An Asteroid and Two Comets, Oh Boy!

Picture of Halley’s Comet against the Milky Way in 1986. Courtesy of NASA and the Kuiper Airborne Observatory.

2013 is shaping up to be a very interesting year astronomically. This coming Friday there is an extremely close (about two Earth diameters) fly-by of an asteroid: DA-14. This asteroid will make the closest pass of any object of its size known to science in recent history. Prior to the last 25 years or so, astronomers did not have the optical capability to find such objects.  This object is similar in size to the asteroid that caused the Tunguska event in 1908 which leveled thousands of square miles of forest in Siberia. As to DA-14 hitting the Earth, I advise checking out this NASA video: http://www.space.com/19432-close-approach-of-asteroid-2012-da14-fear-vs-fact-video.html. I hope NASA is correct in their calculations! I think they are.

In March Comet Pan STARRS will be making its debut from out of the Oort cloud and starting in October astronomers expect Comet ISON to put on quite a show for Northern Hemisphere viewers. The first thing that is interesting about all three of these objects is that they were unknown to mankind until recently. Asteroid DA-14 was discovered by astronomers in Spain in February 24, 2012, Comet Pan STARRS was discovered on June 6, 2011 by astronomers in Hawaii at the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (STARRS), and Comet ISON (International Scientific Optical Network- the name of the Russian group making the discovery) was discovered on 21 September 2012 by Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok in Russia.

In past years many comets were known to come back into the inner solar system at periodic intervals. Probably the most famous of these comets is Halley’s Comet which has whizzed past the Sun every 76 years. It may not make the same splash anymore since the Sun vaporizes some of the gases in each flyby of our star (most recently 1986) and the comet has been getting dimmer. Comets are on severe elliptical orbits around the Sun and Halley’s Comet is about 35 times the distance the Earth is from the Sun at the farthest part of its orbit. I wonder if comets can accretize or add gases to their masses when they are out beyond the planets or do they just get old? “Accretion refers to the collision and sticking of cooled microscopic dust and ice particles electrostatically, in protoplanetary discs and gas giant protoplanet systems, eventually leading to planetesimals which gravitationally accrete more small particles and other planetesimals.”  The planets are on far more circular orbits around the Sun than comets.

So the three celestial objects mention above (Asteroid DA-14, Comet ISON and Comet PanSTARRS) were all discovered recently. Is this because of vastly improved telescopic capabilities? Most definitely! But is it possible that something else is going on here? To my knowledge it is fairly unusual for there to be two visible to the naked eye comets in the space of one year. In 2012 in the Southern Hemisphere Comet Garradd was visible and in 2011 Comet Lovejoy. Comet Elinen turned out to be a big disappointment in 2011 and did not produce the expected coma or tail. Comets are extremely unpredictable as to how bright they will be because it is unknown how much of the trapped gases within a comet will be released when they come closest to the sun. Apparently there is another comet visible in the Southern Hemisphere this year, the Comet Lemmon, a green comet.

What if (this is pure speculation) our Solar System is moving through an area of the galaxy which has more than the usual amount of debris (rocks and icy particles= asteroids and comets)?  Currently most of the larger known asteroids orbit the Sun in an area between Mars and Jupiter and all of the periodic comets have those elliptical orbits which take them out beyond the planets into the Kuiper Belt. If our Solar System is moving into a more densely populated area of the galaxy does that put Earth in a greater danger of collision? In my entire life I have only seen two visible to the naked eye comets and if both ISON and PanSTARRS put on a show this year that will be quite unusual. Last year I was privileged to see a fireball in the beginning of March and then became much more aware of the fireball phenomena, a small asteroid that comes into the Earth’s atmosphere but bigger and slower than the common shooting star which might be an object the size of a grain of sand.

The other issue about comets I’d like to touch upon here is a confluence of science and folklore. In a previous post I mentioned the theory of panspermia. It was there noted that a heat analysis of the dust from Halley’s comet “matched that of bacteria and nothing else”. Viruses and bacteria, particularly anaerobic bacteria, can live in space. The appearance of comets in the heavens has been linked throughout history with plagues and extinctions on Earth.  Most notable are the appearance and partial break-up of Encke’s Comet in 1910 (closest approach to Earth October 27 1914) and the Pandemic Spanish Influenza of 1917 through 1919. It seems the Earth went through the dust cloud left by Encke’s Comet. I’d like to recommend the excellent and thorough article on this subject by Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D., and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Ph.D. in the Journal of Cosmology.

So can we expect to be hit with more space rocks and ice? And is there a plague on the way? Of course, the answer is yes and yes, but when is the better question.

02/22/13 Watch this! http://vimeo.com/59571509 PanStarrs and Lemmon in the Southern Hemisphere. PanSTARRS is coming up to the Northern Hemisphere in March.

04/21/13 Update:  A few weeks ago Kate Valentine had Neil deGrasse Tyson on her UFO Show. She read a question from me asking him if it were possible, in view of the increasing number of so-called “February fireballs”, that we were moving into a more active part of the galaxy. He answered in the affirmative. Today, Facebook friend, Andrew Ackerley, brought this Argentinian video to my attention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?client=mv-google&gl=DK&hl=en&v=nTdbROLB5pQ&nomobile=1 Clearly we seem to be seeing more of these things. Or are we just more aware? You be the judge.

 

Life as we don’t know it

Life as we don’t know it…

If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black…it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white. ~William James

At this point in time on this planet Earth millions of people are wondering if we are alone in the Universe. They think about this when they go out at night and look upward at the glistening jewels of the Milky Way, our galaxy. They ponder it occasionally as they lay in bed waiting for sleep to find them. They eat up science fiction movies about alien invasions and whisper how their brother, aunt, neighbor or co-worker saw an unidentified flying object last summer.

As of January 17, 2013 there are 859 confirmed planets and 1235 candidate planets orbiting other Suns in our galaxy. Of these, 60 or so are Earth-like rocky planets.  NASA scientists working with the Kepler telescope recently said there may be 50 billion planets in our Milky Way alone. Some of these scientists are searching for a Goldilocks planet, a planet just the right size and temperature to harbor life as we know it. But what about life as we don’t know it?

The new Hubble Extreme Deep Field is the deepest view into the Universe we have. From what has been observed we know that there are at least 176 billion galaxies in the Universe, and maybe even close to a trillion galaxies in the observable Universe when the Hubble study concludes. What about the unobservable Universe? Our galaxy is not considered to be a huge galaxy only small to medium, so if there are 50 billion planets in our galaxy and more than 200 billion galaxies (maybe a trillion) how many planets does that likely provide. Fifty Billion times two hundred billion, my mind boggles at this point. Is it possible that life as we know it exists out there in some (many) of these places? But what about life as we don’t know it?

What about extremophiles on Earth? These are examples of life on our planet of which most of us could not conceive. There are 10 foot long tubeworms at the bottom of the sea living in absolute darkness on thermal vents shooting out highly pressurized water in the temperature range of 240° Fahrenheit. Before seacraft were developed that could plummet into the ocean’s pressurized and crushing depths, most if not all oceanographers would have told you that conditions at these deep thermal vents could not support life when in fact they are teeming with life. And so what about life as we don’t know it elsewhere in our solar system, our galaxy, our Universe, the Multiverse?

There is a theory called panspermia which contends that life did not originate on Earth but was transmitted from elsewhere in space. In this theory, life is dispersed throughout the Universe by meteors and space rocks containing microbes and/or amino acids and colliding with planets bringing the building blocks of evolution for life as we know it. Scientists have evidence of a heavy bombardment of earth by meteors about four billion years ago. There was probably a another planet in the solar system located between Mars and Jupiter in the orbit of the current asteroid belt. The destruction of this planet could have been the cause of the heavy bombardment.

German scientists sent bacterial spores mixed with red sandstone into space on a Russian rocket and those spores were returned back to earth and proved to be still viable. Bacterial spores can remain viable for as much as 250 million years under adverse conditions on Earth. On Earth, in the Arctic regions, the reasonably common permafrost is known to harbor bacterial spores and eukaryotic cells which are viable over thousands of years. When comets pass the sun they bring with them icy particles from beyond the major planets. An analysis of the heat radiation from dust particles from Halley’s Comet matched that of bacteria and nothing else, so the evidence for panspermia is mounting. By extrapolation so is evidence for life as we know it outside our solar system. But what about life as we don’t know it?

Well some of the answer to the question lies with one’s definition of life. Many define life as respiration. Respiration is ” the process by which organisms exchange gases, especially oxygen and carbon dioxide, with the environment. In air-breathing vertebrates, respiration takes place in the lungs. In fish and many invertebrates, respiration takes place through the gills. Respiration in green plants occurs during photosynthesis.”  But others including myself define life as consciousness, particularly self awareness.

