Earth - atmosphere

[Faderbaby]

These are good comments and all are equally valid in that all are equally unprovable. That doesn't mean they are wrong. The Intelligence angle is brought up. 'Swamp gas' is mentioned by StefanR as a generic term for disinformation, if I can put it that way. The reference (to swamp gas) comes from one famous UFO case that was picked up by Hollywood writers in the way that Black Helicopters are an element of the modern mythology. Most of this comes from sci-fi writers. The Air Force, or whomever, can't be blamed for NOT correcting errors in Hollywood movies. And, you can't blame them for, possibly, using the public's beliefs to cover other programs and operations. That saves the taxpayers money!

Lizzie mentions the possibility of intelligent entities being associated with plasma (I think). Or, with the EM fields that are prominently mentioned in Condign in conjunction with Plasma UAPs. Condign refers to "UFO researchers" who believe there is evidence of some intelligence being associated with plasma, so this is within the report itself. My friend never discounted (or endorsed) anything. This is truly, in my opinion, an unknown. My original article in 1995 (well-liked by "The Colonel" and totally disliked by Dr. Robert Wood of MUFON) was based on the inter-dimensional hypothesis. I realize now that there is no difference between any of these unprovable theories. Whether you call it "inter-demensional" or "superspectrum", these are sort of the same thing - unattainable knowledge.

Here's a link relating to a plasma propulsion system for cigarshaped: http://www.livescience.com/technology/0 ... aucer.html

[Plasmatic]

Maybe I'm just reading too much in. But... If there is a change in either the "discharge tension" (current / voltage) or the magnetic field? Might it not explain BOTH the sunspot absence and the migrating jet streams (I wonder if the plasma bands they found a year or two ago interacting between space weather & Earth weather are also moving)?

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin

Ive been wondering the same kinds of things about the ice melt situation.I started a thread about that.

[Plasmatic]

Check this out Gmirkin


http://www.aad.gov.au/Asset/magazine/20 ... nkages.pdf

Since 1998 we have been studying the
atmospheric circuit at Vostok, in Antarctica,
and have recently published a paper showing
a link between the solar wind (charged particles
streaming away from the sun’s surface) and
pressure at ground level. Additionally, our
measurements demonstrated the enhanced
influence of the global thunderstorms on
pressure in a manner consistent with the cloud
microphysics mechanism. If this hypothesis
is confirmed, then the influence of this
microphysics mechanism extends globally,
via the atmospheric circuit and cosmic ray
modulation. It also provides a link between
equatorial thunderstorms and polar clouds.
Through our International Polar Year project, we
will make measurements of the global atmospheric
circuit on the Antarctic plateau, to increase
our understanding of the links between the
atmospheric circuit, solar variability and weather.

[nick c]

Faderbaby wrote:
'Swamp gas' is mentioned by StefanR's as a generic term for disinformation, if I can put it that way. The reference (to swamp gas) comes from one famous UFO case that was picked up by Hollywood writers in the way that Black Helicopters are an element of the modern mythology. Most of this comes from sci-fi writers. The Air Force, or whomever, can't be blamed for NOT correcting errors in Hollywood movies. And, you can't blame them for, possibly, using the public's beliefs to cover other programs and operations. That saves the taxpayers money!

That statement is somewhat misleading. StefanR's use of "swamp gas" as a generic term for disinformation is an excellent one, because that is exactly what happened in that famous case. The term was coined by Dr. Allen Hynek when he was working as a "disinformation" spokesman for Project Bluebook, in reference to a [url2=http://ufos.about.com/od/bestufocasefil ... chigan.htm]1966 case in Michigan[/url2] which had attracted the attention of the national media.
Hynek later admitted that the "swamp gas" explanation was totally concocted by himself at the urging of Bluebook, whose only purpose was not the truth, but to make the public interest in the ufo phenomenon go away. That qualifies in my mind as "disinformation."

