Translation of the Roswell Slides Placard

I will freely admit when I was told, during a telephone conversation last night (May 8) that two groups, working independently, had come to the same conclusions about the placard near the body, it didn’t overly surprise me. They both said the first line proved it was a mummy of a child. I didn’t disbelieve this claim because to me, it looked like a mummy and I was surprised that Tom and Don would go off on a years’ long search for some answers given the look of the slides.

Overnight there have been some questions raised about the legitimacy of the announcement and I have done today what I probably should have done last night but then I have more information today. Last night I contacted two people, one at each end of the spectrum and asked them about this. I had their answers in hand before I posted the link to the Blue Blurry Lines with the text of the placard translated as:

MUMMIFIED BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY

At the time of burial the body was clothed in a xxx-xxx cotton

shirt. Burial wrappings consisted of these small cotton blankets.

Loaned by the Mr. Xxxxxx, San Francisco, California

If this is accurate, then the discussion ends at this point and we can relegate the slides to the footnote they should be. The evidence at the moment suggests that it is, though the reading of the placard is not universally accepted. Tony Bragalia, late last night, provided a number of scans of the placard that seem to argue against the ease with which others said they had deciphered the words.

The problem is that Tony’s scans all originated in the same place and that is with Adam Dew. These scans are difficult to read and seem to suggest that those who say they can are engaging in wishful thinking (my analysis and nothing that Tony said). Tony thought that I shouldn’t have posted anything until I had consulted with others, but I had done that last night and have been doing this today. To me the question is too important to let it slip away now. If nothing else, that posting, along with those by Rich Reynolds and Frank Warren have stirred up the conversation and provided some additional clues to what has been going on.

I asked Chris Rutkowski, who was listed as one of those operating on what is known as the Roswell Slides Research Group (RSRG), and he told me, “I don't have full confidence [in the interpretation by the RSRG], actually. It's a bit suspicious that a readable placard wasn't shown in Mexico... I did voice my concerns about its provenance, as I did about the slides themselves.”

In fairness to Chris, I asked him early this morning and he replied early this morning. Isaac Koi replied late this afternoon and said, “I think the position in relation to the analysis of the placard is now beyond any reasonable doubt.” It is a position that others have taken up as the day wears on.

Although there had been some questions about the provenance of the slides, and this would be worrisome this question has been resolved. Dew, as SlideBox Media, has not released an unmodified high resolution scan of the slides as had been promised but he did place a better scan on his web site. Using that scan it seems that the first line has been read with reliability by many different individuals using a variety of techniques on a variety of the released images. He has provided, at his site, a better scan, so any questions of provenance have been rendered moot.

Dew has responded to the announcement by the RSRG, suggesting that they are the ones who manipulated the data. He wrote, “Any claimed success should be repeatable and will be tested. You should be able to give specific and clear enough instructions that anyone could actually repeat your actions with the actual placard scan we have posted here.” You can see the scan at:

http://slideboxmedia.com/placard/

Paul Kimball, who has been recently and unjustly vilified for his anti-slides stance, has published additional information over at The Other Side of the Truth, and has linked to another site that seems to confirm that the placard does identify the body as human. In the interest of full disclosure, that other site is operated by the RSRG.

In response to Dew and to Tony, Paul wrote, “Adam Dew and Anthony Bragalia are claiming that the image from which we derived the proof that the ‘alien’ body is actually a human mummified child is a fake - that it was photoshopped. I believe Jaime Maussan has said the same thing… This is categorically untrue. The only change made was an increase in the contrast to accentuate the actual letters on the page (which were deblurred using simple commercially available software). Nothing was added.”

For those interested in that commentary, see:

http://www.roswellslides.com/

Kimball’s earlier comments do seem to suggest a bias, but then, the evidence, as it stands now, seems to support his and the RSRG’s interpretation. I did contact other members of the RSRG individually. Lance Moody believes that they had read the placard with a high degree of certainty and that suggests the body is human.

Tim Printy, another member of the group told me, “Depends on source image and how much manipulation is required.  Moody and Nab Lator are better at it than I but even using one of Bragalias and Dew’s images I could read ‘two year old boy, and ‘San Francisco California.’”

