Even More Random Out Of This World Thoughts

Sometimes you have a new thought, an idea, or eureka moment, but it’s not gutsy enough to expand into a reasonable length article or essay. So, here’s a potpourri of thoughts too good not to record, but with not enough meat available to flesh out. 

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* I have suggested elsewhere that the Cyclopes of mythology made for excellent representations of ancient astronauts. They possessed, according to Greek legends, the ability to create high-tech weapons for the Olympians (Zeus, Poseidon and Hades), in their war against the Titans. They certainly don’t have human appearance or physiology. But another line of evidence for the Cyclopes as ancient aliens is the Tassili (Sahara Desert region of Algeria) rock art image of ‘The Great God Mars’ so named by its discoverer since this massive image appears very unworldly. Google for the image and see how closely it resembles a Cyclops in appearance.   

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* Because the Mayan people who lived in Tikal believed they came from the constellation Pleiades, Tikal's builders placed the seven most important pyramids of the Grand Plaza in the same geometric pattern as the 'seven sisters,' or seven stars comprising the Pleiades constellation. The geometric placement of structures that mirror the Pleiades at Tikal sort of mirrors the trilogy of pyramids at Giza. The pyramids mirror the placement of the stars in Orion’s Belt. Modern societies don’t lay out their buildings in stellar patterns like the ancients tended to do. So, why did Orion’s Belt, the Pleiades, and some other celestial objects like Sirius hold such sway with our ancient ancestors?

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* Might the UFO ‘greys’ actually be robotic or an android ‘life’ form, an ExtraTerrestrial Artificial Intelligence? Well, why not?  I’ve yet to read any account that proved the ‘greys’ were functioning flesh-and-blood ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. For all of their outward spindly appearance, they seem to be far stronger than their physiology would give them credit for. No one has seen them bleed or have bruises or scars; No arm or leg casts suggest no broken bones, not even a limp; nor have there been reports of sniffles and sneezes; they certainly look asexual and even act robotic as if on autopilot as well as being totally emotionless. When it comes to age, all seem to be the same age; there’s no sign of aging or age differentials. An artificially intelligent ‘life’ form could take on just about any outward appearance its designers wanted it to have. Natural biological evolution and natural selection are totally irrelevant when it comes to AI, including their appearance.

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* It’s been speculated that a really super advanced extraterrestrial technological civilization could literally manipulate matter and energy and create a universe from scratch (although IMHO that’s a really potentially dangerous experiment that could big bang backfire in a big bang big way). But for such an alien race, it would be far easier (and safer) to create one or more, probably more, lots more, simulated universes for fun and amusement, for study purposes or for research. The upshot is that simulated universes could exceed natural universes by multi-thousands to one. Therefore, the odds, if you’re a betting man, are that your reality is a virtual reality. 

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* In the early days of the modern ‘flying saucer’ era, the powers-that-be maintained a low key public policy of discrediting, debunking and downplaying the phenomena and the release of formally classified documents now prove (the Robertson Panel;  Project Grudge; AFR 200-2, etc.). Now one of the more really ludicrous aspects of that early era was the rise of the Contactees – people to claim to have met the handsome ‘Space Brothers’ (and equally beautiful ‘Space Sisters), been taken for rides in their spacecraft to their homes on Venus, Saturn, etc. and who spouted off realms of New Age cosmic wisdom and philosophy. Naturally, the Contactees tainted the entire ‘flying saucer’ picture. The Contactees ridiculed the entire subject. The powers-that-be couldn’t have wished for a better public distraction from the serious behind-the-scenes national security issues.

Which got me thinking about that intelligence trick of misinformation and disinformation – what if, I thought, the entire Contactee subsection of the flying saucer community was a setup in order to ridicule the entire subject matter in the eyes of the public, especially the influential public like members of congress, scientists, etc.  Now the individuals who would become the (relatively few) Contactees were poorly educated, had low incomes, and were in general towards the bottom rungs of human society and achievements. So, you can imagine some intelligence agent(s) from the CIA or NSA going up to one of these people, the great unwashed, with an offer (i.e. – a bribe) they couldn’t refuse – “how would you like to have an extra $1000 appear magically in your bank account every month for life no questions asked. All you need do is claim to have been contacted by tall, dark and handsome aliens and given rides in their flying saucers to Venus and be the recipient of all sorts of wonderful cosmic philosophies of peace, brotherhood, etc. We’ll even help you write up the books detailing your ‘experiences’ for you and you get to keep the royalties and go on radio and TV and go on tour and become famous. How does that sound?” How many people in those circumstances would say no to that? And if any did, well, accidents happen; people disappear. Who’d miss a nobody - one of the great unwashed? This is just a thought which once thought of rings a bit too close to the bone for comfort.



