London Olympic UFO?

In some videos of the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics, an unusual object is seen. It appears to be glowing, and perhaps transparent. An article by Tom Rose in The Examiner has attracted a lot of attention. The above article references the following YouTube video:



The above video is "second-hand,"  taken from a broadcast. So I would not trust it very much. However, the following video posted to YouTube does appear to be first-hand, that is, directly from the news video. And it does indeed show the object, so I will assume that the object has not been added to the video or hoaxed in any way. So what is it?



It seemed likely that the object is the Goodyear blimp. As commenter Chris Jisi posted to the Examiner article above,

It's the Goodyear Blimp Spirit of Europe II, an American-made 130-foot-long "Lighship," which is lit by an internal bulb. With the Goodyear banner removed, as per the rules of the Olympics about no commercial advertising, it could look very much like a UFO.

This sounds very convincing, but can we find any additional support for it? Let's look at the photos on the British website of the Goodyear Blimp, some of which are uploaded by Mobile users:

Blimp Photo 1

Blimp Photo 2

Blimp Photo 3

 Remember that these photos are taken from the website of the Goodyear Blimp. And I think those people know their own Blimp when they see it. The resemblance between this object, and the unknown object in the video is obvious.

Case Closed: The object was the Goodyear Blimp.

News From Across the Galaxy, July 29, 2012

Niburu is visible above the Chemtrail layer!

This just in: the world will NOT end on December 21, 2012, but it may end in 2013. The well-known proponent of Exopolitics, Alfred Lambremont Webre, has just made a startling announcement. The alleged mystery object Niburu is not just a planet, but a "brown dwarf" star, and it will make its closest approach to the sun (perihelion) sometime in 2013.  However, the reason we have not been able to see it is that its path is hidden by Chemtrails! But hiding Niburu is not the only reason that the government has allegedly been spraying mystery chemicals high in the air: "Chemtrails Hide the Niburu Flyby while Depopulating & Brainwashing," according to Webre.

Futurist Alfred Lambremont Webre will present a compelling working hypothesis at the Consciousness beyond Chemtrails Conference in Los Angeles, August 17-19, 2012 whose speakers include actress Roseanne Barr who ran for the Green Party nomination for President in 2012 and is a strong opponent of the U.S. government's secret Chemtrails program.

If such a brown dwarf star were to actually enter our solar system, the result would be Chaos City. It's a good thing that Niburu is just a made-up object.

The "Phoenix Lights" have repeated themselves over Michigan. Military exercises in the northern part of lower Michigan have resulted in widespread UFO reports. Fortunately, this time it didn't take months or longer to establish what was happening.

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/07/major_military_training_exerci.html

Steven Greer

Steven Greer of CSETI announces that "The Disclosure Project and CSETI has teamed up with Emmy award winning filmmaker Amardeep Kaleka to make an historic new documentary on Disclosure, Contact and the suppression of New Energy." However, "No major studio or media group will touch this story : It is simply too explosive and world- changing for large corporate interests to embrace." So he is collecting nickels and dimes (and hopefully plenty of dollars, too, from folks just like you.) And it looks like he is very close to meeting his goal. The film is described as follows:

The Earth has been visited by advanced Inter-Stellar Civilizations that can travel through other dimensions faster than the speed of light. What we have learned from them about energy propulsion can bring us to a new era, but those in power have suppressed this information in order to keep us at their mercy.

 If all goes well, the film could be released as soon as December, 2012. Let's hope that it gets finished before we are all done in by our encounter with Niburu in 2013.

Implants and Aliens and Scalpels, Oh My!

On the evening of July 21, 2012, MUFON LA held a benefit in Hollywood for Dr. Roger Leir, a local podiatrist and UFO celebrity best known for removing alleged alien implants from alleged UFO abductees. Leir recently was hospitalized and had surgery, so to help pay some of his medical bills his UFOlogical friends, including Yvonne Smith, Jordan Maxwell, and Whitley Strieber, participated in a four-hour mini-symposium in his honor. It was repeated the following afternoon in Orange County in Costa Mesa, where I went down the rabbit-hole for a few hours. The event had  an upbeat feeling about it, with UFO-related vendors, snack tables, etc. The efforts that the MUFON people, including UFO celebrities, were willing to make to help Leir shows the UFO community at its best.

Yvonne Smith

Yvonne Smith is a well-known hypnotherapist who works with alleged UFO abductees. With the deaths of Budd Hopkins and John Mack, that leaves Ms. Smith as one of the leading Abductologists in the world. A questioner asked her if there are some people who cannot be hypnotized. She replied that anyone can be hypnotized if the hypnotist persists, although some are much harder to hypnotize than others. In my opinion what she said was more or less, "they'll be good and hypnotized by the time I'm done with them!" Perhaps I  am wrong. She also told about an implant that was taken by Dr. Leir from his patient Ron Noel, which according to Leir emits "deep space frequency" radio waves, and has a strong magnetic field. Smith said that this metallic implant was so hard that diamond cutting tools could not cut it. Eventually, a high-powered laser could.



