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Phenomena 30-07-2004

By Gregon

Here’s the updates to the Phenomena website over the past week:


Also on site are the daily news briefs and assorted other articles, so plenty to browse through.

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
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5 Comments

  1. UFOs and the media
    I found Richard M.Nolan’s article on UFOs and the media extremely interesting.
    Thanks for that Greg.

    You see folks I have been making my own personal survey over the past seven or eight years on exactly this subject.

    I can remember being absolutely furious when people like Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan would publicly assert that there was very little liklihood of there being life anywhere other than on earth.They were very positive about it, and they reiterated it at every opportunity, while at the same time Clarke wrote the most wonderful SF space stories about what could be and Sagan never ceased for a moment telling about the billions and billions of stars and the billions and billions of light years to make us aware of the vastness of it all.

    The way I explain it is this……..

    there are some things you do not learn at your mother’s knee….
    you do not learn them at school…..
    and life experiences do not teach them to you.
    They just are.
    One of them is to treat people the way you would like to be treated.
    The other is that where there is a universe so vast that time and space cannot measure it, there must be more going on than what we could possible even guess at…or dream about.

    So who were these people to make these assumptions on something they knew nothing about, because believe me, even being an astronomer or physicist does not teach you much about the universe.

    I came to believe that there was a conspiracy going on.(Don’t we all!)
    But I believed that this conspiracy involved people whose opinion could and would definitely influence others.

    So I staked out a cubby-hole and waited.

    I didn’t have to wait long.

    When Carl Sagan was dying he wrote his only novel, Contact, which dealt with other life in the universe.It explained in detail how travel through vast eons of space could be done,and how different other life could be.

    Having studied psychology and philosophy I predicted that Clarke would make his move in 2001.
    In March 2001 when NASA released many thousands of photos of Mars from Viking 1976 on the net,Clarke stated in an interview…
    “There is life on Mars and it is huge”.
    I realise that prior to that he had also told an interviewer that Europa was the place that needed looking at if people were interested in extraterrestrial life.But his moment had not yet arrived.

    Since then Clarke has stated on a number of occasions that there is life on Mars and that NASA should investigate it.

    NASA has also done it’s bit for the conspiracy by stating in 1976 that there was water on Mars,but having realised that anyone with half a brain (like me) could figure out that where there was water there would be life, they retracted the statement and denied all knowledge of it.

    I have also watched carefully the incremental changes in documentaries on Discovery and other channels on cable TV over the years.
    Where once the idea of someone proposing that UFOs were actually something real and not swamp gas was ridiculed;now it became more of a “could it be real, do you think?”
    The idea was tendered as something for you to consider in your spare time.
    What if there was other life in the universe?
    How would it affect us?
    Could all those hundreds of thousands of sightings and photos of swamp gas be something altogether different?
    Just something to mull over, no sense getting serious over it, but a totally different attitude all the same.
    In prime time there would be docos that would have once been relegated to late night TV.

    And although western countries were reluctant to print episodes of UFO activity,eastern bloc countries were not.

    The most interesting behaviour I think has come from Seth Shostak and a crony of his whose name I cannot remember.
    Years ago when asked if there was other life in the universe they would throw around Frank Drake’s queer little equation and say no.
    Then Shostak moved to SETI and the quest for the life that couldn’t possibly exist.
    I am aware that Shostak has just this week declared that UFOs are not real, but that is the last weak squeak from a drowning man.

    I don’t believe that these well known people all got together and made a promise to each other that they would deny there could be life out there. I think it was just something that happened, based on the various government attitudes, and also to some extent on some of the let’s face it, more bizarro stories we heard from time to time.
    I have met some people who declare they were abducted by aliens and I know that try as I would, I could not believe them.
    But yes I believe that something has been going on.
    I believe though that Clarke, Sagan, Drake et al all thought that their credibility would be zilch if they associated with those sort of claims.And I don’t blame them.

    You will eventually see someone,maybe not Tom Brokaw, but some other anchor man telling about beings other than ourselves and it will be soon.
    I mean even Shostak says within 20 years we will make contact.
    So if you add the truth and deduct the bullshit,I would make that a lot sooner.

    And have you SEEN some of the latest pics of UFOs???????

    They’re out there mate, and they’re coming to a city near you, and there is no government that can do a damn thing about it.
    And when the elite cannot stop information getting out, they admit to it

    shadows

    1. Life out there
      Hey Shadows, I don’t know if you saw my critique of “Lonely Planets” posted under Greg’s original review of the book, but it fits well with your observations. It really cranks me off when these guys play ‘straight’ with the story when the they fear their peers would snicker, but ‘fess up when the fear of that is gone. Sagan was the worst hypocrite in that regard as well as a destroyer/usurper of other’s careers.

      I hope you are right regarding the timing of things.

      X_O

      1. Yes I did X-O
        Hi X-O, yes I did read it,good stuff.

        As regards Sagan, he had the most to lose.He had the highest profile.

        I always think that a scientist’s greatest enemy is the scientific community.
        Any scientist who is a free thinker, that is, not allowing himself to be confined within the boundaries of a set agenda treads a dangerous path.

        Once a scientist is ridiculed he can rarely find work and will never be taken seriously.

        As far as the scientific community is concerned, things have changed little since the Inquisition where to think against the accepted norm was life-threatening.

        There is only one Prof John Mack of Harvard, the chap who believes in alien abduction and who is a laughing stock among his colleagues.

        My personal belief as I said, was that media of all kinds, movies,docos,simple news reports, are moving slowly towards dissemenating the information that we are not alone.

        I remember Stephen Hawking saying “If ET rings, don’t answer”.

        So I don’t know whether to hope for it or not.

        shadows

        1. Heretics and such
          One of my favorite old saws is: Yesterday’s heresy is today’s science and tomorrow’s dogma.

          I definitely believe there is slow migration towards letting it out. I remember when Clinton rushed out to announce the discovery of ‘life’ back when the Mars meteor chunk was found to have (apparent)microfossils. The bells went off in my head that somethin’ was up. Conversely, the subsequent dribbles of data from the Mars probes have all been showing way more evidence of water, etc. than the headlines acknowledge. It’s almost as though slipping the more consequential data into the public domain will somehow ease the shock when we can all look back and discover what the total mass of evidence really says.

          In any case, I think the plan, if there actually is one, is to get us used to the idea of 1) microbial life on ancient Mars, then 2) microbial life on present day Mars, 3)ancient intellegent life on Mars (Face, etc.), and finally 4) somebody watching us now.

          Xavier Onassis

          1. you said it beautifully Xavier
            Well said, Xavier, I am sometimes at a loss for words.
            Yes there is a dribble of information leading to the truth.

            The other night I watched a doco on cable about aliens on the earth.
            They dragged out all the old stories about alien abduction and I was about to go to bed, when suddenly the story changed.

            I had previusly heard about the US Army handbook from the forties that mentioned aliens but I was unprepared for this.
            Apparently in a firemen’s handbook somewhere in the US the question is asked…..
            If a UFO crashed into a children’s kindergarten whom would you save, the aliens or the children?
            The answer was….the children.
            But then, you would endeavour to save the aliens.
            Then you would endeavour to save their ship or whatever, and then put out the fire.

            It makes you think, doesn’t it?!!!

            shadows

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