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Deathbed Confession Says Aliens Were at Roswell

xnuandax writes "The army's explanation of weather balloons in the Roswell, New Mexico incident 60 years ago has been dealt a serious public relations blow. Late Army Lt. Walter Haut had signed a sealed affidavit prior to his death last year asserting that he had witnessed the wreckage of an egg-shaped craft and its extraterrestrial crew while working at the Roswell Army Air Field. An article at News.com.au reviews how Haut had worked as public relations officer for the Roswell base and was involved in the original weather balloon explanation of events at the time. This recent evidence would seem to confirm speculation that egg-shaped saucers are notoriously difficult to fly safely at low altitude."

85 of 1,267 comments (clear)

  1. Bombula by Bombula · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As much as I want to believe aliens are among us, it just doesn't make sense that a civilization advanced enough to cross interstellar space would crash in New Mexico. And the chances of aliens being humanoid in appearance are close to zero.

    --
    A-Bomb
    1. Re:Bombula by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I can't believe the civilization as advanced as ours is full of people who can't even program a computer. It's just odd.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    2. Re:Bombula by Smidge204 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Perhaps you are overestimating just how advanced our "civilization" is...

      It would not be terribly strange, for example, for someone who bolts tires to cars on an assembly line his entire life to not know much about computer programming.

      However, it would be kinda strange for an individual or crew capable of navigating a craft at least twenty four trillion miles to not know how to fly a spacecraft well enough to avoid crashing.

      Unless they were on the "B" Ark...
      =Smidge=

    3. Re:Bombula by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not everyone who buys a car is smart enough to design one. Maybe they're just hick aliens crashing their society's equivalent of a mass-market SUV into some boring planet in the middle of nowhere.

    4. Re:Bombula by Balthisar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't want to give credence to this, but for the sake of logic, I've got to say: maybe the crew didn't navigate four trillion miles. Consider that Navy aircraft carrier pilots have no idea how to navigate an aircraft carrier from Hawaii to the sea of Japan, but yet you're saying that it's inconceivable that a crashed F-14 pilot could pilot such a craft. I have to think that even an advanced society has some type of delegation of responsibilities that would permit a craft to crash on the Earth. Unless they employed eugenics at some point in their history, there's no guarantee that even an advanced society doesn't have "normal" people. That's something that always pissed me off about Star Trek (even as a fan): everyone was a super-genius, unless you dedicated yourself to raising grapes in France or you were a junior member of an away team. ;-)

      --
      --Jim (me)
    5. Re:Bombula by rolfwind · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I don't really believe in Roswell or spend too much time thinking about it as it is a waste of time but:

      As much as I want to believe aliens are among us, it just doesn't make sense that a civilization advanced enough to cross interstellar space would crash in New Mexico.
      Shit happens. It didn't make sense that Italy would get bogged down in backwards Ethiopia in WW2, that the English would lose a few battles to Zulus with spears, or that with our technology we can't conquer Iraq. Weirder things have happened.

      Technology can break down. Maybe rarer as the farther one advances, but I still bet there are mishaps.

      And the chances of aliens being humanoid in appearance are close to zero.
      We have no way of knowing this unless we meet aliens. Perhaps being humanoid has certain advantages in handling machinery and setting off an industrial revulotion. Afterall, scientists love pointing out our opposable thumbs in relation to most other animals as being an advantage to using tools.

      I have problems with the whole UFO thing, mostly that they hide from us seems to be more of a contrived book plot than anything, but some issues are nonissues. Until aliens do come and reveal themselves or something like SETI gets results, it's a waste of time obsessing over the 1,000,000s of conspiracies that exist.
    6. Re:Bombula by ozmanjusri · · Score: 4, Insightful
      They navigated the craft at least twenty four trillion miles THROUGH SPACE before crashing it in a unique and completely alien atmosphere with flight conditions they have never encountered before and that their craft obviously weren't designed to handle.

      I doubt it was the flight conditions.

      It's far more likely they navigated all those trillions of kilometres, then sent down what to them was a clearly unarmed, unarmored lander that demonstrated they were peaceful types hoping to say hello to the locals. When they got near the touchy military types at Roswell, their lander copped an unexpected sidewinder up the clacker.

      The military then covered up the fact that they'd screwed humanity's chances of ever having friendly chats with some people who could solve the problem of interstellar space travel, cure cancer, save the whales and promote world peace.

      Let's face it, if the US military had scored any advanced alien tech, they wouldn't have kept it secret. They'd have used against someone by now.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    7. Re:Bombula by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yea it actually is.
      1. At this time the P-80 shooting star was the top of the line fighter the US had. It would have a very hard time shooting down a 737 much less a space craft of any type.
      2. The US air defense network at that time was almost none existent.
      3. SAM sites? The US didn't have them yet.

      Also the US doesn't really have a history of shooting down aircraft over our air space.
      If you compare the number of Soviet recon aircraft the US has shot down vs the number the US has lost you will see that the US really isn't that trigger happy.

      You don't know many people in our military do you?

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    8. Re:Bombula by bladesjester · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I have problems with the whole UFO thing, mostly that they hide from us seems to be more of a contrived book plot than anything

      IF they exist, why would it be so hard to believe that they'd stay hidden while studying us? Biologists do it to animals all the time when they want to study them without affecting their behavior. Heck, even a lot of hunters conceal themselves from their prey through the use of things like blinds that blend into the environment.

      --
      Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
    9. Re:Bombula by brian0918 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "4. The human-like form is somewhat universal after all."

      It's only universal among the uncreative minds of most scifi authors. Even on earth the diversity is so great that you wouldn't consider birds/insects/slugs to be "human-like forms" but even they have most of the parts (eye, head, nose, ears) in approximately the same relative locations. The chances of this occurring on another planet seem remote.

    10. Re:Bombula by NMerriam · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You sound like the type of person that thinks that evolution is random. Evolution is actually the opposite of that.


      Well, mutation is random. Survival of those mutations is not. But the idea that primate forms are "ideal" simply because we happened to be the result of evolution ignores that while we survived, the individual physical traits chosen from were random. There were probably far superior (but equally random) options that just never happened to pop up in the right place at the right time.
      --
      Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
    11. Re:Bombula by Planesdragon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As much as I want to believe aliens are among us, it just doesn't make sense that a civilization advanced enough to cross interstellar space would crash in New Mexico. And the chances of aliens being humanoid in appearance are close to I can't believe that a civilization advanced enough to go to the moon could crash an automobile on their own planet.

      I can't believe a civilization that can split the atom could burn all their fossil fuel.

