: space ships and ray guns. Christianity: respect your parents and go to church.
The leap of faith required between Aliens and God is an order of magnitude:
Statistically it's likely that other planets out there support life, and some of them might be advanced enough for space travel. It's a significant but not unrealistic improvement on our own position/technology.
"God" in the biblical form requires an immense level of magic to explain.
Maybe they were looking for one of their own? Why else would it hover over an aircraft hanger? It was probably scanning it.
Have you ever gone fishing?
Do you think that the fish that we catch and then release can prove to the other fish what happened?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If these are taken as natural, l judge that system ignorant and harmless. I spare it. But if the hand of Ming is recognized in these events...
I judge that system dangerous.
I call upon the great god Dyzan. And for his greater glory, and our mutual pleasure...
I destroy it utterly.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
So, is the TSA still relegated to makeup/hand lotion patrol?
I remember when people thought the B2 was a UFO. Silent, dark, "invisible" to radar and from one side it could be seen as being a saucer shaped object.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
As suggested, this message up near the front of postings but buried in 3rd or 4th level I am putting. if(scanSubject(/Lshelverfn/) == is_good) { this buried enough for hiding will be } else { signalWith(flare) <-- like 20 rotations back --> && I will { backUpTalker('ON'); this.Talker('OFF") }.
Oops. Pardon the above, still need to tweak the english emitter. This somewhat better seems it to be.
Quick report: Hiding am I yet; can walk the streets and ride "Elevated" but not good yet with face2face. Have deflated boobs as incompatible with facial hair these seeming to be. Still with problems with "left" opposed to "right" with footware. It is subtle. Internetspeak okay-- blend in with ESLs and with the L3373s and specially A-OK with fragment code interspersing. /. anonymizing well & intercepting unproblematical as would be dismissed as juvenile prankyprank and either +5 insightful or -1 doubleplus unfunny. Ping nobody's radar either way this would.
Ok better on the english emitter, now, I think. I hope the translator routines don't frobnicate on this material. (That is a "joke"; I need to practice those if I am going to pass in F2F situations here).
Pretest of observation platforms over "airports" has gone well with the notable exception of the one large "airport" near the long big lake. Although that incident has been adequately contained, with the first general news stories not surfacing until 50 rotations after, it demonstrated that we cannot rely on the Acme Cloaking Device Incorporated products. See my last report before I left for this assignment about my concerns with Acme's quality assurance program and let us get it right next time. Request that you hurryup on finding replacements. The opportunity to study the mass religious festivals at these "airports" at the time of Big Bird Feast was lost on this orbit because of this snafu. We definitely want to be prepared for the one next orbit.
I need to get back into the hot shower before my skin melts again. Will look for your ACK in the Hubble pics.
Oh, if you NEED to signal me with a flare again, please dial down the intensity. That last one was WAY too noticeable.
Had the Soviets been able to get a closer look, they would have seen the Stars and Stripes.
If people where ready to think this in a proper manner they would soon realizes that aliens are real. The question however is have they found our planet and checked up on us them selfs or by using a prope. This question is important becose space is big and any alien race that can travel between stars can easy hide from our simple radars (radio wave bouncing of metal objects). What we consider high tech here, might be many centuries old for the alien races in question.
I am sure that many alien races are here just to explore. I am bit more worried about the alien races who have interest in conquering whole worlds and enslave the population. Space is really big, so it is a easy assumption that such alien races exist.
Could it just be a ball-lightning thing ?
You can read the whole of his essay, (in two parts).
The quote from above comes from the second part. The first part is, what I thought, a fascinating historical review of how the world works with regard to secrets.
Or you can read his book. It comes highly recommended. --This is not your average "Woo woo, Leonard Nimoy looks at UFO's!" book. It only looks at cases reported by multiple airforce/military/police witnesses, (due to their typically being selected for being sane and sound individuals as well as the procedural documentation recorded in each case as a requirement of their jobs). Even though civilian accounts are left out, the book still manages to cover a couple hundred cases from the 40's to the 70's. It also deals in depth with the military and political side of the issue, and easily refutes many of the common misnomers about UFO's, (of which several are represented on this site).
He doesn't, however, get into what UFO's are here to do. That's a whole other can of worms.
Here is some channeled work which attempts to shed light on that subject, among others. (Beware, with a group like the one this particular material comes from, a lot of creepy people also come out of the woodwork to spread fear and confusion and lies, etc., in order to stop people from looking. So take everything, including this, with a grain of salt. This is the kind of material and subject matter which makes people want to play a lot of video games and shut out eve
Any of the above might fit, don't really know, but all are possible.
Myself and several friends saw one pretty close back when we were young teenagers. Damn freeking impressive if our government has craft that can do what we saw. And considering this was more than 40 years ago, double damn impressive if they had anything that sophisticated back then.
Can't tell ya what it was other than an oval flying craft, and obviously so, this wasn't a candle in a plastic bag or anything like that, but it had no visible or audible means of propulsion, in other words perfectly quiet, and was capable of a dead stop hover and then acceleration at full ahead ludicrous speed. We saw at it at under 100 yards distance at the closest point. No helicopter, airplane or balloon or UAV device would even approach those flight characteristics we witnessed in such rapid changes. The acceleration was from right here, to winked out over the horizon in like 2 seconds. From a complete stop. No exhaust trails at all, no noise.
It changes your life seeing something like that, you can't ever take what government or the laughing skeptics say as serious any longer, and makes you question things a lot more.
Since then it has been and off again on again mini hobby. One of my contacts is a retired high level military spookish type, who's last job would put him in a postion to know more than a few things about what goes on at the edge of the atmosphere due to what we will call cold war concerns and being aware of WMD and whatnot along those lines. It took a long time but eventually I got a roundabout confirmation about certain things, one of those "I cannot confirm nor deny that we sometimes take images of unknown origin fast movers that enter and *exit* the atmosphere at high rates of speed". Along those lines.