I suppose you could argue that the RSRG is made up of rabid skeptics, with a couple of exceptions, but that doesn’t actually negate their findings, especially if others not affiliated with them are coming up with the same reading. It seems that if there is manipulation going on here, it is on the part of Dew, who is keeping the debate alive by not releasing the high quality scans he said it would… and by suggesting that those offering a counterpoint are involved in a scam of some sort.

Philip Mantle, who seems to be quite offended by all this and is not part of the RSRG, has provided some interesting commentary. He wrote:

I just wanted to add a little bit more info regarding the on-going debate into the alleged Roswell slides. Unfortunately this last week I have been a little bit under the weather, however, this did allow me the opportunity to sit with my feet up in my ufological armchair and see if I could obtain a quote or two from a variety of experts regarding the alleged Roswell slide. Basically all I did was email a polite request to a number of academics and institutions respectfully asking them to comment on the photo (slide) in question.  Some came back and stated that they didn’t think the photo was of good enough quality to comment on, others requested more details, some did reply but when I asked if I could quote them they declined.

There are a number though that did indeed reply and give me permission to quote them. Personally I believe I’ve spent more than enough time on this sham already but for the record I am providing here two of the replies I obtained. They are unedited and all they were sent is the so-called Roswell slide photograph. Again, for the record, none of the academics I contacted came back with a reply that they thought the photo depicted an alien.

Here are two of several replies I received:

I confirm that the photo is of a mummy of a child, possibly Peruvian or even Egyptian.

Salima Ikram
Professor of Egyptology
American University in Cairo

Okay, it is a mummy, but very hard to tell if it Egyptian, South American or European. I see no wrappings of any kind, it appears to be a child or youth. Do you have a provenance on the slide??? That may help the determination.

Cordially

SJ Wolfe 

S.J. Wolfe

Senior Cataloger and Serials Specialist

American Antiquarian Society

And when I asked if I could have this person’s permission to quote her the reply was:

Of course you can. And if you do, please describe me as Director of the EMINA (Egyptian Mummies in North America) Project. Here is the link to the website http://egyptologyforum.org/EMINA/

Cordially

SJ

You are of course free to make of these comments you will as they are simply my humble attempt to help try and get to the bottom of what I believe is a very sorry saga. There will no doubt be those that question the abilities of the two above ladies to comment on this matter but so-be-it. The one thing that I can say regarding the above two comments is that they have both been made independently of any of the promoters of the ‘Roswell slides’ and therefore in my opinion are a great deal more credible. You can choose to agree or disagree of course but this is just one way to try and bring the matter to an end as quickly as possible in my humble opinion.

So, while those who support the slides talk of scientists who don’t believe the body is human, there are other scientists who believe it is. But that’s not the real take-away here. It is the statement by an American about the slides. Don, during one of the interviews said that Tom had failed to interest any American scientists in looking at the slides or voicing an opinion about them. Philip seems to have done that and has some sort of response by an American scientist, which just shows you can find someone with credentials to support your point of view as long as that point of view isn’t too extreme.

The real point is that if the first line does identify the body as the mummy of a human child, then a search for an exact match is irrelevant. In fact, an exact match isn’t necessary because the body in the slide looks an awful lot like many of the other mummies that have been identified from around the world. And, of course, it is not up to those who believe it to be a mummy to prove it, but to those who claim it is an alien to prove it. This they haven’t done.

There is one other fact here. A short video shows how the words on the placard were identified. This seems to suggest that those on the RSRG and others are sharing their methodology and their research into this while some others are calling names. That is always the last defense when the facts begin to crumble. You can see the video here:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkaKpPGKTV0&feature=youtu.be

We might have taken this as far as we can at this point. We might have solved the “mystery” of the alien in the slides, and all the other discussion, discourse, allegations, and claims have been rendered moot by those who were able to read the placard, it turns out so easily.

Chris Rutkowski Joins the Team

The Roswell Dream Team has expanded again. This time Chris Rutkowski (seen below), a well-known Canadian researcher has joined us.

We wanted to bring in someone with a skeptical bent but not someone who was rabidly anti-extraterrestrial. We wanted someone with an open mind, who would point out where we might have slipped off the rails, but not someone who would assume that we were wrong simply because there is no possibility of alien visitation. It is a fine line to walk, but we believe that Chris can walk that line.