There is a prevalent theory that the Earth, our Mother, is a living being. It is called the Gaia Hypothesis and I subscribe to it. But what if the heavenly bodies are conscious beings? Now we are getting closer to what could be part of life as we don’t know it. Vaguely related to this, because of their ubiquity in the Universe, are dark matter and dark energy which astrophysicists believe compose the majority of the Universe. Could the dark matter exist on a different dimensional plane or at a different frequency unmeasurable by our instrumentation? Is dark energy the life force of the Universe? I cannot answer these questions, but I do like to think about them. For if life is consciousness and consciousness is non-local then life is everywhere in the Multiverse and beyond.

Why do I write about this you may ask? There are at least two reasons. The first is to change the minds and hearts that harbor antiquated paradigms about the Earth being the center of the Universe and the only place capable of nurturing life. The second reason is because when I think about this I feel so ecstatic I want to sing along with Dominico Medugno (below). If you think about this seriously ten minutes a week, I’ll bet it will change your view of your life for the better and your place in the Universe forever.

Basil Bristow, who has channeled several beings with great wisdom has emailed me the following message from Pretorius, who is speaking through him currently, regarding my blog post above:

January 20, 2012

Today I heard from a reader:  Millions of people on Earth are wondering if we are alone in the Universe. They think about this when they go out at night and look upward at the glistening jewels of the Milky Way; where, as of January 17, 2013, scientists report there are 859 confirmed planets and 1235 candidate planets orbiting in our galaxy. I wondered if Pretorius would care to comment; here is his reply:-Basil

The scientific community on Earth; while they are to be admired for their advances during the past 100 Earth years, in reality are still learning their A.B.C.s which is akin to children in 1^st Grade.  However, advancement is advancement and I again congratulate them.  But, I must also add that what is done with their newly acquired knowledge, and how well it is administrated, remains to be seen.  Indeed, it is as if the Earth stands on the brink of self-destruction (as has happened on Earth in the past) or if common sense becomes the watchword.

Now, regarding the postulations regarding Earth-sized planets that could maintain life in both your own Milky Way galaxy and in the Universal cosmos in general.

First, as I have said many times, mankind must get away from considering “life” as life that requires air, water and food … as is needed by the population on Earth.  If that word “life” is to remain your criteria for defining “life” throughout the Universe then your consciousness will remain extremely limited.

“Life” as construed by the Universe is that which contains the essence of The Supreme 1 and, of course, that includes everything.  Whether that essence needs air, water and food to survive is immaterial – what is material is that the essence has the “breath” of life given to it by The Supreme 1 – and, I assure you that everything in the Universe has received that “breath” of life.

To answer the question as to whether or not the human creature that lives on Earth has “Brothers and Sisters” living elsewhere in the Universe then the answer is yes, it does.  There are countless areas in the Universe where such “life” exists.  It would seem scientifically logical that, providing Earthly human-life does not annihilate itself, then “Earthlings” may one day meet colonies of those brothers and sisters.  However, if I may quote an Earthly phrase – “Don’t hold your breath,” for that day is, without a doubt, far, far into the future.

However, I must add a qualification to that statement because many of the human-like societies elsewhere in the Universe are more advanced spiritually, scientifically  and in general knowledge.  But still, many other human-life societies are not as advanced as you on Earth.

I do not make a practice of predicting the future but it would seem to be logical that at least one or two of those more advanced societies would visit Earth before Earthlings visits them.  Indeed, such visitations have occurred many times in the past and Earth’s humanity has benefited spiritually, physically and intellectually from those visits.

It is spiritual growth that will define Earth’s humanity – not scientific  growth (although that is most certainly important!) for it will be the spiritualness of Earth’s humanity as a whole that will define its longevity.

Thus, if I may, I urge you all to go within and bring forth the love and peace that has lain imprisoned in the human breast for so long.  Let it free and bring new “life” to your Earth – not just life that requires air, water and food, but life which blossoms on its spirituality.

Until next time,

Pretorius

Update 04/14/13 Shadow Biosphere

 

The Answer, Or How I Would Save the USA Ecologically and Economically

Simple pencil drawing of a cross-section of the train.

I totally admit that it sounds absolutely vain to have a title of this nature, but many good solutions can come from common folk who think deeply about a problem. I encourage you, dear reader, to make suggestions on how to make this idea work better. My intention is to put America to work and end dependence on fossil fuel and thereby clean up the environment and make the air cleaner to breathe.

America needs better mass transportation. we lag behind much of Europe, Japan and China (and probably other places too) with our train system. Those places have high-speed bullet trains. I think we should go them one better. If America had better and more attractively priced public transportation we would drive less and create less pollution and use less fossil fuel.

My idea is for the government, in conjunction with the train companies, to build a high-speed train to connect America’s hub cities. This would be no ordinary train. It would be solar-powered by panels set on top of the tube through which it would move. This could be a similar application to solar roadways that I cited in an earlier blog post.The train would be set about one-third into the ground with the tube built around it and it would have a modified octagonal shape with rounded corners. It would have only one track and might work by the maglev system. The most famous maglev train is in Shanghai, China.

Sitting the train in a ditch and surrounding it with a tube would make it safer and faster as inertia could be modified within the tube through a suction like effect. There would be no collisions possible due to the train being inside the tube. No animals would be killed on the track because the train would be totally enclosed. Because it is only in a ditch and not in a subway tunnel the cost would be lower to build.

Thousands of American workers would be employed improving the grassroots economy of the country. Building the train system would provide construction jobs. There would also be maintenance jobs and service jobs running the complex rail system. There would be hundreds of engineering jobs in creating the plans and execution of this idea as well as thousands of peripheral jobs in train station services. Using the solar-powered train would lower the dependence on fossil fuels. It is a win-win situation for the country. No longer would we lag behind China, Japan and Europe.

This rough idea that has excited my imagination came to me all in one piece in an open meditation.

Update 11/28/12: Thanks to Stephan A. Schwartz via the SchwartzReport: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/9702521/310mph-floating-trains-unveiled-in-Japan.html

The first photo in this article bears a resemblance to my drawing especially in the area of the furrow in which the train runs.

 

 

Fukushima, the Media, and the Reality-based Worldview

I have not wanted to write about Fukushima, because I have nothing good to say. My grandmother used to tell me “If you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.” Sadly, I have not entirely lived up to her words, but I have tried. The Japanese people have much to overcome in their current situation and I do not wish to make their lot any worse than it is, and that would be difficult to do in any case.

I have been following closely the situation involving the nuclear reactors which were affected so disastrously by the earthquake off the coast of Japan last spring. The site from which I have gotten most of my information is Arnie Gundersen’s Fairewinds Associates. Mr. Gundersen and his wife have been steadfastly reporting the bad news that is horrible to hear, but it is bad news that we must force ourselves to hear. His is a wake-up call to all Americans that nuclear power is inherently horribly dangerous and that danger once unleashed is complete and lasting annihilation. American nuclear reactors are mostly old and past the date which they were originally intended to be taken off line. This adds to the danger as leaks are more likely from old reactors. The single piece of good news is that solar power has surpassed nuclear power in energy production in the United States.

In a nutshell, the Fukushima nuclear disaster is far from being over. The site is still red hot with nuclear particles. Tokyo itself, 148 miles away from the Fukushima reactors, should probably be evacuated. The level of contamination of random ground samples in Tokyo would be considered hazardous nuclear waste in the US.  The officials of TEPCO (Tokyo Electrical Power Company?) who run the Fukushima facility and the Japanese government have been lying to their citizens and to the world. TEPCO is even burning nuclear waste and putting hot particles in the atmosphere that we all breathe. They have become mass murderers as many innocent people and animals around the world who unwittingly breathe those particles will die horrible deaths from various cancers. This is not supposition, this is fact.

The US is in collusion with the cover-up of the facts. Please read the following articles:

http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/the-radiation-warnings-you-wont-get-from-the-mainstream-propaganda-machine_04022012

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/fukushima-radiation-spreads-worldwide.html

I am extremely disappointed in Hillary Clinton in that she signed an agreement to the effect that the US would continue to import goods from Japan without subjecting them to testing for radiation.

Why has the media chosen to ignore the obvious danger coming from Fukushima and why do the government and various states continue to champion the building of these reactors, these machines of certain doom, although there are other cleaner energy options such as solar, wind, water and geothermal energy available? Many European countries whose populations may be more awake than Americans have begun the phasing out of all nuclear power from their borders. In fact the nuclear industry is greatly tax subsidized by the American taxpayer: See this Alternet story by US Senator Bernie Sanders and Ryan Alexander.

