Every strange light in the sky was a UFO to me as a kid, and by
definition I suppose one could conclude that every personally unexplainable
light in the sky is a UFO.
But eventually I realized that most of my "UFOs" were
airplanes -- even the one which began showing up faithfully, way off in the
east, almost every evening (that one turned out to be an experimental project
occurring at an Air Force base way, far away from my location). Of course, some lights remained unidentified
for me, but that's the nature of so many lights in the sky (as UFO investigators
know only too well).
As a teenager
and later as a young man, appearing occasionally on TV and radio shows to
discuss the UFO subject, I routinely took along a few of what were considered
at that time to be among the most reliable UFO photos in existence -- but,
alas, years passed and gradually a few of those old reliables were exposed as
hoaxes or misidentifications of normal things.
Because (to the surprise of some) almost all of those old broadcasts recorded between 1965 and the late
seventies were converted digitally and included somewhere deep within Wendy
Connors' Faded Discs collection, I'm keenly aware that the day will
come when somebody, agonizing over my often lackluster TV and radio
appearances, will say, hey, that Barrow, what a fraud, pushing those old faked
photos on an unsuspecting public! It
won't matter that these weren't phony pictures when I displayed and discussed
them in good faith originally -- it's the end result that matters, burned into
digital format until the end of time, the end of R. Barrow or the end of
digital media.
Nowadays, with
the advent and breakneck progression of computer-generated images, anything
goes and the world of still and motion picture photography offers an entire
digitalized universe of fakes, frauds, hoaxes and reality shape-shifted any way
one's little heart desires. Images of
UFOs and accompanying alien beings, sadly, have not been excluded from the
hoopla.
Which brings us
to the recently disclosed and long-hyped "Roswell alien" slides,
finally unveiled in Mexico this month, and quickly determined to show, not an
alien from the 1940s, and not a Roswell alien -- but only a mummified
two-year-old earth boy's corpse from antiquity, apparently photographed in the
1940s. At last, an affair to beat TV's Alien Autopsy all to hell.
But wait, what's that smell?
Indeed, the UFO
alien circus returned to town, where it festered under cloak of darkness and daylight for about three years, until the
main attraction tent collapsed into a squalid heap. No time left to fold this puppy into neat
sections.
Hardly unique to
the UFO research arena, but predominant nevertheless, is the ufological
grapevine, a living, pulsating thing all abuzz with gossip, rumors and innuendo
about UFOs and, sometimes more importantly, the people involved with the
subject. For instance, some folks are
disappointed with me because I slipped into writing less about UFOs and more
(much more) about politics and extremists who methodically plot to destroy
Western society. I'm no authority in
these matters, but if one really hopes for a scientific solution to the UFO
enigma, I think's it's kinda essential to maintain as free a society as we can
get in order to keep things above board.
Some will
condemn me simply because the title of today's entry is, um, unappetizing.
The ufological
grapevine performs other services. It
throws a few names around which consistently pop up when bad things are about
to happen or have already occurred. Such
was the case with the "Roswell alien" slides. As much as I sit back these days and contribute
little to nothing in the UFO information realm, I'm still aware of names, many
names, of people "involved" in one way or another -- the sort of
names ending up ultimately on the "UFO Watchdog" site (see link in
the margin) as either good or not so good when it comes to UFOs.
Frankly, anybody
who knows anything of the past should have remained extremely cautious about
the "Roswell slides" months before they finally appeared, based
primarily upon the names behind the scenes, names with whom there have ben
problems in the past.
And now? The question we posed in a previous blog
entry can now be asked boldly, in no uncertain terms: Will the "Roswell slides" fiasco
pound another nail, a very large nail, into the lid of the UFO research coffin
here in the United States and/or elsewhere?