      I can't believe a civilization advanced enough to circumnavigate the globe could still practice slavery.

      You're a screwball, you know that? Space travel is likely dangerous, or if not dangerous then so frequent that accidents still happen.
    12. Re:Bombula by Amiga+Trombone · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's only universal among the uncreative minds of most scifi authors. Even on earth the diversity is so great that you wouldn't consider birds/insects/slugs to be "human-like forms" but even they have most of the parts (eye, head, nose, ears) in approximately the same relative locations. The chances of this occurring on another planet seem remote.

      Yes, but then again consider sharks and dolphins. Very similar in appearance, even though one is a mammal and one is a fish. Frequently they're mistaken for one another even thought they aren't remotely related.

    13. Re:Bombula by Planesdragon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That makes no sense at all, when at least 99.9% of the species on Earth (a very "earth-like" planet) are not humanoid!

      100% of the sentient ones are. And, above a certain size, flying creatures are all "bird shaped."

      Your point?

    14. Re:Bombula by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      However, it would be kinda strange for an individual or crew capable of navigating a craft at least twenty four trillion miles to not know how to fly a spacecraft well enough to avoid crashing.

      Let me illustrate something:
      However, it would be kinda strange for an individual or crew capable of navigating an air craft around the world to not know how to fly a plane well enough to avoid crashing.
      And yet planes do crash from time to time.

      If you want another:
      However, it would be kinda strange for an individual or crew familiar with driving an hour or more a day to not know how to drive a car well enough to avoid crashing.
      Many people who commute at least half an hour to work each day get in auto ascendents.

      Finally:
      However, it would be kinda strange for an individual or crew capable of operating a high altitude balloon keeping it aloft for months to not know how to manage it well enough to avoid crashing.
      So clearly it can't be a weather balloon.

      I'm not saying anything one way or the other about what may have happened, I'm just pointing out that they could have crashed if there was a they.

    15. Re:Bombula by Dracos · · Score: 2, Insightful

      or that with our technology we can't conquer Iraq

      We're not in Iraq to conquer it. Iraq is a money laundering scheme.

      Taxpayers > government > private contractor corporations.

    16. Re:Bombula by jd · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Last I looked, space had fewer mountains. Before the advent of the artificial horizon (which would be a meaningless thing to have in deep space), pilots were forever crashing into lakes, snowy hilltops, etc. There's a canal in Europe that is packed full of World War II aircraft who mistook it for a runway or a road for emergency landings. The wrecks have lowered landing gear and seem to have largely made smooth but very unexpected and probably quite fatal splashdowns.

      Besides, USAF pilots can fly for tens of thousands of miles but one still crashed and died in Oregon recently. I can't remember if it was last year's airshow or the one before in Hillsboro, OR, that a veteran pilot in a veteran aircraft in better-than-new condition ploughed into the ground at high speed.

      Does this mean that the Roswell incident occurred? No. It is possible through the use of mathematics to prove that very long-range manned interstellar flight requires conflicting constraints, that no matter how good the technology of some pictured civilization, it will never be able to achieve such a goal. I believe such distances may be crossable, but they will never be crossed in that specific way. Because I believe the distances crossable, I believe that aliens could potentially visit Earth. Because I believe the method often described requires certain conditions to be simultaneously true and false, I do not believe that the observations attributed to aliens could possibly be so.

      Personally, my biggest interest in the question is not whether we have been visited, but whether we can draw inspiration and imagination enough from the claims for us to go there. NASA had a 50 Km solar sail design over two decades ago that, had it been built at that time, would have reached Alpha Centauri and returned with a rock or ice sample. (It had a predicted top speed of a quarter of the speed of light at the midway point. Allowing for acceleration/deceleration time, it would have been approaching Earth about now.)

      It was never built. The celebration of Columbus' voyage in the early 90s - by having a mini solar sail race - also never happened. The plans put forward for NASA in the present day lack, well, everything. Only now are people researching the effects of prolonged isolation on humans - long after the optimal point of launching a Mars mission. Because of cost? lluB. It costs virtually nothing to lock someone away in an isolation chamber. The CIA apparently has hundreds they're not using, and the CDC has many such chambers for isolating people with deadly, contageous diseases. You're going to be paying the person's salary anyway.

      If the Roswell story gets people fired up about space, gets people motivated to find some "get up and go" that hasn't already got up and gone, then I don't care if it's real, fake or purple. If it achieves for society what society won't achieve for itself, then by all means declare it true.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    17. Re:Bombula by feepness · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, but it wouldn't be hard to believe our military would shoot down an unidentified flying egg no matter how advanced or rare it's occupants might be.

      You know, I actually can't really complain about them shooting it down two years after the world just finished blowing the crap out of each other and nuclear weapons made their first appearance.

      It seems anyone smart enough to fly a few bazillion miles would also be smart enough to reconnoiter a less advanced (but still dangerous) civilization.

    18. Re:Bombula by kestasjk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Trillions of kilometers? That's about 1/10th of a light year, you need at least 8 light years for interstellar travel (and we'd be pretty amazingly lucky to have intelligent life so close to us).

      Try "gajillion bazillion manyillian kilometers". Interstellar space travel is pretty ridiculous, and not just because we can't think of a technology that could do it, but because a technology that could do it and not take millenniums would be impossible.
      Most of all why would they bother coming all this way? If they did want to travel so far just to say "hello, what's up?" why not do it via radio? This would be much faster and easier. If they wanted to invade or take over, assuming our planet is hospitable to them, wouldn't they send more than an "egg"?

      (And why do the accounts of these interstellar travelers involve anal probes, corn, barn dances and farm animals?)

      --
      // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
    19. Re:Bombula by vandan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The thing is ... you're completely wrong. It was a Christian country who invaded Iraq and killed 1,000,000 people since 2003. The same goes for any example you might be able to drag out of your half-addled brain ... Christian atrocities are echoed with a far smaller response from the Muslim world. If this were not the case, there would be no New York left AT ALL.

    20. Re:Bombula by ozmanjusri · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Well, transistors were "invented" 6 months after the "crash" at Roswell

      Yeah, but point-contact diodes had been in use since the '20s. Adding a third wire isn't that big a conceptual jump, and the main reason it didn't happen sooner was that triodes were already doing the job.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    21. Re:Bombula by zCyl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Our shape has proven to have greater survival value than the shape of our ancestors.

      Perhaps more precisely, the shapes of your ancestors had greater survival values than some of your more distant cousins.