UFOs: A National Security or Science ETH Issue? Some Historical Analysis

From the get-go (circa 1947), UFOs (initially called 'flying discs' or 'flying saucers') were not viewed as a scientific issue or problem but rather one of national security - after all, unknown aerial objects were being tracked on radar and observed by credible witnesses including pilots and especially military pilots, invading the sovereign airspace of nations. By the time it became obvious UFOs were a scientific problem (as in are they alien spaceships), it was too little, too late for scientists to risk their careers on this topic. It was easier, wiser, and better to give thumbs-down to the UFO ETH (Extraterrestrial Hypothesis)

The Anti UFO ETH might have historical roots because from the get-go (circa 1947), UFOs (initially called 'flying discs' or 'flying saucers') were not viewed as a scientific issue or problem but rather one of national security - after all, unknown aerial objects were being tracked on radar and observed by credible witnesses including pilots and especially military pilots, invading the sovereign airspace of nations, and I do mean nations from around the world, not just the United States. This era was after all part of the beginnings of the Cold War, so unknown aerial objects would naturally be of intense concern to the governments of not only the superpowers but, in the era of this new nuclear weapons age, to all nations.

Further, from the beginning, the ‘flying discs’ were taken as representing a technology, albeit terrestrial technology, probably Russian (unless you were Russian and then it was American technology). This is represented by the fact that although there was never any official conformation; no press releases to the fact, it was still widely reported in the newspaper (press) that the American military was instructed to shoot down any UFOs that refused to land when so directed or which indicated any hostile intend. But, to acknowledge that, well let’s just say you don’t give shoot-to-kill orders against swamp gas, unmanned weather balloons, the planet Venus, temperature inversions, etc. Aerial technology that’s under intelligent control on the other hand you can (in theory) shoot down

Though in the early days of the then termed ‘flying discs’ era, national security was the issue, to avoid overreaction on the part of the public (‘the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!), this being just a few years after the turmoil of WW II, the flying disc issue had to be downplayed. Softly, softly and the less said about the Russians the better – flying discs had to be, in public admissions anyway, hoaxes, hallucinations, misidentifications, anything but the Russians or Chinese (or in Russia and China anything but the Yanks).

Clearly the powers that be had to be ever mindful of the panic that resulted on Halloween Night of 1938 with that radio adaptation of the Martian invasion novel “The War of the Worlds”. The broadcast was just a bit too realistic for comfort in hindsight. The public could be spooked, and back then the Russians or Chinese were just as nasty as any Martians as far as the public were concerned. So, softly, softly!

Ultimately nobody ever really had to worry about the Russians, Chinese or Americans (or any other terrestrial nation for that matter). But that wasn’t immediately apparent.

By the time the flying discs were becoming more obviously a scientific issue as official public and unofficial secret investigations started eliminating terrestrial explanations of the artificial kind (unknown but highly advanced and potentially secret Russian, Chinese, American, etc. aircraft), well, by then the subject was well and truly a part of the military complex and intelligence gathering agencies and not just in the USA, though in the USA one not only had the acknowledged U.S. Air Force flying disc investigation, but also the unacknowledged participation of the NSA (National Security Agency), FBI and CIA (as later Freedom of Information suits uncovered). The scientific community was pretty much left out in the cold. Your average Ivory Tower academics don’t normally hold top secret security clearances nor are they knowledgeable about foreign military technology capabilities.

So by the time it became clear and publicly acknowledged that UFOs weren’t a national security issue, well over two decades had passed, and since by then it was all a non-issue (the only issue that counted being national security), no wonder scientists (with few exceptions) didn’t take up the UFO baton as the military and intelligence organizations bowed out – at least they bowed out publicly, but behind the scenes, well that’s another story. While publicly and officially stating that UFOs have proved to be of no national security concern, prudence dictates you keep a behind-the-scenes; an unofficial eye on developments; on cases, on things – just in case. “Remember Pearl Harbor” - You don’t want to be caught off-guard again!

But the public never did acknowledge the flying discs, or by now termed UFOs were a non-issue – it never wavered in its fascination for UFOs, especially once it became obvious UFOs weren’t secret weapons of a terrestrial foreign power. By process of elimination, if UFOs had nothing to do with a terrestrial source, therefore, an extraterrestrial power must lie at the bottom of things – the UFO ETH was born and matured.