The Fukushima situation is worse than the disaster of Chernobyl in the Ukraine. Take seven minutes out of your busy life to look at the legacy of Chernobyl here. Notice that Chernobyl is estimated to have caused nearly a million cancer deaths worldwide.  Now realize that the Fukushima disaster will continue to cause cancers for the next 100,00o years. Yet our mass media outlets continue to ply us with vacuous stories and little to no information on this very real menace.

Please keep checking these internet news resources for valuable information, it may be the most important thing you can do for yourself, the environment and generations to come.

Fairewinds Associates

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

The SchwartzReport

The Fukushima Diary

Update 4/24/12:

Mutations in Michigan-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AupyLDGHKk

Hunger strike demonstrations in Tokyo-

http://www.timeout.jp/en/tokyo/feature/4968/Tokyo-hunger-strike

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hunger-Strike-for-the-Future-in-Tokyo/255751377792291?sk=info

Doyle Plillips sends this update: http://soundcloud.com/flashpoints/flashpoints-daily-newsmag-05-6

& http://blog.imva.info/world-affairs/4495

 

What I Saw…

Those of you that know me know that I am an avid sky watcher. I literally follow Kate Valentine’s advice to “Keep your eyes on the skies.” Likewise Don Ecker’s command “Keep your eyes pointed upward.” On March 5, 2012 that advice paid off. I was walking around a large pond in north central New Jersey with a friend between 7:30 and 9:00 p.m. and at around 8 p.m. I saw an amazing blue white fireball in the WSW sky careening toward Earth. It was moving more slowly than a typical shooting star. It was also very big being considerably larger and brighter than Jupiter which was also visible nearby. It had a short thick tail and the head of the fireball seemed to be rippling back toward the tail like molten metal.
I was so startled that my mouth would not form words. I simply hollered and pointed. My friend said she thought something was wrong with me and continued to look at me rather than in the direction of my pointed finger and so did not see the celestial spectacle. I expected there to be a thud or shaking of the Earth but there was none.
I continued to be excited, thinking that perhaps the countryside might be set ablaze by the object when it hit the Earth but there was no blaze. I wondered if it might be possible to discover any wreckage but caution and discretion prevented me from sallying forth into the underbrush.
March 5th is a special anniversary for me and I had been hoping for a sign from the heavens for some time. Perhaps this was it. In any case I began conjecturing as to what the sighted object might be. It was not a comet though its shape resembled one because comets remain constant to the naked eye in the night sky and do not move perceptibly in a matter of a minute or less. They do not generally fall to Earth and if one does we can all bend over and kiss our butts goodbye.
That night I searched the internet for news of a fallen spacecraft such as a satellite or UFO. No word of a problem on the space station, so the astronauts were fine. I decided to write a sighting report to both NUFORC (Peter Davenport’s National UFO Reporting Center) and MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) because what I had seen was unidentified to me and in hopes that I might get some information about what the object was. I was not disappointed. The following day I received both a phone call and an email from MUFON’s Ken Pfeifer. And many thanks to him! He furnished me with the photo seen at the top of this post. Apparently what I saw was a fireball and it was seen in five states and the District of Columbia. Am I glad I did not head off to look for the wreckage!

The fireball I saw was probably of a type called a bolide.

Amazingly I discovered that a fireball was also seen over Scandinavia and Great Britain the night before my sighting and it was golden red in color. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/17248971 A woman in Scotland claims she found the meteorite while walking her dog. If so it is worth a decent sum, but I would definitely not sell.

A meteorite also fell through the roof of a house in Norway on March 11th or 12th. http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/2785-meteorite-falls-on-the-roof-of-a-family-allotment-in-oslo

There  apparently have been a greater number of fireballs that fall to Earth every February for the last several decades. They are slower moving than usual “shooting stars” and a lot bigger and brighter. It is theorized that these fireballs come from the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.  This year the fireball season has moved into March as well. Some amateur astronomers predict that 2012 will be a banner year for fireballs, so “keep your eyes on the skies!”

Meteor reporting sites:

http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball2/form2.php

http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com/2000/11/meteor-fireball-report-form.html
Fire ball FAQs:http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/faqf/

UFO reporting sites:

http://www.mufon.com/reportufo.html

http://www.ufocenter.com/reportform.html

Update 04/23/12:

Are these things becoming more common? http://www.space.com/15385-daytime-fireball-california-nevada.html

 

My People of the Year 2011

 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel courtesy Wikipedia

 

OK, so I’m a bit late with this, but I am a firm believer in thinking before speaking or writing. That doesn’t mean I am always able to reflect before speaking, but it is a goal.

On the world stage, Angela Merkel is one of my People of the Year 2011. She is one strong woman and a role model for young women around the world. She was successful in holding the European Union and the Euro together against dreadful odds. Granted, it is possible that things could still crumble.  She is arguably the most powerful person in the world. She presided over the government that made the very intelligent decision to eliminate nuclear power from Germany. Truth be told, I may not agree with all her politics (slowed phase out of nuclear power, for instance) but her success is undeniable.

Related to Chancellor Merkel are the small scale ecological pioneers of Germany, another of my People of the Year 2011. Germany has become a leader in implementation of solar power despite being in a higher latitude (less sunshine) than more likely candidates.

http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/germany-cuts-solar-energy-feed-in-tariff-by-50-in-8-years/

The word ‘ecology‘ was coined in 1866 by the German biologist Ernst Haeckl. Germany is investing heavily in alternative energy sources and they are being embraced by many small entrepreneurs and private citizens. Twenty percent of Germany’s energy came from renewable sources in 2011 and that amount is scheduled to increase. Compare that to only 14.3% renewable in the US.

Freiberg Green City

Biodigester at german pig farm courtesy Reuters

My couple of the year 2011 are also my Americans of the year: Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Astronaut Mark Kelly. They represent what is best in America, both incredibly brave in their personal and public lives. Gabrielle Giffords was attacked by a crazed gunman in Tucson Arizon last January. Six other citizens were murdered at the same time. She has made a remarkable recovery from a gunshot to the brain.

Astronauts represent the most publicly brave persons imaginable. Since visiting Kennedy Space Center in Florida, more than ever before I am impressed by the enormous courage it takes to blast into the vast expanses of space in a relatively small metal vehicle.

As I write this I heard on the news that Arizona Congresswoman Giffords is resigning to work on her further recovery. Best wishes and a big thank you to her.

Congrsswoman Giffords and Astronaut Kelly courtesy Village Voice

Sadly now I must name my worst persons of the year. They are the officials at Tepco who presided over the Fukishima nuclear meltdown, the world’s single worst ecological disaster ever. Just thinking about this makes me sick. While these Tepco bigwigs did not cause the earthquake or the tsunami which followed, they were the folks that managed the nuclear plants, who decided to build nuclear power plants in an earthquake and tsunami zone and not maintain them properly, who obfuscated and lied about the severity of the problem. So now we have a radiation polluted Pacific Ocean, millions of sea creatures have died. More people will die as a result of this “accident” than were killed by the regimes of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot combined. What ever happened to falling on the sword?

 

Ufology This Summer 2011: I’m Sad, Glad and Mad!

This summer has seen several big moments in the field of ufology. The first is a very sad occasion. On August 21st Budd Hopkins, 80, passed on after a long illness. He was a multi-talented artist who was known for his geometric paintings and sculpture. He was also an alien abduction researcher, giving compassionate attention to experiencers for many years though his Intruders Foundation. He wrote a number of excellent books including Missing Time and Intruders which substantiate the phenomenon of alien abduction through relating the experiences of ordinary individuals and finding patterns in them.  I was supposed to meet Mr. Hopkins several times at conferences and at his foundation meetings, but alas, to my great disappointment, this was not to be. Ufology has lost a valiant researcher. Rest in peace, Budd.

New York Times obituary.

On a different topic, (the glad part), ufology has made a wonderful advancement with the release of Break Thru Films documentary “Secret Access: UFOs on the Record” by filmmakers Ricki Stern and Annie Sudberg seen on the History Channel in a 2 hour special on August 25th. It is based upon Leslie Kean’s book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots and 344Government Officials Go On the Record and Ms. Kean is featured prominently in the presentation.  Leslie Kean has had a long history as a clear eyed researcher and investigative journalist who co-founded the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFi) and was a producer with James Fox for the independent film I Know What I Saw. This documentary is a must see for anyone even vaguely interested in the subject of unexplained aerial phenomena. Its irrefutable evidence from sterling sources will turn anyone who is on the fence about the reality and importance of ufology into an advocate for more research into this paradigm shifting subject. In addition to the information also presented in the book, the film had some new data about the Phoenix Lights from NUFORC and a new research project, UFOtog, by special effects master Douglas Trumball.