      Consider this perspective: Every single one of your ancestors, all the way back to single-celled organisms, survived long enough to procreate successfully.
    22. Re:Bombula by BlueStraggler · · Score: 4, Insightful

      2. They are us from the future.

      I'm thinking it's us from the past. Considering that Homo Sapiens Sapiens is at least 50,000 years old, and recorded history about 5,000, there's been plenty of time for us to develop a few spacefaring civilizations. If you allow for some alternate branches of the homonid family you have a lot more time than that. You'd expect them to swing past the old farm from time to time to see what, if anything, has changed.

      On the other hand, who's to say they're from space at all? Even if the stories are 100% true, there's not a shred of evidence to show that they're from space. We've never seen spacecraft, only aircraft. Is space alien really more plausible than some kind of technologically superior earthling who can live undetected (almost) on the same planet as us?

    23. Re:Bombula by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Bullshit, the US establishment worships one thing and one thing only. MONEY. To call them Christian is an insult to Christians worldwide. We are a country that has Christians and are founded on Christian principles but to call these acts of aggression christian in nature is stupid and irresponsible.

    24. Re:Bombula by Torvaun · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That was my first thought on seeing this headline. If on my deathbed, I have the opportunity to fuck around with the minds of half as many people he just did, I would do so, and die a happy man.

      --
      I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
    25. Re:Bombula by TheNetDevil · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You mean metric vs imperial, right? :)

    26. Re:Bombula by misleb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As an example, we have radially symmetrical animals, such as jellyfish, and bilaterally symmetrical animals, such as chordates. Stephen Pinker talks about how any animal navigating an environment with gravity would benefit from a bilaterally symmetrical body plan. Thus we might reasonably conclude that any life form on a planet that can randomly evolve a bilaterally symmetrical body would have reproductive success. Once you have bilaterally symmetry


      I had read that symmetry is not so much a matter of random luck... but a matter of information efficiency. That is, it is much more efficient/quicker (and therefore more likely to happen) to just repeat existing patterns than to evolve a unique structures for each "side" of the organism.

      -matthew
      --
      "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
    27. Re:Bombula by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Christian atrocities are echoed with a far smaller response from the Muslim world. If this were not the case, there would be no New York left AT ALL.
      What Christian atrocities against Muslims are we speaking about, exactly, since the Crusades and Reconquista (Muslims have long since payed back on those - remember the fall of Constantinople, the Battle of Kosovo, and centuries-long occupation of most of Eastern Europe?). Iraq doesn't fit, sorry, since it was not conquered for religious reasons (I didn't hear of any witch-hunts or persecutions of the heretics during the occupayion - did you?). On a side note, the 1,000,000 figure is pretty much pulled out of nowhere - last I checked, the most pessimistic estimates were ~100,000.
    28. Re:Bombula by st0nes · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If Paris is acting she deserves an Oscar. I doubt that she is, though; she really is as thick as two short planks.

      --
      Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
    29. Re:Bombula by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you compare the number of Soviet recon aircraft the US has shot down vs the number the US has lost you will see that the US really isn't that trigger happy...
      I don't think Soviets had planes that could do recon missions over the States at the time, or at any time, for that matter. US is basically an island nation, or an island-dominating nation, very well isolated and fortified. There is no country in the world that could dream of successfully invading and occupying it, neither in recent past nor in foreseeable future. When you compare armed forces of Soviets to that of US, you'll see large distinction in that US Navy is on par or dominant over US Army, while Soviets had their accent put on army, dwarfing their navy in comparison (well, admitted, being constrained onto landlocked and polar seas kind of nullifies usefulness of a navy). It is possible and useful to send planes to fly by borders, or shortly fly over parts of Russia, when you have bases in surrounding allied countries. However, reconnaissance flight over US is a sure suicide mission.

      We can only win battles against small third-world countries like Afghanistan, and most of the people we kill there are civilians...
      Yeah, like... Third Reich, Japanese empire, North Korean + Chinese armed forces... Iraq was considerable adversary in first Gulf war and you know, Afghanistan is not exactly a small country...
    30. Re:Bombula by Stooshie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      By dismissing anything "bad" done by other people that call themselves christian, that leaves you looking squeaky clean. That's convenient!

      --
      America, Home of the Brave. ... .and the Squaw.
    31. Re:Bombula by bytesex · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, he meant standard vs. imperial.

      --
      Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
    32. Re:Bombula by Gospodin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wonderful. But from our POV on Earth, a 2Mly trip still takes > 2M years. So it isn't faster than radio.

      I'm also ignoring the slight problem of actually accelerating at 1g continuously for 20+ years.

      --
      ...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
    33. Re:Bombula by CmdrGravy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I can't say that I have, to be honest from what I've read about it I'm a bit put off the seemingly extreme levels of pretenciouness and lack of humour that seems to be exhibited ( although I realise this might not be what it's really like ).

      In any case comparing a single two week festival to a civilisation capable of achieving space flight is something of a stretch. All the stuff people take to Burning Man is manufactured elsewhere where even today you could probably go and see direct evidence of its creation and when you say the area is cleaned up afterwards you really mean it's all taken off and dumped elsewhere.

    34. Re:Bombula by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You mean the Iraqi on Iraqi violence that erupted after the US military demolished their government? Yeah, that's definitely not our fault.

    35. Re:Bombula by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Insightful

      90% of those deaths are from Iraqi on Iraqi violence and not from American action.
      Yes, I've been there, and i know what I'm talking about. "I didn't hurt those people! It was the wasps from that nest I threw rocks at! Stop blaming me for the consequences of my actions!"
      --

      You can't take the sky from me...

    36. Re:Bombula by redbaritone · · Score: 2, Insightful

      --...it just doesn't make sense that a civilization advanced enough to cross interstellar space would crash in New Mexico

      Like us, they probably have not evolved beyond hiring the lowest bidder.

    37. Re:Bombula by Dusty00 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So by just being there you know what you're talking about? Are you the one who surveys a site after the US has just dropped a bomb on it or the one who catalogs the casualties in Iraq? Quite frankly, being there doesn't give you any insight into what sort of violence cause what casualties unless that's the job you're doing. I think you'd better name some credentials if you're going to throw out a 90% stat.

      And for my disclaimer, yes I am ex-military.

    38. Re:Bombula by Spudds · · Score: 2, Insightful

      We are a country that has Christians and are founded on Christian principles I hate this sectarian self-serving BS.

      No We're Not. This country was found by men of many different religious ideals. We have very specific, plainly stated separation of church and state (which is quickly ebbing away [Thanks Right-Wingers!!!]). A good portion of the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were Atheists. Seriously, do your research and stop trying to "own" the country with your ridiculous and archaic beliefs by saying the country was founded by any particular sect of religion.

