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Looking For a Link Between Sci-Fi UFOs and UFO Reports
NewsWatcher writes "The BBC has an interesting story about the link between sightings of UFOs and sci-fi films. From the article: 'Documents from the Ministry of Defence released by the National Archives show the department recorded 117 sightings in 1995 and 609 in 1996.' Those years correlate with the screening of the film Independence Day (1996) and when The X-Files was at the height of its popularity in the UK (1995).
'The more that alien life is covered in films or television documentaries, the more people look up at the sky and don't look down at their feet,' said an expert on UFO sightings based at Sheffield Hallam University."
Tell that to my ass.
... if there is also a link then between Government Conspiracy Theories & shows like the x-files?
people see what they have been thinking about.
For example: when you buy a new car, all of a sudden you see that same model car everywhere.
Add to that peoples inability to think critically, and you get UFO's.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The more that alien life is covered in films or television documentaries, the more people look up at the sky and don't look down at their feet,' said an expert on UFO sightings based at Sheffield Hallam University.
Which means that they are seeing something.
UFOs have been observed since ancient times. The apostle John saw one. The Egyptians inscribed a UFO in their hieroglyphics. And the ancient Hebrews recorded the interactions of aliens and humans as the Nephilim.
I think there's more than the authorities are willing to divulge. It's interesting to see leaks like the quote above confirm what some of us have believed for a long time.
Sounds to me like Independence Day got a lot of people thinking about aliens. So than, when they look at the sky, and see something they don't recognize, it must be an alien/ufo.
I want to know why we always have crummy video of some ufo, when everyone has a camera on there cell phones, with fairly good resolution?
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
Interestingly, troughs in UFO sitings are associated with peaks in CHUD sitings.
Well, nothing. But it deserves further investigation.
The more that alien life is covered in films or television documentaries, the more people look up at the sky and don't look down at their feet
Alternatively, the more people see aliens (on TV or whereever), the more people will ... see aliens.
Or even more controversially: maybe the aliens realy liked the X-Files, Independence Day, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind...
1.- Create not so intelligent creatures
2.- Have them go at it
3.- Laugh at their culture, religion's belief, politics, and overall problems
4.- Sell the broadcast to other aliens
5.- Profit!
I'll start to believe this might be credible when there is a proven, positive correlation between the prominence of UFOs in film and on TV and the incidence of trip-and-fall accidents.
This seems more like evidence of the powers of suggestion and priming. People who are thinking about aliens and such are more likely to see something and say "alien!" rather than "hmm, interesting cloud" or "Neat colored meteor" etc. I doubt this has much to do with where people are looking.
Pareidolia
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I guess that if a decent Sci-Fi about aliens gets folks to look up at the night sky for a bit, regardless if they then "see" a UFO (real or imaginary, I'll stay out of that debate) its done us a good thing.
A bit of wonder of the cosmos will do most people good.
Greg
Carl Jung wrote a book on Flying Saucers based on possible psychological aspects of UFO sightings. Although he was skeptical of UFOs existing at all (this writer is not), I'm sure he was on to something.
If you look at UFO sighting report from the earliest to the latest you would remark that alien face evolved with time, and surprise surprise, cinematography. There is a web page somewhere which shows that somewhere , too bad I did not bookmark it. Same for alien "saucer" evolution by the way.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Maybe people saw the aliens first and then started watching x-files and/or Independence Day to give them idea's on how to deal with a possible alien threat... Or, perhaps aliens picked up x-files on their space ships and are fans of the show. It being a fox show they of course had to get closer to earth to adjust their antenna for better picture quality.
Does it have an antenna?
So you're saying the aliens are only here to steal our cars?
That's exactly what happened to this guy.
Fools! Plot the sighting with aluminum foil sales!
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Correlation is not causation. The article presents no real evidence that UFO sightings are caused by Sci-Fi popularity. Until they do we must all continue to believe that the cause of UFO sightings is aliens.
And your term for the day is. . ,
argumentum ad ignorantiam.
