No,
this isn’t what you think. It was something that I noticed in a Billy Cox
column which addressed Tom Carey’s appearance at the American University. Cox
was discussing the purpose of the panel discussion and interviewed adjunct
professor John Weiskopf
who asked his honors students to consider the impact of ET themes
on popular
culture. Cox wanted to know if he had any regrets about asking Carey to appear.
That started a discussion about Carey and his revelation about the Roswell
Slides at the discussion and also reminded me of another lecture in front of college
students that was somewhat similar.
 |
| Display in the International Museum and Research Center in Roswell. |
Some
sixty-five years before that, on March 8, 1950, a lecture about flying saucers
was held at the University of Denver. This lecture became part of the mythology
involved in the Aztec UFO crash and was given by a “mystery man” who was later
identified as Silas Newton. Frank Scully, in Behind the Flying Saucers:
The
negotiations between the faculty and the spokesman for the lecturer took months
to arrange, as the speaker wasn’t keen about being “evaluated,” but when the
science students voted 100 per cent to hear the lecturer, he acquiesced. Of
these, 80 per cent said, after the lecture, that they were “impressed.” By a
show of hands 60 per cent indicated they believed the man knew what he was
talking about, that he obviously was a member of the group of scientists he
described as having examined space ships which had landed on this earth from,
in all likelihood, another planet. More,
they believed the mystery man of science had the best answer to the secret
propulsion behind these flying saucers and that it was neither combustion nor
jet.
William
Steinman added a little to this in his UFO
Crash at Aztec, published in 1986. He identified the instructor of the
class as Francis F. Broman, who taught a basic science course. Steinman wrote
that Broman had actually invited George T. Koehler to give the lecture, but Koehler
said that his friend knew more about the subject, so it was Newton who gave the
talk.
Steinman
also mentioned that an intelligence officer had contacted Broman to learn more
about the lecture. When Broman said that he hadn’t believed the tale but that
he didn’t speak for everyone in the class that seemed to satisfy the officer. The
call was terminated.
William
E. Jones and Rebecca D. Minshall took up the investigation and reported their
findings in the International UFO
Reporter for September/October 1991. While they suggest that Steinman had
almost everything right about the lecture, they reported that the name of the
class, rather than Basic Science was Science and Man.
And
they report, “The purpose of the lecture was to provide the students with an
assertion against which they could apply the critical thinking methods that
Broman was teaching.”
They
also noted, “Broman found Newton’s claim about the crashed saucer unconvincing,
as did many of those who attended his lecture. Further, Newton failed to live
up to an agreement to allow his story to be critiqued using the methods being
taught by Broman. As a result of statements made later by Broman about some
aspects of the lecture, Broman was reportedly threatened with a lawsuit by the
author of a book entitled, About UFOs.
The dispute was settled out of court.”
Well,
I’m not surprised by the threats of a lawsuit. That seems to be standard
operation procedure in the world of the UFO. But the important points here, are
the facts about the lecture, including that the professor and the students
found Newton’s claims and evidence unconvincing.
So,
fast forward 65 years.
Back
to the original question. Did he have
any regrets about asking Carey to appear? According to Billy Cox:
‘Mr.
Carey surprised attendees and participants alike that evening at a near full
capacity event (170 people) with his disclosure,’ Weiskopf stated in an email, ‘but
many attendees whom I spoke with afterwards (including my students) said that
they were quite skeptical of Tom Carey’s claim. Mr. Carey got what he wanted,
his disclosure eclipsed much of the substantial discussions by the other three
panelists who have remarkable careers and credibility. The lead teaser for
WTOP’s radio coverage the following morning beginning at 6 a.m. contained three
points, the most dramatic being Tom Carey’s leak.’
Tom
Carey was, as you say, ‘the odd man’ out, but that was deliberate; that was
intended,” Weiskopf went on. “If we present knowledge and experience of the
same or identical frequencies, then we are only limiting ourselves.” He
preferred instead to reflect on how the course forced his students to stretch,
which he says manifested during a session with the speakers before the public
event that evening: “It was a remarkable luncheon to watch my honors students
question, challenge, and in some cases, retort or refute statements that the
panelists made in their books/articles/interviews. In my course during the book
discussions, my students were ‘less than kind’ in discusssing Tom Carey’s
co-authored book Witness to Roswell. At the luncheon, two students told Mr.