Finally, I’m angry (mad) about the revelation that author and UFO researcher Philip Imbrogno has completely faked his credentials (bad). It was revealed by skeptic Lance Moody in his blog What the Hell Was That that Imbrogno’s degrees from MIT and elsewhere were entirely bogus. UFO researcher Don Ecker of Dark Matters Radio followed up by checking out his military bona fides. Imbrogno claimed he was a Green Beret in a select group executing missions in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Ecker discovered it was a total fabrication.  This is a real shame because ufology is a study not given credence in all quarters because it is seen as a fringe topic. Any tinge of  dishonesty casts major doubt on any research on which the liar has worked. Furthermore it damages the entire field.

I will end this post on a bittersweet note sending my deepest sympathies and profoundest thanks to Leslie Kean who was both the personal companion of Budd Hopkins and the inspiration for this astounding groundbreaking documentary.

Please follow the links in this post if you want more information on the topics discussed herein.

Leslie Kean and Budd Hopkins

Thanks to les-repas-ufologiques.com

POSTSCRIPT: He says it better than I can.

Thoughts about the Budd Hopkins Memorial

by David Biedny on Tuesday, 11 October 2011 at 16:01

I wanted to briefly comment on the memorial held Saturday, October 8, 2011 for Budd Hopkins, at the 15th Street Friends Meeting House. The weather could not have been better, it was a clear, perfect day for this lovely affair celebrating the life and work of this wonderful man – one I’m proud to be able to call a true friend – and it primarily focused on his work in the art field, clearly demonstrating that Budd was really one of the most respected Abstract Expressionists of the famed New York School.

Leslie Kean started the proceedings with her cool, professional demeanor, even though it was obvious that she misses her partner, friend and love. Any of us would be blessed to have that kind of tenderness in our lives, and something that was plain to see was the depth of respect and love that these two people had for each other, it was both reassuring and inspiring.

His daughter showed slides of many of Budd’s artworks, which were bold, colorful and as direct as the man himself. Another thing that many spoke of was Budd’s sense of humor, and I can personally attest that he loved laughing like few others, and there was some really nice footage of Budd being, well, Budd.

Peter Robbins delivered an eloquent eulogy, describing working with Budd, and how much influence Budd had on his own way of thinking and dealing with others. Randy Nicherson played a video tribute to Budd, full of poignant, heartfelt scenes – there was another video compilation presented towards the end, done by Seth Keal and Charles Miller, with some really heartwarming footage of Budd dancing with his granddaughter. Another picture of Budd, his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter clearly demonstrated the uncanny resemblance of Budd and his daughter’s daughter. He will live on in her.

David Jacobs spoke about Budd’s work in the field of abduction research, but what really came through was how much David loved Budd as a human being and close friend. That was also evident in the way that people spoke about Budd afterwards, small conversations overheard during the subsequent reception confirmed that there was not a bad thought about Budd anywhere near the event.

There are many more details – some interesting UFO folks were in attendance, but they were outnumbered by the artist friends, thankfully – but suffice it to say that any of us would be happy and fulfilled to have this much love manifest at our departures.

To those who would attack his research, and accuse him of being a flawed human, of not being 100% hardass about his dealings with alleged abduction victims and potential hoaxers – I personally witnessed the degree of comfort this brave man gave some very distraught people, folks who were scared, confused and who didn’t have anyone to turn to without being marginalized or ridiculed, and for that work alone, he should be celebrated and respected. If he was fooled by some unscrupulous folks, his decision to err on the side of kindness and compassion is perhaps a byproduct of his intensely powerful humanity and sincere desire to help others. Those who would vilify him would be well advised to check their own glass houses for hidden piles of large, rough stones.

Budd Hopkins was a great man, and I for one will miss him something urgent.

 

I was a guest on The Kate Valentine Show!

On July 3, 2011, I was pleased to be the guest on Kate Valentine’s “Viewpoints”, which is archived at:

http://www.atlanticcoastufos.com/past_shows.html

or on iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kate-valentine-ufo-show/id367295290

We discussed some interesting aspects of ufology including my own ideas about what alien intelligence might comprise.

Several weeks prior to this show, I taped another show with Kate and psychologist interested in the UFO phenomena  Oddly several copies of that show were lost at the studio, never again to resurface.

Kate Valentine is the host of two radio shows in the New York/New Jersey Metro area both of which deal with the paranormal and primarily but not exclusively UFOs. One is called “the Kate Valentine UFO Show” and is heard on Friday afternoon at 1 p.m. on WVNJ AM 1160 and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 4 p.m. The other show is called “Viewpoints” and is heard on Saturday nights at midnight on WNYM AM 970.

Kate is quite a remarkable lady with a decades long keen interest in unidentified aerial phenomena. She has interviewed some of the best and brightest in this field and I highly recommend anyone interested in ufology to check out her menu of past shows or listen in live. Both shows have a call-in feature so it is quite possible to ask questions about your sightings to individuals who are veterans in the area of ufology.

I know that Kate would herself love to have the opportunity to be a space tourist and I hope that wish will come true for her.

Here is a quote from her website:

~For my own part, I declare I know nothing whatever about it, but looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? — Vincent van Gogh, 1889.

 

Alarming news that could be good…

CREDIT: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, V.M.J. Henriques (sunspot), NASA Apollo 17 (Earth)

On this blog I have posted two articles concerning how the last solar minimum was longer than usual:

http://fahrusha.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/spiritual-musings-on-the-current-solar-minimum/

http://fahrusha.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/still-not-many-sunspots/

Now we are in the midst of a solar awakening waxing toward a solar maximum in around the year 2013.

However, today the solar physics division of the American Astronomical Society announced that the  solar maximum following the one in 2013 is probably not going to be very active if it happens at all. It seems the Sun is going through a period of dormancy. If this turns out to be true, there is likely to be colder weather on Earth. This may act to combat the man-made global warming we have caused with our petrochemical excesses.

I am not a particularly religious person but I consider myself to be very spiritual. In the words of Robert Monroe, I certainly have experienced that “I am more than my physical body.” I can’t help thinking that it is possible that a power greater than me has had a hand in this and is saving humanity and the other life on this planet from the excesses of mankind. I do not know the identity of this power, if it is a deity or an advanced alien civilization one hundred thousand years ahead of our own that somehow has a vested interest in our survival. Maybe I am simply a romantic to consider such a notion but I have experienced first hand that there are other beings in our midst that are intangible to most of us in our 4D world.

Even if that turns out to be the case, long solar minimums are not without their downsides. Consider if you will the Maunder Minimum spanning from 1645 to 1715 which ushered in a mini-ice age. If the weather becomes sufficiently colder it will impact agricultural output and we all know what substantially less food would mean in a world already struggling with famine and overpopulation.

http://www.space.com/11960-fading-sunspots-slower-solar-activity-solar-cycle.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/solar-minima.html

 

Earth Day Update and Concerns

Remnants of Ancient Troy

It has been a while since I have written a post. I’ve been very busy with my life in general, but also very intensely concerned with the Earth and the ecological devastation that has taken place increasingly over the past year. I don’t like to write a post that is infused with hopeless negativity even if what I am writing about is true.

Last year we had the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a totally preventable man-made disaster, that was so destructive to other species and human livelihoods. It really made me furious and I could not write about it constructively, so I did not write about it at all. Instead I wrote some posts about energy solutions. I hope to continue to do this, but of course this is primarily a blog about the anomalous and the paranormal.

The Earth has also experienced a number of violent earthquakes around the world in many places such as Haiti, Chile and of course, Japan. I fear that the western coast of North America will not be spared. My heart goes out to all people and other creatures affected by these calamities. I am aware that earthquakes are a continuous phenomena across geologic time. It does seem to me that the severity and number of these quakes are increasing in recent years. A higher population density worldwide intensifies the destruction to humans. A theory concerning greater earthquake frequency to which I currently ascribe is that as glaciers and polar ice caps continue to melt due to (mostly man-made) global warming, the placement of water changes around the globe. There is, for instance, less water ice resting on the Himalayas and therefore a whole lot less weight holding them down, while there is perhaps more water, therefore more weight, in the South Pacific, especially around the equator. When this weight is redistributed in this manner, especially in a very geologically active area, such as the Ring of Fire, it may boost the number and severity of quakes on fault lines. The extent of the weight of water in this equation should not be underestimated. Think about how attentive one must be to water pressure when scuba diving only a relatively few feet down.