Jose Escamilla is well-known as the discoverer of flying "rods," originally called "Roswell rods," but known to most people as "insects." At this event, Escamilla was talking about his latest discoveries and film project, involving Moon conspiracies. Our moon, he explains, is not a grey-colored object as we have been led to believe. Our moon is a full color body, but NASA has only released black-and-white photos of it. However, an amateur astronomer in Texas named Bill Bryson has been able, using his telescope and a $68 Chinese-made camera, to reveal our moon in all its full-color glory. Escamilla has finally completed his movie about the moon's hidden colors, available at www.theCELESTIALmovie.com. It blows the lid off NASA's conspiracies to hide huge artificial structures, including pyramids and statues, on the moon.



Escamilla did not say this at the MUFON meeting, but other sources suggest that both Bryson and Escamilla are claiming that the moon has an atmosphere, water, and vegetation - hence, the "colors" that NASA is covering up!

Steve Colbern is the Chief Scientist at Applied Silicone, and also at Alien and Scalpel Research. I wrote about the latter in my posting about the International UFO Congress near Phoenix in February:

One vendor doing a great business was A&S, "Alien and Scalpel Research," promising "scientific analysis of alien implants and UFO crash debris." I do not know how much they are charging to "scan" a person for alien implants, but I heard complaints from those who signed up about the long wait. One woman described to me her experience with A&S: they took her into the little tent at right, and "scanned" her several times with different electronic instruments. They found three implants. They also told her that she was an alien hybrid, but also had 'angelic" DNA as well. I am truly amazed at what science can learn these days.

Colbern (behind table) facilitates implant-viewing, $2 a pop

Colbern continued Escamilla's thread about the Moon Conspiracy. Our moon is as much as 40% "hollow," he said, perhaps because it has been extensively mined, or else because it was constructed (!!) as a hollow shell.

Returning to Smith's earlier comment about Ron Noel's alleged alien implant,  Colbern added that it was made of carbon nanotubes. The aliens use nanotechnology extensively. Implants are typically 3-4 mm long, and 1 mm diameter. Leir added, from the audience, that their magnetic decay occurs over about six weeks after their removal. The isotopic ratios in the implants, according to Colbern, indicate that the objects probably originate about 30,000 light years away, near the center of the galaxy.

Jordan Maxwell, Costa Mesa, CA, 2012

Jordan Maxwell told MUFON about "secret societies." I wrote about a lecture by Maxwell I'd heard in my November/December, 2001 Psychic Vibrations column:

Jordan Maxwell is a jolly sort of fellow who uses simple, folksy arguments to reach startling conclusions. He informed us that we Americans are still living under a system of government and religion that is “Druidic” in origin, and we are still being ruled by England. All of our law is based on maritime admiralty law. Because you were born from the water breaking in your mother’s womb, under maritime admiralty law this makes you a maritime “product.” We think we are American citizens, but in reality all of us “belong” (literally) to the United States, which is a foreign-owned corporation set up in 1868. When your mother signed your birth certificate, this gave ownership of you to the U.S. corporation. Our birth certificates are traded on the stock exchange, where they serve as collateral for the U.S. corporation’s loans from international bankers. (It’s odd, I have looked at many stock quotes over the years, but have yet to see my birth certificate listed.) Originally sold for $630,000, our birth certificates are now worth more than $1 million each. If you look at your name as it appears on official documents, you will find that it is always in capital letters, just like the letters on a tombstone. This indicates that you are dead, under the law: you belong to them.
There is a way to remedy this, of course, and “repatriate” yourself to become a citizen of “America” instead of a product belonging to the “United States.” You can also get your true name back, using both uppercase and lowercase letters. Among the advantages will be that you do not have to pay income taxes, and are no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the courts. Maxwell and his pals can help you to do this, but (as did not come out until the second day) it’s going to cost you. His “repatriation” package sells for a mere $995. A “mortgage cancellation” package costs $1,200, a true bargain considering the size of mortgages here in California. But not all his services are so expensive. Monetary judgments can be set aside for a mere $125.
Dubious etymology is a specialty of Maxwell’s. For example, the Christian worship of God’s “son,” who is risen, is clearly derived from Roman worship of the “sun,” which rises each morning. Son-sun, he repeats, it’s obvious. (Can his audience truly be so simplistic to believe that these words would sound the same to speakers of Latin, Greek, or Hebrew?) “Christ” is really “cristo” or “crisco,” which means “oil,” not anointed. The “Lord,” originally spelled “Lard,” is simply congealed “crisco.” Passover is when the sun “passes over” the equator which marks the beginning of spring.