"Swamp Gas" Explanation:
There were numerous sightings during the Michigan wave of 1966. The case itself is very memorable for another important event that occurred. Project Blue Book sent Dr. J. Allen Hynek to investigate the sighting reports. At first, Hynek agreed that there was something going on in the Michigan skies. But after consulting with the Blue Book headquarters, he changed his mind, and said that the sightings were nothing more than "swamp gas."

Hynek Changes Mind:
Hynek would later change his attitude about UFOs, and ultimately, become one of the foremost and well-known UFO proponents ever. He would be credited with coining the phrase, "close encounters of the third kind," and was a consultant on the movie by the same name. He also had a cameo role in the film. Before his death, he created the CUFOS web site, which is still maintained today.

By my way of thinking, StefanR is totally justified in using that as an example (and this is not an isolated case) of 'disinformation' by the government with regard to the ufo phenomenon. The assertion that the government has (and therefore why not?...still is) engaged in a disinformation campaign is provable, and not just the stuff of sci fi. That sci fi writers picked up on the case and incorporated it into their stories is because government disinformation is real!
Why would the US government want to deceive the public? if not to cover something up? and if so what?

Nick

[Faderbaby]

Okay, but...

Bluebook, whose only purpose was not the truth, but to make the public interest in the ufo phenomenon go away.

...because, like the British conclusion of The Condign Report, it's very expensive to investigate all of these sightings, while producing no benefits. Many of these sightings are known to be military projects.

Why would the US government want to deceive the public? if not to cover something up? and if so what?

Three easy examples of known programs that correlate directly to "UFO" sightings are Skyhook Balloons, U-2 flights, the F-117 and the B-2. Oops - that's four examples. See how easy it is? There are undoubtedly many others. All of these have been directly correlated to increased public reportings of "UFOs". Why deceive the public? For reasons of national security. All of these programs were implemented to save American lives. Good enough reason? Absolutely.

The rest of the unexplained "UFOs" are, according to Condign, bouyant charged plasmas. The aerial characteristics of such plasmas matches the often-reported and highly unusual flight characteristics of unexplained sightings.

http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-05/skyhook.html

[MGmirkin]

Interesting. Thanks for that.

~Michael

[Groovy_Guy]

This may help to explain why the weather predictions have been completely abnormal in my part of Canada (Muskoka). Well that and the fact that forcasting is based on false assumptions of the nature of weather itself!

I run a business that depends on weather predictions to help plan build projects, and installs for customers. This year has been noticeably different from last year. I should really write it down daily, but successful prediction rates must be in the 5-10% range. So, I can't depend on 90% of ANY weather services predictions.

I'm not sure exactly what to make of it. This may be opening a slight can of worms but "chem-trails" are noticeably down this year in my area. We are also getting lots of patchy rains/storms. Lots of storms are approaching from the west, only to be literally halted in their tracks, while the weather forcasters push back the storms arrival on an hourly basis until 4 days have passed and the storms have broken up.

You can imagine how stressful this can be in job planning when you work outdoors at all times.

Has anyone else noticed these events?

[lizzie]

Faderbaby said:

My original article in 1995 (well-liked by "The Colonel" and totally disliked by Dr. Robert Wood of MUFON) was based on the inter-dimensional hypothesis.

(I think I would trust The Colonel in this respect. He has no vested interest in what you say.)

Plasma and electromagnetic effects in the ionosphere related to the dynamics of charged aerosols in the lower atmosphere
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/m ... 2/00002008

Space matter plasma strings and electromagnetic fields
http://www.west.net/~simon/Spacematterp ... ields.html

Pulsed Plasma Anomalies
http://teslatech.info/ttstore/conftapes ... gram11.pdf

NASA Baffled by Unexplained Force Acting on Space Probes
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1978577/posts

The link below is to a report of a "UFO encounter." Concentrate only on what you think are the electromagnetic effects at work.

