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Comments: 202 +- Entertainment: Looking For a Link Between Sci-Fi UFOs and UFO Reports on Tuesday August 18, @11:27AM
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by
timothy
on Tuesday August 18, @11:27AM
from the it's-spooky-how-the-aliens-manipulate-hollywood dept.
from the it's-spooky-how-the-aliens-manipulate-hollywood dept.
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NewsWatcher writes "The BBC has an interesting story about the link between sightings of UFOs and sci-fi films. From the article: 'Documents from the Ministry of Defence released by the National Archives show the department recorded 117 sightings in 1995 and 609 in 1996.' Those years correlate with the screening of the film Independence Day (1996) and when The X-Files was at the height of its popularity in the UK (1995).
'The more that alien life is covered in films or television documentaries, the more people look up at the sky and don't look down at their feet,' said an expert on UFO sightings based at Sheffield Hallam University."
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Just my imagination? (Score:5, Funny)
Tell that to my ass.
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Does it have an antenna? (Score:2, Funny)
Does it have an antenna?
i wonder ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:i wonder ... (Score:4, Funny)
Why? You suspect a conspiracy that government pushes TV shows about conspiracy theories to cover up real conspiracies?
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Re:i wonder ... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course! Don't you realize that Wormhole X-treme! is just a coverup for the secret government Stargate project?
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Yes, but the government has buried that research. I already have quite proof for that. You can read about that in my newsletter.
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Re:i wonder ... (Score:5, Interesting)
While this includes people's imagination being debunked by FBI's investigation, it also includes references to "top secret" projects only known by early "conspiracy theorists" and some of them were sometimes revaled true a few years later.
That's why it got that sucessful (besides the quality of the show itself) : it mixed mystic theories, unbelievable myth, and real theories about government and UFO's that were sometimes factual.
I don't have much examples in mind right now, but I remember hearing much words like "aurora" "blackbird" or theories about UFO's when I was kid, and later, discover that those were based on real reports of people claiming to have experienced those things.
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Yes, exactly. The X-Files was the first TV show I saw which 'got' the vibe of the conspiracy underground and managed to portray the strange mix of fact, conjecture, truth, outright lies, paranoia and contradiction which you get from doing serious study of the UFO phenomenon and related subjects. The show was at its best when it made no attempt to make anything make sense or add up and just generated a 'wtf' SF anthology feel. 'WHAT IF ALL the freaky things you've ever read in zines or on Usenet were, in fac
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
people see what they have been thinking about.
For example: when you buy a new car, all of a sudden you see that same model car everywhere.
Add to that peoples inability to think critically, and you get UFO's.
Re:Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
My favorite is when the serious conspiracy theorists trot out the fact that the Air Force had an officer making reports about UFO sightings to the president. Of course, this was during a period when the United States was developing a variety of secret aircraft, so it stands to reason that the Air Force was keeping track of people who saw unidentified flying objects.
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I think it is more than just the mindset. When I have seen these claims, the people are usually saying that the UFO did some odd aerobatic maneuver that is impossible for conventional aircraft. They really seem to believe this. To them, the only explanation is that the aircraft they see must not be man made.
The true fallacy that they make is believing too much in their eyes. They are completely unqualified to determine whether the high performance, experimental aircraft(s) flying miles away is doing som
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I wonder how and if it relates to priming [wikipedia.org] ...
Any psychologists around ?
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A slip? (Score:4, Funny)
The more that alien life is covered in films or television documentaries, the more people look up at the sky and don't look down at their feet,' said an expert on UFO sightings based at Sheffield Hallam University.
Which means that they are seeing something.
UFOs have been observed since ancient times. The apostle John saw one. The Egyptians inscribed a UFO in their hieroglyphics. And the ancient Hebrews recorded the interactions of aliens and humans as the Nephilim.
I think there's more than the authorities are willing to divulge. It's interesting to see leaks like the quote above confirm what some of us have believed for a long time.
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If you honestly think there is a "leak" in that quote you mentioned, then WOW...
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How, exactly, are angels, fallen or otherwise, not off planet aliens (aside from the belief that their off-planet origin is supernatural in nature rather than mundane, which, one would note, would apply equally to the ancient Hebrews conception of human origins.)
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You can't conceive of "off-planet aliens" when you haven't yet conceived of *planets*.
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Maybe we've been watching too much Stargate? Just saying... And one more question if I might:
You're statement implies that there are 'on-planet aliens'. Just curious as to whom you're referring to.
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He's referring to ILLEGAL aliens!