Carey face-to-face that they did not like his book nor did they believe it.
They told him that his logic and conclusions were faulty.”
Weiskopf
said it wasn’t his job to tell the class what to think. “When I taught this
course I never colored any book, film, television show or blog with my personal
beliefs or what I thought about the extraterrestrial issue, either in general
or specifically. I allowed my classroom academic environment to unfold as
objectively as possible allowing the students to ‘conclude, be confused or
indecisive or become staunch believers’ on their own after examining and
evaluating all of the data for 14 weeks.”
Bottom
line: “I would hope that other universities and colleges would take the same
bold and courageous step that American University did in supporting this
extremely important event.”
The
whole article can be seen here:
And
here’s my point. Not much has changed in those 65 years. In 1950, the students,
according to the best accounts, were not impressed with Newton. The reason was
probably the lack of evidence. It was heavy on speculation and if you reject
the Aztec crash, then it was heavy on fabrication.
With
Tom Carey, the students, according to the best accounts, were not impressed
with Tom. The reason was probably the hyperbole of his remarks and the lack of
evidence. Of course, today, we know that the major problem is that the source
of his information, those slides have been uncovered and that the body shown is
not alien.
The real
point is that we all need to look at the evidence with a little bit more skepticism,
we have to be more diligent in our research, and we have to reject this will to
believe. If we don’t, some 65 years from now someone might be writing a similar
story (and hey, if I’m around, I’ll do it.)
47 comments:
The "will to believe" is a big problem in UFOlogy. What's needed is more skepticism, more demand for verifiable evidence by serious people who aren't infected with the "will to believe."
Although Carey will spin this as having taught at that university, or some such ridiculous claim. Sort of what Hoagland has done with his NASA lunchtime speech. I think it wrong to give such stupid people such a legitimate forum, even if it is to essentially show how stupid they are.
The blog article states: "And here’s my point. Not much has changed in those 65 years. ..."
If you please Dr. Randle, I beg to differ -- We have YOUR Research, we have YOUR Blog, and more is known about the Roswell crash today (as well as a few other major UFO encounters) than was known in March of 1950.
Of course, we all still have a good ways to go. But proceed forth we will. (And as always, thank you so much for continuing on ...)
Tom -
This is unnecessarily harsh. There is no evidence that Tom Carey will claim he taught at the university, nor is it proper to call Tom Carey stupid. He is a smart individual that got caught up in his own belief structures, a mistake that anyone could make.
The city of Lourdes in Southern France takes in about 5 million tourists a year based on fairy tales about the Virgin Mary. That doesn't seem to offend people nearly as much as people who believe in Raelians though. Funny.
Ufology is a cultural spectacle that includes as many different belief systems as there are people who engage in it. It is what it is. Some people choose to get worked up about it, some people choose to devote their lives to ridiculing these folks. I've found the practice of skepticism to be a sort of religious zealotry in its own right. And just as ugly.
@ Tom
I think Hoagland is hilarious. I love listening to his lectures. Who cares its all fiction? He's not swarming central Mesopotamia with religious fanatics and chopping off heads of people who dare to disagree with him is he? In the balance of things, Hoagland is an utterly harmless quixotesque figure tilting at imaginary geometry. Who. Cares.
Seriously... why do you guys get so worked up about this? What is the existential threat to Western civilization? Richard Hoagland or religious fanaticism?
Let's all take a deep breath and stop caring so much what others choose to believe.
Kevin -
Ok, that was harsh.
Which leaves 2 possibilities of what happened;
1 - Intelligent people were fooled by the evidence.
2) Otherwise intelligent people were caught up in sort of an "Alien Fever" zeal.
Or, am I missing a third possibility?
Gurkenstein -
I'm not saying there is not at least an entertainment value for people like Hoagland. I guess hoaxes just irk me to no end. And I fail to see how these things advance ufology.
