I might believe in aliens if they anal-probed people besides drunken farmers in the middle of nowhere doing questionable things to livestock. You just don't hear about that shit happening to scientists or university professors.

I watched a video that showed exactly how crop circles are formed. Surprisingly low-tech. Hell, I could go do it to my neighbor's yard right now. His grass is about high enough.

I will remain a skeptic until there is something truly unexplainable by Science, science dammit!

Your rather Cthulian thoughts above actually match my beliefs regarding the UFO phenomenon very closely.

I recognize, and sympathize with, that cynicism. I haven't totally given up my enthusiasm over the subject just yet. I do still believe the phenomenon exists, and that it is something beyond our current scientific understanding. There is some scant evidence that the darn things do exist; enough to get actual scientists - such as astronomers Hynek and Vallée and physicists Bruce Maccabee and Harold Puthoff (though Puthoff recently became a scientologist, so that diminishes his credibility somewhat), all of whom have been employed by/involved with the US Government due to their interest in UFOs - to go from being skeptics to believers (or, in the case of Maccabee and Puthoff, from being believers to stark raving UFO-nuts). While my own excitement over the subject has diminished significantly - yeah, I used to be much worse - it hasn't gone away.




Actually, it's not just drunken farmers who are abducted. (I realize you probably meant that as an exaggeration, but it's one I feel obligated to debunk because the evidence - namely, dozens of reported abductions every year, numbers that have actually shown an increase over the years - proves otherwise. People from all walks of life report alien abductions. The first reported abductee, Antonio Villas Boas, sort of fits the "backwater farmboy" mold, except that he's from Brazil, so "redneck" doesn't exactly describe him. The first couple to popularize the phenomenon with their abduction story four years later - Betty and Barney Hill - didn't exactly fit the "drunken redneck" mold at all. They were a mixed-race couple, a rarity when the abduction occurred in 1961: Betty was a social worker and Barney was a postman. Both were community leaders and NAACP members, and Barney was a member of the local board of the US Civil Rights Commission. Whitley Streiber, author of Communion (his allegedly non-fiction retelling of his experience), ironically enough, was a horror novel author who wrote about werewolves. Brigitte Grant is a British make-up artist. Herbert Schirmer was a Nabraska police officer. David Liebe Hart is a well-known actor and puppeteer who has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!; he claimed to have been abducted at an early age. Robert Taylor? A respected forester from Scotland whose close encounter is known as the "Livingston Incident". Peter Khoury, a Lebanese resident of Australia, wasn't exactly "abducted" per se, but his infamous experience was no less bizarre. And these are just the notable cases, the ones that stand out from others more. There are many, many more cases similar to this. Again, it's not all a gaggle of rednecks from the sticks. In fact, the early cases of UFO sightings and abductions were typically average American citizens, holding down decent and respectable jobs, living in the suburbs in small "nuclear family" units.

The people who've studied UFO abductions aren't exactly nutjobs, either. Would you consider a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and Harvard-trained psychiatrist a nut? How about a history professor? Then John Edward Mack, David M. Jacobs are absolutely certifiable; their works helped popularize the phenomenon and bring it some measure of credibility.

The "redneck farmer" stereotype came about thanks to the Travis Walton abduction case; you've probably seen the film version, Fire in the Sky. To be fair, though, Walton wasn't a farmer out fucking sheep; he was a logger who was on the job with a logging crew when he was abducted. Ever since that case, the Media has hyped up the image of the "back-woods, blue-collar, redneck UFO abductee". Guess which stories get reported most? Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were two such blue-collar shipyard workers out fishing when they were abducted near Pascagoula, Mississippi. The infamous Allagash Abductions? Four guys out camping. Ain't nothin' more blue-collar than that! You see this treatment even in stories of UFO abductees from other countries: Jan Wolski was a farmer out riding in a horse-drawn buggy near Emilcin, Poland when he was abducted; Meng Zhaoguo was a logger working at Wuchang, Heilongjiang in China; Dionisio Llanca was a truck driver making a run to Río Gallegos in Argentina when he was "taken".

The stereotype makes sense, if you think about it. Look at what reporting a UFO abduction does to a person's life. If you were a wealthy, affluent person whose livelihood depended upon your social, political or business connections, do you really want to fuck all that up by telling people that the saucer-men were poking about your anus, or are you going to keep that quiet so all your friends don't abandon you? If you're an MD, do you really believe all of your patients are going to remain your patients if you go public with your story of alien-rape? What if you're a psychologist? Wouldn't people start saying, "The shrink is nuts!" if you told anyone about your "experiences"? How about a politician? A statesman can have his shot at the presidency totally ruined just by screaming in excitement during a campaign rally; what do you think telling people about his "intimate encounter" with E.B.E.s would do to a person's shot at the Oval Office? Of course a scientist, a businessman or a politician isn't going to report their UFO abduction story; they've got too much to lose!

