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Professor Says UFO Studies Should Be Taught At Universities
New York anthropology professor Philip Haseley wants young people to get the best education possible, and part of that education, he says, should be about UFOs. Haseley thinks universities should offer classes on UFOs and other unexplained phenomena from space. "[A sighting] happens to millions of people [around the world]. It's about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study. It's important that the whole subject be brought out in the open and investigated," he said. I want to believe the truth is out there in 500 words or less.
And I would take your money. Next year we can come back and see who learned more.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
http://xkcd.com/718/
Some schools teach creationism. Some teach actual theology. Why should alien abduction be treated any differently? Teach the controversy!
Reasonable-quality audio/video recording equipment is becoming nearly ubiquitous, being embedded in cell phones.
Yet the only "footage" that is available is grainy and poor quality.
As the quality and availability of audio/video recording equipment grows, one would expect the quality of "sighting" recordings to increase, but they aren't.
I think that's very telling.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I took a class in religion studies in college. UFO or other paranormal theories would fit right in there.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Looking at tuition costs can make one feel like they've been probed in the ass so why not learn about others who have felt the same way?
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
A rigorous scientific and professional approach would be far better than an amateur approach any day. Otherwise we deny the phenomenon entirely, or rely on amateur people who keep finding traces of them anywhere they look. You know they saying: "To a person holding a hammer, every problem is a nail."
UFO doesn't mean aliens, space visitors, or conspiracies.
It means: Unidentified Flying Object.
If you see a condensation trail high in the sky, you know that there is something creating it, but if it is too high for you to see, it is unidentified. It is flying. It is an object. You have just witnessed a UFO. There is nothing ridiculous about it at all.
If this class focuses on the spotting of things you don't understand, and the process in which you go through to try to discover it's identity, then I'm all for it. A class that pushes students to come up with multiple possible theories and find ways to research them, to prove or exclude them, and to report on their findings.
Seems like an awesome class idea to me.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Podunk professor from community college in remote town close to Canada has crazy ideas and other news at 11.
Seriously this made the front page of /.? This could be on the Onion!
I would take that class
And I would take your money. Next year we can come back and see who learned more.
Well, right off the bat, you'd learn that people taking UFO classes don't have much money.
"We know people who think this is a nonsense subject. And we'll refer you to voluminous literature and facts about UFOs."
Seriously? These guys do understand that "voluminous" literature doesn't equate to "quality literature", right? There are tomes and tomes on dragons at your local library, but I don't think many of us would consider "Draconic Studies" a worth academic pursuit.
I had this class. In my university, the history department had some classes in secret societies and conspiracies. We discussed the history and psychology of these events and how they've migrated from supernatural to scientifically based as our culture changed from dependence on one to dependence on the other. It was very interesting, though the mythology on Masonry and the Illuminati and such were far cooler than the UFO stuff IMO.
It was a good class and I agree that it should be a history elective.
I think a class that studies those who believe in UFOs would definitely be worth of an anthropology class.
Who are the believers? Why do they so strongly believe they saw a UFO? What is the cultural basis behind this belief? What are the equivalents in other societies? Ghosts? Evil spirits? Angels? A study of the people would be very interesting.
I think this anthropology professor might even be qualified (if biased) to teach such a class.
I think this guy is right. There should be a class on this. I even have a name suggestion:
Anthropology 150: The UFO Phenomenon as a Study in Mass Delusion
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
UFOs have been put under plenty of scientific scrutiny, and absolutely nothing has ever stood up to the test. The very best results these fools can come up with is the occasional statistical outlier that they fixate on as proof that "it couldn't have happened by accident." The simple fact is, if there were any basis to this nonsense at all, it would have been proven true a long time ago. By the way, the same applies to ghosts, bigfoot, telekinesis, and prayer.
I'm shocked at how closed minded so many of you are. A lot of things sound ridiculous until you start learning about them. Here on slashdot we have tons of comments from people who have absolutely no knowledge of an area that are just dismissing it because it doesn't fit into their limited view of reality. I am not a "believer," but I sure as hell am not a pseudo-skeptic debunker either.