Chris himself said, “Although I've been called both a skeptic and a believer (depending on whether you're hearing it from a ‘true believer’ or a skeptic), I tend to think of myself as an objective cynic. I sit on the fence when it comes to the question whether or not some UFOs are alien spacecraft. (The pointy slats are painful, but they can be endured.)”

About the Roswell crash case, Chris said, “I think we're a long way from declaring Roswell an ‘alien’ incident. True, according to some witnesses, the material recovered was unlike anything they had seen, and there certainly was an attempt by the military to cover up or obfuscate information about the event. It's a matter of speculation as to whether or not the material recovered was non-terrestrial in origin, since we don't have any on hand to test.”

He cautioned, and rightly so, that “We're relying on decades-old testimony in some cases, and more recently on memories of family members who may or may not recall with any accuracy statements or events from long ago. Furthermore, some military witnesses may still be reluctant to talk and some may still adhere to their military code of secrecy.”

Chris did provide us with some background information that is probably of interest to all. He wrote in a recent email to me, “My background in astronomy and education (BSc and MEd, respectively) fits well with my interest in science education, particularly when it comes to astronomy-related topics. I have greatly enjoyed showing people Jupiter's moons through small telescopes at public star fests, and telling them stories about how constellations got their names. And yes, the topic of UFOs falls under this broad category of astronomy-related subjects, although by history, not accurately. Astronomers are no better equipped than stock market analysts when it comes to dealing with objects reportedly moving low over witnesses' heads and over airports.”

Chris and Donna Rutkowski.

And he is not a newcomer to the world of UFO investigation. He told me, “... I've been investigating reports of UFOs since the 1970s. I've also been writing about cases and theories since about that time. With many hundreds of case investigations under my belt, I can say that there does not seem to be a single simple explanation for all reports. They're not all hoaxes or misidentifications of stars and meteors. They're not collective illusions. There's a residual percentage of cases which have enough data and detail to explain them as aircraft, stars, planets, balloons, etc., except they are not.”

The plan is to share everything with Chris and get his take on the importance of the information, the evidence, and the thinking involved. Chris said that he liked the idea of a “cold case” investigation and thought with Roswell it was something that was long overdue.

The Demise of Ufology

(Blogger's note: Ufologist Chris Rutkowski posted this at http://www.uforum.blogspot.com/ and I thought it an eloquent description of our UFO world today. I'm afraid he's all too right about this and that doesn't bode well for Disclosure or our acceptance into the mainstream world. I'm afraid that I share his view.)

I caused a bit of a stir several months ago when I called UFO case investigation a lost art. I'll go further this time: ufology looks like it's near death.

The bad news is: I'm an optimist.

I was having a conversation with Brian Savage recently, and he made the observation that the UFO phenomenon has been derailed. He was formerly with the Alberta UFO Study Group, an earlier incarnation that produced in-depth investigation reports and scoured government documents for historical Alberta cases. Brian's comment was in reference to the many popularized UFO-related developments over the past 20 years which have destroyed the legitimacy of serious UFO research.

Examples of these derailments include the alien autopsy film, Lazar's Element 115, the strawberry ice cream nonsense, Greer's telepathic vectoring of UFOs, crop circles, exopolitics, Nibiru, and the resurgence of the contactee phenomenon. These and others have served to draw public and popular attention away from serious UFO case investigations and into the realm of wild arm-waving speculation and wide-eyed fanaticism.

It's too bad; it really looked like there was something developing there, for a while.

UFO cases themselves have radically shifted characteristics. Things seemed so simple when Hynek formulated his Close Encounter classifications: CE1 was a sighting at close range; CE2 was a trace case; and CE3 involved seeing occupants. There was no CE4 or CE5, as adopted by some ufologists now, reflecting abductions and contactee incidents. Only three categories, nicely defined and delineated.

The CE2s went extinct first. Ted Philips had several thousand physical trace cases documented by the time crop circles arrived on the scene. Then - poof! No more CE2s. People stopped seeing UFOs landing and taking off; aliens stopped landing their scout craft and leaving behind scorched patches and tripod marks in fields. Instead, mysterious circles (and later, patterns) appeared, almost always without accompanying UFO sightings, and it was assumed that the aliens were using some kind of "rotating vortex" to power their ships.