Now in addition to the devastation caused by the earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis, another man-made catastrophe has occurred. The nuclear reactors at Fukishima have been severely damaged by the quake and tsunami and are now in various states of partial meltdown. Unfortunately the reactors were unsafe from their inception. Nuclear energy is inherently unsafe due to human fallibility which is always present along with human greed which causes planners to cut corners, and because the spent fuel remains highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years and there is no where to put spent fuel that is safe.

Sadly, the situation is far from under control, though brave workers at the plant have repeatedly attempted to shut down the reactors at the cost of their own (workers) health. It is not the object of this blog to go into detail about the various radioactive substances still being manufactured and spewed forth from Fukishima and which are a hazard to all biological life on this planet. A smart consumer of information will be well advised to look into this on his or her own. An excellent starting place is Arnie Gunderson’s site Fairewinds Associates. I personally would like to see all nuclear facilities fazed out starting with reactors in large population areas, on or near geological faults or subject to violent weather extremes.

Of course we should all do what we can to help the victims of these multiple tragedies. One action we can take to prevent this tragedy being repeated, is to lobby our elected officials to shutdown nuclear power plants and withdraw tax subsidies to build new ones. Go ahead…write those letters…get off yer duffs and go out and demonstrate! Do something proactive instead of stewing in existential depression which is pointless.

 

Extraterrestrial News and A Paradigm Shift

New Solar System (image credit- Tim Pyle NASA)

This is a very exciting time for astronomers, amateur astronomers, astronomy buffs, ufologists and aware citizens of the world.

First and foremost this week a new solar system with six planets has been discovered along with an additional 1200 exo-planetary candidates by the NASA Kepler Spacecraft. Probably as I am writing this, the number will change in the upward direction. This information is being added to daily. The Kepler Spacecraft has been a wonderful success for NASA. I urge all my readers to click on my links to detailed information at NASA on this fascinating program and the mechanics of the Kepler Spacecraft.

The star with the newly found solar system, Kepler 11, is said to be Sun sized. The amazing thing here is that five of the six planets found around Kepler 11 are in very close orbits around Kepler 11 and all six are thought to be rocky objects like the Earth and Mars and the Moon. In the beginning of the discovery of exoplanets, almost all the planets discovered were gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn but much larger and closer in to their stars- not what would be considered to be hospitable to life as we know it. That all changed in Autumn 2010 with the discovery of a rocky planet only 20 light years away orbiting a red dwarf star, Gliese 581, in the so-called Goldilocks or habitable zone – a region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface.

So it begins to seem that habitable planets may be relatively common in our galaxy. This idea was considered to be foolish in scientific circles within very recent history. We add to this idea that the Universe is proving to be larger than anyone expected and appears to hold three times the number of stars many astronomers might have estimated only a year ago. We are poised at the brink of a paradigm shift comparable to or greater than the one Galileo started with his non Geocentric model of the solar system. (The earliest heliocentric model of the solar system was by Philolaus in the fifth century BC, but was not widely adopted. Philolaus was a Sun worshipper. Is the Sun a conscious being? I think so.) In short, our beloved Solar System appears to be one of trillions out there. There are probably millions of solar systems in our Milky Way Galaxy and there are billions of galaxies. There is no reason not to believe that many other galaxies have stars with solar systems. Similarly there is no reason not to postulate that many of these solar systems have rocky planets in the habitable zone with water on them.

Where there is water there is likely to be life. Meteorites have told us that the building blocks of life exist in space. Rudimentary life can exist in extremely harsh conditions. There are stars in this galaxy that are far older than the sun, and galaxies that are far older than the Milky Way. It does not require a big leap from these facts for us to expect to find advanced civilizations on some of these rocky, watery planets. If some of the civilizations out there are tens of thousands of years more advanced than ours, might they not be visiting our habitable rock with it’s cruel warlike dominant ape species we like to call “human beings”? It is indeed an exciting and frightening time to be alive!

 

Mammoth Prediction

Wooly Mammoth

When I was younger and more foolish I made a list of predictions for the coming year. It was in the late ’80s and my late great friend, Captain Haggerty was organizing a new year’s publicity event around his dog training business and asked me if I wanted to take part. He was making predictions about what would be happening in the dog fancier’s world and displaying some of his dogs. I was to bellydance for the cameras and make some predictions about what would happen in the world at large.

Most of my predictions did not transpire in that year, but in some permutation many of them became pivotal in future years.  Last week I noticed in the news that Japanese scientists were actively working on recreating a mammoth from genetic material retrieved from the Siberian permafrost. I had predicted just that in the late ’80s. It is claimed that the mammoth will be born of an elephant surrogate mom by the end of the decade. The elephant is the closest surviving relative of the mammoth.

Since the time I made that prediction, I have thought long and hard about the business of making predictions. I have noticed that predictions I’ve made often occur but seldom in the time frame I expected. Often people are looking for predictions about the personal lives of the rich and famous. I have no interest in that whatsoever.

I am concerned that in making a specific public prediction one can change the course of events. Simply put, if I write that Mr. X will be killed and a sizable group of individuals read that and think about it, does that make it more likely that Mr. X will perish? I suspect it will. It will affect the collective mind of humanity.

There is another reason I am not making a lot of predictions: my world view has become increasingly dark and I do not wish to infect others with my state of mind. I am not depressed, really, I’m actually fairly happy. It’s just that my “Weltanshauung” (world view) is very negative.

What I have to say next is going to sound very politically partisan but in actuality it is not. I was very hopeful about the world until the day after the 2000 US Presidential election. I was never very politically active previous to this time. I was and am an active environmentalist. Yes, I admit it I am a treehugger. After “W” was elected it seemed as though the whole world went to hell in so many ways, both related to the election and not related to it at all, and it has not recovered.

I will make only one prediction now, and it will be very general. The more you do to improve or save the environment, the happier your future will be; and conversely if you degrade the environment you can be sure the future will be awful for your old age and those that follow you.

Sometimes I wonder how people (are they really humans?) can be anti-environmental. I do understand a certain shortsightedness on the part of those who might lose their incomes as sanctions are put into place which would cause them to lose their jobs. There is a fairly simple answer for this. They should be retrained for green jobs. There is lots of money to be made in renewable energy, for example, and this is just the beginning.

It is a fantasy of mine that those who are politically active against the environment are reptilian alien shapeshifters who want the Earth to be turned into a hot awful wasteland so that they can immigrate their population from their wasted reptilian planet light years away and enslave the few remaining humans. In reality those belonging to the anti-environment group are probably simply greedy and rapacious sociopaths who don’t care a whit for anybody or anything beyond dying with the most toys.

 

Important Ecological Solutions

Here in the USA we could easily use the flatulance coming out of the mouths of politicians to power massive electrical plants. But seriously, we need more forward thinking ideas like those outlined in the following article. The answers are out there to save warm-blooded species on our planet (That includes us.) If we don’t we’ll all perish and take all the large mammals and many birds with us. Make no mistake the Earth will go on, without us. Witness the dinosaurs!  Congratulations to California and Wisconsin for leading the way in the USA to break our dependency on foreign oil and the noxious byproducts of fossil fuel. Thanks to NY Times and Frank DeMarco (see links in my blogroll). Using Waste, Swedish City Cuts Its Fossil Fuel Use

ELISABETH ROSENTHAL – The New York Times

Here is a positive story of what can be done when the will to overcome entrenched special interests is strong enough.