@ Tom
I understand. I used to feel the same way. I try to take a more nuanced approach these days. Hopefully that's an indication I'm maturing intellectually. Time will tell.
Tom -
To be generous because "it don't cost nothing" as Belushi said in Animal House... I'll take option No. 2...
Hi Kevin, nice article.
I pull two particular things out of it:
One is how eerily similar the two events are to each other --both speeches with seeming inside information to back it up,etc. I also agree that the way the modern one was handled is refreshing.
The second thing is that I would like to take this opportunity to again point out that:
A group of SF writers, all with ties to the military, (a SF writers club kinda), publishing in Arthur Rapp's SpaceWarp, a Sci-Fi Publication, were the first to publish information about a craft coming down, in late 1949.
The Wyandotte Echo, and then the Kansas City Star published a slightly altered story, based on the same information, which was nearly identical, and of which went from Coulter to Mr. Fick, to others who changed the story again, giving it to Mr. Scully, etc.
This is all history. I have provided plenty of links in the past, as well as on my blog, that shows this.
It has always seemed as though the first version of the story would be the most reliable version.
Isn't that generally true?
Well, the first version was the one told in that Wilkie Conner article -in SPACEWARP- of Dec. 1949/Jan. 1950.
On Universities hosting authors:
This is actually pretty common and not exclusive to UFOlogy topics. Tenured profs can invite anyone they wish to their classes without concern from their Deans or Dept. Chairs.
I once took a semester course from Dr Jack Kasher, UNO professor emeritus of physics and astronomy who is also an ETer and MUFON chapter head. This was decades ago. Kasher held open symposiums for students on the topic of UFOs. He had no opposition from the university at all.
I think you will find the majority of college students a bit skeptical about aliens in general. Perhaps a growing trend in the educated Millenial Generation.
I recently asked a very smart 11year old what he thought of Roswell and if he ever heard of it before. He said yes, but that he was not convinced that an alien crash happened or that they exist at all. I said "what about the debris and the witnesses"..he laughed and said "so they found some junk, doesn't mean there are aliens". This is a kid that I have never mentioned ET or saucers to be before.
The younger generation is not that interested in this topic.
Hi!
That 11-year old is wise beyond his years :)
I think that the ETH is based on "will to believe", and it is the "ET" idea that seems to appall most people.
It's absurd even to me and I've had a lot of first-hand experience.
Let go of the "it's aliens from another planet" thing and call it "anonymous perpetrator" instead...
What does it have to do with this topic? Roswell is based on the assumption that "UFOs = extraterrestrials", and the case is in my opinion utterly pointless unless you try to prove that the air force is lying about something.
@Stefan -
Indeed your "anonymous perpetrator" fits squarely into what Vallee has maintained for years now. Cheers!
Stefan:
"Roswell is based on the assumption that "UFOs = extraterrestrials", and the case is in my opinion utterly pointless unless you try to prove that the air force is lying about something".
This is precisely what all the Roswell ETHers are saying (and have said ever since 1980). You cannot postulate a 'Roswell is ET' thesis without also saying, or implying, that the USAF knows the great truth and is covering it up.
Once you admit the debris/bodies were recovered by the military, the inevitable question arises: what became of them? And if they are still in official custody, who knows about it, etc?
So yes, if ETs were recovered, the USAF is indeed lying about something.
I'd not call them alien, I'd call them "tricksters". I'm always interested in those stories about crashes & retrievals - I don't think they are ET but if someone can make a strong point to show that they might be, I'm open to that idea. I don't want to zero in to one particular interpretation because it makes one get serious tunnel vision, ignoring evidence that could have been important. But...
This Roswell-slides thing, for me it's not a disaster but an important part of the greater picture; there's a vital clue hidden within this mess. In fact this roswell-slides business was so tricksterish, it almost seems as if.. I'm hesitant to say that, but: who gained the most from this? The phenomenon. For many UFOlogists it's another disappointment, for the sceptics it's another nail in the coffin of UFOlogy, but the "anonymous perpetrators" get away once again and leave nothing but a cloud of mystery, disinformation and shattered hopes. They keep doing their thing, "laughing all the way to the bank". No matter how you interpret it, "they" get away every single time and their success rate is 100% in my humble opinion.