Oh what short memories we have. 9-11 comes, tanks the economy, raises unemployment rates, scares the shit out of the country, and today all people can remember is the number 3,000.
Well, looks like you never quite figured it out. See, 9-11 "tanked the economy" and "raised unemployment rate" because people had the shit scared out of them. Why did they? Because politicians like Bush wanted to spread fear to distract from their incompetence and institutionalized corruption.
"I like the lights-on-clouds explanation - it would explain why 12 people near each other might see something very odd, but no one else would"
12 people, isn't that enough for you? wjay about the people who haven't been interviewed? travelers for example...
just a thought...
You know how Richard Dawkins is all over the news talking about Atheism? My theory is that it's because he's secretly preparing we humans for a time when they land and we're all forced to question our religion.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Every time something like this comes up in the news, I think about what I saw in the sky over Smyrna, DE in 2002.
It was a fairly overcast day, and my wife was tending to the horses on her parent's farm. I was sitting on my car trying to pass the time, and looked up when I heard the jetliner go overhead. The jet was flying beneath the cloud ceiling several thousand feet up, but due to the delay of the sound reaching me, I initially looked for it behind its actual position. There, I saw a dark flat object which seemed to be tumbling through the air. Originally, I thought it might be something that fell off the jetliner and was now plummeting to earth. The thought of recovering a piece of an airplane was thrilling, so I strained to stay focused on the object. I soon discovered though that it wasn't falling, it was traveling in the same direction, and at the same speed as the jet - following it close enough that it probably would show up as a single radar blip. You're going to laugh at this, but it reminded me of the two-dimensional prison that Superman's enemies were trapped in. How could a flat tumbling shape be moving through the air at speed like that? I should have grabbed my camera in my car, or gotten my wife's attention, but strangely I did neither, and to this day, I don't know why. Instead, I simply watched the object and jet as if I was in a trance until both finally vanished into low clouds near the horizon.
Weird... really really weird.
I on duty that night. I did not see anything. I do know the people who claimed they saw the UFO. All of them together do not possess enough mental energy to warm a cup of tea. Just because "pilots" claimed they saw it does not make it so. Knowing many pilots, I would not fly on their plane if they were the last flight out of hell! The City of Chicago was installing new lights at the United terminals and I would bet that was the source of the UFO. They are VERY bright. So bright the FAA tower complained and they had to be re-aimed. If they were looking for intelligent life, they would not find it at United Airlines. How come UFO's never appear at Havard or MIT? It is always some half-baked nimrod who thinks drinking Schlitz is "worldly".
Or to be more precise the grainy cell phone photo of said UFO? After all at least one of these United Airlines people had to have a cell phone.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
That's like them admitting that a person strapped with TNT was walking around in the terminal, and then disappeared. Err... of course they'll say it was an insignificant event/delusion.
Admitting something like that would simply demonstrate the ineffectiveness of our (usa's) defense capabilities... which, considering our spending on defense, would not be a good thing.
Yep, cause people are dropping like flies from global warming. Fatalities in the millions.
That's actually probably pretty close already, and it's going to get worse.
If they beamed down from space, then I'd agree. But let's say aliens evolved somewhere where aging and death were not evolutionary advantages, and they're just chugging along at somewhere conventionally below the speed of light, and they just stop by on their 50,000 year vacation to tank up on Oxygen or sightsee or something, before taking off again. Wouldn't take a single drop of magic, especially since they're apparently not even invisible.
Is it the likely explanation? I'd rather go with secret military test flights.
And it was controlled by non-terrestrial intelligences, how would we know unless they or the govt told us?
Quite simply we wouldn't.
And until one of those groups publicly announces the full truth of what's really going on we're left with speculation, rumors, half-truths, the mocking of those who report that they've seen something, and denials by govt agencies like the FAA.
I have a simple proposition which, if adopted (and there is no reason not to adopt it) would allow the world to learn the truth about UFOs/extraterrestrials, presuming they actually exist and the government has made contact (Roswell, etc.). Congress should pass a law granting absolute immunity from prosecution/retaliation/termination for anyone working for the government with security clearance who comes forward with evidence about UFOs/ETs. If the government really doesn't have UFO/ET secret knowledge, then there should be no problem with passing such a law, and nobody should be opposed to it. It kinda surprises me that nobody has thought of this before. Yes, I realize that people with such knowledge would still be afraid of being shot in the back my the MIB posse, regardless of immunity from criminal prosecution for revealing classified information. But SOMEONE would come forward. We have similar laws for immunity for employees who file workers comp claims. Merely by having such a law debated and voted on would be very informative as to who would oppose it and what their arguments would be. Bill Clinton always said he wanted to know the truth about UFOs, but he never made the logical step and proposed a law like I've just described. That means he must know UFOs are real, heh. So, what about it? Write a letter to your congressperson. Let's get the Extraterrestrial Revelation Act of 2007 passed.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I'm with you on this. It's also important to remember it is winter, the atmosphere is cold above O'Hare International, and ice crystals are able to do interesting things with light from the sun alone.
God has left an immense level of evidence to prove He exists.
One day you'll know for sure. I promise.
My favorite UFO in the news was when a local news station was doing a human interest series on local nut-jobs who made claims about the paranormal. They were very skeptical and generally debunking these people by showing up with a camera and recording it when the nut-jobs failed to produce anything paranormal, without actually confronting or insulting the people. They'd just done a bunch of ghost hunters the night before.
Then they interview "Prophet Yaweh" from Las Vegas who says that by reading the Old Testament of the Bible in Hebrew, he learned a secret that allows him to summon UFO's on command. So the news channel picked a date, time, and location, and Prophet Yaweh shows up, and immediately summons a UFO, throwing the story rather off track.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
HAh! UFOS EAT IT
Not particularly.
It might be highly improbable, however it would be even more improbable to have an entity who can control just about every tiny event occuring in this Universe.