Maxwell told MUFON that the US government is not actually a government, but a privately-owned company. He was selling a CD for $10 containing the most amazing information that would change your whole life. However, you had to pay $10 to find out what it was.
Maxwell said that according to the Bible, not God but The Gods created ADM, not Adam. Many people were already here. The "powers that be" on this world are not humans like us, but they just look like us when they want to. An alien presence is here, manipulating us unseen.

Anne and Whitley Strieber

Whitley Strieber and his wife Ann next took the stage. Whitley is the famous author of Communion and many other works of imaginative fiction, some of which are acknowledged as fiction, while others are misrepresented as factual. He explained that he has an implant in his left ear. After a particularly spooky encounter one night with The Visitors, Whitley felt a "nasal intrusion," and later realized that he had been given an implant in his ear. As he writes in his book Solving the Communion Enigma, "later that day, I noticed a sore lump at the top of my left ear.. from time to time the ear would get red and hot." He went to a doctor who diagnosed a "probably benign cyst" that was "fixed in the pinna of my ear, close to the top,"  and set out to have it removed. However, the implant would not allow itself to be taken:

He started to draw it out - and then the impossible happened. The thing moved, and not just slightly. Despite the fact that it had appeared so fixed in place that he thought it must be embedded in the cartilage, it became mobile and slid under the skin from the top of my ear down into my earlobe.

At this point, the doctor "pulled out and stitched up the wound." (quotes from Chapter 5). Sometime later, the implant returned to its original location, where it supposedly remains today.

Whitley told MUFON that for a time he was worried that the implant might turn him into a robotic spokesman for "them." No scientist is willing to investigate his alleged implant, he said. (Perhaps we can locate a scientist or two willing and able to do the task?) The government fears the disclosure of implants, because it would reveal their impotence in dealing with The Visitors. Implants, Whitley speculated, may be intended to be found, to prevent Disclosure; governments cannot afford to admit that this invasive intrusion is occurring, and cannot be prevented.

Anne Strieber read several accounts of "experiences" that people had sent it to them. Most of these stories involved "implants."

In response to a question about Budd Hopkins (with whom Strieber briefly cooperated, then split from), he replied "Budd Hopkins was not friendly to me," explaining that it was apparently because of their very different perspectives on the alleged phenomenon. (Hopkins, by reputation, was friendly only to those who never questioned anything he said.) The late Phil Klass attributed their split to the fact that you can't have two Queen Bees in a hive; each wanted to be the Big Cheese, and so they had to split. As for his son, who was allegedly abducted by The Visitors as a child, Strieber said that the son, now married and a father, has no interest in "the visitors" at all, and does not want the subject brought up.

Whitley Strieber's left ear

I was sitting up close, right behind the "reserved seats" for the presenters. When Strieber returned to his seat, he was sitting directly in from of me. I realized that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to examine Strieber's left ear, which was about two feet from my face. I did not see any lump or swelling on the pina of his ear, nor did I see any scar from the surgery he claims took place. It simply looked like a normal ear to me. You don't suppose that Strieber simply made up that story about the implant? 

Another view of Strieber's ear

In fact, I even got photos from my remarkable vantage point. Do you see any evidence of an alien implant? It seems to me that, assuming this story about his supposed "implant" is true, Strieber could easily allow close-up inspection and photography of his ear, including X-rays, by a specialist who was qualified to distinguish something natural from something artificial. Think of what this would add to our knowledge of alleged "implants!"

The last speaker was the guest of honor, Dr. Roger Leir. He spoke about how science is ignoring all this great evidence he has of alien implants. He also added that, during his recent surgery, he had an out-of-body experience.

So concluded a day of great weirdness, and a good time was had by all.

More Time Wasted with National Geographic's "Chasing UFOs"

While at the two recent conferences in Reno and Las Vegas (see the previous Blog entry), I had occasion to explain to several people that the latest turd-TV offering from the National Geographic Channel, Chasing UFOs, had succeeded in doing something that never has been done before: UFO proponents and UFO skeptics all agree that the show is absurd, a travesty of "UFO investigation" that makes everyone look bad. Indeed, some UFO proponents think that because the show is so bad, it must be a government plot  to embarass UFO researchers!  Hard-core UFO proponent Robert Hastings quite appropriately says the show is "investigation as farce."  He says that its "entertainment-based formula may best be described as Blair Witch Project meets Inspector Clouseau. If the show’s producers are not secretly in cahoots with some intelligence agency to make legitimate UFO research look bad, by association, they have certainly achieved that outcome inadvertently."

was the UFO a spider web reflection?

