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Roswell UFO Festival

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the take-us-to-your-beer-tent dept.

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.'"

3 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Jerry Pournelle by jenesais · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  2. How about a double cover up ? by ivan_w · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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)..

  3. Re:American only belief? by kripkenstein · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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)
    Why? Well, why do Americans like fast food or blockbuster movies? It's a cultural thing. UFOs are as much American as Bruce Willis action flicks or interest in people like Paris Hilton.

    Why specifically are UFOs an American cultural thing? Well, for some reason in the US many conspiracy theories thrive (JFK assassination, etc.), perhaps because there have been plenty of actual conspiracies: Nixon, Iran-Contra, and so forth. (Or do all countries have conspiracies, but the US is better at finding them? Who knows.) The US has a thread of anti-establishment thought that is quite strong, this might also factor into it.

    That, and sci-fi was very big in the US around the middle of the century; the Roswell incident - whatever happened there - was in the right place at the right time.