To recap, the UFO ETH only came to the fore when the UFO TH (terrestrial hypothesis) was found wanting by official military and other national security agencies. The scientific community was in the dark since UFOs weren’t associated with being a scientific issue, but the great unwashed did see the issue as a science issue and the UFO ETH obviously rang a responsive chord. Why? Well they (the public) had been preconditioned into accepting the notion that extraterrestrial life was not only possible but here, and here and now.

Extraterrestrials (usually nasty) in novels and short stories and films and TV shows were part and parcel of the culture of the times, often because it was easy for writers and Hollywood to substitute an alien menace for the red menace of communism. The aliens invaded, but that was just a roundabout way of saying the Commies were going to invade if we didn’t ‘watch the skies’. Aliens, as substitutes, were also popular in the pulps before WW II, again as stand-ins for representing nasty foreign powers. Aliens were also used as a whipping boy to make social commentaries. Aliens were well established in the public consciousness. 

So, left out in the cold by the official establishment, scientists hadn’t a real clue about the nature of UFOs any more than the military or public did, but at least the military’s jurisdiction – national security – had been eliminated as a possibility, so they now washed their hands of the problem (or so it seemed). The public however wanted answers; the military couldn’t provide them other than UFOs posed no threat to national security, so the public turned to the scientists for answers. But the scientists were caught on the hop. All they knew apart from the now non-existent national security issue was that there was not only flying discs being identified as just hoaxes, hallucinations, or misidentifications (for public consumption as reassurance that the flying discs weren’t Russian, etc.) but that there was this fringe element towards UFOs – the contactees and flying saucer cults which were loonier than just about anything going.

The scientists weren’t really aware that the cultists and contactees and alleged (for public consumption) hoaxes, hallucinations, and misidentifications were the chaff and the haystack. They didn’t know that there was wheat and a needle to be dealt with. So, the wishes of the great unwashed be damned, scientists weren’t going to dirty their lab coats by entering murky waters dealing with the only UFO residue they knew of – cultists and contactees and hoaxes and misidentifications and hallucinations. So, under pressure, their only possible response was a quick with respect to the UFO ETH “it can’t be therefore it isn’t – now excuse me for I got better things to do that will better enhance my career prospects”.

Scientists of course did have to come up with specific objections to the UFO ETH – The sweeping and generalist “It can’t be therefore it isn’t” wouldn’t sit all that well with the great unwashed. That their anti UFO ETH arguments failed to be convincing is why the UFO ETH debate still rages on, over six decades later.

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: The Condon Report

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time the rather famous, or infamous, University Colorado UFO study under project director Dr. Edward U. Condon which ultimately provided the reason for the USAF to get out of the UFO business.

Assuming one or more extraterrestrial civilizations with advanced, interstellar spaceflight capability exists; then they know about Planet Earth. Say ‘hi’ to those pesky UFOs, a concept either dismissed or ignored by the general scientific community. Part of that scientific snub is in no short order due to what’s commonly called ‘The Condon Report’, a scientific study into UFOs undertaken by the University of Colorado on behalf of the U.S. Air Force (USAF).

From the early days of the modern UFO era (1947+), the United States Air Force (USAF) took charge of investigating the flying discs or saucers, later tagged ‘unidentified flying objects’ on the grounds of national security and coming to terms with violations of American air space.

But at the height of the Cold War era, the military had to downplay any possibility that the flying discs could be foreign technology – reds under the beds sort of stuff; the McCarthy era. Thus, the military put the emphasis on hoaxes, natural phenomena, misidentifications, anything but nuts-and-bolts that could belong to a foreign power.

Ultimately that proved to be a PR disaster when it became fairly obvious that many official explanations of UFO sightings as prosaic phenomena were more far out than the UFO ETH. By the early 1960’s, the public’s perceptions of the USAF competence in handling their UFO investigations (under the code name Project Bluebook) was proving to be a public relations nightmare, capped off by the J. Allen Hynek (who was the main scientific consultant to the USAF on the UFO issue) ‘swamp gas’ fiasco or debacle.

That ‘swamp gas’ episode was a turning point for now the USAF UFO Project Bluebook investigation was becoming a real public relations disaster. The more the Air Force tried to downgrade the issue, the more the public smelled whitewash. Since the USAF knew the UFOs were not a national security issue – no alien invasion had resulted after two decades – it was time to exit gracefully from any involvement relating to the UFO issue. The question was how to accomplish that in an apparently open and in the public eye manner. Well, what about a totally independent study by an established university headed by a well known and respected scientist (or at least someone well known and respected by the scientific community – most scientists don’t tend to be household names).

So, in order to bring in qualified, independent, experts, restore credibility (and get a reason to get out of the UFO business) the USAF turned to the University of Colorado, and respected physicist Edward U. Condon, to look into the UFO issue.