Episode 3, "Alien Cowboys," is set in Colorado, where they begin by investigating the Tim Edwards UFO video of 1995.  The Chasers are suitably impressed by this video. So far as I know there has been no skeptical investigation of this video. Bruce Maccabee analyzed it, but came to no conclusions about what it is. "Abovetopsecret" user ALLisONE posted a photo comparing the "UFO" in Edwards' video to the sun's reflection on a spider-thread, and so far that's the best explanation I have seen. The changing shape and size of the object certainly suggests a reflection. The smaller white objects (baby UFOs?) are suggested by some to be insects, but to me they look like little dandelion "puffs", small seed packets being scattered in the wind.

They meet with Chuck Zukowski, who investigates alleged "cattle mutilations." I heard Zukowski speak at the International UFO Congress in February, and posted the following in a Blog entry of February 22:

The sessions began Wednesday morning with Chuck Zukowski talking about the joy of slicing up dead cattle that the aliens have already sliced and diced - that way, he can study their handiwork. He showed some gruesome photos, adding that he always brings his three kids when he investigates a mutilation, so that they can help out. He claims to sometimes detect substantial EMF fields emanating from mutilated cows, and speculates that it is a residual field from some alien device. I am wondering why the field does not dissipate away at the speed of light.

Zukowski explained that his website is www.ufonut.com, because this is what people call him. He said that mutilations seem to follow the cattle of certain ranchers, even if the rancher moves. I would think that what follows a rancher is the propensity to attribute slightly unusual predation patterns to extraterrestrials. He has discovered that mutilations and paranormal events are most common at 37 degrees north latitude, creating a belt of weird stuff running clear across the country. In the Q&A session, the question came up as to whether the aliens might be abducting cattle to create a race of "hybrid fetuses." Chuck thought that might be true. Can this be the explanation for the aliens' bizarre obsession with the nether parts of cattle - the creation of an alien/cattle hybrid? Now that truly bends the mind!

Somehow to me the image of Zukowski's three children romping about while he pores over a mutilated cow seemed delightfully surreal, but Chuck assures us in a comment below that his children are young adults, so their presence is surely more understandable. Soon it's time for the three Chasers, plus Zukowski, to put on the "prosthetic devices" and stumble around in the dark looking for mutilated cows, since it's obviously easier to find dead cows at night than when the sun is out. But just as they discover a herd of live cows from its infrared signature (guys, a dead cow won't radiate heat!), another near-encounter with a wild animal, this time a mountain lion, sends them scrambling back with no alien evidence.

They next visit UFO raconteur Stan Romanek, one of the least-credible persons in all UFOlogy. At this year's International UFO Congress I heard Romank deliver one of the most ridiculous talks on UFOs I'd ever heard. I posted:

Stan is the guy who became famous when he posted to YouTube a video of an alien peeping in his window. Soon others were posting alien Peeping Tom videos of their own, many of them better than Romanek's. He told about how he started to have sightings of UFOs a few years back, and soon they were following him around. Before long, big-headed aliens are playing peek-a-boo in the windows of his home. Then the ETs were replaced by as many as nine alien hybrid little girls, who intrude upon his telephone calls, and also play now-you-see-me-now-you-don't. One of them is Lisa's daughter from a previous UFO abduction. Stan gets a few not-quite-clear photos of strange-looking little girls, whose images probably have been Photoshopped to give them ET features.

Stan injured himself falling off a ladder, and was going to get corrective surgery. However, before the operation he was abducted by ETs, and his injury was miraculously healed, to the astonishment of his doctor. Before finishing his talk, he mentioned in passing that someone had anonymously mailed him actual photos of the true Roswell crash debris, and he flashed them tantalizingly on the screen. Stan Romanek is a one-man paranormal factory, and I suspect these wild claims will just keep piling up for many years.

Afterward while Romanek was at his table in the vendors' room (he and his wife now have three books of wild UFO claims), I introduced myself to him, and gave him my "Bad UFOs" card. I asked him why the aliens were following him around. We chatted very briefly when somebody (probably his wife) must have whispered, "don't talk to that guy." Suddenly it was, "I can't talk to you. You just bad-mouth people. Go away." I attempted to get a photo of him and his wife (others were doing so), but he turned his face away from me (how I regret not getting that image of Romanek avoiding the camera!). He said he'd have his lawyer sue me if I took a photo; I replied that was ridiculous, since he was a public figure in a public forum. So much for "UFO research!"

You guessed it: Romanek joins the UFO Chasers in their special Dark-Exploration Suits, and they stumble around not some desolate place, but in the suburban neighborhood where Romanek lives, looking for Extraterrestrials. I'm surprised they didn't have an Encounter with an ice cream truck. They don't find any ETs, but Ben spooks James by replicating the "peeping Tom alien" video, lying on the ground and holding up an alien mask.