In my mind there is no doubt that some branch of a militarized organisation in the US is deeply involved in some monkey business here. Who profits most? The phenomenon, again. Our heads are tuned away, looking for evil conspiracies (that might be true, no question), and again the "aliens" keep doing their thing. They are like the spider in the corner.. right in front of your eyes but moving ever so slowly so you don't notice it.
"...the speaker wasn’t keen about being “evaluated,” but when the science students voted 100 per cent to hear the lecturer, he acquiesced. Of these, 80 per cent said, after the lecture, that they were “impressed.” By a show of hands 60 per cent indicated they believed the man knew what he was talking about, that he obviously was a member of the group of scientists he described as having examined space ships which had landed on this earth from, in all likelihood, another planet."
* * *
"And here’s my point. Not much has changed in those 65 years. In 1950, the students, according to the best accounts, were not impressed with Newton."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I don't know about that Kevin. If, after Silas Newton's lecture, 80% said they were "impressed," and 60% "believed the man knew what he was talking about," it would appear that the majority of students attending that lecture 65 years ago were somehow persuaded by Newton's talk that what he said was probably legitimate, despite what we know now, that Newton was a conman.
If anything, the reaction to the slides fiasco was much more strongly against the promoters claims once the placard was deciphered. That makes me wonder what percentage of people who thought the slides might show an alien body would still believe that if the placard hadn't been deciphered. Now very, very few people believe the slides show anything but a child mummy as a result of the RSRG's work.
To me, what that shows is that in contrast to 65 years ago, along with the rise of the internet allowing a kind of skeptical "open source" investigation, the current generation is much more willing and able to discern false claims than they were over six decades ago because they have better resources to do so.
Which is a good thing.
So, much has changed since then, at least in terms of these two comparative examples.
Steve -
Sorry I didn't make it clear... the quote comes from Behind the Flying Saucers which is not exactly the most accurate source. Scully was playing up how successful the lecture had been, but Broman, interviewed later suggested that most of the students were unimpressed with what Newton had to say.
Their reaction seemed to be mirrored in those who heard Tom Carey some 65 years later. The students weren't overly impressed.
"Bob Koford said ...
A group of SF writers, all with ties to the military, (a SF writers club kinda), publishing in Arthur Rapp's SpaceWarp, a Sci-Fi Publication, were the first to publish information about a craft coming down, in late 1949."
This may be true as it pertains to the Roswell/Aztec mythos, but in terms of ET craft recovery stories it is false.
The earliest germ of the crash-retrieval story comes from the mid to late 19th Century. One such tale was traced by Nigel Watson over 20 years ago to a Peru newspaper from 1878. This story was a rewrite of several earlier newspaper tales that had appeared over the decade prior in Latin America.
All these stories probably find their genesis in France, 1864, where Henri de Parville aka Francois Peudefer wrote a story which is possibly the origin of all modern crash-retrieval tales called Un habitant de la planète Mars.
All the elements are there, geologist or archaeologist discoverers, location in the Americas, strange hieroglyphs, alien corpse and anomalous vehicle.
UFO researchers who ignore the folkloric aspects of these tales make a grave mistake.
Thanks @ChecoBeeper Yes, I was referring to what became the Aztec case.
However, your point is important. For one thing, the thought of "alien" hardware would fail in some manner, leading to a mishap, has been pronounced doubtful by many. Stories going further back in time should cause one's ears to perk up.
Of course we could go way back -to tails of goddesses arriving in clam shells. That's a crash disk story if I ever heard one ;)
Anyone who reads through thousands of UFO reports will come across some which hint at a sort of vulnerability seemingly inherent in the movements (the system behind these movements) of the light/s, object/s or craft/s around the sky.
People seeing a 'falling leaf' manoeuvre, who think that the aircraft (or whatever it is) looks like it is in some sort of trouble.
People report 'erratic' and 'zigzagging' movements, which I have seen myself. Although the UFO moves in a manner suggesting intelligent control, and ultimately purpose, there is also an imperfect appearance to what you are watching. And, looking back now, I can well imagine what I saw - in the uneven zigzagging and more erratic cases - falling to the Earth, under certain unpreventable circumstances.