Kristianstad has already crossed a crucial threshold: the city and surrounding county, with a population of 80,000, essentially use no oil, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long frigid winters. It is a complete reversal from 20 years ago, when all of their heat came from fossil fuels.  But this area in southern Sweden, best known as the home of Absolut vodka, has not generally substituted solar panels or wind turbines for the traditional fuels it has forsaken. Instead, as befits a region that is an epicenter of farming and food processing, it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines. A hulking 10-year-old plant on the outskirts of Kristianstad uses a biological process to transform the detritus into biogas, a form of methane. That gas is burned to create heat and electricity, or is refined as a fuel for cars. Once the city fathers got into the habit of harnessing power locally, they saw fuel everywhere: Kristianstad also burns gas emanating from an old landfill and sewage ponds, as well as wood waste from flooring factories and tree prunings. Over the last five years, many European countries have increased their reliance on renewable energy, from wind farms to hydroelectric dams, because fossil fuels are expensive on the Continent and their overuse is, effectively, taxed by the European Union’s emissions trading system. But for many agricultural regions, a crucial component of the renewable energy mix has become gas extracted from biomass like farm and food waste. In Germany alone, about 5,000 biogas systems generate power, in many cases on individual farms. Kristianstad has gone further, harnessing biogas for an across-the-board regional energy makeover that has halved its fossil fuel use and reduced the city’s carbon dioxide emissions by one-quarter in the last decade. ‘It’s a much more secure energy supply – we didn’t want to buy oil anymore from the Middle East or Norway,” said Lennart Erfors, the engineer who is overseeing the transition in this colorful city of 18th-century row houses. ‘And it has created jobs in the energy sector.” In the United States, biogas systems are rare. There are now 151 biomass digesters in the country, most of them small and using only manure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The E.P.A. estimated that installing such plants would be feasible at about 8,000 farms. So far in the United States, such projects have been limited by high initial costs, scant government financing and the lack of a business model. There is no supply network for moving manure to a centralized plant and no outlet to sell the biogas generated. Still, a number of states and companies are considering new investment. Last month, two California utilities, Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric, filed for permission with the state’s Public Utilities Commission to build plants in California to turn organic waste from farms and gas from water treatment plants into biogas that would feed into the state’s natural-gas pipelines after purification. Using biogas would help the utilities meet requirements in California and many other states to generate a portion of their power using renewable energy within the coming decade. Both natural gas and biogas create emissions when burned, but far less than coal and oil do. And unlike natural gas, which is pumped from deep underground, biogas counts as a renewable energy source: it is made from biological waste that in many cases would otherwise decompose in farm fields or landfills and yield no benefit at all, releasing heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. This fall, emissaries from Wisconsin’s Bioenergy Initiative toured German biogas programs to help formulate a plan to develop the industry. ‘Biogas is Wisconsin’s opportunity fuel,” said Gary Radloff, the initiative’s Midwest policy director. Like Kristianstad, California and Wisconsin produce a bounty of waste from food processing and dairy farms but an inadequate supply of fossil fuel to meet their needs. Another plus is that biogas plants can devour vast quantities of manure that would otherwise pollute the air and could affect water supplies. In Kristianstad, old fossil fuel technologies coexist awkwardly alongside their biomass replacements. The type of tanker truck that used to deliver heating oil now delivers wood pellets, the major heating fuel in the city’s more remote areas. Across from a bustling Statoil gas station is a modest new commercial biogas pumping station owned by the renewables company Eon Energy. The start-up costs, covered by the city and through Swedish government grants, have been considerable: the centralized biomass heating system cost $144 million, including constructing a new incineration plant, laying networks of pipes, replacing furnaces and installing generators. But officials say the payback has already been significant: Kristianstad now spends about $3.2 million each year to heat its municipal buildings rather than the $7 million it would spend if it still relied on oil and electricity. It fuels its municipal cars, buses and trucks with biogas fuel, avoiding the need to purchase nearly half a million gallons of diesel or gas each year. The operations at the biogas and heating plants bring in cash, because farms and factories pay fees to dispose of their waste and the plants sell the heat, electricity and car fuel they generate. Converting to Renewables Articles in this series examine innovative attempts to reduce the world’s dependence on coal, oil and other carbon-intensive fuels, and the challenges faced. A blog about energy and the environment. Kristianstad’s energy makeover is rooted in oil price shocks of the 1980s, when the city could barely afford to heat its schools and hospitals. To save on fuel consumption, the city began laying heating pipes to form an underground heating grid – so-called district heating. Such systems use one or more central furnaces to heat water or produce steam that is fed into the network. It is far more efficient to pump heat into a system that can warm an entire city than to heat buildings individually with boilers. District heating systems can generate heat from any fuel source, and like New York City’s, Kristianstad’s initially relied on fossil fuel. But after Sweden became the first country to impose a tax on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, in 1991, Kristianstad started looking for substitutes. By 1993, it was taking in and burning local wood wastes, and in 1999, it began relying on heat generated from the new biogas plant. Some buildings that are too remote to be connected to the district heating system have been fitted with individual furnaces that use tiny pellets that are also made from wood waste. Burning wood in this form is more efficient and produces less carbon dioxide than burning logs does; such heating has given birth to a booming pellet industry in northern Europe. Government subsidies underwrite purchases of pellet furnaces by homeowners and businesses; pellet-fueled heat costs half as much as oil, said Mr. Erfors, the engineer. Having dispensed with fossil fuels for heating, Kristianstad is moving on to other challenges. City planners hope that by 2020 total local emissions will be 40 percent lower than they were in 1990, and that running the city will require no fossil fuel and produce no emissions at all. Transportation now accounts for 60 percent of fossil fuel use, so city planners want drivers to use cars that run on local biogas, which municipal vehicles already do. That will require increasing production of the fuel. Kristianstad is looking into building satellite biogas plants for outlying areas and expanding its network of underground biogas pipes to allow the construction of more filling stations. At the moment, this is something of a chicken-and-egg problem: even though biogas fuel costs about 20 percent less than gasoline, consumers are reluctant to spend $32,000 (about $4,000 more than for a conventional car) on a biogas or dual-fuel car until they are certain that the network will keep growing. ‘A tank is enough to get you around the region for the day, but do you have to plan ahead,” Martin Risberg, a county engineer, said as he filled a biogas Volvo. Here is a great idea from the USA thanks to Scott and Julie Brusaw: http://solarroadways.com/main.html Check out their incredible and marvelous website! Lots of great ideas here on good uses for solar energy on the USA’s massive road system. Thanks to NHNE for bringing the solar roadways to my attention (and yours).

 

Recurring Dream TV Project

I spoke to Amy Kohn at length about her new project and it is indeed very  interesting. Here is her request:

Do you have a recurring dream? Do you often wonder what it means? If you have a recurring dream that is vivid, emotional, or perhaps even confusing and would like help understanding what it means, then we want to talk to you. Emmy Award winning television producer developing a new series about the analysis of dreams.  Contact us at 212-687-7716 or at madtwin@rocketmail.com. Please include your name, age, where you live, a description of the dream and how we can contact you. The more you can tell us the better!

 

A Great New Book and a Rebuttal of Agenda Driven Journalism

The book in question is UFOs, Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean. It is a well researched and carefully written book by a serious and well respected investigative journalist with chapters written by first hand UFO observers in multiple witness cases who are also (as the title suggests) generals, pilots and government officials. Mostly the book does not champion a source of these craft which behave as though intelligently controlled and appear to be metallic, however several of the witnesses propose the ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) as the most likely scenario. Other ideas put forth (not in the book) are that the craft are crypto-terrestrial, demonic, inter-dimensional, or time traveling. I personally have no trouble thinking of them as possibly both inter-dimensional and extraterrestrial but that may be fodder for another article.

Leslie Kean’s book is now on the New York Times bestseller list as well it should be. I recommend purchasing the book as a holiday or birthday gift for your skeptical friends because it makes a rather air tight case that the phenomena is real. Ms. Kean is also a founder of the Coalition for Freedom of Information and has pressed forward for US government documents using the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) particularly around the 1965 Kecksburg incident in Pennsylvania.

The book goes on to explore the possible dangers to aviation that UFOs pose and makes a case for a serious UFO government agency to be established in the United States as such agencies have been established in other countries.

Ms. Kean has been interviewed on many mainstream news shows as well as UFO-interest radio shows and podcasts. I chanced to read James Oberg’s piece , an NBC reporter’s very biased critique of her book about a week ago and was stunned that he had the nerve to trot out the old debunker’s patently ridiculous statement that career pilots are no better observers of aerial phenomena than the average person. When anyone makes such an outrageous statement, for me, the argument is over. It defies imagination that he should expect anyone to believe him. I don’t think he believes that himself or he would be well advised not to travel by air. It can only be that he has another agenda, a reason that he wants the public to discount all reports of UFOs. It is the height of humano-centric hubris to steadfastly hold that there is no other intelligent life in our vast cosmos.  Is Mr. Oberg a disinformation agent? I don’t know, but he definitely has an agenda and that agenda is not to promote open minded inquiry. We must wonder why.

Today I came across a rebuttal of James Oberg by Leslie Kean herself and I reprint it here with the object that more readers will realize that Mr. Oberg is an agenda driven debunker:

SKEPTIC MISSES POINT BEHIND UFO BOOK
SOLID SIGHTINGS CITED IN UFOS¹; SERIOUS INVESTIGATION NEEDED
By Leslie Kean
MSNBC
September 7, 2010

http://nhne-pulse.org/ufo-leslie-kean-dismantles-ufo-critic-james-oberg/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38977500/

When I wrote my book about officially documented UFO reports, I fully
expected the skeptics to react. That¹s why I was careful to focus only on
the very best evidence from the most credible sources in “UFOs: Generals,
Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record.” <http://bit.ly/cH72wg>
Since 95 percent of all sightings are eventually identified, the book is
concerned only with the remaining 5 percent — those UFO events that have
been thoroughly investigated, involve multiple witnesses and ample data, but
still cannot be explained.