The Roswell extraterrestrial tin can

In Episode 4, "UFO Landing Zone?", the UFO Chasers jump into "a race to investigate these [crash] claims." Well, it's only been 65 years since whatever it was happened at Roswell, so you'd better jump in before the trail grows cold. They stumble around in the dark, as usual, and get all excited over finding a piece of scrap metal, which only at the end is revealed to be "tin." Saucer debris, or the remains of some ranch hand's long-ago lunch? They also breathlessly find a military button, later identified as belonging to the U.S. Air Force. Too bad that the Air Force did not exist as a service until Sept. 18, 1947, more than two months after Roswell, and thus the button could not possibly have anything to do with any operation carried out in July of 1947. Roswell proponent Kevin Randle adds this about the button:

It seemed to be too good. The button I used for the photograph had not been buried, but only exposed to the open air for a couple of decades. It is tarnished to a bronze color. The button they found seemed to be nearly pristine. I would expect that if it had been buried for any length of time it would have degraded more than my button that had not.

The nearly-pristine post-Roswell Air Force Button

What this tells me is that the National Geographic has gone the same way as the Arts and Entertainment Channel, Bravo, History Channel and a couple of others....The point is that National Geographic is now more about ratings than research. It is about audience share and entertainment and not about finding the truth, whatever that truth might be. It is about superficial research that avoids asking the difficult questions or asking those who might actually have an answer.

 Exactly right. Randle also checked with the White Sands Missile Range about the supposed UFO crash video presented by Ted Loman that we see repeated over and over, research that The UFO Chasers could not bother to do. He was told that it was part of “an infrared shot of a Navy missile test." Case Closed, but by Randle, not by The UFO Chasers. 


And yet at this very moment another TV production company is seeking to cast "a new docuseries following Alien and UFO Researchers and Investigators. The show would be similar in concept to Ghost Hunters -- except with UFO and Alien findings." They explain, "We are looking to follow an existing team of Investigators," not even realizing that there is no such thing. Are they doing this because they believe Chasing UFOs to be a great show, or will they do a decent job of investigating UFO claims? I'd like to be optimistic about the show, but as a realist I'd have to say that the odds are against it.

Skepticism at the 2012 Mensa Annual Gathering, and The Amazing Meeting (TAM)

This year the Annual Gathering of U.S. Mensa, the high-IQ society, was held in Reno, Nevada the first weekend in July. It was followed by James Randi's Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas the next weekend. To my thinking, this required a "Grand Tour" of Nevada. Driving up to Reno from San Diego took "only" ten hours, not counting the time spent at rest stops, restaurants, etc. The scenery is glorious along U.S. 395, but the road is slow and I'd recommend taking two days or more for the trip. This was followed by one of the most "desolate" road trips I've ever taken, from Reno to Vegas, about eight hours driving of two-lane highways in the desert, in 110-degree heat (in July), with my car's air conditioner not working. Compared to that, the 5+ hour drive back to the San Diego area was a breeze.

Brad Lutts, Mark Edward, Susan Gerbic,
and Ben Radford at the Mensa Annual Gathering

There was only one skeptic-related presentation at this year's Mensa Annual Gathering. It was titled "Waging War on Pseudoscience - Skepticism in Action," and it featured Brad Lutts of the Reno Skeptics (moderator), Mark Edward (magician and mentalist), Susan Gerbic (skeptical activist), and Ben Redford, deputy editor of The Skeptical Inquirer.  Each described their own skeptical investigations and activities, inviting the audience to get involved. There was an overflow crowd, which was as welcome as it was nerve-wracking; I was sitting right up front to help the panel get set up, and I kept getting squeezed by people trying to crowd in. The audience was quite supportive and interested.

Susan Gerbic tells the Reno Skeptics about
her excellent  "Guerrilla Skepticism" on Wikipedia

The evening following that presentation, the Reno Skeptics met in a pub near Mensa's Casino hotels, where we got to meet local skeptics. It looks like a very fine and active group.

"The Amazing Meeting" - TAM - was, of course, "amazing" as always. I won't try to summarize who spoke at the conference, and what the subjects of discussion were, because plenty of information is available on-line about that. A good starting point is here.