      A simple google search (try this one for instance) will prove you wrong. Hell, some of the founding fathers were actually incredibly against religion in general, citing a slew of negative impacts religion has had on societies all throughout history.

      I hate being "lumped up" into other people's belief systems. "Oh you're American? Guess you're Christian then."
    39. Re:Bombula by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      a guy dying signs an affidavit, and its still not enough. what would prove alien existence then
      How about, I dunno, some evidence?

      I mean, literally billions of people have made dying claims to be able to see various deities, and yet not one person in the world believes that every religion is completely true. How unreasonable is that?
    40. Re:Bombula by sgt_doom · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Beautifully said, Good Citizen Dusty00! As a former combat veteran, I stand against this mindless Nazi-sounding drivel to support the foreign invaders of Iraq, or any other country, for that matter. To have the unmitigated gall, or abject ignorance and stupidity, to suggest that the invading and occupying forces of America (American-financed mercenaries included)have nothing to do with the ongoing, horrendous violence in Iraq after the Busheviks invaded, destroyed their infrastructure, caused massive and continuing unemployment by shutting down former government-run industries, and bringing in transnational (Halliburton, et al.) corporations which only - or predominantly - hire foreign nationals (sounds kind of like Amerika, don't it?) and the citizens there have little or no social order at all is indistinguishable from insanity....

    41. Re:Bombula by jwiegley · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That argument makes no sense. I cannot fathom how that got +5 insightful.

      Written history is perhaps 5000 years old. Geological recorded history is millions to billions of years old. There is nothing credible in either of these historical records to suggest that your missing 45,000 year gap, or any time before it, included any homo sapien (nor any other species') abilities, achievement or potential to produce a being capable of leaving this planet let alone survive or create a civilization to come back from and "visit the old farm."

      The only credible evidence to suggest that some being may leave this planet in the reasonable future is a few successful test trips to its nearest moon. That history is only 40 years old. And even, then the last 30 of those 40 years indicates very little continued progress.

      Further, An undetectable, advanced alternate terrestrial civilization is just as implausible as an undetectable flying spaghetti monster. So yes, I would look for space aliens before the undetectable civilization. And I don't think any advanced alien race has ever crossed stellar distances and visited this planet.

      The observations presented are not insightful; at best they are +1 thoughtless fantasy.

      --
      I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
    42. Re:Bombula by lawpoop · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm not saying that intelligent life can only be humanoid in shape. I'm arguing that it's not a projection of anthropomorphic thinking to say that intelligent life can be humanoid.

      Random mutation creates myriads of body plans, but only a few are selected by the environment. Radial symmetry and single-celled life are a successful body plan; AFAIK, bacteria are far and away the most abundant species on Earth, in terms of biomass.

      But my argument is that any intelligent life than can build things must have some kind of hand-like appendage. If they're coming here in ships, rather than just floating here in their bodies like space-faring jellyfish, they must have built those ships. Or maybe they 'grew' the ships by conscious or unconscious manipulation of DNA or bodies of other life forms... who knows? But if extra-terrestrial life developed on a rocky planet, or a gas giant, there's a good chance that it could be bilaterally symmetrical, with limbs, because that is a reproductively successful body plan in oceans or on land.

      There could be strange intelligent life made out of dark matter, weird crystalline creatures in solid rock, jellyfish creatures in gas giants like Saturn... But what would intelligent creates look like? On Earth, trichordates happen to have died out, but that doesn't mean in another scenario they might be a dominant species in terms of biomass. We know that bilateral symmetry is a successful body plan. That means you get an even number of limbs -- 2, 4, 6, 8, even dozens in the case of centipedes. Heads also seemed to be highly selected as far as body plans.

      If you have an animal that both walks on a limb and manipulates objects with it, you have a limb that's selected for cross-purposes. It's probably not a great manipulator nor a great runner. It's a jack of all trades. But, if you have dedicate object-manipulating limbs, like hands, then evolution can select for better and better manipulation, and then better and better intelligence to manipulate objects.

      So then once you have a bilaterally-symmetrical animal that has a head and dedicated object manipulating limbs, i.e. hands, you basically have a humanoid. It probably wouldn't two-limbed, because you need at least one pair of limbs for locomotion, and other for object manipulation. It could be two-legged, like us, it could be four-legged, like a preying mantis, it could be 6-legged, like a handed spider, or multi-legged, like a centipede with hands. But it's not totally unreasonable to expect a life form to be humanoid.

      All I'm saying is that it could be rational to believe it's a possibility that intelligent life could be humanoid, and not simply a projection of "Humans on Top" thinking. It would be an example of convergent evolution, like eyes, legs, and wings. It could be radially symmetric, like a jellyfish or plant, it could be a tri-chordate, like we used to have on Earth, and it could even be a humanoid. Rationally speaking, not just what works well in the sci-fi movie make-up department, or Freudian dreams.

      --
      Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
      -- Pablo Picasso
  2. So? by sanmarcos · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is not like this affidavit is going to change the world or anything. There is absolutely no proof. It just sells newspapers and adds fire to crackpot theories. Even if there was extraterrestrial life, I would not want to know about, or even let any of the crazy people in this world know about it. The reaction would not be good. Humanity is not ready yet.

    1. Re:So? by Bombula · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I disagree. I think humanity is more than ready, and it would do us an enormous amount of good.

      --
      A-Bomb
    2. Re:So? by gravos · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I couldn't agree more.

      Some guy signing a docket on his deathbed is strange behavior that needs explaining, certainly, but the best explanation may well not be that there actually were aliens.

      Perhaps the CIA was testing LSD or an experimental new drug at that site at that time to see what it would do to young army officers. In fact that seems a lot more likely to me than aliens crashing in a desert.

    3. Re:So? by dc29A · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I disagree. I think humanity is more than ready, and it would do us an enormous amount of good. Ready? Lot of people in the west can't tolerate gays, lesbians, blacks, arabs, dogs, cats, Windows and whatnot. We have the most powerful nation on the planet with 92% of it's citizens believe in some magical man up in the sky. We kill each other over silly things like who's God can beat up who's God. We lie, cheat, don't trust anyone and are insanely greedy.