Whether they are human "black ops" types or "etheric beings" remains to be seen; but they do seem to use electromagnetism in ways not familiar to us. Interestingly the author of the article believes these are all electrical phenomena.

UFO's a Mystery No Longer?
http://nextrev.blogspot.com/2008/02/ufo ... onger.html

[MGmirkin]

Weather predictions are reliably unreliable... Sometimes it's better just to look out the window and SEE whether it's raining or there are clouds on the horizon. My roommate is in roofing, so I hear ALL about how wrong the forecasters are when they predict a sunny weekend, my roommate schedule a crew to do a tear-off or otherwise schedules repairs and then it downpours...

~Michel Gmirkin

[webolife]

If I may offer a correlation, if not explanation, for the northward shift of the jet stream, let me set forth here a teaching I have presented for about 28 years now to my earth science students, in the form of the following propositions:
1. In the [geologically recent] past, the earth had a global greenhouse climate.
2. This is known from virtually all fossil data, including the existence of massive thick coalfields in Antarctica, tropical dwellers on Ellesmere Island (N. Territories, Canada), prevalence of limestone strata worldwide, etc.
3. This global greenhouse assured the non-existence of a jet stream as we know it.
4. The climate worldwide was subtropical, eg. the Sahara as well as Antarctica were once subtropical forests.
5. Global wind patterns such as the polar easterlies, prevailing westerlies, trade winds, etc. did not exist as we know them today.
6. This was partially due to a "leveler" topography, both below and above sea level, eg. continental boundary mountain range systems and their associated volcanics are a "recent" development, along with abyssal plains and trenches as we know them today.
7. This was mostly due to the former unification of the continents, known as "Pangaea".
8. The global greenhouse catastrophically collapsed, in association with widespread astronomical activity (I've [pre-EU] called it meteoric, but EU makes me wonder about significant EDM activity, due to Velikovskian influences in my worldview), and the upheaval of the crust due to seafloor spreading/continental drift. Timescale is a matter of presupposition.
9. At least three longterm global climate effects followed, which are:
a. the relatively rapid segregation of tropic to polar climate zones, due to the initiation of "over" heating at the equator, and its subsequent:
i. prevalent low pressure hydrology associated now with equatorial jungles,
ii. prevalent high pressure desert zones, roughly located at 30 deg. latitude, N or S,
iii. high pressure induced polar vortices, especially pronounced over the Antarctic region
iv. intermediate (misnomered "temperate") zone of weather change "extremes" associated with, but not governed by (as so many meteorologists seem to suggest) the so-called jet stream
b. the initiation of a polar ice age, geologically/geographically widespread and sudden, due to the demise of the global greenhouse, which continues to the present day, but...
c. the global systemic quasiperiopdic recovery to its original state we refer to as global warming, with its ocean current "engines" (aka El Nino and La Nina), and atmospheric effects, including the thinning of the ozone, etc., along with melting of the permafrost, increased release of methane, continued deglaciation of Greenland, Antarctica, the Arctic Ocean, continental glacier recession, etc.
10. Taken together, parts 9a-c necessitate a periodic, but longterm poleward trend in the jet stream, continued desertification (sorry, folks in Chad and other affected central African regions), and progressively more extreme weather in the "temperate" latitudes where most of the world's population is found.

[webolife]

Of course, the above explanation is given in the context of my traditional training, without much reference to EU... but that's why I'm here, to learn from all you creative people!

[Faderbaby]

The possibility that these plasmas have an intelligence is mentioned in The Condign Report. This is a PDF so I can't copy/paste it, but it's on the first paragraph of pg. 6 of this file: uap_vol3_pgs31to38.pdf. Links to download this are at the top of this thread.