Of course, assuming that magic is merely level of technology that is far beyond our understanding, it would seem that while aliens visiting us might be improbable but yet fathomable science (e.g. the Universe is billions of years old, so why not a species or a civilization that evolved a million years before us - think of the technological progress they'd have made in that time).
However, the existence of God as most religions seem to perceive would truly be baffling (e.g. abruptly changing Universal constants (not in the gradual way that they do change), interaction of an independent outside observer with a closed system etc.)
I do not know what it is, but it would definitely be contrary to our understanding of the Universe. Magic, I suppose, is as good a word as any.
The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
N41Â53.51988, W087Â36.50574
There is a test for exactly this sort of thing. We call them "elections." The results come back positive if your condition reads "elected."
I used to read all kinds of UFO books: skeptic, neutral, and "believer" books. I hoped to get to the bottom of the mystery. However, I've concluded that whatever it is, it resists "regular" scientific investigation. Barring some breakthru, the topic is forever stuck in limbo and mire with insufficient info to say it is psychological in nature or a new phenomanon. I was generally unsatisfied with the skeptic's explanation. Their arm-chair psychology was as speculative and creative as the witness stories. But that just leaves a big null.
Table-ized A.I.
"Fred, I'm totally serious! How else would I have this giant gash in my lip from where the hook was?"
"What? You were probably out all night licking sea anenomea again with those Clownfish sisters and bit down on some coral."
"But I'm telling you, fishermen are real!"
"Yeah right. What next? You still believe in Red Tide?"
Alien 1: I said +15 latitude, not -15! Alien 2: Doh!
I trust radar more than human testimony. This is why I recommend anyone who's interested in serious UFO research (not alien research) google for former FAA head of Accidents and Investigations, John Callahan. (http://tinyurl.com/y5gzpj>)
So the story goes, several years ago, in front of the National Press Club John Callahan claimed to have visual, plane-nose and ground radar proof of a UFO. He brought an audio cassette of the conversation between the ground controllers, a VHS tape of the incident, the November 1986 FAA report, and target readouts to support his case. At the end of his speech, he said he was prepared to testify before congress, under oath, that everything he presented was the truth.
See it for yourself. (http://tinyurl.com/uauzc)
The combination of data and corroborating testimony makes this a case worth following. It's just a shame we know so little about the FAA's investigation and their final conclusions.
What do you get when you cross a mountain-climber with a mosquito? Nothing! You can't cross a scaler with a vector.
But doesn't God say that he cannot and would not prove that he exists because proof denies Faith and what is God without Faith? So, theoretically, if God were to prove he exists, he would be proving he does not exist.
Mixing human logic and God is like mixing peanut butter and mayonaise. I suppose one could theoretically do it, but it'd probably leave a bad taste in your mouth.
Dude! Shit, I'm still laughing, that was hilarious!
A dead Englishman is always better than a measure of butter, except on bread.
A specific kind of bread, actually, long, thin, and crunchy. And I would
have used an indefinite article before 'livre', but for all I know, it's
a stable idiom.
No good deed goes unpunished...
Nah, bad conspiracy. The Republicans would report Jesus, not UFO.
Table-ized A.I.
Our little green friends should be respected whilst they are around, lest the magnificent viruses of the world gets to them and turns them into poor little sick green friends, reference the recent Tom Cruise flick for details.
D.A. =/= God. HHGTTG =/= The Bible, unfortunately.
According to the article: The frisbee shaped rotating six foot UFO was 24 feet in diameter with windows around its edge; it was not spinning; did not have any windows; and was shaped like a cigar.
I'm glad that everyone saw the same object. I wonder why they didn't give a photo or at least a sketch of this object.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Mysticgoat, Are you an alien?
It's times like these when I wish slashdot had a "WTF" mod. Until then, mark it informative and revel in the insanity!
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Arthur_C._Cl
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
...It's just the Daedalus returning from Atlantis.
then it got closer and turned out to be a 737. The only flying saucers I've seen were on TV and in the theater. What I don't understand is this: how is it possible with the advances in film and video photography over the past forty years we still have fuzzy video and fuzzy pictures of flying saucers? You'd think the flying saucer proponents would learn how to use a goddamn camera properly by now. God, what a bunch of gullible morons and fakers!
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
For those that are not familiar with the advance in technology and mad skills some of us have, take a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iWIRGaBoZI
Now strap some super bright LED's on this thing and tell me the guy flying it isn't an alien.
Want to see a UFO ? Just wait and pray to get Parkinson illness. Then get a camera and go to the nearest open field. Then you'll just be able to spot a UFO and even film it! It seems UFO's are attracted by Parkinson affected cameraman's.
Every discusion of UFOs must include a reference to the Fermi Paradox
This reminds me of a thing a very old friend of mine did back a few decades ago when UFO hysteria came up, cashing in on the craze as well:
He made a bunch of tissue paper "balloons" that used as fuel some melted parafin (candle wax) as the fuel source, and some kite string to attach the candle to the tissue paper. This is the same material that you use for older traditional kites, and in fact this buddy of mine said it was a canabalized kite kit as well with a little "engineering" to hack it into something else.
Some cloudless winter night in Minnesota, without much wind, he took a bunch of these and lit them up in the late evening, but when people would still be awake to see the things if they were doing some late-night driving or happened to be outside at the time. Think about it, what would a hot-air baloon powered by a candle look like at night? A big glowing ball of light that would float and hover as it caught random air currents, moving in erratic directions. Since these were comparatively small, they also tended to float just about house tops and other buildings.
Occasionally the wax "fuel" would run out, but the ballon woudn't necessarily land immediately afterward as it was still a very light weight object.
Needless to say, the next morning there were a bunch of UFO "sightings" in the local paper, and the local police department had a rather busy night trying to figure out what was going on, trying to calm down the local citizens. I can only imagine what the law enforcement thought of the whole mess, and what would have happened if my friend had been caught.
Beam me up, hot Nord babes.
According to this article, there was a possible UFO crash in the Northern part of South Africa over the weekend. Admittedly, it sounds rather more like a meteorite strike and some imaginative reporting.