-FL
religious movies and Christ-in-food sightings.
Bullshit covers this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFiDfwsphVs 6:15 onwards. Makes you loose hope in humanity.
Correlation does not imply causation.
What if the aliens realized it was a period of time where we were most receptive to close encounters of the third kind.
Or maybe they just realized people would blame it on too much alcohol and a drunk encounter with ID4.
The aliens are smarter than us, this idea is just us playing right into their hands!
*Puts on his tinfoil hat*
It was in the sky and I couldn't tell what it was. Maybe it was a bird; but it was an object, I couldn't identify it, and it was flying.
I don't think it was aliens, but you never know, it could have been a bird from Mexico or Canada. Or plane. Or...
Free Martian Whores!
Could also be a result of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon - that is, the thing where after you learn a new word/name/fact, you suddenly start noticing it everywhere.
If you are interest or curious about flying saucers, of the form 'made on Earth', then this is an interesting documentary:
http://www.factualtv.com/documentary/Real-Flying-Saucers
it covers research done by Coander, the Germans and the Avrocar.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
600 UFO sitings is insignificant. That is such a ridiculously small percentage of the population of the U.K. that you can't use it for proving any correlation whatsoever. Just because it jumped in one year from insignificant/6 to insignificant doesn't mean a trend has been established. It's probably the same loon calling 3 time a night instead of once every 3 nights.
Now show me 100,000 people calling in on one sighting, and I'll sit up and take notice.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Why isn't "GOD" a UFO sighting? Imagine, if you will, that a being arrived in ancient Egypt with ST:NG high tech stuff. Wouldn't that be enough to create a religion and claim you've met God?
Burning bush - phaser on very low power
Water into wine - transporter replacement
Split the Red Sea - force fields, clear aluminum
Hearing thundering voices - loudspeakers
Rising from the dead - Dr. McCoy is amazing
BTW, my father and copilot saw a UFO while flying B-52s. He mentioned it once, never again and his copilot also saw it. They didn't file a report, so their military careers wouldn't be impacted. Jimmy Carter is on record for sighting a UFO.
UFO doesn't mean anything, just something unidentified. Anything from a strange cloud, to a high altitude balloon, to aircraft or birds flying in formation off in the distance with unusual lighting, to a spot on the windshield with refractive properties can be UFOs. Mix any two of them and it is very easy to thing you see something.
Something like 0.2% of the US population claims to have been abducted by a UFO. This means about 16 flights per night for a medium-sized city. Do UFOs coordinate with air traffic control, or what?
UFO 149A, you are cleared to descend to 6000, turn right heading 240, report when over LAX VOR.
Maybe the aliens time their visits to correlate with movies and whatever, just so that we'd think people just imagine things... ;)
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
The aliens came to watch the shows and movies.
Canadians know the truth. You think those delicious timbits are just donut holes? Alien eggs. You don't even want to know what's in a double double.
As a nit pic, Angels would be aliens for all intents and purposes, as would God.
I am an atheist, so don't construe this as defending someone imaginary man in the sky, or Santa Clause.
I dunno . . . I think it depends on your concept of the universe. I would think beings from another planet within the physical universe would be aliens, while beings from outside of (apart from, however you want to put it) the physical universe would be something else.
Let me teach you about Islam... The Jinn are beings created with free will, living on earth in a world parallel to mankind. The Arabic word Jinn is from the verb 'Janna' which means to hide or conceal.
You can't take the sky from me...
For all practicality,. when someone says UFO, there talking about aliens.
Yes, you are technically correct; which is the best kind of correct!
Why would some call 911 to report a terrestrial airplane in the horizon they can't see ID Numbers on?
1- Equating UFO with Flying Saucer is common, but stupid, and not to be excused by it's vulgarity, especially in a haven of technically correct people such as slashdot.
2- Unidentified object!!! If you identify it as an airplane, you don't need to have it's number, you know what kind of object it is.
Stop enabling the dumbing down of society.
You can't take the sky from me...