Therefore, from my own observations and from reading similar sightings by others(*), I say that UFOs falling to Earth is not at all unlikely.
* One witness compared the movements of the UFO across the sky to the movements of 'a wounded animal'.
Daniel, interesting.
Do you mean like one of their already erratic movements, i.e., zig-zagging, etc., occurring too close to the ground (one example)causing the miss-hap?
@Bob Koford -
"For one thing, the thought of "alien" hardware would fail in some manner, leading to a mishap, has been pronounced doubtful by many. "
Indeed - Kent Jeffries concluded, as a pilot, that as civilizations advance and their technology too, that reliability goes up, not down.
Aliens who are said to be anywhere from 50,000 to 1 million years in advance of our own technology seem to crash a bit too often for my taste. Lightning takes them down...Radar takes them down...they collide with each other, or they are just bad pilots. None of that makes any sense.
If the material at Roswell was indestructible how was it broken into the thousands of pieces that were supposedly spread out over a vast area?? The stories are all complete nonsense. Only a fool would believe such rubbish but you can't argue with the tinfoil hat crowd, everything's a cover-up or conspiracy.
@Brian Bell
The Space Shuttle was the most advanced transportation system ever built by man, and it failed twice.
Humans have been sailing the high seas for thousands of years, yet ships still sink.
The only sure thing about technology is that it will occasionally fail. This is not to say that the Roswell debris was an alien spacecraft - I suspect it was a set of radar reflectors from a balloon, but that doesn't rule out the possibility of a UFO ever crashing, anywhere. I see no reason to assume UFOs are crash-proof, missile proof, or have perfect navigation 100 percent of the time. I doubt any form of transportation is completely invulnerable to mishap, because the world has never seen such a thing.
We can expect that any vehicle which is capable of developing great speeds and accelerations will make use of very high energy fuels, etc. It is reasonable to deduce that a faster transportation system will be more dangerous in case a failure happens. Consider the walking gait: in case you fall, consequences will probably not be severe. If you are running and you happen to fall, chances to be harmed are increased with respect to walking. This reasoning can be extended to a plane crash, in which consequences can easily be fatal. A corollary of this reasoning is than if the vehicle is too fast and too energetic, construction materials, no matter how good they are, will be destructed anyway.
Regarding other claims of “nonsense” from negative people here, we don’t really know whether there were really so many UFO crashes, or only a few of them. Theories regarding why they would have crashed are also guesses.
Even if we have got a considerable number of UFO crashes, a consistent explanation would be that we have a very huge lot of UFOs navigating through the atmosphere. This has some consistency with the abduction scenario, in which a purportedly massive procedure is being carried under our noses, to abduct millions of humans. That would require thousands or tens of thousands of flying crafts constantly navigating and working in the atmosphere. In such scenario, the loss of one or two crafts is more likely to happen, and may even go unnoticed or declared irrelevant by aliens in charge.
Yes, I know that the abduction theory is uncomfortable for many UFO researchers, but it is fairly good in the sense that it provides an explanation on why the heck those grey dudes came here.
WDKingston asked:
"If the material at Roswell was indestructible how was it broken into the thousands of pieces that were supposedly spread out over a vast area?? ….."
Good question, and one that needs to be addressed regardless of whether the material was "indestructible" or more conventional. Any complete explanation for the source of the debris field needs to include an explanation for the physical process by which a large number of small pieces came to be distributed over the New Mexico prairie. I have yet to see a physically realistic explanation in the case where the source is assumed to be a balloon.
The explanation when the source is assumed to be an unconventional flying object (as defined by Paul Hill) has been discussed here in greater depth within the last few years. The answer is: it was probably broken into thousands of pieces by using other pieces of the same material, one way or another.
Roughly speaking, there are two distinct ways this is commonly accomplished.
