Believe in UFOs? This editorial's for you!

Oh, you're have another senior monument.

This is the same threat I have heard all my life. Some joker I never heard of is going to prove X due to a secret film or some form of esoteric knowledge even Einstein was too stupid to figure out.X=
a) UFOs as more than a weird form of parodelia
b) Creationism
c) Ancient aliens
d) Bigfoot, Yeti, Loch Ness Monster, Dinosaurs in the Congo Basin, and so on.
e) Demons, boogeymen, ghosts, poltergeists, leprechauns, the monster under the bed, and so on.
f) Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and so on.
g) Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, Fundamentalism, and so on.
h) and so on.Unidentified Flying Objects are exactly that - unidentified. Sometimes footage indicates some phenomena is occurring for which no satisfactory explanation exists. This is almost always later revealed, after the documents get declassified, that the most puzzling are probably DARPA or a foreign equivalent, while the obvious hoaxes are ignored. The obvious hoaxes seem to be a factor ignored even more by the adherents than the military, which is somewhat concerned about false positives, but I guess the adherents don't know about PSYOPS or ACI.Google. Um...Have you kept up with modern historians or did your reading of history stop with Thomas Carlyle's "dark age?" Dark age for who? Muslims?, Chinese?, Asoka?, Mayans?, Toltecs?, Khmer?, Ghana?, Mali?, Songhai?, Ethiopia? shit, even Mongols?For that matter even Europe, does Notre Dame, Rheims, St.Pauls, Hagia Sofia, Lindisfarne ring a bell? Not seein' how the Flavian Coliseum, the Circus Maximus, or the Baths of Caracalla are that much more advanced in an architectural sense. How about individual scholarship? I call your hand. I have Bede, Aquinas, Dante, Giotto, Occam. Let's see, Virgil, OK, Livy, OK, Aurelius, well OK since he is from planet Vulcan, wait, what is this? Aristotle and Plato! those dudes are Greek! Judges!Google.Also, your panties are showing.And you want to lecture me about science as well as history of science? Tell me something new, I live to learn new things no matter how insignificant the messenger may feel about the value of the message.Look, LamarkNewAge, I don't consider you as immediately dangerous, as in a traitor, psychopath, religious fanatic, or Trump supporter. What concerns me is your gullibility and complete lack of skepticism. Dude, the term "new age" is in your avatar, among other things.Get thee henceforth to the nearest public library, the cataloging will likely be Dewey. Start at 200 and kill it. Move to 500, kill it, 900 kill it, to stay healthy this MLS recommends after 900 start back at the beginning and read everything you skipped. It cures both dementia and public embarrassment. Now! Wanna dance big boy?

The most amazing power that UFO's (or UAPs) demonstrate - totally beyond any known human capability, is the power to reduce the resolution and contrast of any imaging system within site of said UFO to render any images taken - optical or radar or whatever - to an indistinct, fuzzy blob.Actually, Japanese porn videographers seem to have developed the same capability when it comes to displaying genitalia, or so I've been told.

So how was the Hagia Sophia some sort of scientific driver?I also have to wonder just what you think my point was. You mentioned an Indian king from BCE times plus Aristotle. I suppose you were saying that Ibdiand and Middle Easterners preserved their works.Standard historical treatments state that after the fall of the West Roman Empire, Europeans simply relied upon ancient Greek scientific writings, but science was stuck for about 1000 years.

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Early civilizations developed different kinds of science to solve practical problems. Among the first sciences were mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.

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The early Greeks left behind a large amount of scientific knowledge. ...As they studied the world, they developed theories.

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The Greeks made many important scientific advances, but their approach to science had some problems. For example, they did not experiment, or test, new ideas to see if they were true. Many of their conclusions were false because they were based on "common sense" insteadvof experiments.

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After the fall of Rome, during the Middle Ages, most Europeans were more interested in theology, the study of God, than in the study of nature. For scientific knowledge, they relied on Greek and Roman writings and saw no need to check their facts or to make their own observations. Many of these ancient works, however, were either lost or poorly preserved. In the writings that survived, errors were added as copies were made.

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Meanwhile, Arabs and Jews in the Islamic Empire preserved much of the science of the Greeks and Romans. They carefully copied many Greek and Roman works into the Arabic language. They also came into contact with the science of the Persians and the Indian system of mathematics.

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Arabic and Jewish scientists made advances of their own in areas such as mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. However, in spite of these achievements, scientists in the Islamic world did not experiment or develop the instruments necessary to advance their scientific knowledge.