Unfortunately, Dr. Condon, as head of the independent investigation, proved to be more a liability than an asset. Staffers uncovered a memo by his higher echelon team that strongly suggested that he had already made his mind up even before the formal and serious study began, that UFOs were a non-issue. That produced such dissention in the ranks, and media publicity, that the internal politics just about shattered any credibility to the investigation. Some members quit and offered scathing rebuttals to the inner workings of the University of Colorado study. True to form, the final report apparently dumped poo on the subject, or at least the introductory / summary chapter written by Condon himself.  

Now of course when you issue a 1000+ page report to the press, who have deadlines to meet, all they have time for is to digest the introductory / summary and write their articles from what that says. What is says is that there’s no meat on the bone; the USAF should stop wasting time on the subject – which is exactly what the USAF wanted to hear – bail out from this PR nightmare. Subject closed. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite turn out that way.

Now Condon was clearly 100% anti-UFO before the study even began, but any read of the lengthy actual report relative to Condon’s summary (what the press, etc. took note of being short and first up) - well Condon said there was nothing to the UFO ETH; but the actual report compiled by his staff couldn’t explain over 30% of the cases it studied.

So there is no similarity between the questions the actual report raises and the summary conclusions reached as given in that first chapter. Few people have taken the time to separate the wheat from the chaff in the Condon Report. The first chapter is the chaff; the bulk of the report contains the wheat.

What you’ll find in the non-Condon written bulk of the University of Colorado report is that case after case (well about 30% of cases in fact) are unexplainable. How Condon can say that there’s nothing to the subject in the summary, while his team suggests that 30% of what you’ve investigated is anything but ‘nothing’, remains a perplexing historical mystery – except for that earlier leaked memo which showed that Condon, despite being a scientist, had a closed mind on the subject.  Contrary to popular opinion, the Condon report proved the need for heightened UFO investigation, not the need to abandon UFO investigation.

But in hindsight the Condon Report proved to be a pivotal point in the history of UFOs. It provided a reason for the U.S. Air Force to get out of the UFO business – publicly at least; it provided a disincentive for scientists to further seriously study the UFO issue. Condon set back the scientific study of UFOs by decades – it probably still hasn’t recovered from the debacle. And thus, to this day, scientists shy away from the UFO ETH issue. As far as the scientific community is concerned, the case is closed, and Condon closed it.

Further readings regarding the (University of Colorado) Condon Report:

Fuller, John G. (Editor); Aliens in the Skies: The New UFO Battle of the Scientists: The Scientific Rebuttal to the Condon Committee Report: Testimony by Six Leading Scientists Before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics July 29, 1968; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, N.Y.; 1969:

Harkins, R. Roger & Saunders, David R; UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong; Signet Books, N.Y.; 1968: [Saunders was a member of the University of Colorado UFO Study.]

University of Colorado & Gillmor, Daniel S. (Editor); Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects Conducted by the University of Colorado Under Contract  to the United States Air Force; Bantam Books, N.Y.; 1969: [The Condon Committee Report.]

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Censorship

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena this time the claims of the cover-up of the UFO ETH – official censorship.  

I received an email from a SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial) scientist along the line that cover-ups are the usual excuse for the claim there’s no obvious public evidence for the UFO ETH, and that's an argument from ignorance, so it has no force.  It's also implausible that every government in the world is participating in a cover-up. I’m guessing here, but I’d wager that scientist hasn’t ever been in the military (I have) or worked for any defence, security or diplomatic related agencies.

Well, any time the powers-that-be classify, conceal, deny, cover-up things, you’re in the dark so obviously any debate or argument to the contrary by you is an argument or debate from your relative ignorance because you don’t have all of the facts.

Regarding the question of censorship/cover-ups over things alien in nature, things like Martian microbes are too inconsequential to try to hide; ‘ancient astronauts’ are too old for a government to worry about; SETI aliens (if SETI succeeds) are too far away to worry about; but UFOs are a different kettle of fish. The possibility that highly advanced aliens with unknown motives might be present here and now – well can you imagine any government admitting to the great unwashed that they really have no control over their airspace! Any government that had, by accident, obtained alien technology would certainly not share that information with anyone, including allies, and thus wouldn’t admit same to their citizens.  Of course not all countries and their respective governments may even have the appropriate data which to cover-up. You can’t hide what you don’t know about in the first place.  

