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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.
But these aliens may be illegal, or terrorists, or maybe even Iraqi!
I for one welcome our unidentified overlords...I think, Im not really sure who they are yet. Where'd I leave my foil hat...
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
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?
I for one welcome our unidentified overlords..
... that is a good one :) :)
Unidentified Flying Overlords
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!
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.)
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.