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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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what you don't realize, dirtbag, is that writers for the x-files got their material not from their vivid imaginations--you will find very little vivid imagination in hollywood--but from "abductee" and "contactee" reports such as you will find from MUFON and elsewhere in the ufological community you like to decry as tin hats and flakes. the writers merely "fictionalize" what many others consider real--and present it in a way where it can be considered "entertainment". they've got a good thing going.
i don't mind adding that stephen spielberg fits right in with healyje's "name reporters" in this department. while the david ickes and david wilcocks of the world tell you about dastardly reptoids living beneath the earth, spielberg puts out two movies--super 8 and cowboys and aliens--which deal with naughty subterranean aliens.
yea, norton is all over the einstein question. seems like we were talking about all that a year ago. einstein had many people writing to him for some sort of pronouncement on divine and religious matters. i think he very gracefully told them they were barking up the wrong tree.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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TB: ...there are only two logical scenarios to be induced. either there is a far superior, secret human technology and interest which is perversely being hidden from the public, or there are nonhuman entities and their cultures involved.
My point exactly. Someone or something absolutely has to be in overarching control of our existence or you and yours just wouldn't be able to sleep at night otherwise.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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so--how do you "scientifically" explain those things, healyje?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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You don't. And that's because there is insufficient evidentiary data to support any conclusions beyond unsupportable conjecture.
Look, if you had access to and expended the vast resources required to realize any of this conjecture and could do it with impunity over a sixty year span, why wouldn't you just do it at 6 pm in Times Square, the Mall of your choice, or at Disneyland? And why would you do it utilizing an absolutely mind boggling array of vehicle types all with vastly differing performance capabilities? And how would you even know we were here to begin with given humans have only existed for the blink of a geological, let alone cosmological, eye and light and radio only move so fast?
It's ridiculous in every respect.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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i'm afraid i'm not following that.
but, adding here--the evidentiary part is solid, and remarkably identical for the russians and ourselves--an apparent ufo hovering over an important nuclear weapons silo facility, total loss of control by the personnel involved, then everything comes back on--reports are made to higher-ups, and hush-hush-hush. in the case of the incident in the u.s.a., the retired military involved came forward years later in a press conference. in spite of their orders to shut the hell up, they felt there is an overriding public interest.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Read it again then. Bottom line is you only have greater (Hynek) or lesser (Klimmer) fictional conjecture rather than data and something broaching a basic common sense intent for repeated alien visitations.
Edit: "the evidentiary part is solid" - not. It is so unsolid as to be non-existent. There is zero, zip, nada physical, verifiable recorded evidence for any such events. None whatsoever.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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so--these guys are making it all up?
reading again what you wrote up there, healyje, you seem to be saying two different things. the first is the "white house lawn" argument, which is a common theme in ufology. why don't they just land on the white house lawn?--kinda like in that old movie, the day the earth stood still.
but i still can't make sense of the second thing you seem to be saying: "how would you know we were here to begin with".
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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It isn't a matter of "making this stuff up" - it's a matter of people's conjecture for events they can't explain and the group / social dynamics when more than one person is involved. Having had to fact check as part of my work in the past and having volunteered on a crisis intervention team I can tell you that journalists, psych counselors and lawyers don't take what folks think they saw, heard, and experienced at face value. It gets down to the concept of 'reliable witness'.
TB: but i still can't make sense of the second thing you seem to be saying: "how would you know we were here to begin with".
Light and radio waves only travel so fast. Even if an 'advanced civilization' had the means of traveling here (really?), how would they know to come here as opposed to anywhere else? Remember, it's a big univers and galaxy and we're nothing, nowhere, and only been around for a blink in that context. We really haven't been here long enough to advertise or broadcast our presence to any real distances let alone attract so much attention from so many of these 'advanced civilizations' that we've turned into a veritable Union Station for alien visitations (if one was to take the rate and kinds of UFO 'sightings' at face value as bonafide alien craft).
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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your explanation might work for a unique episode, healyje, but when a repetitive pattern emerges, you fight the tide.
you have to remember that allen hynek wasn't a scientific nobody. he was a high profile scientist brought aboard to "debunk". within two years, the air force had to try to debunk him, and did a very poor job of it. what hynek recognized was patterns in evidence. when those emerge, a good scientist ought to know that he's on a trail.
you seem to be assuming certain parameters which have fallen by the wayside over the past 20 years in astronomy. we've already picked out a number of prime candidates among our galactic neighbors. you're also far behind on the--admitted--speculations of advanced physics about three- and four-dimensional shortcuts, as well as the recent suggestion that the speed of light itself is a relative thing.
another very dangerous assumption is that an alien culture would be friendly--poor stephen hawking seems to have lost a little sleep worrying that it might not be--and that they don't know about us. i think that archaeological evidence has become overwhelming that "they" have known damn well about us all along.