Take Area 51 (Groom Lake, Nevada). Even assuming that the location has bugger-all to do with UFOs doesn’t negate secrecy going on. There’s no denying the place exists. That’s on the public record. Satellite and ground photographs exist. There’s no getting around the fact that signs are posted around the site that there will be ‘no trespassing’ and that if you do, ‘use of deadly force is authorised’ to keep you out. [That includes SETI scientists!] That too is on the public record, filmed and documented. Translated, there are things going on at Area 51 the American government doesn’t want anyone to know about. Pine Gap in Central Australia is another such location. Many more exist throughout the world. You want cover-ups / censorship and related – call it what you will. Well, something that immediately comes to mind was the Manhattan Project. Then there’s that U-2 spy plane (and a whole range of stealth military aircraft that remained top secret while in development). Likewise, the Project Mogul package designed to detect foreign nuclear weapons testing, launched to high altitudes by balloon, as beloved as an explanation for Roswell.

Nobody can deny that the military has levels of classified security ratings ranging from confidential through to secret and top secret. Anyone suggesting that the Americans (or British, Australians, Chinese, Russians, etc.) don’t have skeletons in their respective closets are in serious denial or in delusion mode. A UFO case might be classified not so much because it’s a UFO, but because the surveillance equipment, type of radar or spy satellite, etc. might be classified.

The number of classified confidential / secret / top secret projects worldwide must number in the tens of thousands. The total number of classified confidential / secret / top secret documents (plus photos and films and related) must be in the millions. The number of multi-decades old classified projects and documents are unknown, but some surely exist. Something old by itself doesn’t equal declassified. And it’s not just the military – all sorts of government civilian and diplomatic projects and decisions remain under wraps for a whole variety of reasons.

There’s no doubt in my mind that UFOs could be one of hundreds to thousands or more topics somewhat too-hot-to-handle and pretty much under classified wraps. That’s a conclusion that’s fairly obvious to me when it came to light, after much denial by the CIA, but pressured via Freedom-of-Information requests, that the CIA had some quite considerable interest in UFOs. Alas, FOI not withstanding, a vast percentage of the text from those released documents are blacked out. And that too is on the public record.

When it comes down to all things classified (a fancy word for cover-up because classified things are covered-up and tucked away out of sight) there is a phrase called ‘need to know’. If you don’t need to know, and you want to, that’s a cover-up as far as you’re concerned. Now Australia had a very long serving Prime Minister (John Howard) who was finally defeated in a 2007 general election, and left politics. I’m sure he knows many secrets – military and diplomatic – from his years in the top job. But, like all good citizens, he’s not telling tales out of class. Ditto all American ex-presidents and Commonwealth PM’s and all other manner of retired statesmen.

There’s also the aspect or concept of ‘the superiority complex’. The ‘I know something that you don’t know’ – ha, ha, ha – that helps feed our egos. Maybe someone does have THE knowledge and THE proof positive of what UFOs are, but why should they share it with you hence share the Nobel Prize? Or, maybe they are just internally satisfied that they alone are blessed with THE answer and that’s the be-all-and-end-all of the matter.

Those who have investigated UFOs with maximum time, energy and resources are of course those from government agencies, representing the government. Therein lays a problem. No government is ever going to admit – assuming an extraterrestrial intelligence behind UFOs – that is doesn’t have full control over its airspace. No government is ever going to admit it is near powerless against possible invaders, including a hypothetical extraterrestrial one. Any government that has insights into the artificial (extraterrestrial) nature of UFOs technology is certainly not going to share that information with other governments, however allied, far less their great unwashed Joe Doe public.

Now sceptics will argue that some countries with official UFO investigations programs have shut them down (or at last that’s the official line). There are two possible reasons for that, assuming everything is on the up and up. The obvious one, to sceptics, is that there’s nothing to the subject – time, money, manpower, resources have been wasted and it’s time to bail out and cut the losses. The quite less obvious one is that we now know what we needed to know and therefore there’s no point in carrying on. That means either a secret admission that we’re helpless no matter what, so no point, or there’s been a conclusion that UFOs pose no threat, so again no particular point in carrying out more studies. In fact, if you example the reasons governments (American and British immediately come to mind) have given for getting out of the UFO business is that phrase – ‘no threat’ - UFOs, whatever they are, or aren’t, pose ‘no threat’ Note that there’s never a definitive statement that absolutely no UFO has represent  extraterrestrial intelligence technology, that aliens aren’t here, it’s always that UFOs pose ‘no threat’ and therefore we’ve got better things to do – like dealing with things that are threatening! That ‘no threat’ phrase might represent a possibility that the powers-that-be know more than they’re telling – ‘no threat’ means different things to those in the know vis-à-vis the great unwashed who might not be quite as convinced if they knew what the powers-that-be knew. That’s a good reason for not confiding in the great unwashed!