And let me tell you this:
1) It is true that many of the older generation at the time I grew up and which are now 65 and going to retire were/are indeed racist. But nowadays a lot of HR departement were replaced by younger people, for which being arab looking isn't that a big deal. In other word the situation nowadays is nowhere as bad as it was 20 years ago or 40 years ago.
2) BUT what I observed a lot was people which think they are ENTITLED to get a great place in society. I could tell you 100's of story of youth simply misusing the fact that their parents did not READ french to lie them outright on "absence bulletin" or "end of year result bulletin". Go play in the street, steal from local supermarket. And then get angry at teacher which gave them a bad note because they did not learn, and kick out of anger pupils which got better note than them. And later got out undiplommed. Sure there were a few non-arabic which did that too. But the majority in my streets were arabics BECAUSE THEY COULD GET AWAY WITH IT BY LYING TO THEIR PARENTS. Remmember : their parent did not speak french or read it.
3) a lot of the youth at my epoch did not care shit about the future. And as far as I can tell this is valid for every generation. I certainly doubt the youth which started it cared more for it than us. Actually when there were protest for whatever stupid scheme our education minister came up with (86?) when we got off to protest in the street, the trouble maker from there simply went away from college to steal en-masse from the supermarket, whereas we were in the street to protest.
4) on the other hand we had on regular basis a burnt down car, burnt play ground, broken stuff. Why ? Because, in the immortal words of some of my friends of that epoch "it is fun to break things down". And as far as I can tell from the story some of my old friends told me from dec 05, well most of the youth were laughing when they started burning stuff. Not really what you would call anger, hu ? Now sure my old friends could be lying out, but why would they ? They are arabic too (well tunisien). When it spread out away from there , maybe more angry youth added to the fuel, but I doubt it. I think it was more akin to "let us show them we aren't pussy coward. Let us revolt !".
The bottom line : I doubt that the revolt of the youth was really a revolt against latent french racism (which IS a problem for some age layer), because those which burnt stuff down, were not the one which had to confront racism the most, I think they were simply idiot finding it funny to break stuff down around.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Albeit not directly ion the secure zone, although I go there from time to time. And you are freaking allowed to have your phone camera because there is nothing sensitive to be phtographied (aka : "secret"). The only things which is not allowed is to go near tanking plane, tank reserve etc... with anything which could go up with a spark, in other word security reason as in "physical security".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
No fish can't talk or really communicate with each other on that level, so far as we know.
If they could though they'd be able to prove it easily, where they have encountered one fisherman there are likely to be a lot more and in places where there are special fishing spots around lakes they will probably be in exactly the same place.
All the fish abductee would have to do is remember where he was thrown back in and gather his disbelieving friends around to watch. Sooner or later they'd see the line and the hook come into the water and they could watch what happened when a fish was hooked and later thrown back in.
I would not assume an Alien would think or act like we do (better for us.)
They are alien to us after all.
To get here, they would be far past our physics. We can't get anywhere with our speed limits and 3 dimensions (and confined in the 4th.)
So, if you went to 2D world (with time you detail bastards) what would they observe as you freely moved around? Many of us would probably not do what we do in SIM games...
Possibly a few UFOs were alien, but we have tons of non alien ones to distract us.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
In Soviet Russia, UFO watches you.
Do not trust this signature.
parent deserves funny . not troll
Slipping shoelaces ?
I've studied UFO phenomena on-and-off for the last 30 years or so, albeit not professionally, and one theory seems to fit better than most. Oddly, though, it's the theory that seems to get the least airtime.
:-/
The human brain (and, who knows, maybe other animals too) is susceptible to "interference" from extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves. Exposure seems to trigger an experience not unlike the classic UFO report, with memories of "lights in the sky" performing astounding "aerobatics" and feelings of a profound "connectedness" that some say changed their lives.
Many UFO sightings (and fairy stories, and religious experiences etc.) take place over long-standing seismic phenomena, nuclear power stations or during thunderstorms; all places where high powered electromagnetic fields at a low frequency (7-8 Hz has been suggested as a "trigger frequency") would not be uncommon.
The idea that a group of individuals all see "the same thing" and back each others stories up just suggests to me that they experienced a localised EM field, while others who were further away had a lesser experience and shrugged it off. Has it ever bothered you how many of these stories can be retold by large groups of people, all of whom had cameras yet none of whom photographed anything - the only "evidence" is in a collection of human brains, and we accept it as evidence because they all agree with each other? What if it is possible to introduce this experience into the "mind" externally without leaving any trace? I personally always think of this theory every time someone, when talking about such an experience, says "it changed my life". That, to me, sounds like indirect evidence of a change in neurochemistry. Just seeing an unexplained light in the sky is unlikely to "change your life".
There's a valley, I think it's in Norway but I can't remember for certain at the moment (Google for it if you have the time) where glowing balls of light are regularly seen floating over the centre, but you can only see them if you're standing to one particular side of the valley. People have written articles about these amazing one-sided light balls, giving all sorts of weird theories about how the light could be polarised to only be visible from one direction. As far as I'm concerned, it's much more likely that the light balls are, well, balls(!) and that the hillside you can see them from contains a source of ELF* EM that scrambles the brains of anyone who stands there.
So, returning to TFA, I'd be more worried about what was emitting that level of EM radiation from the cases near the 12 employees who made the sighting... The Soviets "lost" quite a few "suitcase nukes", didn't they?
(* Let the Elf jokes begin...)
I for one welcome our new UFO overlords.
even if god have a chance of existing, the christian god have zero chance. Let me explain:
The characteristics of god, as said by the church:
-He is perfect
-He is omniscient (sees everything)
-He is omnipresent (is everywhere)
-He is omnipotent (can do anything)
-He is good
If he is good, sees all, is everywhere and can do everything he can fix all the wrong things in the world.
If someone can prevent an evil thing to happen and doesn't do it, he made an evil thing by his inaction.