Yes, quickly determining the apparently true identity of the photographed
image is an outstanding plus, but the unnecessary and questionable length of
time and circumstances involved in keeping this simmering cauldron of virtually
nothing on the stove -- by, yep, UFO "researchers" -- does add a
black mark to the affair, and subsequently to the future. What form both merits and damages will assume
is a matter of conjecture for now.
Long-departed
UFO researchers of the past had their own flaws, as we all do, but they labored
on, producing some superb investigative work.
Today, my wish would be that people such as the late Coral Lorenzen,
Richard Hall and Donald Keyhoe could revisit us for a day, because I'd be
pumped up to hear their personal condemnations of everything that went wrong
and was wrong with the so-called "Roswell alien"
slides. A veritable slide show
sideshow.
Yes, right
before our very eyes, there were supposedly adult "researchers" whom,
much like myself as a kid, desperately wanted a light in the sky to become a
real UFO, except their "light" was only a temporary superhero whom we
might call The Amazing Mummyboy,
and now, to the chagrin of believers who often receive satisfaction in doggedly
pursuing an obvious non-event, not even
Mummyboy, lying in eternal repose on Kodak slides, wants anything more to do
with this performance. Too bad he wasn't
alive to watch the parade.
George
Stephanopoulos: Uh huh.
Well, was there ever any doubt that this ABC-TV pundit is just another
leftist and well-saturated political tampon for the Bill and Hillary Clinton
machine? At the very least, he should
have disqualified himself from interviewing (and aggressively so) the author of
a new book slamming the Clinton Foundation, the Clintons and their donors --
but instead he labored on, failing to tell viewers that he, too, is a
Foundation donor and participant.. Just
an innocent little oopsie? We doubt
that, and we're getting pretty weary of giving mainstream media members the
benefit of a doubt -- particularly when one annually witnesses the coziness
involved with politicians and so-called journalists at White House
correspondent dinners. The stench wafts
on.
"We're all
connected," and despite those annoying TV commercials
touting this growing reality, these very words make me want to run for the
hills. The Amtrak train disaster,
whatever its cause, ultimately makes me even more suspicious (if that's even
possible) about computers in control of our daily activities, because you just
know total digital train control is coming (if it wasn't already there at
Amtrak and messed with by a source unknown).
Still, my favorite computer horror story of the year involves one Chris
Roberts, a well-equipped-for-travel computer consultant who claims to have
infiltrated -- hacked -- the entertainment system aboard a United Airlines
flight on April I (and others previously), thus giving him access to the rest
of the aircraft's operating system.
That is, Roberts was allegedly flying the plane, likely to the amazement
of the flight crew. While some officials downplayed the sum total of Roberts'
abilities, the FBI took him very seriously,
interrogating questioning him extensively and seizing his
high-tech devices. But, hey -- aren't we
all connected now? Doesn't that make us
equal in the cockpit as well? We're
all connected. Theoretically, what
difference does it make who flies the damned plane or what consequences are
incurred, as long as somebody's computer knows how? In computers we trust. Further, I may be lacking in computer
knowledge, comparatively speaking, but it seems to me that eventually, as
computers rapidly innovate and increase their “intelligence,” each will strive
to control the other, thus assuring no safety, no promises, for humans left to
flounder in a world controlled by digital overlords. Meanwhile, major airline corporations will,
for as long as they can (not long), deny that their crucial operating systems
can be hacked by tech-savvy passengers. It's the money, stupid.
Enjoy your flight :) :)
The national
honeybee decline continues as entire
colonies die out during the summer, when their actions and crop benefits are
essential for food production. Potential
blame falls upon parasites, loss of bee-accessible environs to development,
insecticides and herbicides. In recent
years, considerable attention has been directed toward chemical applications
containing a nicotine derivative, suspected to be absolutely deadly to bees,
causing a loss of ability to "remember" how to return to their hives
and ending in certain death. The U.S.
chemical crop industry will not take any of this lying down, be assured, though
the swift actions of some other countries to band substances which appear even
remotely hazardous provide quite a contrast in global policy.