After a few readings, it is clear that the Condign conclusion is that some sort of non-corporeal intelligence is not needed to explain the data within the study. Plasma accounts for the virtually mass-less aerobatics and ability to materialize and de-materialize (and merge with 'mother ships', etc). At the same time, the author points out the possible error of SETI programs in looking for life that breathes like we do. The universe could contain life forms that bear no resemblence to us. It's true that many UAP reports (like the one you linked to in Australia) are interpreted by the witnesses as representing some type of interaction. I think it's an unknown whether this is more than just a strong magnetic field effect on the human brain and body, which obviously tries to interpret the experience as best it can. The evidence of this being anything more than a field effect may not currently exist. But anything's possible. It's probably in that realm of 'unattainable knowledge'.

[StefanR]

That statement is somewhat misleading. StefanR's use of "swamp gas" as a generic term for disinformation is an excellent one, because that is exactly what happened in that famous case. The term was coined by Dr. Allen Hynek when he was working as a "disinformation" spokesman for Project Bluebook, in reference to a 1966 case in Michigan which had attracted the attention of the national media. Hynek later admitted that the "swamp gas" explanation was totally concocted by himself at the urging of Bluebook, whose only purpose was not the truth, but to make the public interest in the ufo phenomenon go away.
That qualifies in my mind as "disinformation."

Indeed, disinformation is what I intended. Whether the intent of the report was to disinform, I'm not sure, but the effect of the outcome most surely is. After reading some background information here:
http://www.uk-ufo.org/condign/condbg.htm
Things do get a little clearer then. As it seems to me it is pure bureaucracy at work, which could account for the bad statistics and sloppy work overall, to put it a little crude.
I also concur with the Hynek explanation you give. But a nuance must be placed. As Jacques Vallee writes in his book Forbidden Science, Hynek had to make some statement under some pressure, in the effect of the threat of discontinuity of being allied with the Blue Book project. And as Hynek in his heart was a scientist, he had personal trouble with the role he had to forfill but it was the only way for him to be close to the information. Catch-22, you see.
And also true, as you say nick c, the media have their own active and passive role to forefill as information source, and usually that information is to be compared in quality with public relations aka propaganda and bovine excrement. It's difficult to get to good information which is not tainted with personal interest, but maybe that is just the way it all functions, money, fame and ignorance.

The link below gives acces to some links which pertain to electromagnetic effects in relation to this subject.
http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/emeffects.htm

Three easy examples of known programs that correlate directly to "UFO" sightings are Skyhook Balloons, U-2 flights, the F-117 and the B-2. Oops - that's four examples. See how easy it is? There are undoubtedly many others. All of these have been directly correlated to increased public reportings of "UFOs". Why deceive the public? For reasons of national security. All of these programs were implemented to save American lives. Good enough reason? Absolutely.

The rest of the unexplained "UFOs" are, according to Condign, bouyant charged plasmas. The aerial characteristics of such plasmas matches the often-reported and highly unusual flight characteristics of unexplained sightings.

I have to disagree with you here. Of course you are completely right in saying that those kind of programs have caused a contribution in reports of sightings, but it doesn't come close, even combining that with Condign's weakly argumented plasmas, in approaching the much more complex phenomenon, as it can be known by studying the history and reoprts themselves. I will not go into the politics of the programs you name here, but those programs are not for saving but for killing only. And the killing is also applied to Americans, there is no discrimination there.
I think it is a good idea to discuss those aerial characteristics of such plasmas, but I'm not sure if we should treat them one by one as given in the Report or just the general probability of the contention proposed by Condign.

Having mentioned Valle a little earlier I would like to give a little information about and of Vallee, as I personally think he is one of most careful in giving opinions about this, and also in relation the electromagnetic side of it all. And to show that being to quick in promoting the Condign report as truly good science and reflective of the complexity of the problem.

Dr. Vallee was born in France and received his B.S. in mathematics from the Sorbonne followed by his M.S. in astrophysics from Lille. He came to the United States in 1962 and received a Ph.D. in computer science from Northwestern University. He was a principal investigator on the large NSF project for computer networking, which developed the first conferencing system on the ARPANET many years before the Internet was formed. He has also served on the National Advisory Committee of the University of Michigan College of Engineering. Dr. Vallee has authored three books on high technology, including Computer Message Systems, Electronic Meetings and The Network Revolution. Along with his mentor Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Dr. Vallee carefully studied the problem of UFOs for many years and served as the real-life model for Francois Truffaut in Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. His research has taken him to countries all over the world. Considered one of the leading experts in UFO phenomena, Dr. Vallee has written several well respected scientific books on the subject.

http://www.ufoevidence.org/researchers/detail13.htm
http://www.theblackvault.com/wiki/index ... ues_Vallee

The research of Dr. Jacques Vallee, supports the hypothesis that the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis for the origin of UFOs is partial at best. We've had scores of researchers on the air who propose the ETH: Stanton Friedman, Dr. Bruce Maccabee, Walt Andrus, Zecharia Sitchin, Budd Hopkins, Timothy Good, John Lear, Bill Cooper, Jerry Clark and many more.

We've had fewer researchers who have proposed a multi-dimensional origin: Dr. Peter Rocjcewicz, Don Ware, Dr. Brian O'Leary, Brad Steiger, Dr. David Jacobs, Dr. Plato Grosso, and of course Dr. Jacques Vallee

http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/ForbiddenScience.htm

Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects

Jacques F. Vallee, 2882 Sand Hill Road, Suite 220, Menlo Park, CA 94025

Scientific opinion has generally followed public opinion in the belief that unidentified flying objects either do not exist (the "natural phenomena hypothesis") or, if they do, must represent evidence of a visitation by some advanced race of space travelers (the extraterrestrial hypothesis or "ETH"). It is the view of the author that research on UFOs need not be restricted to these two alternatives. On the contrary, the accumulated data base exhibits several patterns tending to indicate that UFOs are real, represent a previously unrecognized phenomenon, and that the facts do not support the common concept of "space visitors." Five specific arguments articulated here contradict the ETH: (1) unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth; (2) the humanoid body structure of the alleged "aliens" is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel; (3) the reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race; (4) the extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and (5) the apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives, three of which are proposed in outline form as a conclusion to this paper.

http://www.scientificexploration.org/js ... v4n1a9.php

Dr. Jacques Vallee: Well, it refers to the fact that we are witnessing something very remarkable here. We live in an era where allegedly, science is above board, it's completely rational, it's completely open and it's looking at every possible subject. And yet, here we have evidence that when a group of scientists with the right background and the right degrees, try to study seriously certain subjects, they are ostracized by the rest of the scientific community. I think that from a sociological point of view, that's absolutely fascinating. That research on UFOs should be a forbidden science. It has all the elements where valuable research could be done. We have testimony from very serious and sincere witnesses. We have traces. We have physical elements. We have things that are well within the methodology of modern science and yet, we are not permitted to study it. Officially, we have all the power of the scientific method.

Dr. Jacques Vallee: Well, I had written to Aime Michel when I got his book, which is really the first book that I read on the subject, his book about the European wave of 1964. Aime Michel, who by the way died recently, he died last December, had done something quite remarkable. He had said, "Well, let's not argue whether these people are actually seeing this phenomenon or not, let's assume that they do and let's look for patterns. And in that sense, he introduced for the first time, a rational approach to this subject. And I was very much struck with that. I met Aime Michel a few years later and we started verifying those patterns. And then he was always fighting against those who would say, for example, these patterns cannot exist because UFOs cannot exist and they would actually refuse to even look at them. To them, the skeptics or rationalists in France felt that there was actually no need for them to even look at the data. Because they already knew the answers. That was true even within the French Government. In the diary, you'll see day after day after day, the meetings we had with people like Professor Recaurd, who was by the way, the father of the man who recently was a Prime Minister for France and may be, at some point, President of France, Michel Recaurd. Professor Recaurd was a very eminent physicist. He was at the time, in charge of the French nuclear program. And yet, he did not have the power to convince his colleagues to allow for a small group to be funded to check on the hypothesis that Michel and I were developing.

http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/ForbiddenScience.htm

But by 1969, when he published Passport to Magonia (Regnery), Vallee's assessment of the UFO phenomenon had undergone a significant shift. Much to the consternation of the "scientific ufologists" who had seen him as one of their champions, Vallee now seemed to be backing away from the extraterrestrial hypotheses and advancing the radical view that UFOs are paranormal in nature and a modern space age manifestation of a phenomenon which assumes different guises in different historical contexts.

" When the underlying archetypes are extracted," he wrote, "the saucer myth is seen to coincide to a remarkable degree with the fairy-faith of Celtic countries ? religious miracles? and the widespread belief among all peoples concerning entities whose physical and psychological descriptions place them in the same category as the present-day ufonauts."

In The Invisible College (E.P. Dutton, 1975) Vallee posits the idea of a "control system." UFOs and related phenomena are "the means through which man's concepts are being rearranged." Their ultimate source may be unknowable, at least at this stage of human development; what we do know, according to Vallee, is that they are presenting us with continually recurring "absurd" messages and appearances which defy rational analysis but which nonetheless address human beings on the level of myth and imagination.

"When I speak of a control system for planet earth," he says, " I do not want my words to be misunderstood: I do not mean that some higher order of beings has locked us inside the constraints of a space-bound jail, closely monitored by psychic entities we might call angels or demons. I do not propose to redefine God. What I do mean is that mythology rules at a level of our social reality over which normal political and intellectual action has no power?."

http://www.nidsci.org/articles/clark.php

Dr. Jacques Vallee: I feel more free to talk about this now, I did not feel free to talk about it in the book because the document had a secret stamp on it. My attorney and I were unable to determine whether it was still secret today. The document was dated 1953. However, it has now been released officially and so I don't feel now under any obligation to keep it secret anymore. The document that I had, that I found in the files, was a carbon of a letter sent by an organization working under Project Stalk, which was in fact, Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio which had been hired by the Air Force to do a very thorough, statistical investigation of the patterns in UFO sightings.
................
However, it also discloses two things that have never been disclosed before. First, they have found patterns in those sightings. They wanted to go on studying before any kind of scientific panel was convened. So they were telling the CIA to stop this top secret meeting of the five scientists. Now, when I read this, I almost fell from my chair. I mean, who were these people nobody had ever heard of before? They were actually telling the CIA to stop this top secret meeting of the five leading physicists in the land. Then they, went on saying that they wanted to discuss what could and could not be told to those scientists. Now, from a, if you will, from a historical point of view or from a ufological point of view, that may or my not be significant. From a scientific point of view, it's amazing, I mean, science relies on the ability of researchers to get the data and if there is somebody who is in the background telling agencies of a government what can and cannot be told to the scientists who are hired to make an assessment of the potential threat to the security of the country; I mean, this is... this is extraordinary. And they went on to say something even more extraordinary and more ominous, although it's really not a smoking gun. But one of the paragraphs in the memo, in the Pentacle Letter, suggested before convening any panel, that they wanted to do a series of experiments, essentially to simulate UFO waves

http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/ForbiddenScience.htm

Clark: Can we infer from the existence of physical evidence, then, that there is a physical cause?

Vallee: If the UFO phenomenon had no physical cause at all, there would be no way for us to perceive it because human beings are physical entities. So it has to make an impression on our senses somehow. For that to take place, it has to be physical at some time.

Clark: So in other words there is such a thing as a solid, three-dimensional flying saucer.

Vallee: No, I didn't say that. That may or may not be true. I don't think there is such a thing as the flying saucer phenomenon. I think it has three components and we have to deal with them in different ways.

First, there is a physical object. That may be a flying saucer or it may be a projection or it may be something entirely different. All we know about it is that it represents a tremendous quantity of electromagnetic energy in a small volume. I say that based upon the evidence gathered from traces, from electromagnetic and radar detection and from perturbations of the electromagnetic fields such as Dr. Claude Poher, the French space scientist, has recorded.

Second, there's the phenomenon the witnesses perceive. What they tell us is that they've seen a flying saucer. Now they may have seen that or they may have seen an image of a flying saucer or they may have hallucinated it under the influence of microwave radiation, or any of a number of things may have happened. The fact is that the witnesses were exposed to an event and as a result they experienced a highly complex alteration of perception which caused them to describe the object or objects that figure in their testimony.

Beyond there - the physical phenomenon and the perception phenomenon - we have the third component, the social phenomenon. That's what happens when the reports are submitted to society and enter the cultural arena. That's the part which I find most interesting.

Vallee: Yes, I'm familiar with that incident and similar ones. But that doesn't alter my point. The doctor may have experienced the object as "real" but we don't know what the nature of that reality is.

We know there are objects that contain a lot of energy in a small space. What do we know about what happens to the human brain when it's exposed to a great deal of energy? We know very little about that. We don't know much about the effects of electromagnetic or microwave radiation on the brain, nor about the effects of pulsating colored lights on the brain. The research into that is just beginning.

What we do know is that you can make people hallucinate using either lights or microwave or electromagnetic energy. You can also make them pass out; you can cause them to behave strangely, put them into shock, make them hear voices or even kill them.

Clark: What do you think of the abduction cases?

Vallee: Again, I'm interested mainly in their symbolic contents.

Let me explain what I mean. We live in a society that is oriented toward technology, so when we see something unusual in the sky we think of it in physical terms. How is it manufactured? What makes it tick? What is its propulsion system? We tend to assume that the physical phenomenon is its most important aspect and that everything else is just a side effect and much less important.

But perhaps we're facing something which is basically a social technology. Perhaps the most important effects from the UFO technology are the social ones and not the physical ones. In other words the physical reality may serve only as a kind of triggering device to provide images for the witness to report. These perceptions are manipulated to create certain kinds of social effects.

If that's true, then the abduction cases are quite revealing. I am not concerned with how many switches there were on the control panel or whether the percipient felt hot or cold when he was inside the flying saucer. Those questions may be totally irrelevant because maybe that person never actually went inside the object.

But the report is extremely important for its symbolic content. It can help us understand what kinds of images are coming through. One might illustrate the difference in this way:

An engineer observing a computer would want to look at the back and open up the boxes. He would want to take a probe and examine the different parts of the computer. But there is another way of looking at it; the way of the programmer, who wants to sit in front of the computer and analyze what it does, not how it does it. That's my approach. I want to ask it questions and see what answers I get. I want to interact with it as an information entity.

In the case of the abductions I think we're dealing with the information aspect. I came to that conclusion because abduction cases, in close encounter cases in general, what the witness is saying is absurd.

http://www.nidsci.org/articles/clark.php

Vallee: I've always been unhappy with the argument between those who believe UFOs are nonsense and those who believe they are extraterrestrial visitors. I don't think I belong in either camp. I've tried to place myself between those two extremes because there's no proof that either proposition is correct. I've come up with the control system concept because it is an idea which can be tested. In that sense it's much closer to a scientific hypotheses than the others. It may turn out that there is a control system which is operated by extraterrestrials. But that's only one possibility.

There are different kinds of control systems - open ones and closed ones - and there are tests you can apply to them to find out what kind of control system you're inside. That leads to a number of experiments you can do with the UFO phenomenon, whereas the other interpretations don't lead you to anything. If you're convinced that UFOs are extraterrestrial, then about the only thing you can do is to climb to a hilltop with a flashlight and send a message in Morse code. People have tried that, I know, but it doesn't seem to work very will!

The control system concept can be tested by a small group of people - you don't need a large organization or a lot of equipment - and you can start thinking about active intervention in the phenomenon.
......
My point is that you can't be sure until you do something. Then you realize that what you were seeing, the thing that looked absurd and incongruous, was really a marker for a boundary that was invisible to everybody else until you discovered it because you looked for a pattern. I think that's exactly what we have to do with UFOs. We have to do something that will cause them to react. And I don't mean building landing strips in the desert and waiting out there to welcome the space brothers.
......
Vallee: You should work outside any organized UFO group. Also you must be very careful about the types of instruments you use for your analysis. For example, I have become increasingly skeptical of the use of computers in UFO research.
....
For another thing you don't want to go around chasing every UFO that's reported. If a sighting gets a lot of publicity, you should stay the hell away from it. Instead you should go after cases that you select yourself, ones that have received very little publicity and you've heard about through personal channels. There are plenty of those and they are surprisingly rich in content. You should take your time investigating them. Get involved with the people as human beings. And then you have to become part of the scene, getting as close as you can to what's happening especially if it continues to happen.

http://www.nidsci.org/articles/clark.php

"There is a feeling that I get in the course of my investigations of being in the presence of a form of consciousness that is truly remarkable. That consciousness has a great sense of absurdity, and also a great sense of humor. The bottom line is that I feel that I've learned something out of this whole exercise, and as long as I'm continuing to learn something I'm going to continue to do it."
-Jacques Vallee

[Faderbaby]

I have to disagree with you here. Of course you are completely right in saying that those kind of programs have caused a contribution in reports of sightings, but it doesn't come close, even combining that with Condign's weakly argumented plasmas, in approaching the much more complex phenomenon, as it can be known by studying the history and reoprts themselves. I will not go into the politics of the programs you name here, but those programs are not for saving but for killing only. And the killing is also applied to Americans, there is no discrimination there.

Well, these are military programs, the purpose of which is to (obviously) protect a population of people and kill enemies. Welcome to Earth. Personally, I'm glad we won the Cold War, which is the more specific purpose of these particular programs. I don't know what else you're referring to in terms of sightings (as it is not specified) so I can't guess. I don't know if you read the excellent article I referred you to on Skyhook projects? It showed all of the direct correlations between Skyhook programs and Project Blue Book (whose offices were always in the same building as Skyhook for obvious reasons). They didn't need to investigate "UFO" sightings that were Air Force projects.

The remaining roughly 3% of the unexplained sightings of UFO/UAP have common characteristics. These do match the behaviour of plasma. It's not proven due to the rarity of atmospheric plasmas. At least we may be looking in the right direction.

[Lloyd]

- The data gathered by EU folks around here suggest that a greenhouse climate is a myth, invented by Sagan to explain the unexpectedly high heat of Venus, which is hot, not because of CO2 atmosphere, but because Venus is a young planet, ejected from Saturn maybe 9000 years ago. The Earth had a warm climate then, because it was a satellite of Saturn and "orbited" within its extended diffuse atmosphere. The Saturn system was far away from the solar system initially. Over the millennia the Saturn system approached the solar system, until it reached the asteroid belt, then disintegrated. This brought on a Great Flood, which came from the polar column over the north pole, and soon followed by a rapid cooling, referred to as the Ice Age.
- The roots of the continents go to great depths, therefore, there can have been no continental drift, as the roots would have been severed. The only apparent way the continents could spread apart without continental drift is if the Earth expanded. Subduction of tectonic plates seems impossible, because the supposedly subducting plates must be lighter than the material below them, so they can't sink. The ocean trenches show no subduction, but the rock layers are horizontal there, not steeply inclined. Expansion could account for the trenches. The Atlantic Ocean may have been carved out by electrical discharge, like Vallis Marineris on Mars, but the discharge probably initiated expansion of the planet, so the Atlantic widened by expansion after it was carved out electrically.