Ops, there are thousands of children that starve to death, they are not responsible for their situaition and this "god" don't save them all.
Ops, there are natural disasters that kill the sinners and the good guys (kids too, if u think there are no good guys)
[insert your observation of natural injustices and cruelties of our world and society here]
so, we can only conclude that the entity above modeled and named "god"
1) doesn't exist or
2) is not omnipotent or
3) is not omnipresent or
4) is not good (or even fair) or
5) is not perfect
choose any one that you like, since we have no data to determine witch one (or more)of these is the factual truth.
Damn. Missed my cab ride home again...
Nothing witty
This also points to an incomplete and/or incorrect model. But then, many ministers are not scientists.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
From the Bad Astronomer: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/firstonthemoon. html
But there was a far worse breach in reality in the show, and this dealt with the famous Apollo 11 "UFO".
On the way to the Moon, the astronauts saw something out their porthole they couldn't identify, and it appeared to be following them. They figured it might be the booster rocket that put them on their way to the Moon. The rocket, called an SIVB, had accelerated them out of Earth orbit two days earlier, and when they disconnected from it they maneuvered away. Two days later, their different orbits had separated them substantially. When the crew spotted their bogey, they called Houston control and asked how far away the booster was... and were told it was 6000 nautical miles distant-- way too far to be whatever it was they were seeing. Michael Collins, the Command Module pilot, looked at the object through the on-board telescope and said it was changing shape, sometimes looking elliptical, and other times looking L-shaped.
So what was it? UFO people have made a lot of hay from this story, and the show itself makes quite a bit of drama over it:
Buzz Aldrin: There was something out there that was close enough to be observed-- what could it be?
Narrator: If it wasn't a part of their rocket, it could only be one thing: a UFO.
That's a pretty dumb thing to say. First, a UFO is any unidentified object, but using the acronym strongly implies an alien spaceship. Also, by definition, if it wasn't part of the rocket, it was unidentified, so it had to be a UFO. Duh.
The program then goes on to say:
To this day whatever it was the crew saw has not been positively identified or even publicly acknowledged.
However, this isn't entirely correct. It has been identified.
My friend David Morrison, who is an astronomer at NASA Ames in California, answers questions sent in to the Ask an Astrobiologist website. He got this very question! Here's his answer:
I just talked to Buzz Aldrin on the phone, and he notes that the quotations were taken out of context and did not convey the intended meaning. After the Apollo 11 crew verified that the object they were seeing was not the SIVB upper stage, which was about 6000 miles away at that time, they concluded that they were probably seeing one of the panels from the separation of the spacecraft from the upper stage. These panels were not tracked from Earth and were likely much closer to the Apollo spacecraft. They chose not to discuss this on the open communications channel since they were concerned that their comments might be misinterpreted (as they are being now). Apparently all of this discussion about the panels was cut from the broadcast interview, thus giving the impression that they had seen a UFO.
As it turns out, someone managed to snap a photo of the UFO over the the O'Hare airport.
No, 12 isn't enough. It'd be easy to convince 12 people to pull a prank like this (not saying that it is a prank, but we shouldn't rule out the possibility).
Anyway, regarding your comments on the travelers, that was pretty much my point - no one else has reported these lights, only the 12 people that probably were working in close proximity to each other. Travelers, like pilots and air traffic controllers, are another group of people you would expect to see something if it had been there, since O'Hare is such a busy airport. (I didn't mention travelers initially because I thought it'd be obvious.)
Riley Martin has had an awareness of this since 1953, and has been a source of contact every 11 years since. He freely takes questions about it on his radio show. He never fails to have an answer.
When I was flying in and out of Midway Chicago airport, I would be transitioned routinely over the airport, midfield anywhere from 45 degress to perpendicular to the active runway. As you said, it keeps you out of the flightpath of any aircraft using the crossing runway. Typical altitudes were 500-1000 AGL, well below 1900 feet. These were typically single engine small aircraft, Cessna 172s, Pipers, and my own Beech Sundowner.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
this "joke" really has a VERY long beard by now... every stupid slashdot story got at least one overlord joke. what's wrong with you guys, are you that desperate for attention, that you refuse to evolve beyond age old nerd/geek jokes? why not try to be innovative for once?
Mr. Red Mercury. You go against every conspiracy theory out there. We all know that for something to be top, ultra, heavily classified -- and I mean so secret that the revelation of it would create global chaos, the fall of our religions etc -- it has to be seen by at least one (1) person, preferably at night or in some desolate location, with arguably weak evidence heavily supported by common sense. It's some sort of unwritten rule of top-secret stuff.
On a more serious note, let me point out the article The Political Sociology of Alien Encounters by Eric Ouellet Ph.D. Very interesting, although simple read. And even though it doesn't touch on the topic of the abductions themselves, it at least tries to show what way our "world-horizon" shapes whatever we experience.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Well, at least he summoned some friends waiting in the hills with a laser projector. But I give him that.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Yes, which is the reason I had made that statement.
It was implicit.
In this day and age, you're telling me that a dozen employees saw this thing, and even heard about it over a radio broadcast, but not one of them had both a camera phone and the presence of mind to use it?
I flew into Chicago O'hare on November 7, on a united plane too, why didn't I get to see the ufo? (Seriously, I did)
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
Actually 'God' doesn't say or visibly do *anything* -- if he/she/it/whatever did something, then we would have evidence rather than 'faith'. And, sorry to offend the religious, but 'faith' is just plain stupid. Belief not based on evidence, reason, or probability equates to a pitiful display of wishful thinking (it is just plain delusional).
"God" in the biblical form requires an immense level of magic to explain.
Yes, but only because sheepherding doesn't require much in the way of technological knowhow. So the guys writing of their experiences in the OT attributed lots of 'powers' to their visiting 'god' which he/she/it didn't actually have, never claimed, nor demonstrated.