      Imagine some aliens sending us some peaceful message, but these aliens look grotesque by our standards. Guess what? The neocons, China and Russia declare "War on Aliens", we'll jihad their asses. Unfortunately, we humans are extremely intolerant, and nowhere near ready to meet aliens. Not even close.
    4. Re:So? by solios · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I call bullshit. On the ready bit, anyway. Just imagine the sheer force of the political shitstorm a First Contact would stir up. Anyone who could decode the garbage we eject into space would be smart enough to scope out the political situation - anywhere you put down, you're going to be politically validating whoever's collecting taxes on the ground you drop on.... and if you don't land in the US, you'll have the US military six feet up your ass muscling whoever else out of the way for first call on photo ops, resources, etc. Land in the middle east and you've not only brought that political shitstorm to a boil, you've also incited two of the world's major religions. Then there's the language thing.

      Personally, if I were an alien and I came across a planet like this, I'd stick a huge visible-from-earth goatse billboard out past the moon and leave. The effort it would take earth to pull that kind of an insult out of the sky might actually cause us to grow up a bit.

  3. Ah! by McGiraf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He probably died laughing behind his teethes.

  4. Highly improbable by i_want_you_to_throw_ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I want to believe.....

    That being said... the U.S. government is remarkably inept at keeping secrets much less orchestrating a cover up of this size.

    Same is true of most conspiracy theories.

    1. Re:Highly improbable by jstomel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I often hear this kind of reasoning, that the government is too incompetent to keep something like this secret. I find this an odd defense, seeing as if it did happen then the government obviously was not able to keep it secret. Otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it.

    2. Re:Highly improbable by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think the problem is that you're confusing the political branches with the military; the military is very good at secrets - witness their record keeping the SR71 quiet, the specifics of satellite imagery, and the NSA's contribution to DES. Contrast that with Watergate and you'll see who sucks at secrets.

      --
      "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
  5. Mod Parent UP by Gabrill · · Score: 2, Insightful

    At this point, unless his affidavit leads to compelling and PUBLIC evidence, it doesn't matter whether it was a deathbed joke or and earnest confession. It will come to nothing more than a Discovery Channel episode.

    --
    Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
    1. Re:Mod Parent UP by Dun+Malg · · Score: 2, Insightful

      At this point, unless his affidavit leads to compelling and PUBLIC evidence, it doesn't matter whether it was a deathbed joke or and earnest confession. It will come to nothing more than a Discovery Channel episode. Given that the decedent was a freakin' PR man for the Air Force, I doubt he was privy to any secret information at all, much less any compelling secret information about aliens. Basically all this loser knew was that something happened and they wanted it covered up with a fake story about a weather balloon. As a veteran of the military, I can assure you that it's not now and definitely was not then full of keen, erudite intellectuals. A lot of minimally educated hayseeds and urban mooks end up in the military, and they gravitate towards jobs like public relations. What did a PR man do in 1947? Hand out mimeographed press releases to reporters, and probably little else. The man's story started off being rather simple: "I dint see nuthin'", basically. Over the years it grew, till eventually he said he had been shown bodies and a 15 foot egg shaped craft. No explanation was ever given why anyone would be foolish enough to show the base PR man information of such monumental secrecy. Application of Occam's Razor gives us the most likely story: William Haut was a small time nobody till he became associated with an extraordinary event. The more extraordinary the event, the more important he became. Funny thing, when you give someone the means to make themselves more famous simply by embellishing a story that no one will ever be able to prove false*, the story will nearly always become embellished. What's more, the more you tell such a lie, the easier it gets to believe it yourself. The real story is too stupid for the romantics out there who are dead-set on finding little green men: It was a classified balloon-lofted radar reflector system that crashed. Some dumbass thought saying it was a flying saucer would be a good cover story. When it immediately became clear that the saucer story was bringing MORE attention, not less, it was quickly changed to a more mundane but plausible "weather balloon" story. Unfortunately, the damage had been done. We will forever have fools demanding to see Hangar 18 at Wright Field because of it.

      * after all complete lack of evidence is simply proof that the conspiracy is working!
      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  6. follow the money or the little green men .. by abes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This was posted on digg, and as someone pointed out, Haut also ran a UFO museum. So .. yeah .. no ulterior motives ..

    A simple google search gives one of many such links:

    http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tw/07-20-95/cover.htm

    Not to say that's the only reason he did that .. who knows. It just a bit odd. Other military people have come forward, including a high ranking general (who released a book). The general claimed all our current technology came from UFOs. Such as the night-vision goggles. This is a fairly outrageous claim even for someone with a rudimentary understanding of electronics.

    It's not that I think aliens are impossible. I just am highly suspicious that they'd sneak about so much. Or that our government could keep anything a secret for so long. And crackpots coming out with books on UFOs does not count as the leaks.

  7. Alternate Headline: by Guppy06 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dying Man Has Perverse Sense of Humor

  8. Humanoid form by riker1384 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I disagree, I think there are significant chances they would be somewhat humanoid if they existed. If they move around on land, they most likely need legs to do that. They might have more, but two is the minimum so they might have two. To make tools they need manipulative parts, and they could end up with two there. They would work better if they're up off the ground and a geared more towards fine control rather than being robust enough to walk on. Biology and evolution seem to favor bilateral symmetry, so they would probably have even numbers of limbs at least.

    Also, sensory organs would usually work best when they're high up off the ground and able to turn in different directions, so I wouldn't be suprised if they had something resembling a head.

  9. anyone curious... by catbutt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    why the affadavit, which has been "released", is not printed in any of the articles?

  10. Exactly! by Tony · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The most recent "vast government conspiracy" has to do with GWB and friends hijacking the US Constitution, lying to the world to lead the US into war with Iraq, providing bid-free billion-dollar contracts to close friends, and declaring the Vice-Presidency is outside the law.

    I mean, who could believe *that*?

    --
    Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
    1. Re:Exactly! by ari_j · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're doin' a heck of a job, Generation iPod.

      Thanks, mom and dad. I'm doing like you taught me.

    2. Re:Exactly! by jamesmrankinjr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Conspiracy implies that the facts of the matter are concealed from most people.

      Everything you mention is pretty much common knowledge at this point. Which I think either disqualifies it as a conspiracy, or marks it as an extremely poorly concealed one.

      Which goes back to the original point that governments are very bad at keeping things secret.

      -jimbo

  11. Re:Speculated Where??? by Icarus1919 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That thing flying over your head is not a UFO.

  12. Mathmatical form by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    "I disagree, I think there are significant chances they would be somewhat humanoid if they existed."

    But according to evolutionist, evolution is millions upon millions of decisions over "millions of years". That fact alone means that you will have something that's completely different. Some environments may be earth-like NOW! But that doesn't mean it has been so over those "millions of years". Plus environments are complex things, especially over "millions of years" of interaction. In other words the odds over "millions of years" are against it, even if the laws of physics over "millions of years" are the same everywhere.