That didn¹t stop James Oberg, a space analyst for NBC News, from complaining
that the book was based on a ³questionable foundation.²

…

STORY: UFO BOOK BASED ON QUESTIONABLE FOUNDATION
By James Oberg
MSNBC
August 27, 2010
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38852385/ns/technology_and_science-space

…

In the biographical note appended to his commentary, he notes that he spent
22 years at NASA¹s Mission Control and has written books about space policy
and exploration. But he neglects to inform readers of something UFO
researchers already know all too well: that he is a founding fellow of the
Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI, formerly CSICOP), a group whose aim is
to debunk UFOs and any other unexplained phenomena that challenge our
familiar ways of thinking.

For many years, Oberg, while retaining his stance as an objective student of
the UFO phenomenon, has been a consistently vocal skeptic. His long list of
articles dealing with UFOs date from the 1970s and are posted on his website
under the heading “space folklore,” which accurately sums up his attitude
towards the subject. He may be qualified to serve as an unbiased, expert
consultant on Russian or Chinese missile systems, but not on UFOs.

His objection to my many varied cases has to do with his notion that pilots
are poor observers. To buttress this idea, he quotes J. Allen Hynek
referring to questionable statistics compiled in the 1960s by Project Blue
Book. He also cites Russian researchers describing two events in 1982 when
pilot sightings were accurately identified as “military balloons” after the
fact.

This is not surprising, since the vast majority of sightings can be
explained, and this kind of identification is made all the time. However,
such solved sightings — whether made by pilots or anyone else — have
absolutely nothing to do with the cases presented in my book.

I wonder if Oberg gave “UFOs” a careful read. He spent many paragraphs
quoting me concerning a report on aviation cases by French researcher
Dominique Weinstein. The problem is, those are not my quotes. The chapter
from which he extracted them was written by Jean-Jacques Velasco, head of
the French government’s UFO agency for over 20 years, as is obvious in his
byline and narrative about French research.

Oberg gleefully proclaims that I have ³faithfully vouched for² the cases in
Weinstein’s list, but actually, I have respectfully allowed Velasco to write
his own chapter. (About half the chapters in my book were written by highly
credentialed authorities and expert witnesses.) If Oberg wants to discuss
the Weinstein study, he’ll have to contact Velasco.

Oberg¹s fixation on the question of the reliability of pilots as witnesses
is not raised by the generals and aviation experts I have interviewed –
officials who have studied pilot cases and interviewed pilot witnesses for
decades. As described in “UFOs,” French Air Force Maj. Gen. Denis Letty
initiated an extensive study of UFO data because competent pilots he knew
personally were confronted by the phenomenon. Chilean Gen. Ricardo Bermudez
was instrumental in the founding of his country’s official UFO investigative
agency in 1997 because of inexplicable sightings involving pilots.

Richard Haines, who has written more than 70 papers in leading scientific
journals and published more than 25 U.S. government reports for NASA, was
formerly chief of the space agency’s Space Human Factors Office and served
for 21 years as a retired senior aerospace scientist at NASA’s Ames Research
Center. Having studied pilot sightings and related aviation safety issues
for more than 30 years, and having personally interviewed hundreds of pilots
during that time, Haines has concluded that pilots are indeed excellent
witnesses, given their thorough training, expertise and hours of flying
time.

Haines is now chief scientist for the National Aviation Reporting Center on
Anomalous Phenomena. Sadly, most pilots never report their sightings, as he
points out in “UFOs.”

Most importantly, the aerial cases documented in “UFOs” — and many more on
the record elsewhere — involve multiple factors such as:

- Sightings of long duration, allowing for accurate voice transmissions and
the refinement of the initial identification.

- Multiple witnesses — co-pilot, crew, passengers, other aircraft in
different locations, and occasionally observers from the ground.

- Onboard radar and ground radar recording the presence of a physical
object, often corresponding exactly to the visual sighting.

- Direct physical effects on the aircraft, such as equipment malfunction.

As an example, Brig. Gen. Jose Periera of Brazil, commander of air force
operations until 2005, reports on an “array of UFOs” observed over his
country in 1986. Two pilots chased one of the objects for 30 minutes.
Numerous other pilots saw the objects. Radar recorded them. Six jets were
scrambled from two Brazilian air force bases to pursue them. Some of the
pilots made visual contact corresponding to radar registrations. Both
military and commercial pilots were involved. Onboard as well as ground
radar systems confirmed the presence of the objects.

³We have the correlation of independent readings from different sources,²
Periera writes. ³These data have nothing to do with human eyes. When, along
with the radar, a pilot’s pair of eyes sees that same thing, and then
another pilot’s, and so on, the incident has real credibility and stands on
a solid foundation.²

In 2007, airline captain Ray Bowyer saw two gigantic, bright yellow objects
suspended over the English Channel, which he observed carefully for 15
minutes. His passengers saw them, another pilot on a second aircraft was
also a witness, and an object was registered on radar.

In 1986, three Japan Airlines pilots watched a series of UFOs for 30
minutes, communicating with air traffic control while radar operators picked
up the objects in corresponding locations.

I could go on with many more examples, presented in detail in the book.
Oberg says pilots may misinterpret visual phenomena when forced to make a
split-second diagnosis before taking immediate action — very rare cases, I
would assume — and no one would disagree with that. But, just as was the
case with the solved Russian sightings I discussed earlier, this is entirely
beside the point with respect to my book, because the cases presented do not
involve such a scenario.

In addition, “UFOs: General, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the
Record” presents many other cases that do not involve pilots at all — but
often military personnel and police officers — including:

- The famous 1980 incident near RAF Bentwaters in Britain, involving the
landing of a UFO and objects sending beams of light to the ground.

- The 1981 “Trans-en-Provence” landing case in France, investigated by the
official French agency GEPAN.

- Belgian Maj. Gen. Wilfried De Brouwer’s report on the wave of sightings in
Belgium in 1989-90, which includes a spectacular photograph.

- The 1993 “Cosford Incident” involving a UFO over two Air Force bases in
Britain, investigated by the Ministry of Defense.

- The 1997 Phoenix Lights incident that former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington
described.

These are just a few of a host of cases with abundant data that don’t rely
on pilot observations — and which are still unsolved. It’s the aggregate of
cases, the accumulation of evidence and the long-running but unsuccessful
attempts of qualified experts to resolve them that establishes the reality
of a yet-unexplained physical phenomenon with extraordinary capabilities.

Oberg says that “if investigators are unable to find the explanation for a
particular UFO case, that doesn’t constitute proof that the case is
unexplainable.² Fair enough. Perhaps there is some prosaic explanation still
to be discovered. ThereŒs always that possibility, no matter how small.

But we remain in a state of ignorance concerning UFOs, leaving us with the
conclusion presented in the book: We need a systematic, scientific
investigation of the skies that actively looks for these mysterious and
elusive objects. In the meantime, all I ask is that devout skeptics like
Oberg read the entire book before raising objections that actually have no
bearing on the matter at hand.

On October 10, 2010 I have discovered a very good article by another paranormal blogger about this subject and the airport shutdowns by UFOs in China.

http://tucsoncitizen.com/paranormal/2010/10/09/leslie-kean-ufos-and-the-need-for-timely-and-responsible-ufo-reporting/

 

 

 

New Contest Photo

OK Folks, here it is- the second mystery photo contest! Where was this photo taken and who is in it? By who I mean the three people in the front. I’m not sure who the people in the rear are so I wouldn’t be able to moderate that answer in any case. The people in the photo are not eligible to win, in case you were wondering and neither is the person who took the photo, though she will be credited after the answer is revealed. All answers written in will be revealed when the contest has ended.  As in my previous contest, I will allow the winner to suggest the prize. (And no, a million U.S. Dollars is not a possibility! )

Oh yes, you can get half the answer, such as you can name the three people and not the event and location, or vice versa. Good luck and may the best human win!

Update!!! 09/16/10

The contest is over with the first prize winner being David Biedny, second prize goes to Ellen J. and honorable mention to Shelia K., Jill J. and Patricia.  David identified all the participants and the general venue, Ellen identified me and the specific venue. Shelia, Patricia and Jill all identified me. The second Dave (G.) who identified Jeff Peckman as disclosure dude was close (but no cigar ).