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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47% of Americans believe in creationism
ig·no·rant
/ˈignərənt/
Adjective
Lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated.
Lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular: "ignorant of astronomy".
They are only ignorant if they do not know and understand the theories of evolution. That is, if you are suggesting that is the area of their ignorance. If they know all about something and choose to not accept it then maybe "ignorant" is not the best word for it.
I would agree that large numbers of people that believe in creationism don't know much about science but then there are probably a lot of atheists that are also ignorant in that same regard.
If you want to insult creationists, just use words like dumba$$, which is what you are thinking anyhow. Making the insult sound enlightened doesn't hide the intent.
Dave
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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TB: your explanation might work for a unique episode, healyje, but when a repetitive pattern emerges, you fight the tide.
There is no "tide", just human nature and that covers all tides just fine.
TB: hynek recognized was patterns in evidence.
No, Hynek recognized patterns in the material and testimonies presented him, none of which rose to the level of 'evidence' which was exactly his problem as a scientist.
TB: you seem to be assuming certain parameters which have fallen by the wayside over the past 20 years in astronomy. we've already picked out a number of prime candidates among our galactic neighbors. you're also far behind on the--admitted--speculations of advanced physics about three- and four-dimensional shortcuts, as well as the recent suggestion that the speed of light itself is a relative thing.
Not at all, and we haven't picked out any "prime candidates (drama)" - why would you even use such verbiage? We're just at the 'is it a rock?' stage of the Kepler mission as opposed to the 'is there life?' stage. And as far as "speculations of advanced physics" goes - nothing about it constitutes or suggests practical applications for inter- or intra-galactic [time] travel at the moment.
TB: another very dangerous assumption is that an alien culture would be friendly--poor stephen hawking seems to have lost a little sleep worrying that they may not be--and that they don't know about us. i think that archaeological evidence has become overwhelming that "they" have known damn well about us all along.
"dangerous? Again with the drama. But Stephen's point get's to the heart of the matter as far as common sense motivations and intents for visiting the Earth - if you had the means. Why would you go to all the trouble, find us, and then just whirl about in the shadows? It's ludicrous. It would be like Europeans coming to the Americas and three hundred years later we're still a native society with myths and continual 'sightings' of creepy white folks and strange floating cities. Get real. Good or evil - no one's going to the trouble and expense of getting here to play hide-and-seek for sixty or six thousand years.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Tony, please answer why, in this day and age where nearly everyone carries a high resolution camera system with geolocation and instant web uploads, that more "UFO" sightings are not reported?
In fact, there seem to be much less these days.
Please refrain from using the "world government conspiracy" to suppress the information, it is a ludicrous concept, even the most repressive governments have a great deal of trouble doing so in their own countries.
"Anyway, I have to argue about flying saucers on the beach with people, you know. And I was interested in this: they keep arguing that it is possible. And that's true. It is possible. They do not appreciate that the problem is not to demonstrate whether it's possible or not but whether it's going on or not."
Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All : Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist (1998)
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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thing is, ed, they are reported and recorded and are all over the internet on ufo pages, where they are promptly attacked by "debunkers".
personally, i don't brook much with photographic evidence, which for good reason is not admissible in a court of law. photographs are easily hoaxed and doctored, even more so these days than in the past. other evidence far outstrips what's available photographically. if you know the first thing about the "phoenix lights", that's solid evidence. if you know the first thing about the spin-doctoring afterwards, you might start to get savvy about how these things are being handled. please don't put your term--"world government conspiracy"--into my mouth. the pattern which you ought to be seeing is obvious, public experience of unusual phenomena, and then an authoritarian full-court press to downplay it which never deals with the experience realistically.
we have picked out "prime candidates", healyje, and there's no drama involved. it seems every new issue of the astronomy journals tells us about newly discovered planets around nearby stars and how great they'd be for having life forms.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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TB: obvious, public experience of unusual phenomena, and then an authoritarian full-court press to downplay it which never deals with the experience realistically.
Dude, the heavily dramatic verbiage just gives you away over and over. First, there are no "authoritarians", simply people attempting to explain phenomena. The "experience" in the case of the 'Phoenix Lights' is irrelevant and unreliable. The squadron commander saying they ejected their spare flares on the other hand is verifiable both by the squadron pilots and by a flare inventory.