  13. I just don't buy P-51s shooting down a spaceship by tjstork · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The whole problem, in my mind, with the Roswell "conspiracy", is the part that has a flight of P-51 Mustangs shooting down a spacecraft capable of travelling at intersteller speeds. As good as the P-51 was back in its day, it would be almost miraculous for one of these planes to shoot down a modern jet aircraft such as the F-22 or the EF-2000. Obviously, the technology required for manned interstellar space flight is easily 50 - 100 years beyond what we have now, and so, the claim seems utterly foolish. In any case, if an interstellar ship could reach the earth once, why wouldn't they have sent a rescue party looking for their fallen comrades?

    --
    This is my sig.
  14. Re:Not a trustworthy source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    He was the founder of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, NM. I think that makes it necessary to take his death bed statement with a grain of salt.

    Two possible scenarios come to mind:
    1. He lies and claims that it was really an alien spacecraft so he can make money. Oh wait, he's dead... make money for his family.
    2. He really believes that it was an alien spacecraft, which is why he opened the museum.

    I don't see how this extra piece of information affects the likelihood that he believes his claims.
  15. Re:I just don't buy P-51s shooting down a spaceshi by aralin · · Score: 2, Insightful
    In any case, if an interstellar ship could reach the earth once, why wouldn't they have sent a rescue party looking for their fallen comrades?

    The closest star is some 4 light years away, the next one is about 10 or 12, I am not sure. Then it goes up. Lets say they are relatively on our doorstep on a star less than 50 light years away, we still have another 3 years before they will learn their aircraft was shot and about 53 years to get the war declaration message, providing we are able to receive it. And I'd say that around 70 to 100 years before their fleet shows up :)

    --
    If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
  16. A Lieutenant? by EmagGeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Suffice it to say that a Lieutenant is not exactly going to be high on the "need to know" list.

    This is a hoax.. no aliens at Roswell..

  17. Re:alien tech wouldn't defy laws of physics by illegalcortex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't quite understand why this is would be an outrageous claim Well, it's a bit like school. Remember how you always had to "show your work" to prove that you weren't cheating? No big jumps from problem to solution. Well, it's the same way with all this "current technology." Work on it has been incremental through the years. For every breakthrough you can trace the history leading up to it, and find people who almost but not quite got there. The breakthrough of silicon transistors was preceded by years of struggling with germanium transistors. That was preceded by years of trying to figure out how semiconductors worked and what they might be good for. That really picked up steam in the 1920s. And prior to the transistor, you can look at the history of vacuum tubes. They followed a parallel line of development and formed the bridge to the transistor era (early electronics and computers used vacuum tubes).

    So for such a claim to NOT be outrageous, you'd have to also claim a vast conspiracy of scientists all over the world through the decades, sitting on most of their findings while publishing just enough to give an incremental step for the next breakthroughs. Or you'd need the aliens to be directing this, handing out tiny little tidbits of information to the scientists, and either swearing them to secrecy or using some sort of mind control on them. So yes, it is quite outrageous.

    On the other hand, if next week some scientist produced working plans for a fusion generator that used a grand unified theory totally different than any proposed, now THAT would be what it would take to not be an outrageous claim of getting outside help.
  18. Public Relations Officer != Reliable Witness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Guys, he was a PR officer! He and others filling his job receive scripts to read and is told what to say and puts a happy face on everything. Why does everyone think that just because he was there that he had security clearance to see the deep dark secrets they had there? He's nothing more than a mouth-piece and no one to take final statements from as in he was not in the inner circle of people who would be truly in the know. It's like that TXU spokesperson promising that yes they will not raise prices of electricity and yes they were investigating that wrongfully applied bill that became news because it was a slow news day. In reality, this person is told what to say and is in no way connected to the price-setting or policy effecting mechanism. PR, people. Not scientist. Not connected. Just a pretty face to keep the public happy while work goes on, and yet completely oblivious of what's really happening.

    And, if the military acquired such precious specimens as alien life, who in their right mind thinks they would actually call an undertaker to make "child sized" coffins for them? They're specimens for study! Sheesh - we'd more likely pickle them in a tub of formaldehyde! We pay top dollar for meteorites and some of the most valuable material on this earth is moon rocks tucked away in NASA vaults - dirt and rocks treated like a priceless treasure and we're supposed to believe that and undertaker was going to stuff some alien bodies in hastily built coffins? Rubbish!

    Both of these stories leads credence to the fact that this whole thing is just a fun little distraction with no fact behind it. Enjoy your fantasy.

  19. Nope, humanity is not ready by Weaselmancer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm ready. I'd bet you're ready. But most of humanity is not.

    Three out of four Americans are Christians, and they're definitely not ready. So are most other people of faith - since little green men from Tau Ceti would pretty much blow their creation stories out of the water.

    It would be instant chaos. Three out of four people...or more, depending on what part of the world you're from. Suddenly, the foundation and moral code they've all built their life on - is provably false. And therefore...gone. They would go nuts.

    If these guys are smart enough to cheat physics and be here, they're probably smart enough to not go public. As a species, unfortunately...we couldn't handle it. Which is a real bummer for me, personally. I'd like to meet them if they're around. I've got nothing to lose, it wouldn't change my world views by very much at all. But for most other folks it would be simply too traumatic.

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
  20. The part of the Roswell crash that never added up by ruiner13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Many of the accounts of the crash site at Roswell and the parts recovered claim that there was a metal that despite being super thin, was flexible and impervious to damage. Ok... if they really had such a material, how the heck did the craft crash and scatter debris? If the material was that good, how did it come apart? I'd love to believe, but that part in particular has always made me a bit skeptical of the whole incident.

    --

    today is spelling optional day.

  21. Re:Maybe he just has a wicked sense of humor by CptNerd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not to mention the publicity would help keep interest going in the area, to help out his heirs...

    --
    By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
  22. Re:You think we are aware of all tech military has by tftp · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I say it's impossible because, assuming your premise:

    1. Not a single sample of early but almost-modern NVGs is available.
    2. NVGs are not difficult to invent, they are difficult to buy parts for.

    For example, we could have a NVG as early as 1930 because you could use the early iconoscope to capture IR light below the visible power and amplify it as much as you want. That's what TV does, basically, and it is not a surprise that some camcorders are IR-capable.

    But that NVG would weigh 200-300 lbs and wouldn't be exactly portable. To make it portable you need to advance the technology quite a lot. First portable NVGs were still vacuum tube based, but implemented in a very smart way, as a series of long parallel holes in a glass plate. The front edge, facing the field, would receive the picture, produce electrons, those electrons would then be accelerated within all the tubes and when they hit the end, facing you, the light would be both visible and bright. That worked like a "bug eye" - once the picture is focused it is transferred as if through a bunch of fibers, just with amplification.