The first way is to use two discontinuous pieces of the same material and bring them together with an excess of kinetic energy. (i.e., take one piece and smash it into the other.) When two pieces of material with the same strength are brought together with sufficient energy they each inflict damage on the other in equal amounts. This is the process used, for example, to cut and polish facets onto diamond (the hardest naturally occurring material). So if you had two balloons, two airplanes, or two Arcturian scout-ships and crashed them together with enough velocity, you would produce "thousands of pieces" regardless of the intrinsic strength of the construction material.
The second way is to use a single continuous piece of material and put energy into it with a distributed force field. When the force field intensity exceeds the tensile strength of the material, it fails. Examples of such force fields would be gas pressure, EMF, or magnetism. A common example would be a pressure vessel pumped up to increasingly higher internal pressure. In effect, the material on one half of the vessel is working against the material on the other half. This results in a so-called "hoop stress". Once a distributed stress field exceeds the yield strength of the material and a rupture occurs at one point, the force field immediately starts re-distributing itself; this creates "stress risers" which concentrate the stress even further, and causes ruptures to occur nearby the original site, which cause additional ruptures, which cause additional ruptures, etc, in a chain reaction. If the re-distribution of the stress field propagates at a speed faster than the speed of sound in the material, the material cannot move out of the way fast enough, and the material will rupture at multiple locations, simultaneously. With a stress field due to mechanical forces like pressure, this can be difficult to achieve, but with a stress field due to electricity/magnetism, the re-distribution can take place at the speed of light.
I'm guessing you've never seen an Aluminum foil capacitor that got charged up to too high a voltage, but it will blow apart into a bizillion pieces with a bright flash and a loud pop. Since a couple dozen or so witnesses reported the debris as resembling a metallic looking foil, it doesn't take much imagination to postulate this kind of a disruption mechanism.
This isn't nonsense, rubbish, a cover-up or a conspiracy; it's applied Physics.
@CommanderCronus -
Yes agree on the human aircraft and ship defects, pilot error, and resulting disasters. BUT we are talking about what ET'ers claim to be a super intelligent advanced race of very smart aliens who they presume are hundreds of thousands of years (or millions) in advance of our technology. The claim that aliens crash as much as humans do because of very common mechanical or pilot error makes no sense for a race that can bend space, time, and gravity and travel across the gallaxy only to crash frequently in the desert.
@Larry -
You assume the debris field was a spacecraft. It's been discussed here also that if it were a balloon it was the radar target foil that dragged on the ground, shredded, and blew around producing a visual effect of a large field of junk. The debris field was never as large as people now claim which is (they think is the size of a 747 impact area) which Brazil nor Cavitt nor Marcel ever claimed. Look at Brazil's very first news interview. It was not big at all.
I don't think anyone knows how large the debris field really was, or even whether a lot of the debris fell elsewhere and was never discovered. The ONLY things we know (and even then not with certainty) is that some was recovered and that it had various shapes, sizes and structures. We don't know whether it was tightly packed or whether there were large gaps. It all so much relies on unreliable testimony decades afterwards plus the small amount printed in the contemporary newspapers. There are simply NO accurate figures on anything. For all we know, more of the debris drifted, or was blown, off the ranch during the time before it was retrieved than remained afterwards.
There was an engineer called Robert Galganski who years ago went into all sorts of complicated maths about it (in the Int. UFO Reporter) including double integrals and other equations to try and prove what the debris was not (but not what it actually was). Who ever said there were 'thousands', 'hundreds' or even 'tens' of pieces anyway? We just do not know.
We can even postulate, if we so desire, that long before the USAF got there, the surviving ETs had a spare vehicle, recovered most of the wreckage, and flew off with it back to their home planet.
Perhaps THAT is what those nuns saw! Perhaps.
Bob,
The instances I saw of lights making those sorts of manoeuvres were all low down in the sky over the centre of London. They certainly didn't look like they were in danger of falling. The point really was that they didn't somehow give the impression of being invulnerable.
It wouldn't surprise me, at all, if there were ways to cause them to fall to Earth, or, if very occasionally there was some sort of mistake from inside/failure to accommodate hostile factors in the environment.
(I suspect that what I saw were objects or aircraft, partly because looking at one quite close up through binoculars - the shape behind the light was the top half of a circle)
Brian Bell wrote:
"The claim that aliens crash as much as humans do"
That claim is only yours, based on nothing more than your own belief.