But a farmer? A trucker? A logger? A fisherman? A dock worker? What've they got to lose? Are people really going to stop giving you truck hauls or pizza delivery jobs if you claim to have been abducted by a UFO? Only if you put it on your resume. Other than that, what've you got to lose by coming forward with your story?

I would like to point out: no, I do not believe every UFO sighting/abduction story out there. For example, I find the stories related by the most celebrated UFO abductee, Whitley Streiber, to be most dubious. (Think about it: he wrote horror and science fiction before becoming an abductee. Coming up with a fantastic-sounding abduction scenario wouldn't be hard for him, would it? Hell, a book he and Art Bell wrote became The Day After Tomorrow, so I definitely think he's nuts.) What I'm saying here is that UFO abductions aren't just something that happens only to inbred yokels.



The crop circles hoax is an old one. I remember seeing vids on how it was done back when I was in high school. Hell, a song was even made about the fiasco. Doesn't necessarily mean UFO sightings or UFO abductions/encounters are all frauds.

I still see no actual evidence to make me believe in UFOs. There's about as much evidence of UFOs/alien abduction as there is of God, in my opinion. I will believe in neither until they can be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. There are many people who are highly educated(even Pulitzer & Nobel Prize winning) who I think ar nuts for some of the things tey believe in. Education and winning prizes doesn't make peope any less likely to be deluded.

If there really were that many people getting truly abducted by aliens/ET whathaveyou, there would be some kind of evidence after it happening to so many. Many people claim to have seen the Loch Ness monster and Big Foot, yet with all of our fancy new technologies no one has ever captured proof. It would be easy to prove their existence if they were here.

When some people go through deep hypnosis they are highly suseptible to outside suggestion. I used to be an avid reader of ET&supernatural phenomena, but after a while I realized that it's hokum. And yes, I was being facetious in my first reply, but is certainly not an uneducated ribbing.

ETA~ Crazy people can win Prizes, apparently. Learn something new every day.

THey can also win Pulitzers before they turn crazy.

I'll agree that the vast majority of UFO sightings/abduction reports have either very little or absolutely no evidence whatsoever (meaning that the reports are probably either the products of mentally unstable minds or of people seeking attention in what has to be the most self-destructive manner possible), but there are a handful of cases with enough evidence to say that something is happening, and it's not just in people's imaginations. Rifling through the old Blue Book files shows you that much: tons of reports that can easily be explained away scientifically (or with common sense), and those few occasional reports that make you pause and think, "What the flying fuck??". It's those reports that make me believe something is happening that is beyond mere human imagination.

Like I've stated before, I don't think it's extraterrestrial at all.

Or with this handy chart.

Perfect! Love the caption below the actual weather balloon!

I wan as avid reader of UFO's/Ancient Astronauts and the ilk when I was younger. It was really exciting stuff. But, I came to agree wholeheartedly with your statement above. Even the venerable Charles Fort basically said the same thing. He noted that if there are aliens among us, they would more likely be here to harvest us like an exotic menu item than anything else. His explanation of why "they" have not contacted us "officially" rings far more true than any of the "guardian angel" junk. To paraphrase Mr. Fort, do we negotiate with chickens?
I also agree with Wolfmammy that for all the supposed extraterrestrial (or whatever)activity that has taken place on earth for for eons, there is an amazing lack of real evidence. It's 99.9 percent hearsay, interpretation, or extrapolation.
For the very few cases that are plausible, I agree that they are unlikely to be from other galaxies. Other dimensions or time-travelers are more plausible to me.

Hey B, have you ever heard of Obama being in touch or being about to get in touch with aliens? I found some information about it on the net and for some wicked reason I could swear I heard it in italian news...

-- 23 Mar 2011, 18:10 --



-- 23 Mar 2011, 18:11 --

right... as if it was necessary to repeat it... -.-"

Actually, I have a suspicion that he is a... No. I won't go there.

Alienated from his constituents, maybe, but I wouldn't call him an actual alien. That'd be an insult to extra-terrestrial biological entities and inter-dimensional beings everywhere, and I just will not allow that. :p