I cleared a seat for Randi in the front row as McGaha packs up

As for UFO-related content at TAM, there wasn't a lot. On Thursday before the sessions started, James McGaha presented a workshop titled Astronomy for Skeptics: Investigating "lights" in the Sky. He brought a suitcase full of stuff like powerful green lasers, compasses, a video camera, maps, etc. to illustrate his presentation (that TSA found so suspicious that they broke into his suitcase, took everything out, and examined it. And they did the same thing on the flight back home!) . James spent a lot of time explaining about the different types of compasses and how each one is used, how to determine your magnetic declination from a topographic map, etc. In my opinion, this is going about things the hard way. I asked him, since lots of people today carry smart phones, why not use a program like Google Sky to determine what astronomical object is being seen? (There are plenty of even more sophisticated astronomy Apps for smart phones, but the free Google Sky App is simple and sufficient.) "Those programs are not accurate," he replied. (James doesn't have any kind of cell phone). I replied that Google Sky has always been accurate each time I have used it. I have seen people occasionally get a wrong result when something isn't set up correctly, but once you have installed the program and verified that it is giving correct results, you can rely on what it tells you afterward. Just take out your phone, point it at some bright object in the sky, and you'll know instantly whether it is Venus, Jupiter, Vega, or whatever.

John Alexander (left) and James McGaha

In my earlier conversations with John Alexander, author of UFOs Myths Conspiracies and Realities (one of the better pro-UFO books), he had expressed interest in meeting and chatting with some of the skeptics. Knowing that he lives in Las Vegas, I invited him to come out and meet us for one of our nightly "sessions" in the hotel bar. Dialogue is good! John is properly skeptical of most UFO conspiracy claims, but he is in my view too trusting of "eyewitness reports" by "credible observers." One also needs to pay attention to whether an observer's story has changed over the years (if so, it always gets more dramatic, not less). In the case of the supposed "UFO landing" at Rendlesham Forest, UK, a major case in Alexander's book, the observers' stories have grown over the years from 'lights in the sky' to 'structured craft that landed.'

The only other UFO-related event at TAM was the paper by Ivan Alverado on the analysis of the Billy Meier UFO metal sample. Billy Meier is a man in Switzerland who gets photos of impossible things, like dinosaurs and "spaceships from the Pleiades." His photos are colorful and entertaining, but utterly bogus (see http://www.iigwest.com/investigations/meier/ ). Meier is also a "prophet" who has produced something called the Talmud Jmmanuel that supposedly proves the extraterrestrial origin of the Bible.

Billy Meier and the extraterrestrial hottie, Semjase

In 1985 Dr. Marcel Vogel (1917-1991), a chemist who worked as a Senior Scientist for IBM for 25 years, analyzed a supposed sample of UFO metal provided by Billy Meier. Vogel  dabbled in all manner of New Age woo, like healing with "crystal energy." I saw Vogel give a lecture in 1982 in which he used "applied kinesiology" to prove that holding a crystal against your body makes you stronger (see p. 105 of my book Psychic Vibrations). But Vogel was a paradoxical figure, because his inventions of surfaces for use in hard drives was of enormous value to IBM.

Vogel's analysis, using highly-sophisticated X-ray spectrum devices, supposedly showed that the makeup of the metal sample could not have been created by any known earthly technology. He suggests it may have been created using Cold Fusion. Alvarado's analysis is highly technical - you can read it here - but in a nutshell, Vogel did not properly interpret the X-ray spectrum data, and the sample is made of ordinary substances like aluminum.

TAM 2012 was great fun, and I'm definitely planning to head back there next year!

"Chasing UFOs" and "Dirty Secrets" - The National Geographic Channel

(See the previous two postings for more on Chasing UFOs.)

The second episode of Chasing UFOs on the National Geographic Channel, "Dirty Secrets," was one of the most paranoid and absurd pieces of supposedly non-fiction TV that I have ever seen. Apparently the military has constructed an underground base just outside Fresno, CA (not recently, but about 60 years ago), and uses it to conduct secret research on alien technology, and perhaps the aliens themselves. And you thought that all secret UFO activity was in New Mexico or Nevada! The rich agricultural areas surrounding Fresno are probably home to more cows than people, and the generally flat terrain of the San Joaquin Valley is poorly-suited for hiding secret government stuff. But that hasn't stopped the area from becoming a local UFO Hotspot.

One woman identified only as "Sarah" and photographed only in shadows, says she has been followed and harassed since she began investigating local UFO activity. Justin and Eva Moncrief claim to have seen a UFO crash near their house, and saw a  caravan of trucks go to the crash site. Justin says he has been "followed," too. We are repeatedly shown a white van apparently slinking away when observed, it supposedly is the harassing vehicle. Later they photograph it so clearly that the license plate has to be blocked out while it is on screen. It would be trivially easy for any law enforcement agency to identify this vehicle and its owner, should any of those who claimed to be harassed actually file a complaint. I suspect that if that were done, we would find the van to be rented to Chasing UFOs' production crew, and its driver to be one of its employees, since he seems to always appear on cue. Ryder later says that she looked up the license plate, "but couldn't find anything conclusive here." What is that supposed to mean? Here is a clear example of how the UFO Chasers don't want to investigate and reach a conclusion. Instead, they leave the evidence they gather on the table, and walk away.