Then the CE3s went AWOL. No more sightings of landed UFOs where entities were seen exiting and re-entering their crafts. Instead, abductions ballooned in number, eventually overtaking classic CE3s. Really, have you heard of a decent CE3 case recently? No bedroom visitations, no alien faces in windows, no telepathic instructions about saving the human race. Just a simple CE3 observation. No? No.

Even CE1s are mostly gone now, too. Instead, we have YouTube videos of "mysterious orbs" and "Galactic Lightships" seeming to dance all over the pace because the witness couldn't hold the video camera steady. On the other hand, we have goofballs with too much time on their hands using video toasters to create obvious hoaxed UFO videos that experienced UFO investigators can tell are not worth bothering with but go viral anyway, getting retweeted and reblogged everywhere by UFO fans.

But a well-witnessed, well-investigated CE1 case? Rarer than a straight-talking politician or oil executive. Sure, if you look at popular UFO websites that list UFO reports, there are dozens and dozens from all over the world, posted by witnesses. But follow-up to get additional details to make an evaluation, such as direction of movement, where the UFO was in the sky compared with other things, and even an accurate time? Forget it. Onsite investigation? Impossible. Referral to one of the few reliable UFO investigators who lives nearby the witness, to allow proper investigation? Can't, sorry; privacy of witnesses is guaranteed.

So what we have in ufology today is the maintaining of a high number of UFO sighting reports, but a decrease on information content of the cases. Public attention surges when UFO stories in the news go viral, but critical thinking goes out the window.

Part of this is because no one person is viewed as someone who can speak for ufology today. Following the death of Allen Hynek, no one was easily identifiable as someone to take his mantle. (Not even Philip Mantle.) Not Stan Friedman, not Jerome Clark, Mark Rodeghier, not Jenny Randles, not Kevin Randle, not Bill Birnes, not any other of the dozen or so who might (or might not) fit the bill.

(Similarly, who speaks for debunkery? After Phil Klass passed away, is it now Phil Plait? James Oberg? James Randi? Bill Nye? Even Larry King can't decide who is an authority and whom to have on as guests to debate UFOs.)

Poor MUFON and CUFOS, the few remaining doggedly determined UFO groups. They're hanging on, with declining revenue, losing staff and trying desperately to carry on with serious UFO study, when UFO fans have not the slightest interest in that.

Ufology is greatly fractured. With thousands of UFO-related web pages, everyone (and anyone) can be an expert. Anyone can tell you the "REAL Truth" about the aliens' presence on Earth and their nefarious dealings with the government and how Obama is an alien and why I've been chosen as their emissary and why alien hybrids have pale skin and why aliens will arrive in 2012 and where the underwater alien bases are in the Gulf of Mexico and why the hundreds of orbs in my photograph are mental images of aliens and not dust particles and why some UFO craft disguise themselves as airplanes and why chemtrails are not just contrails and why this blog is passing through into another dimension....

The Ottawa UFO Crash

According to the newspaper account that appeared in The Welland Tribune, dozens of people in and around Ottawa saw something flash across the sky and smash into the river. They heard an explosion that was described as thunderous.

Witnesses said that the object appeared to change course a number of times and that there were lights on it rather than it glowing. Some thought it might have been a small aircraft in trouble and because of that, emergency search and rescue crews began to probe the river with sonar and underwater cameras.

A doctor, Dirk Keenan, who was out sailing with friends said that the object was a very bright light in the east, close to Quebec. He thought it was like the headlight of a car that was descending rapidly, leveled off, and then disappeared.

On the next afternoon, about 1:30 p.m. the police and rescue workers located an object about thirty feet below the river’s surface. The current prevented divers from entering the water. A police spokesman told reporters that the size and shape suggested it had not come from an aircraft and that it could be a rock or logs stuck together and that no one had come forward with any sort of photograph or video of it though there might be a reason for that. Some claim that the video footage had been confiscated bu authorities.