TB: we have picked out "prime candidates", healyje, and there's no drama involved. it seems every new issue of the astronomy journals tells us about newly discovered planets around nearby stars and how great they'd be for having life forms.
Again, the dramatic language is just killing you again and again. Astronomy journals simply point out that a percentage of the Kepler mission planets are in the 'habitable' zone, of a size roughly comparable to Earth, with a year length in the ballpark - all of which suggests, SUGGESTS, such planets are where we might best direct our resources in our search for life on other planets. None of that counts as "picked out prime candidates", but rather just common sense criteria for the kinds of planets worth further investigation.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Hell, with all the resources available to modern science, they know that there's some sort of life on SuperTopo, but haven't a clue as to whether it's intelligent or not. And believe me, there's no conspiracy to hide any evidence.
There's no truth to claims that ST has been taken over by aliens based in an ark on a grassy knoll in area 51 on the Moon, and that they're using us as a proving ground for their cover-up tactics. And pay no attention to that chemtrail slackliner.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Tony B, to suppress the evidence of extraterrestrials interacting with humans on the scale you implied would involve cooperation of various different organizations and governments of different countries. We can’t even agree on how to deal with the US debt!
When multiple explanations exist, the simplest one is usually the correct one. Consulted by William of Ockham.
applying occam's razor at the time of columbus would have assured everyone that the earth is, as it obviously appears, flat.
"government conspiracy" seems to be your interpretation of what others think about this, moosedrool, and ed's as well. healyje, on the other hand, offers us a way out which is absolutely brilliant: we can't explain it, so we must discount it.
from my point of view, use of the term "conspiracy" is totally inappropriate. to conspire means to "breathe together." it implies an isolated group with criminal intent cooking up some secret agenda on its own. i don't see things happening that way at all. what i see is a hidden hand of control, applied at crucial times, but not often enough to be greatly obvious.
in the phoenix lights case, fife symington, governor of arizona at the time, earned himself the unusual honor of a simultaneous listing in the ufo "hall of fame" and "hall of shame" of the "ufo watchdog" webpage, which attempts to keep some of this honest. fife saw 'em, they were awesome, but then he had to try to joke it all away, perhaps in the medvedev manner, with an aide interrupting the press conference in an alien costume, after which all seriousness fell by the wayside. somehow, however, the ejection of spare flares did not leap to mind. that took a couple days to cook up. i'm sure the inventory sheets were not tampered with, however. that never happens in the military.
symington's flip-flop parallels that of jimmy carter, who, before he was elected president, told of personally witnessing a ufo in georgia. he made quite an issue of it in his anti-watergate, "i'll never lie to you" campaign. he promised that, if elected, he would open all the secret files concerned with ufos, and he added that he could never ridicule someone who said they had seen one because he had seen one himself. after he got into office, his tune changed within a matter of months. but did he come forward with "rational" explanations that would lay it all to rest? not at all. he tried to act embarrassed and slithered off, like any common political snake, changing the subject and hiding behind his keepers.
this is what i mean by patterns.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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Thomas Friedman,
I am struck by how many liberals insist on reducing carbon emissions immediately, but, on the deficit, say there is no urgency because no interest rates rises are in sight. And I am struck by how many conservatives insist we must reduce the deficit immediately, but, on climate, say there is no urgency because, so far, temperature rise has been slight.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/opinion/friedman-the-market-and-mother-nature.html?smid=tw-NYTimesFriedman&seid=auto&_r=0
450 ppm carbon dioxide is...
routinely cited as the tipping point where we create the conditions for out-of-control acceleration.
We're on target to surpass 450 ppm in less than 25 years.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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TB: healyje, on the other hand, offers us a way out which is absolutely brilliant: we can't explain it, so we must discount it.
I do no such thing and no discounting of an incident is involved or required.
When something is 'inexplicable', it's just that: inexplicable. Simply let it remain so without the utterly desperate need for all manner of dramatic divine, alien, or conspiratorial fantasies to fill the void of what we don't know. If ever more hard data becomes available, then maybe there would be an opportunity and possibility of producing something more than wild conjecture about a given incident. To date no such data has ever become available.
The only thing that is 'discounted', is the wild and woolly conjecture folks like you demand fill the voids of what we don't know.
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WBraun
climber
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To date no such data has ever become available.
And none will come in the future either.
Data is for the sterile.
For those that are alive and living it's an ever changing real time dynamic orchestra that can't be captured into the lab coats bottle.
The data that gets into the bottle has already outside of it changed and morphed on.
The lab coat is left behind with the sterile dead data bewildered and lost ......
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