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You believe they spoke to a super natural being whose influence is not scientifically documented? Whose stongest interactions were taking place before digital recording and scientific reasoning?
You believe in "angels" more than "life evolving on a[nother] planet"?
WOW.
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As a nit pic, Angels would be aliens for all intents and purposes, as would God.
I am an atheist, so don't construe this as defending someone imaginary man in the sky, or Santa Clause.
Re:A slip? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a nit pic, Angels would be aliens for all intents and purposes, as would God.
I am an atheist, so don't construe this as defending someone imaginary man in the sky, or Santa Clause.
I dunno . . . I think it depends on your concept of the universe. I would think beings from another planet within the physical universe would be aliens, while beings from outside of (apart from, however you want to put it) the physical universe would be something else.
Parent
Re:A slip? (Score:5, Interesting)
The more that alien life is covered in films or television documentaries, the more people look up at the sky and don't look down at their feet,' said an expert on UFO sightings based at Sheffield Hallam University.
Which means that they are seeing something.
UFOs have been observed since ancient times. The apostle John saw one. The Egyptians inscribed a UFO in their hieroglyphics. And the ancient Hebrews recorded the interactions of aliens and humans as the Nephilim.
I think there's more than the authorities are willing to divulge. It's interesting to see leaks like the quote above confirm what some of us have believed for a long time.
[citations desperately needed]
... as well as post a third hand account of several unrelated occurrences thousands of years ago in one paragraph.
Ahhh, the human imagination and psyche. Full of so much wonderful things as the ability to conjure up grand imaginations and interactions
I wish the article had gone back further to War of the Worlds time or the old classic 50s black and white abduction movies. Note the first abduction didn't happen until [wikipedia.org] it had already been in pulps and film. And, from my own personal savior, Carl Sagan [wikipedia.org]:
In The Demon-Haunted World astronomer Carl Sagan points out that the alien abduction experience is remarkably similar to tales of demon abduction common throughout history. "...most of the central elements of the alien abduction account are present, including sexually obsessive non-humans who live in the sky, walk through walls, communicate telepathically, and perform breeding experiments on the human species. Unless we believe that demons really exist, how can we understand so strange a belief system, embraced by the whole Western world (including those considered the wisest among us), reinforced by personal experience in every generation, and taught by Church and State? Is there any real alternative besides a shared delusion based on common brain wiring and chemistry?" (Sagan 1996 124)
It's fun stuff to read about and write tall tales about ... and nothing more.
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You mean peopel have seen things they can't explain! Stop the presses~
Educated people make mistakes about Venus and the moon, what do you think about people before modern scientific training would think?
Movies and imagination (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds to me like Independence Day got a lot of people thinking about aliens. So than, when they look at the sky, and see something they don't recognize, it must be an alien/ufo.
I want to know why we always have crummy video of some ufo, when everyone has a camera on there cell phones, with fairly good resolution?
Re:Movies and imagination (Score:5, Insightful)
If you see an OBJECT, that is FLYING, and you can't IDENTIFY it (making it UNIDENTIFIED)... it *is* a UFO (relative to me).
That blurry, fast moving thing in the sky that i can't recognize is a UFO.
UFO does not state or imply that the object is or might be alien... that's a leap people make on their own. If i say "i saw a UFO", i am NOT saying i saw something from outer space, just that it was in the air and i don't know what it was. Nothing more, nothing less.
Parent
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For all practicality,. when someone says UFO, there talking about aliens.
Yes, you are technically correct; which is the best kind of correct!
Why would some call 911 to report a terrestrial airplane in the horizon they can't see ID Numbers on?
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missing tag... (Score:2)
Well, nothing. But it deserves further investigation.
Re:missing tag... (Score:4, Informative)
This is a case of "if you look hard enough, you will find". If they looked for evidence that reruns of 70's sitcoms were the cause of UFO sightings, they would have found evidence too.
TFA mentions an average level when E.T. was released as contradictory (which was noted and, apparently, ignored) and TFS mentions an average level when X-Files was aired as evidence.
Parent
Alien Web Profit (Score:3, Interesting)
1.- Create not so intelligent creatures
2.- Have them go at it
3.- Laugh at their culture, religion's belief, politics, and overall problems
4.- Sell the broadcast to other aliens
5.- Profit!
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Alien life must be even more boring than earth life if THAT show were to make a profit. Highly unlikely.
Re:Alien Web Profit (Score:5, Funny)
Really, the show ended after the Dinosaur Wars, they just didn't bother to tear down the studio.