Okay Folks,
This has strayed way off topic. I was pointing out that these college lectures, some 65 years apart, had some interesting parallels, not a discussion of how widespread the debris was or who did what to make the thing crash, whatever it might have been.
A quote from Budd Hopkins:
All beliefs and no miracles
vs.
All miracles and no beliefs
If an audience has to be "convinced", the evidence is very very weak, naturally. Yes, if something can be convincingly debunked in less than two days, well, that's just dirty. But it's fair. If you think you have an idea what a certain thing is, try to falsify your idea but seeking evidence that contradicts your expectation, and evaluate it. That has not been done in case of the Slides, that's why some people got a bloody nose.
Roswell & Aztec: How is this still a thing? Might be true UFO crashes but who knows at this point. There are other cases that are much more important IMHO.
You know what would be AWESOME? if the Roswell slides research group would analyze the 2007-2009 Kumburgaz videos & maybe even the famous "alien interview" video which for some reason didn't get even 0.01% of the attention those silly Mummy slides got.
KRandle points out a very interesting aspect of UFOlogy, the everlasting re-invention of the wheel; reoccuring patterns of social behavior and snake oil salesmen.
Who am I to tell you what to do, but as an "abductee" (what a terrible term) I'm still hoping for experienced researchers to break free of this paralyzing ETH fixation.
What we know is that the phenomenon is interconnected to other paranormal phenomena and ESP, and that it is highly deceptive. Duh, that's old news (Operation Trojan Horse, passport to Magonia etc were published.. when?), but nah, let's keep re-inventing the wheel forever and ever and ever.
Maybe Roswell and Aztec, and many other cases, are Red Herrings. If you have a highly intelligent master trickster that is consistently lying and deceiving people, would you follow his tracks in the snow, or would you expect a trap at the end of the tracks?
PS: I'm not saying that Mr Carey is a snake oil salesman - that comment was meant to describe a general aspect of the scene.
You have to wonder how the degree of strangeness would factor into the students reaction. If one of the lectures was on the Kelly-Hopkinsville or the so called Flatwwods Monster case. Would the students have laughed the lecturer off the stage? These cases would stretch even the most hardcore ETer's beliefs. It isn't my intent to bring those cases up for debate just to ask if high strangeness would play a role in the student's reaction.
Kevin:
You are correct that discussion of the debris field is way off topic--but perhaps a good topic for a future post?
I have spent a lot of time in New Mexico, over the years and I've seen a lot of paper and plastic bags that are least as fragile as balloon materials being blown around by the wind and stuck in the bushes and cactus. I've never seen the wind create a debris field from this material. I doubt the process is physically possible and has ever been observed by anyone, but I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise by data. Generally, I would expect that a wind strong enough to repeatedly tear aluminum foil and rubber into progressively smaller pieces would also be strong enough to scatter the pieces away from their point of origin by miles. I just thought this group would be knowledgeable about the arguments that have been made over the years (both pro and con)--whether any experiments were ever done to either support or falsify the premise, etc.
@Neal Foy -
I tend to think the credibility of the speaker and his/her ability to present factual and balanced speculation (with high professionalism) on a phenomenon would go a long way in such a presentation even if the subject were highly strange or the audience skeptical.
@Larry -
So on your next visit to NM take a few people and secure permission to use some land. Take material similar to Mogul in sufficient quantity and spread it out over an area. Wait a few days and return to observe your findings. Do it in July. See what happens.
Larry wrote:
I have spent a lot of time in New Mexico, over the years and I've seen a lot of paper and plastic bags that are least as fragile as balloon materials being blown around by the wind and stuck in the bushes and cactus. I've never seen the wind create a debris field from this material. I doubt the process is physically possible and has ever been observed by anyone, but I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise by data. Generally, I would expect that a wind strong enough to repeatedly tear aluminum foil and rubber into progressively smaller pieces would also be strong enough to scatter the pieces away from their point of origin by miles.