My estimate is the god of the OT was about 100 years more advanced than our current scientists.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You stopped taking me seriously when you saw the link? That suggests to me that you were suffering from bias before you even clicked through to the page beyond it. Did you give the page more than a few seconds-long skim? It took me about half an hour to read and absorb the introductory notes on that page; they were written by a physicist with a solid CV and twenty years worth of time employed at respected institutions, which is partly why I thought it might be appropriate for Slashdot. He took the time to give critical analysis to a subject usually ignored. Isn't that what people want with regard to such subjects? To expose them to the rigors of scientific analysis and see what comes up?
I would advise that taking the time to lower walls of bias and to properly read a page is the best way to find the coherency, consistency and facts you say were missing in this case.
-FL
Well, I don't know about "little green men", but I do know you are mistaken about astronomers not reporting UFO's. I would suggest that you might do better research before making any more such bold and misleading statements, (like your previous comments regarding photography).
As for giving you proof. . . Why? You seem both rude and very resistant to thinking about these ideas. And in the end, what you believe at the close of the day is rather less important to others than you might wish. The people who are researching the UFO phenomenon are curious and do not search for your benefit, but to enlighten themselves and to enjoy the sharing of knowledge with other people who are interested. They have discovered that learning new things beyond their comfortable patterns is fun!
Those who wish to not seek are entirely free to do so, and their choice must be respected. Falsehoods, however, should be given what they call for; truth.
-FL
Are you saying that they give multi-million dollar fighter jets to people with bad eye-sight, low IQ's, poor judgment and no training whatsoever in spatial and visual recognition of airborne objects?
Police may not score as highly a fighter pilots, but they do fill out reports and are able to communicate encounters as they are happening, which makes their testimony in such cases far more useful than that of the average citizen. I'm not sure how much better you can hope to find, but to stop looking because perfect witnesses are unavailable is hardly rational.
Nevermind. You have obviously set the bar for sanity at an all-time new low. However, if you are interested, for a one time donation of $1000, I will sit and channel anything you feel like hearing!
One way to determine the level of reliability of a source is by looking at how much money is being asked for. While you can certainly buy paper-based copies of the material in question, the download is entirely free. Interestingly, it is also far more rational-sounding than you.
-FL
it's also doubly funy because a great mathmatician,and philosopher PASCAL demonstrated a proof positive in the benefit for believing in god.
Pascal's Wager is the French philosopher Blaise Pascal's application of decision theory to the belief in God. (It is also occasionally known as Pascal's Gambit.) It appears in the Pensées, a posthumous collection of Pascal's notes for an unfinished treatise on Christian apologetics. Pascal argued that it is a better "bet" to believe that God exists, because the expected value of believing that God exists is always greater than the expected value resulting from non-belief. Indeed, he claimed that the expected value is infinite. With this, he sought to convert those, to Christianity, who were uninterested in religion and unimpressed by previous theological arguments for it.
From a sub wiki of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager
I believe. There is no Justifiable reason not to. The flavor is the difficult part.
Long Live Science.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Isn't it feasible that the UFOs nee UAPs are something other than spaceships? Perhaps even some sort of biological that us homo sapiens are unfamiliar with at this point? Anyhow, here's an interesting link http://www.narcap.org/reports/TR8Bias1.htm relevant to the subject...
...oh whoops, I thought I was on metafilter. Oh. Then what I meant to say was...
In Russia, all your UFOS belong to us watching you.
On a plane.
Running a linux distro.
(Sorry, I really thought this was the Blue.)
"We're millions of miles from earth, inside a giant white face, what's impossible?"
And just to turn Pascal's wager on its head and express how weak and unconvincing reasonable people find the 'for God' arguments:
... free stuff ...
http://blasphemychallenge.com/
Damn your soul forever, and get a free CD! Ummm
You will find your answers there. - Simon M.
but I do know you are mistaken about astronomers not reporting UFO's. I would suggest that you might do better research before making any more such bold and misleading statements, (like your previous comments regarding photography).
Talk about pot calling the kettle black. I suggest you read what reasonable people like Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Richard Feynman, or the folks at The Skeptic have to say. Mustn't forget to include Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy take on UFO nuttiness.
There is a difference between scientific ignorance and gullible ignorance. I know I don't know anything and am willing to be educated, but it doesn't mean I have to take what people say at face value, and if I learn it's bullshit, I'll call it bullshit. Especially UFOs as alien spacecraft bullshit. Having an open mind doesn't mean a lack of critical thinking.
If there really are aliens visiting earth in flying saucers, why then, and I'm really trying to understand this, why then would someone travel, perhaps, thousands of light years to abduct some stranger on a farm or isolated spot and give him an anal probe?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
But doesn't God say that he cannot and would not prove that he exists because proof denies Faith and what is God without Faith? So, theoretically, if God were to prove he exists, he would be proving he does not exist.
That's only true if you assume that whoever claimed that about God wasn't just making it up. It is logically possible for God to exist in some way, but for religions to still make up plenty of bullcrap about He/It/Whatever. Considering that's exactly the kind of manipulative statement one would use if one wanted to prod the sheep into following one's own religion (while absolving oneself of any responsibility to validate it), I'd certainly vote for it not being divinely inspired.
I suspect that if a divine entity (or multiple divine entities) exists, it/they will go on existing just fine even if someone manages to prove it.
Of the five characteristics you listed, three (the omnis) are pretty clear and simple to define. The other two--perfect and good--are not so simple to define. Now, I'm not Christian and my beliefs about divinity differ significantly from those of Christians, but in defense of those who believe in a higher power that is "good", I would like to say this:
Most people seem to think that if a "god" was "good" and in control of everything, life would be some kind of easy utopia where no one has any hardships and nothing "bad" happens. IMO, this is a severe misunderstanding of what life is about. Life is about learning, growing, and experiencing; about facing hardships and overcoming them, or at least learning from them. This necessarily requires plenty of "bad" things to happen. Different people leading different lives have different trials to face and different lessons to learn. Without challenges and difficulties, there is no drive for any kind of improvement or advancement. If our existence is somehow the result of some kind of divine entity, I believe said divine entity has generally good intentions, but does not mean for us to be coddled pets, dependent on our god for some kind of perpetual state of easy contentment.