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During the 1100s, European thinkers became interested in science again as a result of their contacts with the Islamic world . Major Islamic scientific works were brought to Europe and translated into Latin. The Hindu-Arabic system of numerals also spread to Europe, where it eventually replaced Roman numerals .

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During the 1500s, European thinkers began to break with old scientific ideas. They increasingly understood that advances in science could only come through mathematics and experimentation. This new way of thinking led to a revolution, or sweeping change, in the way Europeans understood science and the search for knowledge.

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During the Gupta empire, art and science also began to develop. Earlier, you learned that Greece had a golden age of art and learning. India also had a golden age of art and learning during the Gupta empire.

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Ancient Indians made important contributions in other scientific fields, especially astronomy. They followed and mapped movements of planets and stars. They understood that the Eartj was round and revolved around the sun. They also seem to have understood gravity.

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Indiand developed ideas about what the universe was made of. As early as the 500s B.C., Indian thinkers believed that the universe was made up of many very tiny particles. They came up with ideas of atoms before the Greeks in the west did.

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I see nothing that contradicts my roughly 1000 year gap in scientific advances from roughly the time of Constantine. 1100 saw some catching up, among Europeans, and most discoveries and theories were roughly before, or during 300-500 AD.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

The Pentagon’s UFOs
How a Multimedia Entertainment Company Created a UFO News Story

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On December 16, 2017, the New York Times published “Glowing Auras and Black Money—The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program,” a now-famous article about the previously unknown Pentagon UFO study program, as reported by To The Stars Academy (TTSA). It was founded by a rock musician named Tom DeLonge, formerly of the band Blink-182, who describes TTSA as an “independent multimedia entertainment company.” This set off a media UFO frenzy that still continues.

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Most people didn’t notice that Leslie Kean, one of the authors of this piece, is a dedicated UFO promoter who has written a popular UFO book. She is also very gullible, at one point promoting a video of a fly buzzing around as if it were some great proof of high-performance UFOs. (And she still has not admitted that she was fooled by the fly.) Another author of the article, Ralph Blumenthal, has also been a UFO believer for years. So this was not the customary news article written by New York Times journalists assigned to investigate a mystery and write an objective story. Instead, it was crafted by UFO believers to appear neutral and objective when it is anything but.

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Now the other shoe has dropped. On May 26, 2019 the New York Times carried another article by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean—the same three authors as the earlier piece—headlined “Wow, what is that?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects.” They write:

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The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds. “These things would be out there all day,” said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years.

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One seriously wonders why, if unknown objects were supposedly seen “almost daily” for nearly a year, and hung around “all day,” we don’t have overwhelming video, photographic, and instrumental evidence of them, removing all doubt about their appearance and behavior? In reality, all we see are the same three blurry infrared videos promoted by TTSA, over and over again. This makes no sense at all. Doesn’t the Navy have any cameras, radar and other surveillance equipment?

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The Pentagon did not “disclose” or “release” anything about UFOs. This whole “disclosure” line came about from statements by TTSA’s Luis Elizondo and others, and not from any internal Pentagon activity. The Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) came about because multimillionaire investor (and longtime UFO believer) Robert Bigelow, a frequent campaign contributor to Sen. Harry Reid, prevailed upon Reid, then the Democratic leader in the Senate, to set up the AATIP program. AATIP then funneled $22 million in contracts to Bigelow’s company (because that’s how things are done in Washington). The only thing that AATIP is known to have produced are 38 papers in weird physics, like anti-gravity, wormholes, and negative mass propulsion.

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TTSA has claimed from its inception that the Pentagon released the three blurry infrared videos that they ceaselessly show us. They claim to have “chain of custody” documentation for the videos, but nobody has ever seen this documentation. Elizondo recently released to George Knapp, a reporter friendly to TTSA (and it seems to anybody else making UFO claims) a copy of a document purporting to show the videos’ release. But a careful analysis by John Greenewald of The Black Vault shows beyond any doubt that the document does not prove what Elizondo claims it does. Greenewald notes,
we have no proof of any [official Pentagon] release, let alone what is being touted [the videos] is even the same evidence connected to this DD Form 1910. If we see a blatant disregard for the truth by Mr. Elizondo on display with this DD Form 1910, and we see the same disregard for the truth by To The Stars Academy as they have touted documents proving a public release—how can we believe everything or anything else from the same sources?

