Slashdot Mirror
Roswell UFO Festival
jmcharry writes "From the Washington Post: 'Attention, all aliens. Come on down. Because, seriously, this is your crowd. About 50,000 of your closest admirers are expected this weekend for the Roswell UFO Festival, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the nearby crash landing of a flying saucer — and, naturally, the ensuing government cover-up.'"
I read on the Internet (so it must be true) that 50% of the Americans believe that there are aliens on the earth, I wonder why so many Americans?
In France, from my informal questions hardly no-one believes in aliens living on the earth, of course on the other hand we have our own myths, for example the Graphological analysis (believing that you can know someone by looking how his writing look) which is very widespread: you almost always have to do one to get a high-paying job..
Jerry Pournelle commented on Roswell recently: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail473.html#Ro swell.
Pournelle says that because he was involved with the USAF Project 75 technology survey, he would have had access to any information that could have helped with defense planning. He originally suspected that the USAF had dropped a nuke that didn't exploded ("laid an egg" as he puts it) near Roswell.
N/A
Ok.. Let me, just for a sec, take the conspiracy theory just a tad further...
Let's say the government has something REALLY big to hide.. What could be one of its approach.. Well : Take an insignificant incident and PRETEND it's a cover up (that is, give obviously phony explanations, use wandering and puzzled looks during media conferences, have people sign funny papers, etc..).. For the 60 years to come, people are going to be going CRAZY about *this* particular cover-up (which may incidentally - should the double cover up theory be true - not even be one, but rather an elaborate hoax).
Now *THAT* is conspiracy !
--Ivan
(PS : I'm not actually buying this - and believe it or not, I'm going with the weather balloon gone awry explanation)..
Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article doesn't have what he said about the UFO thing.
To paraphrase from memory, Sagan said that he had the security clearances and access and he saw nothing about the Gov. covering up space aliens.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
This my friend, might have something to do with it: 22 out of 400 senior Government, CIA & Military & NASA officials went public admitting UFO's and aliens are real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyVe-6YdUk
Also, France & Mexico governments are supposed to be releasing all the info they have on the subject soon, if they haven't already done so.
Adeptus
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
maybe you should check it out on google earth. even on google earth there is a plane on the tarmac and visible markings all over the area. maybe they are bomb targets, but why would you need a bomb target at a non functioning base. and wouldn't the classic target symbol be good enough instead of crazy geometric shapes like triangles inside of circles. the "targets" are not necessarily a big deal (maybe) but the plane sitting on the tarmac says that someones home.
Roswell is one of the greatest misdirections ever pulled off by the government and no credible Ufologist pays it any attention.
Slashdotters love to pat themselves on the back by pointing out the all the inconsistencies in the Roswell story. Newsflash - ufologists have known about these for years, and Roswell itself is only considered a conspiracy by the New Agers and self-styled Agent Mulders of the world.
Want to poke holes in a REAL ufo mystery? Take a look at Tehran 1976 or Malmstrom AFB.
Well, here is some interesting video of UFO fleets over Peru and Mexico. Mass sighting mid-day. All I can say is they are unidentified, I'm not going to insist they're alien, but some of the vids I've seen before out on the net (rense/google video/youtube/etc) stuff doesn't look terrestrial or military to me.
... May 2007
:-)
UFO Fleet in Lima, Peru
Large Fleet of UFO's in the skies over Mexico City
UFO fleet over Guadalajara Mexico in 2004
Anyways, I dunno what those are. I think balloons is the wrong answer. But I've seen more video of these out there. I find it amusing/entertaining, and there are definitely some very good unexplained mysterious UFO cases out there. And I've have talked to people I trust who say they have been face to face with a real alien/ET/gray type before. So as far as I'm concerned the phenomenon is real. There are ETs here watching, interacting with a small number of humans. And then in the public it's a lot of muddy water, hoaxes, idiots, false sightings, military stuff, etc etc. It's really convoluted. But the truth is out there
UFOs, whatever their origin, are an air safety hazard.
There are literally thousands of credible, documented encounters between Civil/Military Aviation aircraft alone. See http://narcap.org/ headed by a retired NASA scientist who has scientifically categorized various air encounters, EM interferences, and near-collision events.
The recent hovering UFO incident over the busy and restricted airspace of O'Hare airport is yet another example. The airline employees who reported the incident did so because they felt a craft of some sort was in an area that was clearly posing a threat. One of the employees, not comprehending the origin or dynamics of the object fearfully thought it was a terrorist attack.
A MOD report released last year, although skeptical about little green men, acknowledged that UFOs appear to be a real phenomenon, likely natural and not yet understood. And it suggests that all pilots who encounter them stay away from them as they may be dangerous.
Through (effectively) a campaign of ridicule (as expressed here and in other media), a phenomenon deserving of serious scientific inquiry is not being studied because researchers are afraid of being discredited. There really should be a scientific body collecting, and analyzing UFO data.
The incidents of UFOs being reported in aviation is likely much smaller than the actual accounts for similar reasons.
It's unfortunate that the problems and circus around the Roswell story are being used to further discourage trained observers, and first responders from reporting more incidents that would ultimately benefit science and technology.
back in the 60s I was listening to live radio coverage of a gemini flight. The astronauts started excitedly talking about something they were seeing (implied UFO whatever, not space junk), then poof, the feed was cut, then later on they resumed and neither they nor the news ever referred to it again. Instant hushup. Pretty obvious, too. If it was junk, they would have talked about like "Nasa has figured out from trajectories the astronauts were seeing the blah blah satellite as it passed over...", but..nothing, like it never happened. I imagine google will find a reference to it, I am sure millions heard the broadcast, most of the missions back then pre empted all the channels on Tv and a lot of radio stations carried them live as well, because man-in-space was still a pretty big deal back then, exciting, etc. There might be some other slahdotters here who remember that.