The above is just my view, which I'm not interested in trying to impose on anyone else; the main point is that it is not illogical to believe there is a "good" god in a world full of evils.
I did recognize it, it's a great quote. I replied because you reversed it wrt the original quote: 'adv. tech looks like magic' versus 'magic is advanced tech', while not all magic has to be advanced tech (for example, it can be a trick of perception (hold the card up your sleeve where nobody sees it)). Magic could be advanced tech, but not necessarily so.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Um, no, he didn't. Pascal's Wager is one of the most glaring examples of sophistry in history. It supposes that belief is a matter of choice; it assumes the belief comes without cost; and it makes unfounded assumptions about the nature of god(s).
Pascal knew his math, but his opinions on theology belong in the same bin with Newton's on alchemy: proof that even very smart people can be infected with very stupid ideas.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Actually, I was quoting Larry Niven's corollary of the law which states, "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
:)
I guess my sense of humour didn't particularly shine through.
Anyway, I do agree with you - however, if a system produces "magic" (whatever that may be) that is just a characteristic of the environment, one to be studied and understood. So, at that point, magic is no longer really magic, merely science that we did not understand.
Hence my statement.
UFO sighting is BU!XFLOM sixpack on a low budget intergalactic sightseeing trip.... ?
We're not claiming anything. So we can all keep talking about it without actually being naive.
Except me of course. I think the government is covering it all up because the aliens they got to know are so dumb that if we found out we'd make fun of them all the time and in the interplanetary row that follows they'd kill us all.
Okay maybe not. Maybe if people would just be a bit more imaginative they'd come up with a larger array of explanations.
Funny ;-) I didn't know that one ;))
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
That's assuming one subscribes to the idea that God is a pre-entity and not a "by-product" of everything in the Universe.
??? All I've done is point out that you said something which didn't make any sense. .
I answered your question, and you did nothing to contest my explanation other than to say that professional astronomers have never reported a UFO, which is both irrelevant and false.
And now you're telling me that I am "Calling the kettle black." All I have called you is "Rude", whereas I don't think I have been anything but civil in return. So that can't be what you mean. Perhaps you mean that I am suggesting you do better research before making false statements and that you think I should do the same. The only problem with this being that I've not made any false statements, (nor even anything which you have quoted and claimed as false), so again. . , what are you talking about?
I suggest you read what reasonable people like Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Richard Feynman, or the folks at The Skeptic have to say. Mustn't forget to include Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy take on UFO nuttiness.
I have.
Let's start with Carl Sagan.
His main issue is simply that of data collection and review procedure; he has no doubt that alien life exists, but he doesn't find the anecdotes available to be scientifically worthy. Fair enough, though I suspect he has not actually looked closely at all the available data. The U.S. military, for instance, has admitted to having had hundreds of multiple witness UFO encounters involving their aircraft and personnel, all of it documented and available for public viewing via the Freedom of Information Act. That's far better than just the civilian anecdotal evidence I believe he is referring to.
Also, his understanding of crop circles is painfully limited. He actually appears to believe that two pranksters have been able to produce hundreds of crop circles (in several countries) all by themselves. He ignores the fact that there are biological factors involved, including such noteworthy items as stems bursting at all the bend points from super-heated steam, as well as seeds from some circles being rendered magnetic, weird anomalies in the growth of seeds taken from inside circle formations as compared to control groups. Among other items, all of which would be impossible to produce with rope and boards.) I find it absolutely amazing that somebody of such a respected position and supposedly analytical mind can in one paragraph complain that "anybody can make up a story, so why should we believe it," and then only a few paragraphs later say that he believes the story provided by two guys in England who claim they are responsible for crop circles. Clearly, Carl Sagan is only human.
Issac Asimov. -The link you provided doesn't say anything more than he headed the AHA which opposed the idea of UFOs and Aliens. I don't know what his arguments were, but again I suspect that he was similarly using out-dated information and out-dated thinking.
All that Richard Feynman offers us is, "I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the result of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence rather than the unknown rational efforts of extraterrestrial intelligence."
This is little more than an opinion from a famous, very smart nuclear physicist, and also made rather a long time ago. We know a great deal more today. --So I'm afraid I need more than Richard Feynman's one-line opinion before I can stop thinking. Carl Sagan is also Famous and very smart, but he is clearly under-informed. In fact, I've met a LOT of very smart people who are also remarkably under
I think it's inaccurate to talk about race riots (but certainly less than to talk about a religious war). The reason for that is that, although there's quite some racism against visible minorities, the riots involve social categories. Because unlike in the USA, we don't have any racial segregation but rather social segregation, and our "ghettos" aren't made of either blacks or arabs but of first, second or third generation immigrants, and whereas racial discrimination is an important phenomenon, geographical discrimination (to discriminate against people who live in our equivalents of ghettos) is something very important if not more important
You just got troll'd!
Bush coudn't have done those things, he doesn't know what those words mean!
Just like Mr. Jourdain, you don't need to know what the word "prose" means to express yourself with it.
You just got troll'd!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Aliens are more a proof of some people's need for a god than anything else. To assume God needs magic merely points out the failure of conceptualism to realize that God is not a part of the universe but rather the author of its rules. As for magic, it has its place - mostly in quantum theory these days along with the elves, smoke and mirrors. Hey, what could be more magical than a synthetic material where light is measured leaving the right edge as it enters the left edge and a pulse is detected going backwards left to right?
UFOs are often associated with physical phenomenon, sometimes that which is ill understood or perhaps not even known. Probably most often it's associated with phenomenon that is well known - except to the observer.
It took years of 'hassle' for some of these unknowns to ever be investigated. These 'discoveries' include ball lightning, sprites and jets - all storm phenomenon that officially exists and is being studied. As it turns out, sprites and jets were far more observed and common than first believed since many professionals (pilots) didn't report them.