To this point it isn’ know if the object found under water is the same as that people reported or something that has been there for a long time. No aircraft were reported missing and it doesn’t seem that this was a piece of terrestrially launched space debris. In other words, this is the classic unknown.

But it turns out that one of the newspaper stories mentioned Chris Rutkowski, a UFO researcher in Canada, that I know. So I asked him what he knew about the case. He wrote that, "I can tell you what I know about the Ottawa ‘crash,’ although I’m not convinced anything really crashed!"

He said that he had called the MUFON representative in the area, but she hadn’t interviewed any of the witnesses. He said that some people who had seen the police searching the area stop the search after the mass was located, and some of them thought a cover-up was now in place because there was no new information. There was speculation that the US, here meaning the CIA I suppose, was now somehow involved, though Rutkowski didn’t subscribe to those ideas.

He wrote to me, "From piecing together what info I have, here’s what I think happened: Lights were seen in the sky and loud booms were heard along the Ottawa River. I spoke with a reporter, and he said that it was his impression that the lights were seen ‘towards’ the other side of the river from where the witnesses were located. (It’s a very wide river at that point.) I do not think anyone saw anything ‘crash’ or (more likely) ‘splash’ into the water. It was assumed that falling lights must have been on a falling object and that since the rive was in that direction, whatever was falling must have fallen into the river."

Rutkowski did learn that some people had been setting off fireworks that might well account for the booming because sound carries well over water. He didn’t know what the object that had been detected was, writing, "Who knows? A car? Jimmy Hoffa? The Ottawa River is like the one that flows through my city, and they’re always pulling things out of it."

Rutkowski said that the key would be to find the two witnesses who might have seen the lights smashing into the water. "Until then, we have no convincing evidence that a UFO crashed in Ottawa on July 27th."

UFOs and the Old Geezers

Many times when someone posts something somewhere that is ridiculous or meanspirited, I just ignore it. Ignorance is in great supply in the world of the Internet and all you need to do to see that is take a look at the comments appended to news articles. Ignorance of the UFO world is overwhelming.

Just recently the RRR Group posted a picture that my wife took at the MUFON Symposium in Denver and claimed that those of us on the Speakers panel were a bunch of geezers who had failed to solve the UFO question. It was time for us to get out of the way and let those younger, brighter and more enlightened take over. We had our chance and we failed.

Except we haven’t failed. We solved the problem. We have the proof that some UFOs are alien spacecraft and we can make that point over and over. The evidence for that is overwhelming, but not unlike Galileo, who failed to convince the church that there were moons orbiting Jupiter, we get a bunch of people who "refuse to look through the telescope."

Old geezer Ted Philips, being interviewed during th MUFON Press Conference made an important point. Talking about the four thousand or so landing trace cases that he had investigated, he mentioned that once he had a description of the craft, he could predict what the landing traces would be. In other, more scientific words, we had reproducibility, meaning the same things observed under similar circumstances and the predictability that comes from repeated observation. This was science at its best and it’s something that the debunkers, the skeptics, and apparently those in the RRR Group ignore.

Old geezer Chris Rutkowski (seen here) reviewed, at length, a longitudinal study of twenty years of UFO reports in Canada, looking for trends. Here again was a statistical study that provided information about what people saw and how it was identified, if it was identified and what it meant when the mundane, or what some would call the rational, did not explain the events. These were unidentified sightings that suggested alien visitation.

Old geezer Stan Friedman (seen here) diverted from his normal "Flying Saucers Are Real" talk and spoke about the possibilities of interstellar travel, something the youngsters, the debunkers, and the skeptics will always reject out of hand. The distances are too vast and we just can’t travel that far with our chemical rockets.

Well, of course, a chemical rocket would quickly run out of fuel, but other methods of propulsion have been discussed everywhere from science fiction to science conventions... and ways to generate the necessary energy have been discussed. Methods that aren’t beyond our current technology so that when the opposition says the Voyager spacecraft will take 70,000 years to get to the nearest star, they don’t mention that it is not accelerating. Any trip to another star will require constant acceleration until a point is reached that the craft will have to begin to slow down, but the round trip time drops considerably.