the FLIR mobile training unit

How to investigate the alleged UFO crash? It's time to stumble around in the dark some more, this time assisted by a FLIR mobile infrared unit. (According to the company website, this is a mobile "training unit" only.) The FLIR was used to look for warm spots in the area that might supposedly represent UFO debris. Or else outcroppings of bedrock. On go the prosthetic neck braces with lights and cameras, and off they go again, Blair Witch style, with metal detector and Geiger counter. Apparently they think it's easier to find UFO crash debris in the dark than in daylight. However, they soon spot a vehicle farther up the hill. Convinced they are being followed, Ryder decides they should "call it a night." "It wasn't worth taking any chances." There was no attempt to investigate the vehicle, or look for crash debris later, in daylight. This whole crash site investigation was staged for drama, not to seriously gather any information.

pre-flood control photo,  downtown Fresno in 1925.

Next was a visit to UFOlogist Jeffrey Gonzales, who is the State Section Director for MUFON, a fact they don't mention. He, too, says he is being followed, and has surrounded his house with a multitude of security cameras. He might attract less attention if he didn't park his truck, covered with UFO emblems and murals, right in his driveway. Gonzales is convinced that there is an underground military base north of Fresno that studies alien technology, possibly just beyond the levees of the Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District. "This levee sits up over the houses" - as indeed it must if it is to provide flood protection - "so it's a beautiful spot to hide something." The white van puts in another appearance.

So they decide it's Blair Witch time once again; they start out in daylight, but soon Ben and Ryder are rappelling down a canyon, in the dark with their "prosthetic" protrusions, to set up a camera on top the ridge on the other side. We never learn if the camera recorded anything. They later rendezvous on a bridge over the canyon, which I assume could have been crossed earlier to eliminate the need for rock climbing in the dark.

map of hydroelectric tunnels near Fresno

Meanwhile James and Jeff, also stumbling in the dark in their prosthetics, appear to be trespassing by climbing over a tall fence, which has a sign that cannot be read, because it has been blanked out. It probably says something like "No Trespassing, Property of Fresno Flood Control District." There they enter an impressively large tunnel, but sealed off and leading nowhere. "We found evidence of an underground facility!" It was later acknowledged that the tunnel was constructed as part of a hydroelectric project. "But they could also be used to access underground bases," according to Ryder.

Next is a visit with Manuel Amparano, who claimed to have a Close Encounter with a UFO on May 13, 1978 when he was a police officer. Tim Printy points out that there is a discussion of the Amparano sighting in  his SUNlite Webzine (Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 9). It occurred within two minutes of a known rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, a launch visible for hundreds of miles. I'm practically certain that's what Amparano saw; he said the object was "rising." He claims to have been "sunburned" by it, but of course it's perfectly possible he was sunburned in the normal manner the previous day, and attributed it to the "UFO." The UFO Chasers borrow for investigation the flashlight and jacket Amparano had on that night. They tested them, and found nothing unusual. James Fox proclaims Amparano's testimony to be "bulletproof." Nobody's testimony rises to that level.

The program reaches the utter heights of absurdity when, because one couple got a blurry photo of a "UFO" near the airport, the UFO Chasers decide that their next episode of stumbling in the dark should take place in the vicinity of the Fresno Airport. (One anonymous commenter identified this location as 3770 North Pierce Avenue, Fresno, CA; put that address into Street View of Google Maps, and you'll see that's probably correct.)  Ryder walks right up to the airport perimeter fence wearing her ungainly prosthetics, and at one point actually begins to climb the fence!  Here is the clearest proof that we are seeing staged incidents, and not actual investigations. Can you imagine the call from an airport security guard to headquarters? "Boss, there's a woman wearing these strange protrusions with cameras and lights, and she's trying to climb the perimeter fence!" In the real world, she would have immediately been arrested for trespassing, then interrogated for days to uncover any links to terrorist organizations. But in the TV Fantasy world of UFO Chasers, the guard shines a flashlight in her direction, a military helicopter takes off and circles her position, then she rejoins the others who hide under a tree, and the authorities lose all interest in finding out who was trying to penetrate their perimeter.

I don't know whether I'll be reviewing future episodes of Chasing UFOs. We have seen enough in these first two episodes to know exactly what kind of show this is. There is a lot of "data gathering" (more precisely, getting observers to tell their stories), but no serious effort to follow up, investigate, and come to a definite conclusion. It's all Wow, Gee Whiz, What an Amazing Story!. But don't actually look for answers - that isn't fun! Plus, the "investigations" we are shown are obviously staged for dramatic purposes, and are not actual efforts to gather information and solve mysteries. The National Geographic Channel may think it has plausible deniability for the contents of this show, since it was produced by Ping Pong Productions for NGC. But it's being sold under the National Geographic's brand, and it's dragging that once-proud brand through the mud.