I wanted to give Mr. Biedny a box of the “Alien Cereal” that Jeff Peckman had in his hand, as a prize. Alas I could not find one for sale.

 

Read the Story of Nujood

Are you a woman? Are you the parent of a daughter? Are you married to a woman? Do you have a mother? In any of these cases you should read the autobiography I Am Nujood, aged 10, Divorced

This is a difficult book to read, not due to the complexity of the verbiage, but because of the poverty and abuse this child had to endure at the hands of her family. It brings up the abhorrent practice of child marriage. Many little girls as young as eight years old are married without their consent to men often decades older than themselves. They are often imprisoned inside the men’s homes as little more than slaves both sexual and domestic. The reasons for this practice are complex and rooted in the culture in which they occur. Poverty can cause a father to give his child away, but that same father may have multiple wives and his children may number in double digits. He often cannot support them all but gives no thought to birth control. This puts into place a cycle of oppression against women and girls because they are not considered equal to men and in Islamic countries the females must uphold the concept of family honor. A rumor against the honor of a girl or woman may be the motive for an honor killing, even in the United States.

In this book the eponymous young writer exhibits a bravery which is remarkable and praiseworthy. Credit must also be given to the people who helped her because Yemen’s culture can punish the defenseless and those who seek to defend them. I sincerely hope that Nujood chooses to continue her education and become a lawyer like her champion, Shada Nasr, who represented her in her divorce hearing. But Nujood is not alone. Lots of other children are forced into marriage. One quarter of Yemeni brides are aged 15 or less. It seems to me that supporting the education of women and female children in places where they are abused because they are female, is one of the most important things that can be done to bring about world peace and and end over-population. 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/08/26/yemen.divorce/index.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/04/nujood-ali-12-year-old-di_n_485952.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126110751

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Polygamy%2Bharmful%2Bsociety%2Bscholar%2Bfinds/3290757/story.html

 

Does Titan Harbor Life?

Titan, the largest Moon of Saturn

While here on Earth we are allowing rapacious corporate interests (BP, Halliburton, et.al.) to kill off millions of years of evolution, in another part of our solar system, life may be evolving:

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Have_We_Discovered_Evidence_For_Life_On_Titan_999.html

Earlier this year on this blog, (http://fahrusha.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/no-ufo-disclosure-in-sight-in-2010-but-possibly-an-earth-shaking-revelation/) I predicted that while it was unlikely that there would be any government disclosure on U.F.O.s, it was probable that it would be announced in the not so distant future that rudimentary life had been found elsewhere in the universe. I believe that the above referenced report on Titan, the largest moon Saturn, is a vanguard in this important development. The type of life postulated on Titan would be methane based. If that is the case, it would change the way many researchers think about life as strictly a carbon based system.

The Huygens probe, part of the Cassini-Hugyens space mission, was the first Earth based probe to land on Titan. The mission was launched from Earth in 1997 and the Huygens probe landed on January 14, 2005 and continued to send data for about 90 minutes after reaching the surface of Titan. Its discovery of surface liquid revolutionized scientific thought about Titan.

Here is a link to an awesome N.A.S.A. page about Cassini: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

Here is an informative talk about Titan, Enceladus and Saturn by planetary scientist Carolyn Porco.

 

My Big T.O.E. New York Seminar 2010

Pamela and Thomas Campbell

As many of my readers already know, I am a big fan of Robert Monroe, author of Journeys Out Of Body and founder of the Monroe Institute. About a year ago, a book with the unlikely name of My Big T.O.E, came to my attention. It was written by Thomas Campbell who worked with Bob Monroe in the early years, when Monroe was beginning the Institute. Initially My Big T.O.E, was published as three separate volumes, but more recently it was republished as a giant paperback and I bought it. T.O.E., by the way, stands for theory of everything. This book is an engaging tome but don’t expect to buzz through it in a weekend. It requires careful thoughtful reading and I rarely was able to read more than 10-20 pages a sitting. Even then I was often forced to reread paragraphs to truly digest their meaning. It is one thing to understand the words and quite another to own the concepts set forth by those words.

Tom Campbell is a nuclear physicist who has spent much of his career working for NASA and the book is based in scientific inquiry. He is well versed in all manner of cosmology and physical theories of the Universe from Newton through Einstein and beyond into Quantum physics and string theory. He is convinced that the known Universe is both virtual and digital and he can prove it to anyone who will listen (or read). But Campbell is also a meta-physician.

Needless to say these ideas had me spellbound, so when I went to his website to glean more information, it was extremely synchronistic to discover that he had a seminar in NYC in a month’s time. I cleared my calendar for that weekend and registered.

The program was held at the MetaCenter on West 29th Street, a very convenient, clean, central NYC location. Friday night was the (free) introduction to the ideas embodied in the book; on Saturday Campbell worked through the theoretical implications of the “Theory of Everything”; and on Sunday those implications were tested on a practical level with exercises in healing and remote viewing.

The basic starting point of the program was to establish the nature of reality. Most models of reality fail to go beyond the physical 3 or 4D world and fail to consider what happened or what existed before or outside the “Big Bang”. Many scientists start with unsupportable assumptions. Reality is not synonymous with the models we make to explain it to ourselves and others. Physical reality as we experience it is an illusion of our senses. We get some data and extrapolate it into this reality model, when it actually exists only as a probability, until we make a measure of it. Consciousness is at the base of each of our realities and is therefore personal and not truly objective.

There is more, much more, that I cannot delve into in the space of this blog. It is all worthwhile considering.

I found myself largely agreeing with the conclusions of Tom Campbell with the exception of a certain (very esoteric) position on the nature of time outside our physical matter reality. That minor difference of opinion really makes no practical difference in the application of the principles set forth in Campbell’s “Big T.O.E.” (As an aside, he is actually a rocket scientist and I am not, so I’m guessing his opinion on this matter might have more sway than mine ) The manner in which he has explained some of those things that I had already discovered on my own to be true, was extraordinarily helpful in explaining those principles to others.

I highly recommend My Big T.O.E. to seekers and philosophers of all stripes. If you have a chance to go to one of his seminars, do it! In his workshops he is aided by his lovely wife, Pamela (pictured above) and Keith Warner and Donna Aveni (pictured below) who also book the seminars under the name MBT Events and do everything humanly possible to make you feel welcome.

 

The Far Reaches of Human Experience

I ran across a very interesting article this morning courtesy of Dara Holness, who is always alerting me to interesting articles. I don’t reprint many of the articles forwarded to me or those I run across myself, but today I make an exception. The reason is that this article highlights an example of two important edgy phenomena: the possible existence of an afterlife and the far reaches of human earthly survival.  This little boy was revived after not breathing for over three hours and he simultaneously had an experience of the afterlife.  Suffice it to say, I am very impressed!

Clinically Dead Boy ‘Saw Granny In Heaven’

Thursday, April 8 10:02 pm

Sky News 2010

A three-year-old boy brought back from the dead after his heart stopped beating for three hours has told how he saw his great-grandmother in Heaven.

The youngster – who is named only as Paul – claimed he met his relative and she sent him back to Earth.

Paul was playing on his own when he fell into a lake near his grandparents’ house in the town of Lychen, north of Berlin, Germany.

The child’s grandfather later found him lifeless in the water.

Paul was quickly dragged to the shore but the youngster remained unconscious.

His father, who had had first aid training in the past, tried to resuscitate his son by giving him mouth to mouth and heart massage.

A helicopter took him to Helios hospital in Buch and doctors also tried to resuscitate him but he was unresponsive.

They were about to stop because the boy had been clinically dead for three hours and 18 minutes – but then a miracle happened.

The team managed to get his heart beating again, defying the laws of medicine.

The water in the lake was cold and the boy’s core temperature was just 28C – it should normally be 37C.

If the temperature had been higher, the team would have stopped trying to resuscitate after 40 minutes because the boy would definitely have been brain dead.

Cold temperatures means the metabolism slows so body can survive with little oxygen.

Professor of Paediatrics, Lothar Schweigerer, is from the Helios hospital in Buch.

He told Sky News: “My doctors were close to saying ‘we can do no more’ after two hours of thorax compression.

He said this was “because the chances of survival had gone and the little lad must have been brain dead”.

The professor added: “But then suddenly his heart started to beat again … it was a fantastic miracle.

“I’ve been doing this job for 30 years and have never seen anything like this.

“It goes to show the human body is a very resilient organism and you should never give up. The boy is happy and healthy. It’s a wonderful thing.”

He told daily newspaper Bild: “Paul said to his parents, ‘I was with Oma (granny) Emmi in Heaven. She told me to go back really quickly.’”