Close Encounters

UFO’s They are back. Only they are now called UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), What next the return of Big Foot?

From a WaPo article.

The shift — from kooky conspiracy theory to object of congressional inquiry — has accelerated in recent years, fueled by the revival of a Pentagon unit to investigate the sightings.

And in the next six weeks, a report is due that is required to make public everything the government knows about UFOs.

The report, which will be released sometime in June, was mandated by an obscure provision in last year’s $2.3 trillion appropriations bill and requires the director of national intelligence to work with the secretary of defense on a “detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence” gathered by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and the FBI.

And on 60 Minutes last Sunday

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33 thoughts on “Close Encounters”

  2. See the source image

     

    the hill:

    The House on Wednesday passed a bill to establish a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, earning relatively little support from Republicans as GOP leaders sought to quash a bill negotiated by one of their own members.

    Lawmakers passed the bill in a 252-175 vote, with 35 Republicans joining all Democrats in support.

    [continues]

  3. not just not acknowledging what might be in space and not wanting to report phenomena, back on earth some congress critters don’t even recognize an insurrection when they see it, live it and it’s documented. 

     rep. tim ryan calls them out about it

  4. a glimmer of hope that bipartisanship still lives in critterville

    wapo:

    Senators reach bipartisan deal to overhaul USPS finances,
    tighten accountability requirements

    An identical version of the legislation is advancing in the House,
    where it is said to have enough support to pass

  5. more hope glimmers on the horizon

    Today we learned that the NY Attorney General’s office is pursuing a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization in New York, in addition to the civil investigation and the criminal probe led by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. Former personal Attorney to Donald Trump Michael Cohen joined Joy to discuss.

  8. Well….  Close Encounters of the Third Kind has always been one of my favorite movies.
    I find it silly to think that this planet is the only one with life on it in this universe.  Of  course…  religious people will deny anything that’s reported….  can’t have their world view of being made in the image of God shook up.

  9. The question is how long have we Earthlings been under observation?  Are we an experiment? Are we the result of a UFO traffic accident that they did not want to clean up?  Will they ever take far away the bad people and leave us alone?  Or are we just a hologram that has a coding problem?

  12. Some one else’s POV on the topic: 
    Jonathan V Last at The Bulwark

    Look, I can quote you the Fermi Paradox backwards and forwards. If you want to nerd really hard, we can talk about the technological challenges of interstellar travel. In order to travel between the stars, a civilization would need to either:

    Master FTL technology, or

    Be able to warp space/time

    (Or possibly do some sort of magic with quantum entanglement, though this is a much longer shot. Don’t @ me Peter Hamilton.)
    Which is to say that I view the alien explanation with a great deal of skepticism and I am not prepared to go full Little Green Men.
    But on the other hand, we only have a couple options here. The decision tree goes like this:

    There’s nothing there; all of these sightings are hoaxes, or tricks of light, or explicable by natural phenomena; or

    There’s something there.

    And if you take the something branch, then you have to pick from a list of highly unlikely explanations:

    Secret technology being run by the American government.

    Secret technology from a foreign government.

    Secret technology from a non-state actor.

    Aliens.

    I don’t know about you, but of those four, it’s not clear to me which explanation would be the most worrisome.
    Okay, I lied. I know exactly which explanation would scare me most.

  13. Hark While I croon a verse In praise Of the universe. The universe is quite good-sized,  And is, I think, well organized, Containing as it does, a slew Of stars and planets. Comets too Occasionally whiz about And dodge and circle in and out Among the clustered nebulae. They scare the dickens out of me, But I suppose they know their stuff And are expert and quick enough To keep from bumping or colliding With other worlds. But I’m residing At present on the planet, earth, And it does not arouse my mirth To see these reckless comets fly Around as if they owned the sky. It’s much too dangerous in a crowd, And really shouldn’t be allowed. Yet tho there’s nothing to prevent Bad manners in the firmament, The heavenly bodies, generally, Are well behaved and courteously Avoid all quarrels and disputes- Tho when they have them, they are beauts. As to the universe’s size, It’s rather large than otherwise, Containing stars and galaxies And satellites of all degrees. And some are dim and some are bright, But all are lighted up at night,- Mostly along the Milky Way- A quite remarkable display. Some scientific fellows hope By peering thru a telescope To chart the heavens and name each star Of all the billions that there are. More sensible I think it is Just to sit back and let them whiz Along on their accustomed track Around and round the zodiac. For since they are not bothering me I think it’s best to let them be. And that is all I have to say About the universe today.    —The Poems of Freddy the Pig              By Walter Brooks

  14. Why are UFO’s back?, Because all the current discussions have been repeated  over and over and over. It is like your favorite album skipping at your favorite phrase repeating it over and over and over. The sad problem is we are too stoned to get up and change the music.
    UFOs change the music at least for a day.
    Jack

  15. Speaking of changing the music,
    what do you think bout Prince Harry and Megan? 
    Jack

  16. All i know is that 600 years is too long for the English crown to be held without military challenge.  The Saxe-Coburgs have grown soft

  17. Notice that no one observes these “spaceships” in actual interplanetary space, just over the ocean.  They must have “cloaking tech” but turn it off in our atmosphere🙄

  18. bink, good point

    sturge, perhaps it’s not us who are the holograms but are the UFOs.  could they not be just projections of some kind?