Hopefully some of the myriad of french reports of venus in the early morning and the moon behind a cloud bank might yield yet something else in the way of unusual things although with the prevelence of too much wine, indigestion from cheese and offactory fatigue from BO, the reports might be more about lit cigarettes and distant car headlights.
As for ET, Frank Drake's equation was created in a time when astronomy was the study of a rather static universe, at least relative to the life time of the ones studying it. Solar flares were merely little glitches on the sun's surface and coronal mass ejections were not well understood. Gamma ray bursts were things that happened every now and then because the vela satellites picked up something that wasn't a nuclear explosion, either inside or outside of our galaxy, but probably inside. Supernovae were one time events by certain sized stars which had little effect beyond the local area. Times have changed.
While it seems plausible that the universe is teaming with life, it's within the realm of comprehension that we might actually be just about the only ones around capable of realizing that we're alive. It's turning out that the universe is very good at sterilizing rather large areas on a fairly regular basis and that probably doesn't include any of the causes which has precipitated mass extinctions several times here on earth.
If we are to avoid extinction, we will have to defend earth against asteroids and comets and we will have to eventually move out from the sun because earth is eventually going to suffer the mother of all global warming events, one where it evaporates totally as its enveloped by an aging sun. Long before then, there will be many global warming events cooking off the oceans and baking whats left because the sun will gradually heat up as it ages.
Mr Spock is most likely to be a small blob of fungus.
I remember an old documentary about a researcher in Africa studying gorillas. Did she make contact with the leaders, explained the purpose of her visit, and established a commercial embassy to trade bananas for manufactured products? No, she just stayed out of range first, later got closer to the gorillas in the margins, trying to look familiar to them. Sounds too similar to aliens only talking with marginal, out of the mainstream "contactees".
It is clear that you will continue to believe pseudoscience and nothing I can say will dissuade you. Hence the mocking. You use the trappings of science but it isn't science. I wish you further luck in persuading people more gullible than I.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
While I agree that it is incredibly speculative in nature. The major problem I have with belief is that I don't know if you can choose it. It's classic Matrix syndrome. Am I here, or am I plugged in? It feels like I am here, yet I just know there is something more... Something i'm not seeing in this .. Dimension.
Pascal did demonstrate that the belief DOES COME WITH COST, but the cost is FINITE and negligable based on the outcome of the wager.
The nature of god(s) is of that speculative part, however many major religions claim that thier diety is benevolent. Hardly could the gods be malevolent because if they exist, they granted us life at least.
Personally, I believe in a supreme spiritual being, and a spiritual afterlife.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Mocking implies copying behavior in order to ridicule. You are miles from copying my behavior. At no point have you answered a single question with anything even remotely resembling a rational answer, nor have you it seems, understood anything I have written by way of response to your statements.
UFO's are NOT flying saucers inhabited by creatures from another star system, dimension, beneath the sea, or our future.
Nothing you have said or offered suggests any reason to believe this statement. Indeed, everything you have offered by way of 'reason' I have responded to with proper arguments and examples. Since you have not managed, (or even tried), to answer even one of my arguments with a counter argument, I must assume that either you don't want to for some reason, or that my reasoning is superior and you have nothing to respond with except further, unrelated statements of equal silliness. Indeed, your latest attempt at argument is simply to say that just because something I have said sounds logical to you doesn't mean it is true. I would agree, but before you can use this to think that you have at all defended your points, you must also provide a substantial reason for why you think my logic is faulty. You have not done this. Not once.
Your increasingly long response are only further evidence that you have clung to a particular belief and like creationists look for evidence to support it, however tenuous it may be.
You were simply asking more interesting questions which required more work on my part to respond to. If I had known you only wanted to trade content-less banter, I would have complied. (Well, actually, I wouldn't have. I don't actually think your mind is the sort which is ready to accept this kind of information, but your points are worth de-constructing for the benefit of anybody else who may be reading. It also allows me the exercise of further exploring exactly why and how such arguments as yours are faulty. It is an opportunity for me to learn, and as I have stated already, I am primarily interested in both my own growth of awareness and in sharing any insights or data I may have with others, who I also welcome insights and data from. It doesn't actually matter to me, however, if you decide to walk away as ignorant as you started. That is your choice and I will certainly respect it.
You seem immune to critical thinking and rationality.
You wouldn't know this, because you have not offered a single example of critical thinking OR rational thought. You have offered insults, silly and easily refuted arguments, and highly resistant behavior consistent with somebody who has solidly chosen to hide in ignorance.
It is clear that you will continue to believe pseudoscience and nothing I can say will dissuade you. Hence the mocking.
Given that you have said nothing of substance whatsoever, I would have to agree, except, of course, for the word 'pseudoscience'. I would suggest that you are the one following poor science and poor critical thinking. Your posts are certainly evidence of your preference for that mode of thought. --And your crude personal attacks and attempts at ridicule are typical of the one who has nothing else to work with.
I wish you all the best. Goodbye now.
-FL
Beautifully put!
(bookmarking this for an Insightful mod the next time the Mod Points Fairy comes to visit. Not sure if I'll be able to moderate after the discussion has been archived, but we'll just have to see.)
Such a formulation is not even in the Bible, so it is either a strawman argument or a misrepresentation of Christian teaching by fundamentalists. In either case it wasn't God who said it.
The closest formulae to this assertion would be those which say: "But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." (Hebrews 11:6) or "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1)
With that said there is also the verse: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." (1 Thessalonians 5:21) and "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." (Romans 12:2)
Or:
It is a reference to the Hittchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, specifically the section on the Babel Fish.
Considering the rather non-sensical natiure of the book, I didn't take it too seriously.
If they could though they'd be able to prove it easily, where they have encountered one fisherman there are likely to be a lot more and in places where there are special fishing spots around lakes they will probably be in exactly the same place.
There's a lot of ocean out there. And even if the fish return to the same place, the fishermen most likely have moved on.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano