Believe in UFOs? This editorial's for you!

Yeah, Venus has caused a lot of trouble.In WWII, an Army Air Force control tower gave her permission to land.In the late 19th century, a train pulled over onto a side track and waited for her to go by.(both instances from an essay by Arthur C. Clarke)An interesting thing is that Venus can be visible in the daytime -- many people won't believe you when you say the same for the moon, so even fewer know that you can see Venus. However, you have to be looking at just the right place, so when that happens it's startling and people jump to conclusions.BTW, when you're out in the countryside at night away from city lights and the moon is not out, those lights you see moving across the sky are satellites. Yes, you can see satellites with the naked eye under the right viewing conditions.Arthur C. Clarke also described how the refraction of sunlight at the right angle through a flock of the right-size birds can cause strange visual effects which have also triggered UFO reports.

Like I said, under the right viewing conditions. Orange County, Calif, has quite a bit of light pollution, so we have to travel a ways to get those viewing conditions.For example, I was on a campout at a Boy Scout reservation in a canyon just north of Brea. In the middle of the night, I needed to take a short hike to the latrine (on campouts, I made it a habit to avoid using my flashlight as much as possible). It was a clear, moonless night and just the starlight was enough to illuminate the campsite such that I could see everything. Thinking back, though, it was very likely the light pollution from Brea and Fullerton spilling over the ridge that gave me my nightlight, but it was still a neat experience.I grew up in central Orange County, so my first Boy Scout campout, which was in the high desert, was the first time I had a clear unpolluted view of the sky and I was overwhelmed with all the stars. When my older son was in Cub Scouts, we went on a family campout at Lost Valley, a Boy Scout campsite near Anza Borrega. I told him about my first experience and how neat it was. But when we got there and night fell, the moon was out keeping me from delivering on my promise, so he just rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, right, Dad, whatever you say." Then in the middle of the night, he woke me up saying that he had to go to the latrine. As we walked across the gravel (the moon had set by then, BTW) I suddenly noticed that I could only hear my own footsteps. Looking back I saw my son standing there motionless looking up at the stars in awe of what he was seeing -- all he could manage to mumble was, "You were right, Dad."A few years later I was the effective Webelos leader (couldn't be officially because of BSA's idjitotic practice of religious discrimination) and our Webelos den participated in a Lost Valley camp weekend for Cub Scouts. Looking forward to holding a stargazing session with the boys (and having studied up for it), I saw for the first night that the moon would was out. Taking note of when the moon rose, I applied my astrology training from decades before to perform some mental calculations, from which I estimated that each night the moon would rise about 45 minutes later. That meant that on our last night there we could have our stargazing session before the moon showed up to spoil it, which we did. During that stargazing, we also watched several satellites transiting across the sky.ABE
As I recall, part of my reluctance to use my flashlight was to preserve my night vision and, I guess, to better take in nature and my surroundings, a bend I've always had.At that last campout weekend I mention above, while walking through our camp area under ambient light, I noticed a point of light under a mesquite bush, so I investigated. Resorting to my flashlight for a couple seconds, I saw that that glow corresponded to one end of a larva, a small grub. An example of bioluminescence. Over the weekend, I spotted several more. On the way back from the final night's campfire ceremony and on the way to our stargazing session, I spotted one in an embankment next to the trail and pointed it out to our boys.Edited by dwise1, : Tweaking the first part slightly.
Also an ABE

If we did have aliens and their spacecraft at Area 51, Trump would have tweeted out about it as soon as he was in office.No tweets! No aliens!

You mean the codes aren't still 0 0 0 0 0 0 ?

Today I Found Out: For Nearly 20 Years the Nuclear Launch Code at all Minuteman Silos in the United States Was 00000000 And now you know the rest of the story.

In German, we had Dialekt. For example, when I went to work in the Black Forest area of West Germany in 1973, I was pretty proficient in German class and could understand. First day on the job I was hit with Schwäbisch, a Dialekt that even most native Germans cannot understand (though still not as bad as Bayrisch or Schwyzerdütsch, Bavarian and Swiss respectively). I would have been willing to bet everything I had that that was not German! As it turns out, the standard German, Hochdeutsch, is pretty much an artificial language constructed out of Southern German consonants with North German vowels.German also has "Heimatsklänge", "sounds of home." That's a person's accent when they speak Hochdeutsch.BTW, decades later my German still has a Schwäbischen Heimatsklang. I can never say "Pretzel" but rather "Pretzele".Decades ago, PBS had a series, The Story of English (1986). In the episode about the various English dialects/accents inside of England they had to subtitle all the examples so that the audience could understand what they were saying.Do you remember the scene in Hot Fuzz where they are talking with a farmer (and obtain that sea mine)? The only one who can understand the farmer is an older constable and the only one who can understand the older constable is another one (Nick Frost). So the chain of translation goes from farmer, older constable, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg (and us, so Simon Pegg is kind of our audience surrogate, the newbie who has to have everything explained to him and hence to us). Video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw in case that tag doesn't work for you either.Netflix used to have a Scottish comedy show, Chewin' the Fat, which included some segments (eg, with Argyle sock puppets) completely in Scots that nobody could understand. Another Scottish show had a skit where two Scots become trapped in a lift that uses voice recognition:  
Share and enjoy!Edited by dwise1, : Pretzele

Edited by dwise1, : having to work around a YouTube glitch