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One recent development that is significant, and is not mentioned on the program or by TTSA: According to an article in The Drive by Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway:

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the Times’ story doesn’t mention that between 2014 and 2015, Graves and Accoin, and all the other personnel assigned to Carrier Air Wing One (CVW-1) and the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, as well as everyone else in the associated carrier strike group, or CSG, were taking part in series of particularly significant exercises. The carrier had only returned to the fleet after major four-year-long overhaul, also known as a Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH), in August 2013. This process included installing various upgrades, such as systems associated with the latest operational iteration of the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) and its embedded Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) architecture. This is a critical detail. When the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group encountered the Tic Tac in 2004, it was in the midst of the first ever CSG-level operations of the initial iteration of the CEC.

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In other words, in 2004 the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group got its radar upgrade, and soon was reporting “unidentified objects”, including the Tic Tac. In 2014-15, Carrier Air Wing One got its radar upgrade, and soon they, too, were reporting UFOs galore. One could interpret this to mean that the radars had finally gotten powerful enough to detect the UFOs that had long been knocking about. But a more prudent interpretation is that the radars had gotten powerful enough to begin detecting birds, small balloons, insect clouds, ice crystals, windborne debris, and various other things found in the atmosphere. Arguing in favor of the latter interpretation is that these radars are apparently no longer detecting anomalous objects, which itself is extremely significant. It suggests that, in all likelihood, after being puzzled by anomalous objects appearing on the new radar, the operators finally figured out what was happening, and no longer are troubled by anomalies.

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And in a last-minute bombshell, reporter Keith Kloor finally did what reporters are supposed to do, and ask tough questions about persons in the news making claims. Writing in The Intercept on June 1, Kloor’s piece is headlined “The Media loves the UFO expert who says he worked for an obscure Pentagon program. Did he?” Kloor writes…

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there is one crucial detail missing from “Unidentified,” as well as from all the many stories that have quoted Elizondo since he outed himself nearly two years ago to a wide-eyed news media: There is no discernible evidence that he ever worked for a government UFO program, much less led one.

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Yes, AATIP existed, and it “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told me. However, he added: “Mr. Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI [the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence], up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017.”

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That directly contradicts an email sent by a spokesperson for To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a UFO research and entertainment company that Elizondo joined after he left the Defense Department.

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So, it looks like the so-called evidence in the 60 Minutes episode were complete bullshit, not released by the Pentagon at all, but instead by the UFO nuts. And the guy, Elizondo, doesn't work for the Pentagon or AATIP, let alone manage it.

So, you're telling me it isn't aliens?

Of course, all large edifices are inherently a scientific driver. Back around 1940 when the Tacoma Narrows Bridge went falling down, the professional engineer who signed off on the project witness their career and salary just as underwater as those bridge parts currently at the bottom of Puget Sound. The money and the power don't give a shit about any "harmonic vibrations," your ass is grass because bridge fall down.Let's take a trip to the past via the wayback machine (I know talking dogs and punk-ass four-eyed ginger brats in high places). Now, lets say you are the main architect, like Imhotep, well, if the pyramid fails, The pharoh isn't going to be interested in any jive-assed angle of repose, and these are the good-old days, so you lose more than a professional license and a high-payin' job. Can you guess what that is? Think it never happened: Attribution: lienyuan leeOk, so now you are the head architect for Notre Dame, Chartes, Hagia Sofia, the King's chateau, whatever. Do you think the king wants to hear about how the soil can't handle the weight? Yeah, if your walls come tumbling down, you best invent the buttress on the spot if you would like to be the one who keeps their head when others lose theirs.Now, that is one hell of a way to encourage the development of science and engineering but, hey, it worked. Mistaking Europe for the World is one.
Claiming science had absolutely no progress in Europe between 500 and 1500 makes two.Both are wrong, that is my point. I understand you exclusively post on a smartphone, so I will take the liberty to assume Ibdiand means Indian. Yes, I mentioned Asoka (304-232 BCE), that was a simple test of reading comprehension, which you passed.I am definitely arguing the Muslims preserved classical works, some through the Byzantines, and maybe a bit from the Desi in India. (as an aside, I prefer using the recent term Desi over Indian or South Asian to avoid any confusion with the term "American Indians.") As which did the most, I say the Muslims because of the documentation but to go into detail would easily take a RAZD-sized effort in a separate post. "Standard historical treatments" apparently means the cutting edge of historical scholarship during the Victorian era, as a lot has happened since WW2 that you seem unfamiliar with. Such as the modern interpretation of Medieval history to name but one. Maybe you should try looking.