    With semiconductors you can create far fancier, and more efficient NVGs. But we, as a society, made every single step of this path, and it is proven beyond doubt how exactly each step was made, by who (scientists like to publish!) and who stepped on shoulders of those giants and made the next advance, etc. etc.

    As other people mentioned, if you show me a working time machine, or a fusion battery of CR2032 size, or an FTL drive, then I may want to consider the idea of external help - just because no human on this planet has a foggiest idea about how to even approach any of those challenges. But the problem is that every known invention on this planet is 100% traceable to its origins, and origins of those origins, recursively.

  23. Re:The part of the Roswell crash that never added by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Also they said the amterial with thin and tough. They didn't say they tried to hit it with a hammer to bend it, or blow it up or melt it.

    Also there's no telling how hard the ship hit.

  24. This is a fascinating question. Here's the anwer: by Fantastic+Lad · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Just for the sake of argument, what if the government managed to... um ... keep a secret secret? Is it possible that we wouldn't have heard about it?

    This little logic loop is one of the sillier and yet most effective ones in circulation amongst the sceptic crowd.

    Here's the way out of the, "People can't keep secrets" trap. . .

    It's true; people really can't keep secrets. There are leaks all the time. This article is just such an example. But so what? The military industrial complex has installed a failsafe to catch these leaks. It has gone to massive effort to teach everybody from a very young age that only losers who don't get laid believe in conspiracies, UFO's do not exist, James Randi is not an ego-maniacal twit, your highschool science teacher was not just repeating the same crap they taught him, and that the material universe is the beginning and the end of everything you ever need to know.

    With all of that programming in place, when a leak does happen, (like the one in this very article), people climb over each other to rationalize it and ignore it.

    How clever is that? Programming the inmates to keep themselves locked up. It's genius.

    Interestingly, the slashdot crowd is more apt to falling for this trick because special attention is placed upon them; they're the ones with the brains to work everything out, so you have to make sure they are good and programmed. It's baked into the school system on many levels, one of the most poignant being where jocks are rewarded for bullying the geeks, the cheer leaders would never love a geek, and so the geeks are shunted away from relevance on a deeply emotional level. And so they retaliate by being smart and fearing being laughed at and seeking approval from teachers and authority figures. Any subject which taps this programming, (like UFO's,), simply cannot be argued with just reason. There's huge emotional baggage preventing rational thought from prevailing. --You have to deal with deeply buried emotional trauma and self-worth issues. Believing in UFO's gets you ridiculed, and ridicule means you will never be loved. That's emotional wall #1. It offends the science teachers, who the geeks turned to for emotional validation, so that's emotional wall #2. Two big emotional walls will not be breached with reason alone.

    Unless they shed the programming, geeks maintain pretty much a permanent handicap when it comes to TV talking heads lying to them; (talking heads who speak with authority in the same warm-fuzzy tones felt in the, "Isn't Science Nice" stage of programming in the school system).

    So realistically, even if Lieutenant Walter Haut had left a movie reel of an alien being cut open, or bits of space metal in with his testimonial, the truth would still be rejected if the Military Industrial Complex did not want it to be accepted, which they don't.

    Not until the warm-fuzzy talking TV heads, the school teachers, and the sex-drive of teen-age girls are radically altered, will such ideas become 'real'. And thus, between the church and the science teacher, you have your population under a level of control which allows you to dictate to it what it actually chooses to think and believe.


    -FL

  25. Statistically improbable by SoopahMan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A man about to die swears under penalty of law that he saw aliens. He then dies before any such legal penalty could possibly take effect. In other words, the affidavit adds absolutely no authority to these claims. But let's explore the highly unlikely possibility he's telling the truth.

    If what this guy is saying is true - the events and observations he lists - then his conclusion that these were aliens from outer space can almost certainly not be true.

    His claims are pretty consistent with the standard alien conspiracy theory:

    1) Egg-shaped machine flying featuring no external features we currently associate with flying vehicles
    2) Said machine was either taken down by our own fighters or malfunctioned and crashed
    3) Machine was built of incredibly strong light metal
    4) Creatures that are basically humans with certain features pronounced are found dead

    IF all of this really happened, then it is incredibly, highly, amazingly statistically unlikely these dead creatures were aliens.

    1) If the craft was shot down, why in the world would a craft so advanced that it flies 3x the speed of our best planes, in our atmosphere without any clear method of flight and with super-strong metal not survive attacks by such old US planes? Such a ship would either survive or at the very least escape.

    2) Why in the world would the aliens look humanoid? It's arguably unlikely they'd even be carbon-based, they may not even be primarily solid (they could be cells of gases for example). It's nearly impossible they'd be in any way similar in size or shape to us.

    The most damning part of #2 is the "like us" problem - it's essentially the same basic reason to question any God hypothesis - because nearly all God descriptions say God is essentially humanoid, which is very self-centered to assume that something so completely foreign and powerful should look anything like us. Both God and these aliens are as statistically likely to look like The Flying Spaghetti Monster as they are us, but more importantly they are MUCH more likely to look as strange as a floating cobble of spaghetti than they are to look familiar to us.

    Since statistically this conclusion is so unlikely to be true we need to consider the observations and find an alternate explanation.

    Statistically speaking, if we ever did find alien life it would be at a technological state nowhere near our own - so either way, way behind us (we found bacteria!) or way, way ahead of us. They got here so they're not that way behind us kind - so they must be leaps ahead of us. Not hundreds or thousands of years of technology but millions or billions of years ahead of us. Not the kind we shoot down with some crappy planes.

    But what does suit this set of observations is a very different conclusion: That the ships observed were ourselves, perhaps 1000 years in the future, experimenting with time travel. They appear, the vessels fail or, not being designed for war (and not having interstellar capability) are shot down, and the dead people inside are what we have evolved to look like.

    Whether time travel is actually possible is up for debate, and these observations are obviously dubious, but IF you are to accept this dying man's final words, then you cannot possibly conclude he saw aliens from outer space. He more likely saw our future selves.

  26. Re:Its not necessary to have it "shot down" by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The original post said that he could see the US military shooting down such a space craft. I was pointing out that odds of a shoot down where about zero. A crash due to mechanical failure of course possible but I would say unlikely but possible.