A lot of documentation of the original 1947-era UFO sightings is now in the public domain.
This blogger has done a pretty good job of assembling a 1940s timeline, going into excruciating detail of all the military investigations in the early SIGN/GRUDGE era.
There's some pretty intriguing stuff there. It's by no means an open and shut case what those things were.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Q: With so many high-quality digital cameras out there in every cell phone, why do we only ever get crappy videos and fuzzy images of UFO's?
A: Take your cell phone right now and photograph the nearest airplane in the sky. Then come back and ask that question.
Q: Okay, but what about professional astronomers? Why don't they ever see UFO's?
A: Who says they haven't?
Q: If alien life is out there, why don't they just talk to us?
A: Go to your local factory farm and try opening lines of communication with the livestock. Then come back and ask that question.
Q: Why would the government want to keep alien life a secret from us?
A: Go tell your bank manager during your next loan application that you are under the complete domination of a freaky bully who does with you and your family whatever it pleases and that you are utterly powerless to stop it, and that it insists you orchestrate the mass-murder of everybody in the bank and that you fully intend to go along with this plan. Then come back and ask that question.
Q: But Occam's Razor says that the simplest solution is usually the right one.
A: Occam didn't take into account that people are conceited to the point where they believe that any idea which hasn't yet occurred to them is less likely to hold validity than those ideas which they have thought of. Example: When Alexander Graham Bell first announced to the world the existence of the Telephone, very smart critics refused to believe it, even going so far as to publish treatises and diagrams in the leading journals of the day, declaring that the physics of sound simply made it impossible that voice could travel any distance through metal tubes (wires) of the diameter described in Bell's experiment; Was it more likely, they asked, that Bell had discovered some New Magical Force or that he was simply lying? --If we only believe in things we already know and understand, then we would never learn anything new.
Q: Okay, but people are very good at seeing patterns where none exist. People have been fooled before!
A: Right, and by the same logic, since, "All cows are Animals, all Animals must therefore be Cows."
Q: Show me proof! All you are doing is offering non-falsifiable arguments! Proof, damn it!
A: There's tons of it out there. You're simply refusing to look at it. Crop circles are a great place to start because they don't fly away; watch the film, "Crop Circles, Quest for Truth". Also, read Richard Dolan's, "UFO's and the National Security State." After you do some basic research, you won't feel compelled to wave that question around.
This concludes the FAQ.
-FL
and perhaps also a link between UFO sightings and an iPhone application dedicated to apply UFO objects to images, according to the article on this page
http://www.eleganceofaliens.com/page8.html
where an known "authority" in UFOs was caught spreading fake UFO pictures...
While you're grabbing the above listed fine, fine film & book you might also want to pickup "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan and "Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, & Hoaxes" by James Randi. My recommendation would be to first watch/read the items listed above, then read these two, then watch/read the ones listed above a second time to see if your interpretation of the "data" they cite changes at all. Good reading...
Uh huh. I'd also study a magician's manual on how to perform a cold reading, which I've also done. Because there are two kinds of skeptic. They even write the word in two different ways!
The first kind is the Skeptic, and this is a rare sort of person! I am one. I'm the guy who has read the books on both sides of the shelf, remained open and performs analysis based on objective reality without caring who laughs or scowls. It takes courage to be a Skeptic.
The other kind is the Sceptic, (note how the spelling is shared with the word relating to sewage and toxicity). Sceptics are a dime a dozen. They will read only the books by Sagan and Randi and having done so will then utterly fail to read anything beyond that in order to put those two esteemed writers to the test.
Which kind are you? Have you followed your own advice?
-FL
Why would they look at their feet for a UFO?
That's like looking up in the sky when someone says "Hey, look at the dead bird!"
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
A lot of conspiracy theories out there seem pretty obviously like bullshit, yet I wouldn't doubt that there are actual conspiracy theories out there. However, because of all the junk, it seems impossible to pick out the "real" ones.
The fake conspiracy theories could still be generated independently of the government though.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.