Old geezer Bruce Maccabee (seen here) examined the pictorial evidence for UFOs and there are some cases in which there are but two possible solutions. The object is either alien or the case is a hoax. Maccabee mentions the McMinnville, Oregon case which he had investigated for decades and he finds no evidence of hoax... which, coincidentally, is the solution offered by the Condon Committee, the University of Colorado scientific study of UFOs. The object in the photographs matches no known earthly-built craft and was, or is, therefore good evidence of alien visitation.

I, myself an old geezer, would point to the Lubbock Lights photographs taken by Carl Hart, Jr. in 1951. The four known pictures show the objects in V-shaped formations over the town and are either of some unknown craft (which could be of earthly manufacture though no one can point to it) or they are faked. Donald Menzel, that paragon of scientific thought and rationality, for no reason what-so-ever, declared the pictures to be fakes. Carl Hart, Jr., told me in an interview a number of years ago that they weren’t faked and he doesn’t know what they were.

I could point here that the Air Force has been less than candid in its investigation of UFOs, slapping on ridiculous solutions just to be able to label the case. For the 1957 sightings in Levelland, Texas, which involved multiple witnesses, the UFO interacting with the environment, sightings by law enforcement officers and even the suggestion of a landing trace, the Air Force decided the sightings were weather related and the culprit was ball lightning... at the time, even science denied the existence of ball lightning. No one then seemed to catch the irony of using something that didn’t exist to explain the sightings of something else that didn’t exist, at least according to those in the Air Force.

If you are interested in the duplicity of the Air Force, let me point out that according to their nearly day long investigation, their representative spoke to only three witnesses. Later, when Major Don Keyhoe suggested that there were nine witnesses, the Air Force all but called him a liar.

But the truth is that both Keyhoe and the Air Force were wrong. There were many witnesses in thirteen separate locations. Many of their stories, gathered before the publicity and within minutes of their sightings were strikingly similar, including the electromagnetic effects on their vehicles engines, radios and lights.

What all this means is that we geezers have solved the UFO question. We know what is going on and we use our experience to provide answers for those cases that we can and we suggest that some of these UFO sightings are the result of alien visitation. I believe that we know what is going on with the cattle mutilations, a subset of UFOs, I’m fairly certain we know what is happening with crop circles, another subset, and the jury seems to be out on alien abduction, though we have some very interesting terrestrial solutions.

And now we have people... scientists saying the evidence is anecdotal but, of course, that is a way to reject it without having to examine it. We have people claiming that after 60 or 70 years of investigation we have no answers, though we have many solid answers, and we have one group waiting impatiently for those they consider geezers to die off and get out of the way of the new breed who can bring a fresh approach to the problem.

I ask, just what will this new breed do differently? Use the Internet for their research? Rehash the cases that have been solved and involve us again in messes like the Allende Letters, which was explained thirty years ago? Or maybe the RRR Group will support more experiments like those two clowns in New Jersey who proved that witnesses report accurately what they see and that UFO investigators provide answers quickly...

Old geezer Marc D’Antonio told me that he knew the objects in the New Jersey case were either Chinese Lanterns or flares after examining the tape of the lights. The only people fooled were the news media who haven’t conducted much in the way of investigations in thirty years and the employees of a Ford dealership. The two "twenty-somethings" who conducted the "experiment" lied to the media, lied to the researchers, interjected themselves when the publicity began to slip, and then drew conclusions that were not based on the research but on their own personal bias. So much for the new life interjected into UFO investigations and research by the young, hip, enlightened youth.

Here’s the bottom line in this. We know the answers but we can’t get the scientists, the Air Force, the media and the debunkers to look through the damned telescope. They know there are no such things as alien visitors and any evidence that shows otherwise must be manufactured.

And now we have to put up with those enlightened individuals who believe that we have failed in our mission the last several decades. But no, that’s not where we failed. It was in the public relations war. The bad guys had access to the media who are too sophisticated to believe that creatures from another world were smart enough to get here from there. They’re too sophisticated to believe that an average person is smart enough to distinguish between the mundane and something extraordinary. They’re simply too sophisticated to look through the telescope.

So what is the answer here? Simply do a better job communicating the results of investigations to the press. Make sure that everyone knows when an explanation is the result of a desire for a specific truth rather than the culmination of an investigation. And to get those who refuse to finally look through the telescope.