I have dedicated many hours to studying these things, so let me say a few things. I'm going to stick with abduction phenomenon, because I find that to be the most fascinating and the most controversial. First off, it happens to people from all walks of life. It even happens in cities. It happens to police officers, soldiers, teachers, and software engineers. It tends to "run in the family," meaning if a parent of yours had had the abduction phenomenon you are likely to as well. The stories that the vast majority of people report tend to greatly overlap in descriptions of things they saw, equipment used on them, etc. Most people that do report it are embarrassed and many are very disturbed and emotional about what has happened to them. They don't usually want any publicity. People who this happens to repeatedly often just want it to stop happening. In other words, the great majority of cases aren't people seeking attention.
You may think that maybe this can all be mental phenomenon that perhaps people are genetically predisposed towards, but you'll have to look at the physical scarring that often occurs, the implant studies, the many cases that have had lots of witnesses, the cases where many people were abducted, etc.
A funny thing about this phenomenon is that it doesn't fit into any category very well. The more you study it the less sense any theory makes. People start proposing ideas like maybe these aren't physical beings but inter-dimensionals (whatever that means.) Some have noticed similarities between historical accounts of demon abduction and fairy abduction. Some people speculate on the motives of the beings. All we can really tell from studying this is that there is definitely some phenomenon occurring, it is extremely disturbing and embarrassing to the people that it happens to, it often has physical effects, and it we don't yet have any model that can explain it.
I know I'm not going to sway anyone's opinion with the little things I have time to write here. If you are willing to at least consider that something really is happening to people I suggest you find some books. Since the study of these things is not allowed to be discussed openly by scientists or at universities there are a lot of nuts that end up writing and lecturing about these topics. Many of them are the attention and money seeking people exploiting the phenomenon for their gains. Luckily there are some good people as well and some scientists that have risked their careers by exploring these things. It is hard to make suggestions as many authors have good and bad areas, but as an introduction I'd recommend Budd Hopkin's book "Missing Time."
"It's about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study." They did. And after millions of dollars and decades of research they concluded that it was a waste of time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
Why do UFOs always show up in front of some hick in south dakota or kentucky? why don't the aliens ever land on the mall in DC or on top of the Effiel tower? Hell, I'd be convinced if they just landed on a pyramid like in stargate.
I think the closest thing to the above I've ever seen actual footage of was some weird lights above mexico city or something of the sort. Weird lights? I'm sure it was probably just the US and Soviets playing games or something of the sort. I'm not convinced.
[citation needed]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_technology
I think this topic demands some rigorous scientific study. You look at the number of govt / intelligence / military industrial people / astronauts coming out with these "I want to say this before I die" stories, and it makes one wonder. Either they are lying, crazy, or telling the truth. I find it hard to believe they are all lying or crazy.
Project Blue Book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book
The US did research it and did publish what they found. Of course they covered stuff up because the UFOs are classified aviation programs by USAF, CIA, USN and who knows what other TLA.
They were certainly an important phenomenon especially in the 70s
Other things that were popular in the 70s: these. Coincidence?
Whatever it is, it's notablog.
...in psychology and sociology courses. If they want to see crazyness and mass hysteria in action, is a perfect real world example. Probably would be useful in advertising related careers too. Why manipulate people when they can perfectly manipulate themselves?
Anyway, i would put it in the same course as religion, probably those kind of "wonders" are the kind of things that started most current religions, attribute what you cant recognize or understand as an act of gods, ghosts or aliens is cultural, next ones could be mutants, murphy fields, time machines or quantum entanglement.
I actually took a UFO class in college (Temple University). It was a history elective, one that was exceptionally popular and difficult to get into. The class was positioned as one that mainly dealt with UFOs and their impact (or lack thereof) on society, mainly from a governmental point of view.
Except, that was only the first half of the class. After the midterm there was a heavy focus on abductions, and we had to read a number of "non-fictional" books on the subject. It was a bit freaky if you started to believe it.
Beats me if they still offer this class, I took it in 1995.
IMHO, unexplained aerial phenomena (I hate the term 'UFOs') are quite an open question. There is a lot of data out there to establish the reality of the phenomenon and that a significant number of events are unexplained. Probably the best are a number of radar/visual cases occurring in the 1950s and 1960s, in which multiple radars and multiple aircraft all tracked an anomaly for a lengthy period of time. For a good summary of unexplained cases, I recommend looking up the report of the Sturrock Panel (http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/SturrockPanel.htm). This panel examined some of the best evidential aerial anomaly cases and concluded that there was a significant unexplained component to the UFO phenomenon. There are several other good reports, but I recommend this one as a good place to start.