Yep, it's just UFOlogists making stuff up.Us: Where's the evidence?UFOlogists: The Pentagon has it.The Pentagon:

Damn.But we've been told, rightfully so, that it's never aliens until it is. So, when's it going to be aliens already? I'm not getting any younger here.

Where to begin?One of your big themes is that you attack historians for claiming there was a dark age in Europe from 476 to 1300. You like to make examples out of ones who lived really long ago.You then claim that these are Eurocentric academics who ignored the rest of the world.The BIG PROBLEM is your strange memory problems, which cause one glaring inconsistency in your categorization of the history of academic writing. The same dark age peddling historians, that you so disdain, were generally promoters of the idea that Midfle Easterners ( especially the ones that ruled during the Caliphate of Cordoba) were a light in the surrounding darkness.More themes of yours:I don't recall you mentioning the Mesoamerican's scientific knowledge, but I am sure you would throw those accomplishments into the mix of your academic enemy's list of sins, while your Eurocentric accusations get their high frequency output.My response there is just to point out that Mayans, and related peoples, were isolated from the old world, and while they were independently advanced in science, the pre-Colombus New World accomplishments, had no contribution to the line of scientific research & knowledge (not even indirectly) that brought about modern astronomy ( Kepler was born in 1571, so let us consider him as an example of a link between the Ptolemaic and Copernican "schools" we all see as in historical succession).It does not mean Mayans were in any way inferior or shoved aside due to cultural bias.The main theme of yours seems to be that Europeans were always advancing scientifically anyway. You use the 1000 year Byzantium region ( with its wealthy Byzantine empire) as an example.You are clearly impressed with architecture (bigger is better?) and you clearly feel that the use of geometry, by engineering geniuses, will constitute a very "hard" "science". You will probably even consider the engineering challenges, of large buildings, to constitute "scientific experimentation" when it is accompanied with multiple decades of collapsing structures and seemingly endless imperial funds ( thanks to Theodora stealing money from families trying to free enslaved relatives) earmarked for the biggest domed building ever.I will just say the geometric work was already done centuries prior. and the style of the dome was already designed , again, centuries earlier.I suppose you feel that any manufacturing constitutes "science"? The crossbow would be a great "scientific marvel", right? Not that it did not enable the Mongols to destroy the world, mind you.( And I should point out that much of what is described as medieval "science" was really humanism, or the love of writings from the past)

John Glenn said that UFOs were always traveling near him when he went up into space. He said that you knew that you weren't supposed to say anything about it.Edgardo Mitchell and Gordon Cooper would still hear from their fellow astronauts about UFOs.Observations from witnesses mean something, scientifically speaking, not blathering from non astronauts (who form the bedrock of the UFO "skeptic" community). I trust the scientific work, of an observer with a telescope, over a legally blind babbler who refuses to wear his glasses, and I will any day of the week.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

These men went where no one had gone before. They experienced physical and mental stresses we can't even imagine. If they say they saw something unidentified there is more than ample reason to believe them. Yes, they do, especially such prominent witnesses, but not as much as you're trying to make out. Not even a drop in the bucket of the evidence required.If you're trying to say it's aliens all the way down or something then an introduction of the Alien Ambassador to the world via FOXNews would be helpful. And the schematics for their infinite improbability drive.Another round of fuzzy pictures will not suffice.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

No. I support modern historians who use the term Medieval instead of Victorian ones who use the term "dark ages." Victorian historians were extremely Eurocentric overall. Are you claiming they weren't? And where is Cordoba located? Not the Middle East. Well, technically no one prior to the 17th century was doing science as the scientific method was not remotely defined yet. So, I am using architecture, scholarship, and technology, as stand-ins because that's all we have. Crossbows were mainly used by Europeans, Mongols generally used the compound bow.My main point is modern scholarship in the formal study of history does not support any Victorian notion of "dark ages" between 500-1500 CE in Europe.Besides, isn't this thread supposed to be about UFOs? Perhaps conversations about the nature of Medieval history are better handled elsewhere.

Point well taken, and amusing to boot. I prefer primary sources, but yes I can, with all confidence, confirm that secondary-source observation as correct.

All this UFO stuff reminds me of the visions of the protagonist of The Gernsback Continuum