Posts Tagged ‘UFO’
“Who you gonna call?”*…
Let’s say your house is on fire, or overrun by a gang of psychotic raccoons. You don’t hesitate—you take out your phone, and you call the fire department, or animal control, and then firemen/raccoon-wranglers are promptly dispatched to your home. These are well-established protocols, essential to the maintenance of a mostly not-on-fire, feral-animal-free society.
But what about UFOs? What about extraterrestrial beings? Faced with some six-eyed slime-being rooting through your trash, or a spacecraft idling above your backyard (provided it’s not Elon Musk’s “nuclear alien UFO” again), who exactly would you think to call? And what would whoever you called do, when you called them?…
Find out at: “If You Find Aliens, Who Do You Call?”
[Picture above: source]
* Ray Parker, Jr., theme from Ghostbusters
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As we let our fingers do the walking, we might recall that it was on this date in 1953 that the Air Force declassified and released a file in which Lt. David C. Brigham, the pilot of an F-84 “Thunderjet,” reported that a small, metallic, disc-shaped object made a controlled, sweeping pass at the American jet fighter-bomber over the Sea of Japan. “It closed rapidly and just before it would have flown into his fuselage, it decelerated to his air-speed almost instantaneously, the pilot reported. “In doing so it flipped up its edge at approximately a 90-degree bank. Then it fluttered within 20 feet of his fuselage for perhaps two or three seconds, pulled away and around his starboard (right) wing, appearing to flip once as it hit the slipstream behind his wing tip fuel tank… Then it passed him, crossed in front of him and pulled up abruptly, appearing to accelerate, and shot out of sight in a steep, almost vertical climb. It did so more sharply than a plane could have done. Its maneuvering throughout was always clear and precise.”
F-84 “Thunderjet,” ca. 1952
HAPPY MOZART’S BIRTHDAY!
“The truth is out there”*…
Photographer Robert Ormerod took a road trip from Roswell, New Mexico to Area 51, exploring our fascination with the unknown by immersing himself in the lore extra-terrestrials… and in the lives of those who seek them.
More of his photographs, with his commentary, at “Inside the everyday world of UFO hunters.”
* tagline of The X-Files
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As we deliberate the Drake Equation, we might send ideal birthday greetings to Marsilio Ficino; he was born on this date in 1433. An Italian scholar and Catholic priest, he was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. The first translator of Plato’s complete extant works into Latin, he was important in the revival of Neoplatonism, and was in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day. His Florentine Academy was an attempt to revive Plato’s Academy, and influenced both the direction and the tenor of the Italian Renaissance and thus the development of European philosophy.
Ficino was also an astrologer, and is credited with having inspired the Tarot card deck– the Tarot of Marseilles– that was the pattern from which many subsequent tarot decks derive.
Marsilio Ficino, from a fresco painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Tornabuoni Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
“Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history”*…
50+ examples: “Evolution of Horror Movie Poster Designs: 1922 – 2009.”
* Robert Anton Wilson
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As we prepare to shriek, we might recall that it was on this date in 1947 that a secret executive order issued by President Harry Truman established Majestic 12, a secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials empaneled to investigate UFO activity in the aftermath of the Roswell incident— or so many UFO conspiracy theorists believe. The purported documentary evidence of Majestic 12 has been judged fake by both the FBI and the Air Force (e.g., here)… but then, they would wouldn’t they…
“I have had UFO experiences, and yet, at the same time, I can easily be convinced that none of it is true”*…
In 1995, as part of the Walt Disney Company Presents series (that was hosted by Michael Eisner, doing his not-very-successful best to channel Walt), Disney aired “Alien Encounters.” A documentary that opens with footage of “an actual spacecraft from another world, piloted by alien intelligence,” and the pronouncement that “intelligent life from distant galaxies is now attempting to make open contact with the human race,” it only aired once.
* Frank Black (AKA Black Francis, of the Pixies)
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As we look to the skies, we might spare a thought for Gertrude Stein; she died on this date in 1946. An American ex-pat, Stein was an author, poet, and memoirist (The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas). But she was probably most impactful and is best remembered as a hostess and mentor to a generation of writers (e.g., Hemingway,described her salon in A Moveable Feast) and artists (e.g., Picasso) in Paris, where– “the mother of us all”**– she held court for forty years.
Carl Van Vechten’s 1935 portrait of Stein
** The Mother of Us All was the title of a Virgil Thomson opera for which Stein wrote the libretto. And while the subject of the opera, Susan B. Anthony, certainly deserves the epithet, so, many have observed, did its author.
Kids say the darndest things…
Random panels from the newspaper comic Family Circus combined with random quotes from German philosopher, poet, composer, and philologist Friedrich Nietzsche at Losanjealous’ Nietzsche Family Circus.
As we savor sagacity in saplings, we might might recall that it was on this date in 1973 that future President (and then Georgia Governor) Jimmy Carter filed a report with the International UFO Bureau (and later, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena [NICAP]), describing an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) that he and 10-12 others had seen outside a Lion’s Club meeting in Leary, Georgia, in October 1969. It was, the filing suggested, “the darndest thing I’ve ever seen… very bright [with] changing colors and about the size of the moon…”
Carter pledged, during his 1976 Presidential campaign, to open the government’s UFO files if he was elected. In the event, he demurred, citing “national security.”
The signature page of Jimmy Carter’s UFO report (source)
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