    My best guess as to what was at Roswell if it wasn't weather ballon.
    I think it was a failed test of an ME-163. The US captured several but claim that they never did any powered tests of one. They where egg shaped. Could look like a saucer at the correct angle. And if you where flying one with fuel and it crashed you wouldn't look very human when they found you. The fuel was very nasty stuff.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  27. Re:Aeroflot by smellsofbikes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >Of course western intelligence services knew all about this but the public was for the most part blissfully unaware. Of course the USA and the Europeans did the exact same thing if possibly on a smaller scale.

    In the book "Dark Sun: The Making Of The Hydrogen Bomb" by Richard Rhodes, he says (and provides evidence to support) that from roughly 1949 to the day Frances Gary Powers was shot down, there were US aircraft flying in Russian airspace twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. He goes on to say that every year throughout the early 1950's the US would do trial bombing runs with several dozen bombers and accompanying fighters over major Russian cities, during broad daylight, because the Russians didn't have anything that could stop them, and says that throughout the '50's the US recon aircraft were clearly visible, flying over, and the best the Russians could do was fly mass numbers of airplanes below the US recon aircraft to try and physically block views of things they wanted to keep secret. If you read a bit about Curtis LeMay, you'll end up A: amazed that WWIII didn't happen, and B: with a much better understanding of why the USSR didn't like the USA very much. We were acting like the biggest bullies on the block, unashamedly.

    --
    Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
  28. Who says they HAVE to come in peace? by Reziac · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What makes you think aliens are necessarily any "better" or even particularly different? In fact, it's far more likely that any aliens wandering this far out (being we're on the wrong side of the galactic tracks) WILL be aggressive.

    Exploration is a function of aggression. Maybe not overtly, but the ultimate object of exploration is expansion for your species, whether for living space, resources, or whatever.

    In fact, failure to proactively defend our planet MIGHT be interpreted as CEDING our planet to said aliens.

    We just don't KNOW. But it's foolish to assume that just because someone is exploring the Far Reaches of the Galaxy, that they necessarily come in peace and friendship. We need only look at ourselves for an example, and there is absolutely NO reason to believe that human behaviour is all that unique.

    --
    ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  29. Re:Aeroflot by smellsofbikes · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I said that for a reason. I grant you that in the history of the USA that prior to invading Iraq we've never before launched a pre-emptive attack on a country that has not made any belligerent moves towards the USA, so the claim that we're acting like bullies *now* is reasonable. But let's make a comparison: what we did in Iraq is like beating the crap out of a kid on the playground because he was being a small bully who might some day try to trip us. What we did in the USSR was more like going over to the other elementary school and stealing every kid's lunch money, while telling the kid "I could kill you any time I want to" every day for ten years. I think that's far scarier behavior.

    --
    Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
  30. never trust old people by mzs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just kidding :)

    But seriously my grandmother it pushing 80 years old at this point. If you just met her you would think she is a completely normal person. She walks around, talks coherently, cooks, etc, just normal old age things like needing to use the bathroom a whole lot and being a little slower and not the best memory any more. But if you get to know her really well like me, well then there is another story. She told me a while back she murdered her first husband. If you had not known her well that would have truly bothered you but consider that a month ago she told me that she was on a walk and saw a purple faced boy with bangs (yes the haircut) that she knows has been murdering and raping old women in the area.

    So I am just saying sometimes the mind of an old person become swiss cheese and you really can't believe much of anything they say unfortunately.

  31. Brainwashed. by Fantastic+Lad · · Score: 2, Insightful
    This point is moronic. This is not a "leak" it is an old man with an ulterior motive, nothing more.

    I'm not going to play "clashing definitions" with you. The fact of the matter is that this represents new information from an inside source. You can choose to believe or to not, but the leak, whistle-blower, informant, whatever you choose to call him, obviously exists. He's sixty years late, but that doesn't change the fact that he is in a position to know. He's the one who researched and authored the original press release wherein the military at Roswell announced that they had recovered a crashed flying saucer.

    Why do I say this? Because if he had this information, and really felt the need to share it, he would have done so sooner. Instead he waited until it was impossible for the consequences to matter. That's all the proof I need.

    You can make a statement like that and call my reasoning moronic? You know nothing about this man or how he worked. How can you possibly make any kind of statement about how he would or would not react to the influences in his life and what those reactions mean with regard to the validity of the information he is passing on? You can't, plain and simple. From my perspective, I can see a lot of sense in his approach; while alive, as you point out, he was available to pay the consequences for not towing a military secret. How does that do anything to take away from his testimony? Your reasoning is broken.

    And calling his motives "ulterior" is even worse. That's a huge, baseless assumption and judgment based on what appears to be a strong dogmatic bias on your part.

    And save that "you've been programmed" crap. It makes sense when you're sitting around your dorm room stoned, but in the light of reason, it's just vacuous. The only thing I've been programmed to do is seek REAL evidence, and this ain't it, not by a mile.

    First of all, I don't take drugs. Secondly, the light of reason shines quite brightly in my life; The logical fallacies in your post suggest, however, that you spend less time in the same light. You say you are programmed to seek REAL evidence, and you couldn't be more correct. But who defines REAL for you? Think: you are not even considering the current information now; you are brushing it aside based on assumptions and logical fallacies without even having seen it. All you have is a second hand news report which was light on details.

    The point is, the claim may be false, and it may be real. I won't know until I see more. But I am not brushing it aside so thoughtlessly. Thoughtless and forceful rejection of an idea is one of the hallmarks of having been brainwashed.


    -FL

  32. Re:Aeroflot by Qrlx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I grant you that in the history of the USA that prior to invading Iraq we've never before launched a pre-emptive attack on a country that has not made any belligerent moves towards the USA

    Unless you count all the countries in the Carribean, Central America, and half of South America.

  33. No, Advanced = Specialized by Nerdposeur · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I can't believe the civilization as advanced as ours is full of people who can't even program a computer. It's just odd.

    It's just the opposite - the more advanced we get, the more specialized our jobs become. If you live in a tribe in the jungle, you might know everything your civilization knows. If you live in a space age civ, you can't possibly.

    Can you make your own clothes? Grow your own food? Build a telephone? Diagnose your own illnesses? Design your own car? Draft your own legislation? For everything you answer "yes," there are a hundred other jobs you can't do for yourself because there isn't time in one life to learn it all.

    My med-school-student fiance will never know how to program a computer, and doesn't care to. But you'll be glad she hasn't wasted her time on that if she's your doctor someday.

  34. Re:Aeroflot by IngramJames · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I grant you that in the history of the USA that prior to invading Iraq we've never before launched a pre-emptive attack on a country that has not made any belligerent moves towards the USA


    Unless you count all the countries in the Carribean, Central America, and half of South America.


    And the Native Americans themselves, of course...
    --
    'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.