Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

According to physicist Robert A. Freitas, Jr., There Is No Fermi Paradox:

Less than 10% of the Earth’s surface, 1% of the Moon, 0.1% of Mars, and 10^-7% of Venus (total 5 x 10⁷ km²) has been surveyed to 1- to 10-m visible resolution. This leaves 99.96% of Solar System surface area (1.3 x 10¹¹ km²) unexamined for likely artifacts. Interplanetary spacecraft and ground-based telescopes have photographed portions of some planets and asteroids down to 20-km resolution, plus a few tracts on some outer planet moons to 1-10 km. Objects buried or submerged are undetectable with current instrumentation. Large artificial habitats in the asteroid belt (Papagiannis, 1978) would appear visually indistinguishable from natural objects, especially since the belt population itself is poorly cataloged. The assertion that a resident artifact would alert us to its presence is an unwarranted, unsupportable, and untenable assumption.

Very reasonable. In my humble opinion, assuming a galactic civilization would be noticed is not that unwarranted, unsupportable nor untenable, but it’s indeed necessary to remind just how limited our search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been so far.

We can only discard with some confidence civilizations of Type III. But there may still be some Type II civilizations out there, and possibly countless of Type I. We would still not be noticing them. The Fermi Paradox assumes at least one civilization should have evolved to Type III by now.

We are still Type 0! Nada!

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Everyone has an underdeveloped gift to levitate through the amazing yogic flying. According to Wikipedia:

“While sitting cross-legged or in a “lotus” position, Yogic Flyers hop about on springy mats. The TM organization says this is the first of three stages of Yogic Flying called “the perfection of leaping like a frog”. The organization emphasizes that only the first stage of Yogic Flying has been shown … Proponents of Yogic Flying claim that world peace and many other social and environmental benefits can be generated by having at least seven thousand yogic flyers around the world hopping at the same time.”

Shoko Asahara, leader of the Japanese Aum cult, allegedly gained notoriety showing his gift.

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Priceless Uri quotes:

“You realize that when I talk on the mobile phone I keep it away from my head… because it radiates the brain” [see how he's telling the truth when he speaks with his lawyer on the phone].

“Let’s bend the mast now… maybe four hours, but it would bend”.

For more Uri Geller fun, watch his autobiographical, fully endorsed movie, Mindbender. It’s hilarious from beggining to end, but the best part is no doubt when he’s making out with a girl inside a car, and then lose control over his powers and goes flying on a tornado. If you don’t believe it, just go watch it.

[Hat tip to Science Humor]

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Take a look at the image above, and answer quickly: is it real? If it’s not, how was it made/faked?

The first thing I thought when I looked at it was how fake it looked. Surely another 3D computer model. Nice detail for the birds, though, there’s one flying right in front of it.

But if you click on the image, look at the full megapixels version and read its filename, the truth may surprise you.

That disc is real. It’s not flying, as the trick here was that the support was crudely erased with Photoshop, but the fake looking disc is actually real. I’m told by a reader that the structure is for the pigeons. Nice lesson on how your eyes may be wrong, even when they are “skeptical”, huh?

Here’s another interesting one. The image below wasn’t altered in any way, and depicts a 100% real scene. And there were indeed those hundreds of witnesses there.

Click on the image for the original. Can you guess what it really is? The answer will be posted as an update for this post tomorrow.

[images sent by Ringo on alt.binaries.ufo.files]

UPDATE: And the image above is… of two F-18 fighter planes crossing each other. Ta da! I’m told they must be the Blue Angels. These real images that, nevertheless, are not what they look at first sight remind the best UFO photo ever.

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Watch above excerpts from the first episode of “Crazy Rulers of the World“, an amazing series of documentaries by Jon Ronson. It’s based on his book “The Men Who Stare At Goats“, documenting the adventures of the US Army with some extremely unconventional methods of war. Those include killing goats just by staring at them. Or at least trying to do that.

I uploaded this to Youtube hoping that you will become interested in knowing more on Ronson’s work, of which I’m a huge fan. In the whole episodes you will watch actual footage of the goat experiments, and much more details and incredible interviews. Jim Channon, for instance, may have sounded lunatic in the excerpt above, but if you watch the whole series you may have a different opinion. Also, buy his book and save this author of some of the bad karma.

Majestic Doty

I also uploaded and suggest the video here because I think that’s important to better understand one of the most recent bombshells dropped in ufology, the study by Brad Sparks and Barry Greenwood, “The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12” (click to download the PDF from MUFON).

Promoted on this year’s MUFON symposium, the paper essentialy deals a series of fatal blows on the Majestic12 story, in the process of uncovering the involvement and major part played by Richard C. Doty, Special Agent of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). MJ12, Sparks argues, was part of an official disinformation campaign played by the the AFOSI.

Those are 159 pages to read, and I strongly recommend anyone interested in ufology to read it. It’s free, and even if you don’t agree with all of it — I don’t — it’s clearly a very important development.

And as it has just been published, it’s currently in development, as those in favour of the MJ12 story are still going to present their answers to that.

But assuming you already thought, or was convinced by the paper, that MJ12 is indeed a hoax, the prospect advanced at the same time that it was an official disinformation campaign is possibly just as extraordinary. Doty was really an AFOSI agent when he played his role in the creation of MJ12.

Sparks gives some considerations as reasons for the disinformation, and though he is not a supporter, he hints that it could possibly be related to extraterrestrials. Co-author Greenwood, on the other hand, thinks MJ12 is more of a product of personal interest by Doty and possibly some others.

Whatever the real answer, one important aspect that must be considered is the myth, quoted by Ronson, “that our leaders are rational people”. Doty’s work in helping create the MJ12 hoax story may be more related to staring at goats (or hamsters) than one would first assume.

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