We have defeated EVERY skeptical challenge to the Meier case, as you can read - for FREE - at the site. Further, Meier is simply the source of the most abundant, specific, prophetically accurate scientific and world event related information in human history, something the naysayers and defamers simply can't address. The person who's posted the plainly inaccurate and defamatory claims in response to my post has a very vested interest in Meier not being genuine. Unfortunately for mschuyler, 68 years worth of contacts and information easily prove him wrong. But take no one's word for it, check it out for yourself and be prepared to deal with voluminous documentation in the process. The plain, irrefutable fact is that there really is no other UFO contact case than Meier's. All the rest, as you can easily see, are lights-in-the-sky that simply leave people conjecturing, with absolutely zero evidence, let alone real proof, that there's anything extraterrestrial - or even significant - about them.
#1. MY tinfoil hat is NOT crazy.
#2. Considering "religion's" track record/past performance/response to current issues, the crazies are running the insane asylum.
I cannot wait for a legitimate encounter because I would ask for religious/political/economic asylum from this loony bin called Earth.
If people wish to wallow in the arrogant belief that they are the most intelligent beings in the verse, may the All that is, protect them. It would take a very intelligent race that is patient with the overt/covert leadership of this planet to keep from trashing this planet and starting over from scratch.
I would offer my services to be caretaker of all that is worthy of rescue, ie. the dolphins, whales, elephants, gorillas and any other endangered species other than MAN.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
You know, your test flight mention is actually very legitimate.
When I was a kid, I lived on one of the military practice routes. I loved watching the jets fly over, so if I heard them coming, I'd run outside to watch them fly over.
One day, around 1985, I saw a very odd plane fly over. I hadn't ever seen anything like it. It looked kind of like a fighter jet, but it had very angular features, including a tall angled cockpit , a weird body, and weird tail. I told my parents, friends at school about it, and even some teachers. They all thought I was nuts. I had even sketched generally what it looked like, and I was told "there's no such thing."
About 3 years later the gov't announced their "new" F-117, and that was the plane.
Of course, since I had been watching and trying to identify the planes flying over for quite a while, I knew this was definitely a military jet of some sort, so there was no good reason to scream alien conspiracy.
I fell for another one that I was convinced was a UFO, because I had no better way to explain it. Years later, I was talking to a retired USAF pilot, and he told me exactly what it was. It would have been a rather uncommon sight, so I just dumb lucked into seeing it. It helped that I could tell him my precise location, time of day, and even the direction I was facing. Given the choice of the very likely answer I was given by someone with no advantage to lie to me, or believe that an alien spaceship buzzed me, while I'd like to believe it was an alien, it simply wasn't.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I would too if he actually got us a UFO to study.
If that happened it would no longer be a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object).
Personally, I am a strong believer in UFOs. Do you want to know what they are?
I don't know. If I did, they would be IFOs.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
search youtube for mexico ufo videos. such videos of the quality you seek is commonplace there, because ufos, for some reason, appear en masse there with no hesitations, for hours.
Read radical news here
I used to read extensively about UFO's. I was determined to "get to the bottom of it" and figure out once and for all whether the phenomenon was hardware or wetware (psychology). I never did come to a conclusion. The debunking was usually disappointingly sloppy; they make almost as many logic flaws as the "believers". My analysis left me with a Big Null.
But the one thing I did learn by reading many witness accounts and the after-math is that if YOU see a flying saucer or UFO, shut the hell up. Reporting it is a recipe for headaches and ridicule.
Call MUFON or a similar organization to report it to get it off your chest and into their database. Other than that, it didn't happen. Move on.
Table-ized A.I.
From the classified UFO documents that UFO conspiracy theorists like to use to justify their paranoia have shown once they have been declassified have been quite disappointing. What we have always ended up finding is that they weren't classified because there was some massive UFO cover-up, but rather that governments were paranoid regarding sharing how data was distributed and communication protocols. The actual data was pretty boring and has done nothing to vindicate conspiracy nuts.
Some were proven to be mistaken identity. The "bottom" of the disks always lined up with the pixel orientation of the vid camera, strongly suggesting they were an imaging artifact, perhaps of seagulls in the sun.
Table-ized A.I.
There was talk of one here at the local state university but it was shot down when the professors ulterior motive was exposed to actually build a UFO and barnstorm the local Scientology Church and Kirstie Alleys house.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Oh please. That thing is clearly a triangular weather balloon viewed from below, like this one.