And yet what was finally shown in Gen. Ramey's office was NOT lots of little pieces of foil and rubber balloon, but an INTACT weather balloon and LARGE pieces of torn foil/paper, including mostly intact rawin (radar target) panels.
I have reconstructed the photo scene inside a 3-day ray tracer and confirmed that there is only one ML-307 radar target when reassembled, and the balloon would fit inside a typical shoe box.
In fact, Ramey and his minions repeated emphasized all they had were the remains of a single, typical weather balloon and radar target, as sent up every day all over the country.
Also highly notable as missing is the string that would have been needed to attach the radar target to a single balloon or string of balloons.
This has been conflated in the present day, first by the AFOSI debunkers in 1994, into the remains of a multi-balloon, multi-rawin Mogul, specifically "Flight #4", which turns out to have never existed if you are at all honest in examining the real Mogul documentation.
The multi-balloon, multi-rawin target Mogul in Gen. Ramey's office is a debunker myth, provable from the photos themselves.
What happened to all those tiny strips of rubber spoken of by Mack Brazel, and why did he never mention an intact balloon, such as found in Ramey's office? After all, he also said it was NOTHING like those two other weather balloons he had previously found on the ranch.
Very simple. They never existed; it was a story he was coerced to recite, after being held in custody at the base (provost marshal Easely admitted they held Brazel under armed guard), and then by the military to a press conference at the Roswell Daily Record. This all happened a few hours AFTER Ramey had put out the single weather balloon/radar target story in Fort Worth, killing the initial base press release of having captured a real flying disc.
It is also highly significant that Brazel specifically denied finding ANY balloon rigging, yet a real Mogul crash would have left several hundred yards behind of twine and string.
I remind you all, again, this is about the similarity between what happened at the University of Denver and the American University, as well as the reactions of those who were present.
Kevin:
You remark that Silas Newton once gave a lecture at the University of Denver, and that Tom Carey, 65 years later, gave one at the American University. Both involved crashed flying discs (or saucers). Has anyone else, to your knowledge, ever given a lecture at an educational institution in the US about crashes and retrievals?
Plenty of people, such as nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman and others, have lectured about UFOs, but has anyone, apart from the two above, ever lectured specifically about crashed discs (a la Stringfield)? And if so, what was the audience reaction? Remember that you cannot have a crash AND retrieval without implying a massive official cover-up & conspiracy.
David:
One fact, to the best of my knowledge, that has been overlooked is that we are now told officially by the AF in 1994 and later in 1997, that the crash was a Mogul Balloon project. Now, the heart of Project Mogul was the electronic listening devices or radio equipment. At that time in history radio equipment consisted metal cases containing circuit boards with vacuum tubes, resistors and capacitors, batteries and microphones.
Now this is heavy stuff, not likely to be blown around by the wind. Where was it? I have not read any reports from people like Marcel (who was a HAM radio operator with a FCC license who knew radio equipment well) or even Sheridan Cavitt state anything about any type of radio equipment being found, radio equipment that was the heart of Project Mogul.
Strange isn't it? After all these years the talk is about weather balloons, radar reflectors and little I beams with funny symbols, but nothing about what Mogul was all about, the radio equipment. If it was a Mogul crash the radio equipment would have been right there in the debris field. Marcel and Cavitt would have seen it and it would have been end of story.
Larry -
This has nothing to do with the topic at hand. We'll get to Mogul some other time unless everything is absolutely tired of it...
Kevin:
A while back you wrote, about the topic at hand:
"...not a discussion of how widespread the debris was or who did what to make the thing crash, whatever it might have been."
Whatever it MIGHT have been, eh?
After 25 years of telling us almost continuously that it was an ET vehicle, are you now having, shall we say, certain doubts? Please tell us more, as your present and former colleagues do not seem to be having such doubts. I accept that people's true views are susceptible to change and are not always what they seem.
CDA -
I would suggest that this is not part of the thread either... instead, I was attempting to remain neutral in the posting so that we didn't drift off topic. If I had taken a different direction, then I could expect a great deal of hand wringing from those on the other side of the fence. As the man said, "Sometimes a good cigar is just a smoke..."
Kevin:
Agreed and understood. The post was off topic.
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