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Re:Alien Web Profit (Score:4, Insightful)
Or much more likely:
1: Find a planet full of potentially exploitable resources that can possibly support life
2: Seed it with basic life
3: Wait for the life to evolve
4: Oh, yep, it can support life
5: Move in
6: Profit.
One of the silliest things that humans seem to get stuck in their heads is that other creatures would have the same sort of life expectancy as we do. Animals on our own planet have drastically varying lifespans and we all evolved from the same goop.
Start thinking about having a lifespan in the hundreds of millions of years (or no lifespan at all...something like...oh, I don't know, a machine/biological hyrbid intelligence) and suddenly those lightyears which seem SOOOOOOOO FAR are not so far any more.
Parent
Don't look down at their own feet? (Score:5, Funny)
I'll start to believe this might be credible when there is a proven, positive correlation between the prominence of UFOs in film and on TV and the incidence of trip-and-fall accidents.
Evidence of suggestion? (Score:2)
And your word for today is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Pareidolia [wikipedia.org]
That is old news (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That is old news (Score:5, Interesting)
I've looked into this some, and it's not so clear cut. The chicken and egg have fuzzy boarders. For example, (alleged) abduction experts point out that one generally does not recall the abductor's (alien's) face except under hypnosis, and until the Hill case, nobody was bothering to perform hypnosis for such purposes. Thus, there's very little pre-Hill material to compare (and some of it does match).
As far as the "saucer" shape, there appeared to be an increase in saucer sightings even before the original "saucer" news article came off the press. A weatherman spotted about a dozen disks, for exammple, just before the paper. True, the rate jumped even further after the paper came out, but it's hard to tell whether people are simply looking and/or reporting harder, or whether they are imagining things they read about.
I've read fairly extensively on the UFO phenom, and generally conclude it's premature to make any conclusions. If it's not a "space mystery", then it certainly is a psychological mystery. We'd have to toss out a lot of court cases and free a lot of "criminals" if eyewitness accounts from UFO-observing professionals such as airline pilots, emergency response, and cops is dismissed because of an alleged propensity to hallucinate based on media exposure.
Something is really odd, either in the sky or in our heads. It's a fascinating topic regardless of the real answer.
Parent
The UFO ATC problem (Score:3, Funny)
Something like 0.2% of the US population claims to have been abducted by a UFO. This means about 16 flights per night for a medium-sized city. [jarmag.com] Do UFOs coordinate with air traffic control, or what?
UFO 149A, you are cleared to descend to 6000, turn right heading 240, report when over LAX VOR.
FAQ (Score:4, Interesting)
Q: With so many high-quality digital cameras out there in every cell phone, why do we only ever get crappy videos and fuzzy images of UFO's?
A: Take your cell phone right now and photograph the nearest airplane in the sky. Then come back and ask that question.
Q: Okay, but what about professional astronomers? Why don't they ever see UFO's?
A: Who says they haven't?
Q: If alien life is out there, why don't they just talk to us?
A: Go to your local factory farm and try opening lines of communication with the livestock. Then come back and ask that question.
Q: Why would the government want to keep alien life a secret from us?
A: Go tell your bank manager during your next loan application that you are under the complete domination of a freaky bully who does with you and your family whatever it pleases and that you are utterly powerless to stop it, and that it insists you orchestrate the mass-murder of everybody in the bank and that you fully intend to go along with this plan. Then come back and ask that question.
Q: But Occam's Razor says that the simplest solution is usually the right one.
A: Occam didn't take into account that people are conceited to the point where they believe that any idea which hasn't yet occurred to them is less likely to hold validity than those ideas which they have thought of. Example: When Alexander Graham Bell first announced to the world the existence of the Telephone, very smart critics refused to believe it, even going so far as to publish treatises and diagrams in the leading journals of the day, declaring that the physics of sound simply made it impossible that voice could travel any distance through metal tubes (wires) of the diameter described in Bell's experiment; Was it more likely, they asked, that Bell had discovered some New Magical Force or that he was simply lying? --If we only believe in things we already know and understand, then we would never learn anything new.
Q: Okay, but people are very good at seeing patterns where none exist. People have been fooled before!
A: Right, and by the same logic, since, "All cows are Animals, all Animals must therefore be Cows."
Q: Show me proof! All you are doing is offering non-falsifiable arguments! Proof, damn it!
A: There's tons of it out there. You're simply refusing to look at it. Crop circles are a great place to start because they don't fly away; watch the film, "Crop Circles, Quest for Truth". Also, read Richard Dolan's, "UFO's and the National Security State." After you do some basic research, you won't feel compelled to wave that question around.
This concludes the FAQ.
-FL