Grainy black and white inconclusive conclusive proof of extraterrestrial life!
The Denver Post reported today on the press conference dealing with some new alien footage that claimed to be conclusive proof of aliens visiting Earth. But whaddaya know, they couldn't actually allow the footage to be released to the public because the rights belonged to someone else. Ain't that always the way?
The press conference was called by Denverite Jeff Peckman, who also wants to found an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission, and featured footage shot in Nebraska by a father who feared that pervs were looking at his two daughters through a window eight feet off the ground. But lo!, instead of garden variety masturbators, the father captured an balloonish alien head that bobs up and down throughout the video.
The Post link above features a still image from the footage and also a deliberate fake video that illustrates how the original itself could have been faked. The video underwent a vetting process, during which several experts took a look. But keep in mind that that process was presided over by MUFON, which is sort of like getting a bunch of evangelicals together to decide if God is real.
For all of you who're interested in this subject, allow me to direct you to Joel Achenbach's excellent book Captured by Aliens, which I'm sure I've mentioned on this blog before and which I recommend to everybody I meet. Achenbach, ever an empiricist (and the author of Why Things Are, a Miami Herald science column that was widely syndicated), talked to NASA officials and Carl Sagan and Frank Drake and New Agers--and David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson!-- and everybody else involved in the wide world of extraterrestials. It's a great read, and having absorbed it and a lot of similar literature, I'm pretty much with Sagan and Achenbach on this: the likelihood of life elsewhere, given an infinite universe, is big. Probable, even. But the likelihood of us ever running into anything else is appropriately infinitesmal. Sorry, MUFON. Space is just too big.
So until it becomes clearly apparent (no ownership issues, no grainy footage, no blurry pictures and anecdotes) that we're members of a galactic community, why don't we all spend some time on our planetary community? The thing that often strikes me about UFO devotees is that, other than issues dealing with governmental complicity in covering up alien life, they have little interest in politics. Reptilians capture interest; the school board elections do not. Escapism is escapism, no matter how passionate its prophets.
(And yes, I fully realize the hypocrisy of running this post shortly after one about how much I want to play D&D. Shut up.)
Recent Comments