"Chasing UFOs," National Geographic Style - Texas is for Sightings

So, Friday evening was a marathon of the first two episodes of The National Geographic Channel's "Chasing UFOs," repeated ad nauseam. In my previous Blog posting, I cited reasons to fear that the series would be lurid and sensational. Those fears have been shown to be well-founded.

The first episode was Texas Is For Sightings, and it was mostly about the mass sightings in Stephenville, Texas, not far from Dallas-Ft. Worth,  on January 8, 2008. The way they investigate this is to go to Stephenville and arrange a "UFO Town Hall Meeting" to "share stories," i.e. tell random anecdotes about lights seen in the sky. (To a UFOlogist, the plural of "anecdote" is "data.") There was no order to these accounts, and no reason to believe that any one account has anything to do with any other. They ignore the fact that the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek, former scientific consultant to the Air Force's Project Blue Book and Patron Saint of today's UFOlogists, repeatedly said that reports of lights in the sky are of little or no value. He also said, contradicting the program, that pilots make relatively poor observers while they are engaged in flying their aircraft.

Ben McGee stumbling around in the dark

A fellow named Kacey Simmons claimed to have seen UFOs in a particular forested area, so the UFO Chasers decide to go there to check it out. At night, of course. So they attach themselves to absurd-looking night vision equipment with long booms protruding from shoulder braces, looking very much like people with broken necks wandering about. We repeatedly hear one or another excitedly exclaim, "What the (bleep) was that?" They take a video of a light in the sky "changing sizes," not realizing that is the operation of their camera's auto focus function, trying to bring the light into focus. We hear coyotes howl in the distance, and they have an almost-encounter with a wild boar. Such are the hazards facing those who dare to pursue extraterrestrials. They photograph an aircraft with three lights, and wonder if it is from earth.

The UFO video taken by Mauricio Ruiz

Later they bring in UFO author John Alexander, who has nothing to do with the Stephenville sightings, and doesn't even mention them in his book. They interview Mauricio Ruiz, who made a very hokey-looking video of a hat-shaped UFO, and nobody wants to whisper the word "hoax." In the local library they find an account from 1891 of a meteor that reportedly exploded, showering the area around the Grist Mill with a fine meteor dust. They decide to go investigate that one - in the dark. That it might be easier to find meteor dust in  daylight seems not to occur to them. So back on go the prosthetic braces, and they stumble about some more. Again, they are almost attacked by a wild boar. They photograph a reflective object that appears like it might be circular, but it is suspiciously close to some power line poles. It looked to me like it could be a light reflection off a transformer on the pole (I have seen such things), but we only see the scene in darkness. It didn't occur to any of them to come back and photograph that same scene in the daylight to find out what it might have been.

It's strange that the National Geographic Channel would put so much emphasis on the Stephenville case. There is no longer any mystery about what happened in Stephenville on January 8, 2008. UFO skeptic and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha investigated, and submitted his findings to Skeptical Inquirer editor Kendrick Frazier, who published them in the January/February, 2009 issue. The article is on-line here.

The FAA informed McGaha on January 18 that a group of four F-16s from the 457th Fighter Squadron entered the operating area at 6:17 pm local time. A second group of four F-16s entered the same area at 6:26 pm. They departed at 6:54 and 6:58, respectively. The time the aircraft were flying in the MOA accords with the time of the sightings....
What were the aircraft doing? McGaha says they were flying training maneuvers that involved dropping extraordinarily bright flares. The LUU/2B/B flare is nothing like the standard flares you might think of. These flares have an illumination of about two million candlepower. They are intended to light up a vast area of the ground for nighttime aerial attack. Once released, they are suspended by parachutes (which often hover and even rise due to the heat of the flares) and light up a circle on the ground greater than one kilometer for four minutes. The flare casing and parachute are eventually consumed by the heat. At a distance of 150 miles, a single flare can still be as bright as the planet Venus. McGaha also describes the testimony of a medical helicopter pilot, a retired U.S. Army pilot, flying that night, who saw the lights. He said: “I saw multiple military aircraft, with some dropping flares, in the area of the Brownwood 1 MOA.”

Case closed. The Stephenville case was essentially a repeat of the flare drop responsible for the famous Phoenix Lights in 1997. Don't the National Geographic researchers know how to use Google??? Those responsible for this program must be either totally incompetent, or else deceitful. They must know that the Stephenville mass sighting was simply a flare drop, but how can you make a mystery out of that?

See the next Blog posting for more about Chasing UFOs..