  19. guess i’m not the only one asking that.  here’s the same question in a dec. 2020 article from mysterious universe:

    But what if at least some instances of these phenomena are not anything real or tangible at all? What if they are merely holograms? This is something I had never really given much thought to before, yet the theory is floating around out there and it is an interesting one, that some cases of unexplained phenomena just might be holographic projections of some sort. Is there anything to this? Let’s take a look.
    A very intriguing article first brought this unique possibility to my attention, which was originally published in the March, 2003 issue of Fate Magazine and entitled “Holograms and High Strangeness.” One of the highlights concerns a report from the country of Argentina, where in August of 2002 there was a flap of UFO sightings and subsequent cattle mutilations, which caught the attention of many a UFO researcher in the region. [talks about more sightings here]
    […]
    Some witnesses explained that the air would adopt a sort of charged quality, like the air before a violent electrical storm, or that their hair would stand up on end as if being affected by static electricity. Obstacles seemed to be nothing to the strange creatures, as they would merely sort of melt around anything that got in their way, like they were ghosts. Some researchers who looked into the matter speculated that the sightings could have been some sort of holographic experiment being conducted by the nearby Naval Base.
    The Fate article furthers the mystery of potential holograms by fast forwarding to to April of 1982 in Cuba, when a procession of locals suddenly witnesses a flash of light in the sky that formed into what looked like a religious figure, the Cuban version of the Blessed Virgin called la Caridad del Cobre, hovering over them. 
    […]
    How plausible is any of this? And why would anyone really want to do it? With the religious images in particular, the idea of a device to produce incredibly realistic images of religious figures is not exactly new. The Pentagon has supposedly long considered using a holographic “Face of Allah” weapon for the purpose of projecting a realistic deity in order to incite fear, awe, and confusion on the battlefield for psychological warfare purposes. Playing on an enemy’s superstitions and religious beliefs would be nothing new to the military.
    […]
    In the Gulf War, the United States was very interested in using such holograms to cast “an angry God” onto the battlefield, ….
    […]
    … In Japan, for instance, there was a demonstration of such strange technology in 2006, in which  Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) used lasers to project real three-dimensional images in mid-air. The device used lasers that were fired in rapid successive bursts to create various shapes over it, during which time the heat emitted from the equipment caused the air to expand and crackle with an effect like a series of tiny explosions, as well as creating an ozone-like smell.
    [continues with more examples]

  22. Im going to wager that there is but one universe and only one planet with life of any sort living on it.   Anybody wanna bet?

    Sky’s the limit.

  23. Thinking about a piece of music I really liked and then realized I liked it from my Junior year in High School. (groan)  It’s still good.

  24. Would an other-worldly invasion cause humans to unite?   Nah.   Maybe they would take Marjorie Taylor Green back home, though.

  26. My first Vonnegut was the big wazooo…….Slaughterhouse 5………in a modern fiction class…..caught me by surprise, I must say.    

  27. Yeah… Slaughterhouse 5 was my introduction to Vonnegut too.  I was a sophomore in high school and the English teacher wanted us to read it before it got banned at the end of December. I really liked that teacher.

  28. I think I worked through most of Vonnegut’sbooks before I got around to reading Slaughterhouse 5. Of all of his books it is one I’ve never reread. Don’t know why. 
     I think Mother Night is his best book.
    And Welcome to the Monkey House as the most likely to be canceled, a troublesome book IMO
    That last opinion based on my rereading it a couple of years ago.
    Jack

  29. I am now rereading some of my Ursala LeGuin collection. probably one of the better writers of the late 20th century especially if you are interested in exploring the human condition.  Just finished her short novel The Word for the World is Forrest.
    James Cameron should have used it for his Avatar movie instead of that lame screen play he did use. 
    Jack

  30. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
    ― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

    “All people are insane. They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.”
    ― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

  31. Assigned reading aside, I think I only read  Kurt Vonnegut and Art Buchwald when I was a teenager.  

  32. patD – I submitted something if you need it some day, and, I think the links worked. 

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